Mom Writes Podcast

In this episode:

Mel writes an action chapter (!) and wants to know – how do you add in emotion and meaning without slowing down the pace?

According to Kemlo, the key is in the little clues. It doesn’t have to be a long-winded thing, sometimes a word or two, a thought, even nonverbal cues can let us into the heads of our characters when there’s not time or space enough for more. We need to see how things are affecting our characters – if we don’t, does it mean anything to them? Does it mean anything to us?

This is Mel’s third or fourth pass on this chapter (totes normal, you guys! Sadly!) and there’s still room to weave these things in, to layer emotion and meaning so that every word is really serving the story. You want the reader to feel a seamless experience – don’t leave them wondering what’s going on in your protagonist’s head and heart, don’t make them feel like they’re the cameraman trying to take it all in – you want your readers to feel as if they are the protagonist in those moments, feeling those feelings, wanting those same things your characters do.

We return to the concept of show don’t tell – listeners, is anyone else still struggling with this? Like, forever and ever, amen? It’s essentially this: You don’t just feel afraid; you feel your heart pounding, sweat pricking your palms, your vision tunnels, and you want very specific, particular things in that exact moment, because you’re a whole person – just like your characters need to be. If you can show these things without using an emotion word (fear, afraid, dread, you get it) then you’ve done it.

In regards to emotion in the first draft: “I’ll often tell people, go ahead and write ‘she was afraid’ or whatever, use the big box terms and just use it as a placeholder so that you know what you need to capture there so you don’t get stuck on it and slow down, because I think the finessing you’re doing now, the nuance, the subtlety, that takes time.” – Kemlo Aki

Abby and Mel recall their conversation with author Rachel Solomon in the first season, when Rachel told them about her “ad libs” first draft – in order to save time and keep the momentum of the drafting process, she’ll sometimes just leave big blank spaces where emotions, reactions, character development should be – and after getting the basic plot framework down she goes back and fills in the rest. It’s a good strategy if your find yourself getting bogged down in getting it all right during the first draft (which isn’t possible, and that’s okay!).

In this episode

Abby brainstorms more of her book’s great literary character cameos – should Babar the elephant make an appearance? She says it’s going to be challenging to balance these great cameos with the story, but it’s one of the most fun parts of world building. 

Last week, Abby wanted to rewrite some of her initial chapters in third person (as opposed to first person) in order to compare and contrast them and really decide which perspective best suited her story.  Abby landed on 3rd person, and you can take a look at her first chapter at the end of the show notes.

Because Abby’s a former teacher, and this is a MG book after all, there’s some teaching in this book too. The goal of the character cameos and how these characters influence the story is designed to get kids excited about books, about literature, about these characters that they might want to go pick up a book about after they’re through with this one.

Abby and Kemlo discuss skipping ahead in time – which strategies work, and which fall flat? Kemlo recommends skipping long summations—you’re going to lose the interest of the reader unless things are very brief and to the point. A few cues to get the point across usually will suffice. 

The important thing when imparting information to the reader, and in an effort to avoid the dreaded info-dump, is showing your reader why this information matters. How’s the character using it to inform their decisions? Make some connections to the info and use it to move the story forward. 

 Finally, we talk about Abby’s protagonist’s motivations both as a middle schooler and the daughter of an (unbenknowst to her) book character. What’s driving her decisions as a middle schooler? Acceptance, of course, in the midst of dealing with the weird dynamics of having your father head up a magical library, but who hasn’t been embarrassed by their weird parents, right? Who hasn’t wanted to fit in in middle school, who lamented their own awkwardness, who struggled to make friends? These are the kind of concepts that are going to connect readers with Abby’s story.

Here’s the first paragraph of Abby’s Chapter 1— with feedback— as promised in the intro.

Chapter One

TK QUOTE *filming of new reality tv show to start, starring royals as commoners Pudding on Heirs, a new show starring Bookland royalty in common jobs. (1)

 

Bernadette Thorpe’s whole life has always felt like a party to which she didn’t get invited. The first day of middle school was no exception. She walked through the hall on the first day of school and realized that something happened over the summer that changed everyone. (2)

Everyone except her. (3)

She (4) got the sideways eye from a group of girls. (5) Every one of them had hot pink hair. The only pink thing Bernadette had was her lunchbox.

