Situation vs Plot

Hello Fellow Writers!

Yesterday I spent several enjoyable hours hanging out with my writing buddies at Panera while adding another 2000 words to my WIP "Chastity Belt". My plan right now is to get the book written as quickly as possible so that I can then pull out my figurative red pen and start my favorite process of all: revisions!

One fellow writer, Rebecca, was saying how she is having a hard time coming up with a plot. I told her about how Stephen King is pretty anti-plot - he prefers to focus on characters in a situation, and to let the story move from there.

In his book "On Writing" (which, by the way, I highly recommend to anyone who either loves Stephen King or loves to write), he says:

I won't try to convince you that I've never plotted any more than I'd try to convince you that I've never told a lie, but I do both as infrequently as possible. I distrust plot for two reasons: first, because our lives are largely plotless, even when you add in all our reasonable precautions and careful planning; and second, because I believe plotting and the spontaneity of real creation aren't compatible.
A strong enough situation renders the whole question of plot moot. The most interesting situations can usually be expressed as a What-if question:
What if vampires invaded a small New England village? (Salem's Lot).
What if a young mother and her son became trapped in their stalled car by a rabid dog? (Cujo).
These were situations which occurred to me - while showering, while driving, while taking my daily walk - and which I eventually turned into books. In no case were they plotted, not even to the extent of a single note jotted on a single piece of scrap paper.

I love the book "On Writing" because I love having the opportunity to get into King's head. Some people say he's 'just' a horror writer, but I say he's a genius!
Today is Memorial Day (thank you to the men and women who have sacrificed to keep our country safe!). My hubby has the day off and the weather is beautiful, so we're going to spend the day on the dock and in the lake. I may bring my laptop down and try to get some writing done, or I may not. We'll see.

Oh, and did I mention that I submitted my second book to Ellora's Cave? Fingers crossed!
Yours Truly,
Shoshanna Evers

What if... (plot ideas!)

Hello Fellow Writer!

On Thursday I wrote 2,500 words, and then yesterday I wrote another 1000 words. Now I have 41,000 words, which means I am thisclose to finishing my current WIP, "Snowed in with a Millionaire", by the end of the month. This will be my first year as a NaNoWriMo participant, and it has been so much fun I'm sad to see the month drawing to a close already.

While meandering through some of the NaNoWriMo forums, I came across a great thread that offers complimentary "What if?" scenarios that you can feel free to take and run with!

Here's an excerpt, check out the whole thread here:

from Arwen Islanzadi:

Well, everyone knows about what-if questions, so I'll be reposting last year's topic in hopes of inspiring some NaNoers in their work... or an incredibly random subplot... The main idea is to inspire people... So, here goes.
What if...
-You realized that you only had ten days to live and, to save yourself, you had to make an eleven day journey?
-The only way to save the world was for a large amount of the population to comit suicide?
-You suddenly found a gateway into a fantasy realm and wandered through it with no way of returning to the real world?
-Everything you wrote for NaNo suddenly came to life and all of your characters turned against you in a fit of anger at the lack of plot-development?
-NaNoWriMo didn't exist and you had to write a novel on your own, with none of the awesomeness that is NaNo?
...That's all for now, but be sure to post your hypothetical questions for others to adopt!

From EelKat:

What if you open the door to what you thought was a closet, but turned out to be a time machine?
What if your MC was shot in a drive by shooting?
What if a scientist created a micro chip that recorded your dreams while you slept, and you could play them back the next day?
What if the sun went into super nova and wiped out 90% of Earth's populations?

Today I am going to a write-in with my fellow WriMos, and then DH and I are dropping the baby off at Grandma and Grandpa's so we can go see "The Twilight Saga: New Moon". I am very excited to see this since I loved the book by Stephanie Meyer!

I'm so glad that I'm able to attend the write-ins this weekend instead of having to go and buy a car, which was the original plan. DH and I are saving money by repairing the old car instead. I hope to wrack up a minimum of 2,000 more words today.

Wish me luck, and good luck to you too!
Yours Truly,
Shoshanna Evers

Harlequin Historical Undone Guidelines

Hello Fellow Writers!

