Wednesday Writing Workout: Putting Together the Pieces of Your Story

Today I'm pleased to share a Wednesday Writing Workout contributed by the inspiring and talented author Margo L. Dill.

I first met Margo some years ago at an SCBWI-Illinois writing conference. I believe she'd already sold her first novel, the middle-grade historical Finding My Place: One Girl's Strength at Vicksburg (White Mane Kids), but it hadn't been published yet. With today's post, we join Margo's blog tour celebrating the release of her second novel, Caught Between Two Curses (Rocking Horse Publishing), a YA light paranormal romance novel about the Curse of the Billy Goat on the Chicago Cubs. Margo has two more books under contract--both picture books--one with High Hill Press and the other with Guardian Angel Publishing. Besides being a children's author, she is also a freelance editor with Editor 911: Your Projects Are My Emergency! and she is part of the WOW! Women On Writing e-zine's staff. There, she works as an editor, blogger, instructor, and social media manager. When she's not writing, editing, or teaching online, Margo loves to spend time with her husband, stepson, daughter, and crazy Boxer dog, Chester, in St. Louis, Missouri. You can learn more at Margo's website.

Here's a summary of Caught Between Two Curses:

Seventeen-year-old Julie Nigelson is cursed. So is her entire family. And it’s not just any-old-regular curse, either—it’s strangely connected to the famous “Curse of the Billy Goat” on the Chicago Cubs. Julie must figure out this mystery while her uncle lies in a coma and her entire love life is in ruins: her boyfriend Gus is pressuring her to have sex, while her best friend Matt is growing more attractive to her all the time. Somehow, Julie must figure out how to save her uncle, her family’s future, and her own love life—and time is running out!

As a die-hard Cubs fan, I'm really looking forward to reading Margo's new book. (I'm hoping the main character solves not only her problem, but the Cubs' curse too!)

And now, here's Margo's three-part Wednesday Writing Workout.

Wednesday Writing Workout: Putting the Pieces Together

Writing a novel is like putting together a jigsaw puzzle with my daughter. I’ve been teaching her to do the edge pieces first and then fill in the middle. This reminds me of writing a novel because writers usually start with an idea, maybe a plot or an interesting character with a problem—in other words, our border. We build our foundation for a story by piecing together our ideas. But sometimes, that beginning border, even with a few pieces filled in the middle, is not finished or even sturdy. Here are exercises I use with my WOW! Women On Writing novel students to add more pieces to their puzzle and come out with a strong, final product—a finished, publishable novel! (These can also be used with short stories and picture books.)

  

1. Create characters with internal and external problems.

The characters I remember best are the ones that struggled with both internal and external problems. What’s the problem your character has that he must overcome in the novel? Trying to raise money for a new bike? Figuring out how to deal with a sibling? Tired of moving around and always being the new kid at school? These are all external problems, and the ones that our plots are built on. 

But your character also needs an internal problem! In Caught Between Two Curses, Julie has to break two curses; but while she does this, she also struggles with her self-esteem and confidence as well as what love means. These are her internal struggles. While she rushes around to save her uncle, the events in the novel help her grow and work through her internal problems.

Just ask yourself these four questions either before you write your novel or even during revisions:

     a. What is your main character’s internal struggle?
     b. How does he or she solve it?
     c. What is the external problem in the novel that affects the main character?
     d. How does he or she solve it?

2. Brainstorm problems. 
If you find yourself with a strong border for your novel—an exciting beginning and an ending that will leave readers talking for years, but you are stuck in the muddy middle, make a list of 10 problems that a person can have that’s the same age as your main character and in the same time period. For example, my novel’s main character is 17, lives in Chicago in present day. Problems she can have are: pressure to have sex, temptation to do drugs, failing classes, negative body image, disloyal friends, etc. 

Once you have this list, are there any of these problems that you could turn into a subplot for either your main character or a minor character or sidekick? Subplots can often dry up the muddy middle and keep readers hiking to the end.