One of the girls looked down at the pastel plastic box in Bernadette’s hands. She elbowed another girl and nodded at it. They both started to laugh in the same high-pitched cackle. Bernadette’s cheeks flushed hot pink like the girls’ hair, (6) and she thought, note to self: (7) I guess it’s ok to have pink hair, but not pink lunchboxes. 

She hid her lunch behind her back as she passed the group of laughing girls.

Kemlo’s Feedback:

 (1) LOL, this name is hilarious! Love it!

(2) Reads a bit choppy. To smooth this out a little, what if you were to break it into two lines: "She walked through the hall on the first day of school and realized something had happened over the summer. Everyone had changed." Then the next line would echo this thought in a nice way, too!

(3) I really want to know if this is an entirely new school for Bernadette, with a different group of kids from the previous year, because otherwise it seems like she'd know at least a few of the people there. Actually . . . she MUST know some of them because otherwise she wouldn't be able to tell that "everyone had changed." 

(4) Right before this, I'd like to get a glimpse of Bernadette's "game plan" so she won't seem quite so passive. Give her some agency. For example, assuming she and Claire have already had their falling out (they have, right?), and Bernadette knows they both have to go to this school (right?), is she nervous about running into Claire? Maybe looking around so she can try to avoid her? (I would be.) Or she could be trying to fulfill a promise to herself that she'll make a new friend this year, so she's looking around for someone who might fill that role. That could be when she spots the pinkheads and asks herself if they'd fit the bill (nope). Then I can see her deciding to postpone her make-a-friend goal and making a beeline for her first class so she can get there as quickly as possible. But by that point you will have already shown what's at stake for her: she wants to be accepted, to have a friend.

What feels slightly "off" to me is having B enter the school without any thought about what she's expecting to do or find there.

(5) For example, instead of a generic "group of girls," what if these were girls Bernadette had known prior to this? She might remember something about them that would make the sudden change to pink hair especially baffling to her. And if they're just strangers, she might have less incentive to care about them, more reason to look around for someone else, maybe someone she knows, for reassurance that not everyone has changed. Just a thought.

(6) Says that the girls' hair was flushing pink (rather than dyed). I think what you mean is "...cheeks flushed a shade of pink as bright as the girls' hair" or something like that?

(7) Redundant—don't need both . . . or either, actually. Suggest just showing the thought: I guess it's OK to have pink hair...

In this episode:

Mel works on her secondary characters.

Mel felt pretty good about this submission in other respects, and that made it easier for her to focus on beefing up the characters. They called it “putting the dressing on the salad!”

Mel has a pile of post-its, notes Mel’s mom leaves for her as she reads Mel’s draft!

Mel focuses on the details. She and Kemlo discuss incorporating actual locations into your work and how Mel uses Google Maps to research!

“There's nothing worse than reading a book where someone is characterizing a place or a person or whatever that you actually know and getting it all wrong.”

Kemlo asks Mel how she is going about putting her revisions on the page. They take a few minutes to talk about Mel’s self proclaimed “jacked-up” process! It involves a list of things to look for in each chapter.

We also talk about how sometimes using dictation to write is the equivalent of trying to decode a text-to-speech message from Siri!

This is the episode where we find out Abby and Mel are approaching revision very differently. Mel is working with the words on the page, and Abby opens a blank document and works from memory.

We will update the show notes later on when we get all caught up. (Hey, that’s life, right?!) But in the meantime, here’s what you can expect from this episode of Mom Writes:

Kemlo helps Mel fix a small info dump.

1st person vs 3rd person? What kinds of stories are best suited for 1st person? For 3rd person?

Abby talks through the pros and cons of 1st & 3rd person as it relates to her novel.

Abby wants to open each of her chapters with a quote. Is she just making more work for herself? What’s the story-specific purpose of these quotes? Does she need them?