Yesterday I spent five hours drinking coffee and racking up my word count at the Panera in Fishkill NY. It was a blast! I'm having so much fun hanging out with fellow NaNoWriMo participants that I will be very sad to see November end. Usually writing is a very solitary sport. It feels motivating to make it a group venture.

I wrote two thousand words on Friday and four thousand words yesterday, so now I have a total of 28,000 words. That's 100 manuscript pages. And here's the scary part - I recently ran out of plot! That's right. I spent three weeks writing a 40 page plot outline that took me almost to the end of my story, and now I am forced to throw the darn thing out and write by the seat of my pants.

It all started when I had planned for a love scene and realized that my hero and heroine weren't ready for that. So the plot is gone. Now the characters are running the show!

I think after November is over I will take a break from "Snowed in With a Millionaire" and let it percolate a bit. During that time I'll try my hand at a shorter piece, perhaps something for Harlequin Historical Undone....

Here are the guidelines, from eHarlequin.com:

Writing Guideline
Harlequin Historical Undone

Word Length: 10–15,000 words
Format: eBooks
Senior Editor: Linda Fildew
Editor: Sally Williamson
Editorial Assistant: Mimi Berchie
Editorial Office: London, U.K.

If you've always wanted to write for Harlequin Historical, but were daunted by the length, now is your chance to submit something shorter!
The response to Harlequin Historical's more sensual story lines have been so positive that we are creating a new eBook sexy short story program—Historical Undone.
In Historical Undone we are looking for a high level of sensuality that flows naturally out of the plotline. There should be a strong emotional basis to the heightened attraction—it's vital the reader can believe in the intense emotion driving the characters as their relationship develops. These stories should be hot, sexy and subtly explicit without the lovemaking being vulgar or gratuitous.
Whether you choose a dark and devilishly sexy Regency rake caught in a compromising situation with a headstrong miss, or a courageous Saxon lady held captive by a powerful Norman warrior, your characters should be fully fleshed out and should be the main focus of the story.
The history should be well researched in order to give an authentic sense of period without taking over from the romance. We are happy to consider stories set in ancient civilizations up to and including the First and Second World Wars. What remains ever popular are the Regency tales, which could see your characters scandalizing high society or being drawn into a salacious underworld inhabited by pickpockets and courtesans!
We are also open to slightly different elements from those normally found in Harlequin Historical books. Please feel that you can explore aspects of the paranormal and time travel.
You do not need to be agented to send material to us. We are actively looking for talented new authors and wish you every success with your submissions.
Only complete manuscripts submitted electronically will be considered—no partials or queries, please. Submissions should be sent as a Word-compatible attachment. Submissions should also follow standard formatting guidelines and should be double-spaced and typed in a clear, legible font on numbered pages. Author name and title should appear as a header or footer on each page.
Historical Undone e-mail address: undone@harlequin.ca

Today I plan on bringing my word count up to 30,000 words. I'll be attending another write-in at Panera today as well. In fact, I'm running late so off I go!
Wish me luck, and good luck to you too!
Yours Truly,
Shoshanna Evers

Plot Ideas

Hello Fellow Writers!

So yesterday I brought my word count up to 4,272 words. That means I didn't beat my November 1st word count, but I did at least write more than the required 1,667 daily words. Not going back to reread and edit is very difficult for me!

For those of you struggling with plot ideas, I found this fun website called Hatch's Plot Bank that offers a bunch of random ideas. Use what works and toss what doesn't.
Here are the first thirty ideas, but go to the website because there are literally hundreds of them. Who knows, when you get stuck one of these might spark a new idea for you.