3. "Then what?"
The last exercise asks a simple question, “Then what?” Each time you answer, make the problem or situation worse for your main character. You don’t actually have to use all of these horrible situations in your book, but they may help you push your main character a little harder. Here’s an example:

     Julie learns a curse is on her family.

     Then what?

     The curse makes her uncle fall in a coma.

     Then what?

     Julie’s grandma says her uncle will die before he is 35 if the curse isn’t broken.

     Then what?

     He is 35 in less than 5 months.

     Then what?

     She has no idea what to do to break the curse.

Using these writing exercises while you are piecing together your novel will give you a complete story in no time! 

Thanks, Margo, for this terrific Wednesday Writing Workout. Congratulations on your new novel. I look forward to reading it.

Readers, do let us know if you try these exercises. If you'd like to read about where Margo gets her inspiration, check out this blog post. And if you haven't already done so, be sure to enter our current giveaway for a chance to win The Poem That Will Not End: Fun with Poetic Forms and Voices (Two Lions). See April's interview with the author, Joan Bransfield Graham, for complete details.

Happy writing!
Carmela

Wednesday Writing Workout: Your Character's Internal and External Quest

Last Friday, I blogged about the revision retreat I recently attended led by award-winning authors Julia Durango and Linda Sue Park. Today's Wednesday Writing Workout is a follow-up to that post. So if you haven't read it yet, please do so now. I also recommend you read this blog post by teacher Keely Hutton at Writer's Dojo, in which she has her students identify the main character's internal and external quests in a recent Disney movie.

Welcome back! Now you're ready for Step 1 of today's Wednesday Writing Workout:
---Take one of your own works-in-progress and document your main character's: 

• External Quest: what he wants to accomplish (the plot objective) and
• Internal Quest: what he needs emotionally (this drives the character's emotional growth/change) 

Is this harder than you expected? Here's one more example, shared by Linda Sue Park at the Revision Retreat and in The Craft & Business of Writing: Essential Tools for Writing Success (Writer's Digest Books). Speaking of Tree-Ear, the main character of her Newbery-winning novel, A Single Shard, Linda Sue says: "Tree-ear's external quest is to find a way to make celadon pottery. His internal quest is to find a place where he truly belongs."

Okay, now for Step 2:
---Look at the first ten pages of your work-in-progress (or the entire manuscript if you're working on a picture book). Divide the pages into scenes. For each scene, ask yourself:

Does my main character make progress toward and/or face impediments to one or both of the quests?

If the answer is "no," you need to either revise the scene or re-examine your character's quests.

Repeat this step for the next ten pages and continue working your way through until you've analyzed the entire manuscript.

Optional Step 3:
---Remember the one-sentence synopsis Jill blogged about 2 weeks ago? Well, one way to come up with yours is to look at your main character's internal and external quests. Here, for example, is the summary of A Single Shard that appears on the book's copyright page: 

"Tree-ear, a thirteen-year-old orphan in medieval Korea, lives under a bridge in a potters' village, and longs to learn how to throw the delicate celadon ceramics himself."

This synopsis explicitly states Tree-ear's external quest while hinting at his internal quest by mentioning he's a homeless orphan. See if you can do the same for your WIP: craft a one-sentence summary that incorporates your character's external quest and, if possible, hints at his internal quest.

By the way, a book's one-sentence synopsis is very much like a "logline" used to describe a movie. For some helpful tips on writing loglines (including examples from well-known films), see How to Write a Logline at Cracking Yarns, and the follow-up post, How to Write Better Loglines.  

In case you're wondering, I found the following logline at Write2Reel for the movie Keely Hutton discussed with her students:

A video game villain wants to be a hero and sets out to fulfill his dream, but his quest brings havoc to the whole arcade where he lives. 

This incorporates the very external quest Kelly's students identified! 

Don't forget--today is the last day to enter our Book Giveaway! You could win an autographed copy of Michelle Markel’s and Melissa Sweet’s Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirwaist Makers’ Strike of 1909 (Balzer and Bray).