Welcome to Mom Writes! Today we’re introducing our new cohost and book coach, Kemlo Aki, who will be guiding us through the revision process. Kemlo’s a mom too, though her kids are grown. She’s been a book coach with Author Accelerator since 2014. Kemlo’s worked with over 80 writers, she came in on the ground floor, working directly with Jennie Nash and Lisa Cron of Story Genius. She also helped create some of the content in the coaching certification program. We’re super lucky to have her on Mom Writes!

The revision process is time to step back, take off your writer’s hats, and put on your editing hat as you look more analytically at the work you’ve done. Abby and Mel have both completed the manuscript audit, which Kemlo has reviewed, and they spend time discussing her feedback.

Mel mentions that revision can seem overwhelming at times because you’ve often got 15 different things you’re tracking in your chapter and it’s important to find a way of fixing these things that works for you. Often, and this is what Jennie has recommended in the past, is working on it piecemeal – pick one thing (a green item, yellow item or red item – for more information on this see previous episodes that cover the manuscript audit in Season 2) and do that thing, or 3 green things, or whatever you have time for. Indeed, one of the best things about revision if you’re a drafter that needs a LOT of time (like 2+ hours per drafting session) is that revision is something you can work on for 5 minutes here and there. We discuss various ways we’re planning on tackling the revisions in our manuscript, either chronologically or issue-by-issue, or both.

The great thing about Kemlo working on the manuscripts is that it’s always nice to have a pair of fresh, experienced eyes on your work. Both Abby and Mel had the curse of knowledge –and even Jennie to some extent, having been there since the very beginning of the podcast—and Kemlo was able to point out big holes and flaws that nobody had noticed until now. Even little idiosyncrasies like Mel’s tendency to use fuzzy pronouns got some attention, and she got (thankfully!) called out on them.

Fuzzy pronouns – (“it”, usually, or “them”, “they”, etc.) are problematic because your writer’s mind is automatically filling in the blank. You’re taking a chance on the reader here, as they can’t necessarily fill in the blank like you (the author) can. Taking time to clarify these things can mean the difference between a clear concept and one that pulls your reader out of the story.

Part of revision is dealing with constructive criticism. We’ve all been there, and sometimes you have to take a moment between receiving comments and deciding how to move forward on them, reminding yourself that there’s nothing wrong with not knowing something. No great writer skipped the rookie stage. Mel, Abby and Kemlo talk about what it’s like moving from that sensitive writer stage to the stage where you are delighted by feedback, even feedback that isn’t entirely rosy, because you have somewhere new to go with your work, something new to try.

Both Melanie and I struggled to keep the One-Hour Manuscript Review to, ahem, one hour.

In this episode:

Jennie teaches us how to look at our finished drafts not as a writer would (looking at pretty sentences, etc..) but as an agent or editor would if they pulled it off the slush pile.

The One-Hour Manuscript review is a series of timed readings of specific parts of your book, after which you answer big questions.

It’s looking at the story and character motivations, the force of opposition.

Mel talks about her Four-Hou— I mean, One-Hour Manuscript Review and the red flags it brought up in her first draft.

We go back to Mel’s genre choices, and how you can let those choices drive your decisions. By choosing one genre (medical thriller?) it doesn’t mean you have to squeeze out all the romance. But the main genre has to be the trunk of the tree, and the other “sub-genres” can be the branches.

Jennie tells Mel there weren’t any holes in her analysis. Instead, her analysis showed us where the holes were in her novel.

If in revision you only brush up on the prose, the holes will still be there. Right now is the time to uncover the holes and fix them. Fixing the prose comes later.

At the end, we talk a little about feedback from beta readers. Mel sent her story to a friend to read (not me!) and Jennie helps walk her through how to process that beta reader’s feedback.

On this episode of MomWrites… Jennie’s got big news about her kid (adulting!) and feelings are had, Abby’s kids take the initiative in cleaning and bust the vacuum, and we actually do talk some writing – Mel’s revision documents! Oh, and did I mention this was all recorded on Facebook Live? Yeah….

The goal here in revision is this: you want your book good enough to go out, but not so good that you can’t change it. It needs to be good enough to be accepted by an agent and publisher, but malleable enough to change via feedback—this is what happens with most books anyway; there are things about it the agent or publisher is going to want to change to make it more sellable. Sometimes, as with Kelly Barnhill and The Girl Who Drank the Moon, she was asked to rewrite it a third time into a totally different story! And that obviously worked, but it doesn’t always have to be that way.