1 surprised the circus sideshow is a letdown
2 cousin defers college for a traveling puppet show
3 babysitter allowed kids to watch spicy music videos
4 corporate credit card frozen - stranded!
5 passed by for job that was a done deal
6 accused of unfair business practices in town
7 decides to have an alias for some odd reasons
8 starts assuming the role of a dead sibling
9 housewife gets a book deal out of the blue
10 budget tax preparer makes a massive error
11 friend of a friend wants investment capital
12 trip to state capital - meets a famous senator
13 ancient oak on family homestead is dying
14 one of the farm kittens is half bobcat!
15 cousin is burned badly in amateur drag race
16 grandma's old Bible is ruined in flash flood
17 you don't buy $200 shoes when kids go without!
18 his old batchelor ways are really a bit charming
19 the bank calls - the big check has bounced
20 the business can't afford such a massive machine
21 cousin Betsy isn't taking care of loaned car
22 she says it was just ONE film - to pay tuition
23 country walk does good - idea for new book
24 determined to shut down rip-off roadside stand
25 the fumes from the new asphalt are too much
26 friend complains about son's black pals
27 she left her purse in the back of the pickup!
28 dad wired the house himself - with extension cord!
29 hotel receipts are found and prove difficult to explain
30 ice storm forces inlaws to share house for days

Today DH is working late again so if the baby cooperates I will be trying to up my word count. I find that it's fun to set an alarm for ten minutes and see how many words I can write in that amount of time, and then to try and beat my own score.

Wish me luck, and good luck to you too!
Yours Truly,
Shoshanna Evers

Getting Paid to Write

Hello Fellow Writers!

Yesterday I had my last writing class. The teacher, Vinnie Dacquino, said I was a wonderful writer. That made me feel pretty good. Of course, he also said that self-publishing counts as "being published", which is a statement I know most people strongly disagree with. I don't know why he said that, since he was published by Dell. Strange. The other women in the class and I are going to continue to meet up and share each other's work for critique, which I'm looking forward to.

In class we discussed how my heroine in "The Movie Star's Very Personal Assistant" needs to tell her secret to the hero sooner to make her more moral, and then have a different conflict as the final showdown. I totally agree so I'm going to rework that today. I need to get it done before Sunday because when NaNoWriMo starts I will be busy on my next novel, "Snowed in with a Millionaire." Hopefully I'll get more words out of this as well to bring my word count up!

I wanted to share this inspirational video from writer Stacey Cochran. After 15 years of writing, and 2000 rejections (yes I said 2K), he finally gets a check in the mail for the very first time. $1500. I literally almost cried when I watched this video because you can just tell how getting this check for his work is an affirmation to him that he wasn't wasting his time all those years.



I never did get to watch that DVD yesterday, but I doubt I'll have time to watch it today since I will be adding a scene and rewriting another for "The Movie Star's Very Personal Assistant." Also, I'm making my hero tall, dark, and handsome, instead of blond -I read that readers don't like blond heroes. Oh well.

Wish me luck and good luck to you too!
Yours Truly,
Shoshanna Evers

The Secret Formula of Most Romance Novels

Hello Fellow Writers!

Yesterday I worked on my plot for my romance novel, tentatively called "Snowed in with a Millionaire" (or maybe it will become "Snowed in with the Tycoon"). Usually I get my most work done when dear hubby returns from work so he can take the baby off my hands, but last night we watched a documentary online together, so there went two hours of valuable writing time. I don't know why I did that to myself - especially for a documentary I've already seen!

Today I will get as much done on the plot as I can - though it will be a busy day, with a doctor's appointment an hour's drive away for the baby, and then tonight (drum roll please).... I start my Advanced Writing Workshop! I'm very excited. The purpose of the class, from what I hear, is to learn how to revise your fiction to make it better. Everyone is supposed to bring a work in progress. I will be bringing my romance novel "Marrying a Movie Star". My husband has been reading it since Sunday and he says "it's like a book from the book store". Here's hoping he's right, and I'm not going to seriously embarrass myself in this class.

I've already decided that the category line I was planning to submit "Marrying a Movie Star" to (Harlequin Romance) isn't the right one - while my characters don't have sex, they have very explicit kissing and emotions - so I think if I take that to the next level and add in some romantic love scenes I can submit it to Silhouette Desire instead. (UPDATE: Marrying a Movie Star got a rewrite, sold to Ellora's Cave Publishing, and became Hollywood Spank!) (Another UPDATE 2/10/2014: Three years after selling Hollywood Spank to Ellora's Cave, I got the rights reverted back to me, and I self-published the book with fresh edits, a new cover, and a much lower price! I also put it in print using Createspace! You can see how it looks now here.)