Happy writing!
Carmela

A Revision "Aha!" Moment

Happy Poetry Friday! I'm not sharing a poem today, but I have included links to where you can get your Friday poetry fix at the end of this post.

Instead of poetry, I'm discussing revision today. I'm currently in the throes of revising not one, but two, manuscripts, so Jeanne Marie's recent post on revision was timely. However, unlike Jeanne Marie's students, I am not a "reluctant reviser." I know all to well the value of revision from my experience working on my novel Rosa, Sola (Candlewick Press). (For more about that experience, read my blog post on "The 'R' Word".)  That's not to say revision is easy for me. So I jumped at the chance to attend a Revision Retreat led by award-winning authors Julia Durango and Linda Sue Park here in Illinois last month. (Hint: If you don't know their books, especially Linda Sue's Newbery winner, then you're not reading enough. The importance of reading was one of the topics Linda Sue touched on at the Retreat. For more on what she said, read the blog post "Do You Read Enough" by Jennifer Kay, a fellow retreat attendee.)

At the retreat, I was especially inspired by Linda Sue's description of how she writes and revises her work. Before even beginning a novel, Linda Sue defines two crucial story aspects:

• External Quest: what the protagonist wants to accomplish (the plot objective) and
• Internal Quest: what the protagonist needs (this drives the character's emotional growth/change) 

Linda Sue shares examples of defining these for her first novel, Seasaw Girl (Clarion), on her website. There, you can also read a bit more about her pre-writing work.

At the retreat, Linda Sue explained that the quests are not cast in concrete--they can change and evolve as she works on a manuscript, and she talked a bit about how that happened with A Single Shard (Clarion). However, after she's defined the two quests, one step in her revision process includes analyzing every scene to make sure the protagonist makes progress toward and/or faces impediments to one or both of the quests.

Prior to the weekend, attendees had been instructed to bring the first and last ten pages of a work-in-progress. Then, during the retreat, we were given time to practice the techniques the speakers shared. For example, after Linda Sue discussed internal and external quests, we had to define them for our own WIP. In my case, that was a very enlightening exercise. But my greatest "Aha!" moment came when I had to break my manuscript into scenes and then determine whether my protagonist made progress toward and/or faced impediments to at least one of his quests. IN EVERY SCENE! It became obvious to me that, as interesting as some of my scenes were (at least to me), they really had nothing to do with either quest. I saw for myself how much better the manuscript was when I cut those scenes. I left the retreat excited to go home and apply this new tool to the rest of the novel! (Fortunately, I have no qualms cutting when needed. But if you do, you may appreciate the following comic.)

Used with permission from Debbie Ridpath Ohi at Inkygirl.com.

Speaking of tools, I've been reading up on using Scrivener for my writing. It does appear to have lots of neat features. I've downloaded the free trial and worked through the text tutorial. I'll let you know if I decide to try it out on a manuscript. Meanwhile, if any of you use it, I'd love to know what aspects you especially like.

Also, I want to add that much of what Linda Sue shared at the Revision Retreat ties in nicely with the concepts presented in Lisa Cron’s Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence (Ten Speed Press), which Esther reviewed here last fall. I finally picked up Wired for Story last month, and I have to say it definitely hooked me. The combination of the Revision Retreat and Cron's book is inspiring me to take a fresh look at two manuscripts I thought were "done."

On a different topic: don't forget to enter our latest Book Giveaway! You could win an autographed copy of Michelle Markel’s and Melissa Sweet’s Brave Girl: Clara and the Shirwaist Makers’ Strike of 1909 (Balzer and Bray).

Also, I'm sorry to report that wonderful TeachingAuthor April Halprin Wayland did not advance to the third round of the March Madness Poetry Tournament. :-(  However, the competition continues, so do visit the live scoreboard to cast your votes before the tournament ends.

And for more poetry, check out the Poetry Friday round up over at Gottabook.

Happy writing (and revising)!
Carmela