“Your goal as a writer is to always hold on to your vision if what you want this to be, and not to bend it into something else – it needs to end up more of what it already is. There always needs to be some sort of balance between knowing this and taking in advice about your story.” – Jennie Nash

Every writer wants to be read—it’s all about how you want to get your story to the readers. If you traditionally publish, your book is going to go through many hands before it sees the shelf. If you self-publish you retain a lot of that control, but there’s a lot more work on your end. It’s important you ask yourself what you envision your work to be, how do you get it closer to the vision you have in your head? Any advice that takes you away from that is something you may want to think twice about. But consider taking the advice that helps you get there.

Mel’s goal for this revision is to add some layers, depth, and clarity that weren’t there the first time. Jennie points out that competitive titles help an agent and publisher decide where your book is going to sit on the shelf—now is Mel’s book sci-fi, speculative fiction, medical thriller? She’s shying away from the dystopian fiction genre because although her book takes place in the near future, society isn’t undergoing or has undergone that breakdown that makes dystopia unique.

The book summary is the high-level review that asks the big questions – where’s this book going to live? Who’s going to read it? It’s time to narrow those things down, and narrow down the point of your book, your character, how your character changes over the course of the story—really distill that information so if you had this info on the back of a book jacket, someone could pick it up in the bookstore and know what they’re getting.

One important thing to get right about the force of opposition is that it has to be directly related to what the character is trying to learn. You’re trying to make a point about the big things in life, and you want the force of opposition to be continuously pushing your character in this new direction all the time. It can grow, deepen and change, but this is what we’re talking about when we say we want a revision to make the book more of what it is, what you intended it to be.

In this episode:

Now that we’ve talked about revision in the abstract, it’s time to get down to specifics. How do you go about doing it? What does it look like?

Jennie has a series of exercises she recommends that will help you get started with revision.

The One-Hour Manuscript Review: This is looking at how an agent or editor would view your work; it’s something they do dozens of times a day, every day. They have to work quickly, and frankly, it doesn’t matter if something remarkable happens between page 73 and 93 – they have to want to get past the first chapter. If they don’t want to keep reading, a potential reader won’t, either.

You read your first chapter very quickly and scan chapters 2 and 3. You’re looking at the beginnings and ends of chapters carefully to see how they tie together and how they drive the story forward. Then you jump to the middle and read for about another ten minutes. Finally, you read the penultimate chapter, the one right before the end—that’s 5 minutes or so. Then you read the last chapter the way you read the first one and take about 25 minutes to assess what you saw. You’re asking the big questions, like does it have a narrative drive? Does it start in the right place? Does it feel like a story, like it ends in the right place? Is there a force of opposition and do we get all the characters motivations, desires, all the questions we want from a reader?

“If there really is something fantastic happening on page 37, there’s going to be clues on page one; there’s going to be clues at the very end. It’s not like someone does an incredibly bad job on their first chapter and rises to the occasion in the middle of the book.” – Jennie Nash

In this exercise, you're not a writer. You're a reader. You're a skimmer. You're like, what would I think if I pick this up? It's just like if you're in a bookstore and you pick up a book, you read the jacket copy, and you go to the first chapter and you know, you skim it like a potential buyer.

Yet another use for the two-tier outline comes again in revision – after you’ve analyzed your manuscript, you can either use it to guide you through the changes you need to make, to steer your manuscript in the right direction—or, if you need to, you can redo your two-tier outline to reflect needed changes during revision. The two-tier outline is like a magnifying glass on what’s working and what’s not, both in the small scale of scenes and the larger scale of the entire manuscript.

The manuscript audit is the third tool that Jennie recommends. During a manuscript audit, you move through your novel, chapter by chapter, marking green, yellow, and red-light issues. Green-light issues are no big deal – takes a minute or two to fix. Yellow light issues might take longer. Red light issues may take several hours and are the big, big red flags that will stop a reader in their tracks and make them question if this is the book they want to be reading, or not. Do NOT fix during the audit – your job during this point in revision is to find what needs to be fixed. Jennie recommends printing out a paper copy of your manuscript and using highlighters and post-it notes for this exercise. When you’re finished, you take it a little bit at a time—fifteen minutes for a few green light issues here, an afternoon to fix a few red-light issues, etc.