Actually, I really want to submit it to a literary agent first.

I've been looking at a book I read awhile back, called "You Can Write a Romance" by Rita Clay Estrada and Rita Gallagher. The text is interspersed with fun quotes from published authors, like this gem:

Never give the reader the chance to ask why your character didn't take the logical action. Either explain before hand or at the time of the incident why there were no other choices. That's called "pointing to the hole."
- romance author Chelly Kitzmiller

The authors also point out that most romance novels are a twist on a simple plot. They say it's not a formula, it's a guide, but really, what do you call this?

• Boy meets girl.
• Girl has a secret.
• Girl keeps secret from boy as they fall in love.
• Boy finds out and they part in anger.
• Girl loses all.
• Boy returns, repentant, to declare what they both knew all along. He loves her.
• Girl is now strong enough to turn him down or take him back (as an equal partner).

Although I did just read a wonderful romance novel by Sabrina Jeffries called "The Pirate Lord" where a woman was kidnapped by a pirate and taken to his secret island - that set up a really fun historical romance, no secrets necessary. So there are definitely exceptions to the rule.

Now, back to writing. I'll let you know how the writing workshop went (it's a five week class) tomorrow. But before I go, one more fun quote from "You Can Write a Romance":

Writing is an action verb. Do it, don't just talk about it.
-romance author Maria Ferrarella

Wish me luck, and good luck to you too!
Yours Truly,
Shoshanna Evers

UPDATE!! For those who have stumbled upon this old post, I want to share the good news. Yes, I have a literary agent now (see how it happened here), and she got me a 6 book contract with Simon & Schuster Pocket Star! Please visit my website at ShoshannaEvers.com to learn more about The Enslaved Trilogy, out now!

Plotting Your Novel

Hello fellow writers!

Yesterday's writing experience was a smashing success - but not exactly in the way I had planned. I had wanted to start a new novel. I was thinking historical romance, despite the fact I've always been nervous about the vast amount of research involved. So I plotted out a fun kidnapping story set in the 1820s, but when I started trying to write it I just couldn't. Every second I was going - okay, what would his title be and how would he be addressed? What would she be wearing? Do they even have such and such in England in this time period? And so on... so once again I shied away from the historical romance novel.

Instead, I figured out an exciting plot set in contemporary America. I wrote about 4 pages (yup, 1000 words) of plot, although I don't know how it ends. I mean, it's a romance novel so of course they get together in the end, (oh no! Spoiler!) but I've created a situation where they have every reason in the world to hate each other, so it's going to take a bit of thinking to make it so they can go from hating each other to loving each other.

Which brings me to my review of Even Marshall's book on writing a novel, "The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing: A 16 step program guaranteed to take you from idea to completed manuscript."

One thing Marshall says that I agree wholeheartedly with is "show me an unpublished writer, and I'll show you a drawer full of false starts." Um, yeah, how did you know? I am queen of starting novels, but I've only ever finished two of them. I literally have a dozen starts that are about several chapters long or so, and then... I lose interest. Or I don't know where to go next so I give up.

Marshall says the best thing to do is meticulously plot out your novel ahead of time, planning each surprise and cliffhanger before you even can write "Chapter 1". Now, Marshall is not actually a fiction writer - he is an agent. He makes his living selling novels. His approach is highly practical - ie find a genre, figure out your word length, etc. Personally, I've always had a basic idea of where a I wanted a story to go, but I've never actually tried the Marshall Plan from start to finish to write anything. Those 16 steps he talks about are time consuming and difficult - but it can't hurt to give it a try.

So, my goal for today is to do my character sketches for my heroine and my hero, and to start putting my plot points down on Marshall's worksheet (you can photocopy it out of his book if you don't want to buy the companion workbook).

Wish me luck, and good luck to you too!
L'Shanah Toval, happy new year to my family and everyone celebrating Rosh Hashana.

Yours Truly,
Shoshanna Evers