If you’re hungry for more information about the Stoplight Method of revision that Jennie discusses here, watch the replay of our Mom Writes Season Two Kickoff event where Jennie did a webinar all about it! You can watch the replay here: https://www.authoraccelerator.com/momwriteskickoff

Wait.

What?

Take off your writer’s hat? Yeah, you heard us.

In this episode:

We’re here on the cusp of revision on MomWrites – Abby’s finished with her novel, finished driving down the east coast with two kids, two dogs, and a hedgehog, and Melanie’s a mere two chapters away from being FINISHED (so, practically there. Almost). Join us as Jennie, Abby and Mel talk about what’s next for their books.

“So you have a thing that exists in the universe that didn't exist before—writing is total creation! There was nothing, and now there's something, and you made it, and that's why we stop and celebrate because that's amazing.” – Jennie Nash

Jennie says there are two tendencies writers have when they finish their first drafts:

1) “Where's the publisher? I'm ready for the publisher!” The reality is, editing and revision is just the next step towards that goal, and what’s really going to turn your book from good into great. Nothing is ready to publish on the first draft—nothing!

2) The other tendency people have at this point is to circle back to the beginning and do precisely the same thing that they did to write the book. But revision is not the same process as drafting, and it needs to be treated as its own thing because it IS. Rushing through it is a mistake—take your time!

Revision is when we take our writer’s hats off. This is not the process of creation. It often helps to revise in a different physical space than where you did most of your book writing. For instance, if you wrote your whole book at the kitchen table, maybe it’s time to move to a desk in the bedroom, or the couch, or a library or coffee shop or friend’s house. Just being in a different physical space helps you remember that you’re doing something different than creating.

Using a coach during this process can be especially helpful because it brings an entirely new perspective to your work – a reader’s perspective, but one that’s been trained with an eye for revision. A good editor brings four perspectives to the table – 1) you, the writer, 2) the reader, 3) the character and their history, and 4) you, the person who’s lived your life. All of these perspectives together is like going from looking at a picture Michelangelo’s David in a book to standing underneath it, walking around, viewing the art in 3D.

Is revision scary? Yes, absolutely! What if you take a look at what you’ve written and you don’t like it? What if you don’t like a little bit, or what if you don’t like a WHOLE LOT of it? Honesty about what you’ve written and where it will sit on a shelf, and why a reader might pick it up is one of the most critical aspects of revision. Hard decisions will be made, hard truths will be faced, and you’ll have to own up to some really stinky pieces of writing in your book—and some really great ones, too.

This brings us to the final word of advice Jennie has for us – be brave. Know that you have it in you to make the hard decisions, to make the hard choices, to see your book for what it really is and for what it can be, trust the process, and then go do the thing that makes it great.

Starting your revision is a great place to pick up a book coach. Or, Abby and Mel’s case, a great time to change coaches and get a fresh pair of eyes on your work. Today Jennie and Abby want to introduce listeners to Kemlo Aki, a senior book coach at Author Accelerator. Does Kemlo’s voice sound familiar? It should because she was on a (very) early episode of Mom Writes!

Welcome, Kemlo!

Mom Writes is following the typical developmental process of a writer(s) coming into a novel, from scratch and all the way through to a polished manuscript. And right now we are starting REVISION!

Jennie talks about how revision is SO critical, and that if your book isn’t finding traction in this world, this is most likely the place where things went wrong. They haven’t revised correctly. Listen as she talks about the bravery of revision.

Revision isn’t copy editing and making pretty sentences. That comes WAY later. Revision is still looking at big structural elements and spending time to circle around your story, revisiting it, making it the best it can be.

You have to look at your story and be totally honest. What do you really have? Did it capture the vision you wanted?

So how do you determine that? Surprise, surprise. Jennie (Queen of the Process) has a process for that. In the next episode, Jennie shows us how to identify the big, fatal things in our WIP that, if left unfixed, will break a manuscript.