Insecure Writers Want to Know: How would you describe your future writer self if you were living the dream?

            Wait! You mean without the family constantly interrupting me, wanting their piece of my time? You mean not feeling like I’m wasting precious time writing because no readers are waiting for my stories? Wow! Let’s see… It’s not like I want to be stranded on a deserted island with internet hook-up and a fresh pot of hot tea and scones or anything, but a little uninterrupted thinking time would be great. And maybe if I could just stop comparing myself to other writers who seem to have an infinite amount of time to complete stories that people are waiting to read, and have infinite time to do social media. 

            But if I were “living the dream” of a prolific, published writer, I’d probably have an assistant who was tech savvy to help me keep up with social media and marketing. I’d have an editor and/or agent whom I trusted with my newborn stories and memoirs, who would understand my concreteness in concepts and who would continuously affirm that I was on the right path and that I could complete my next story. I’d enjoy the satisfaction of knowing that whatever I was working on would, in fact, get published.

            And who knows? I might even have someone to field all the questions and calls from family and friends while I’m working on my next story to be sure I only need to answer the desperate ones. I might even find someone to help out around the home and gardens while I wrote. Ahh…in the words of Eliza Doolittle, “wouldn’t it be lovely”?

           

            But as it is, you dear followers and commenters, you are my assistants, my sound writing and tech savvy advisors. While I write and pray that what I have written will sell, I turn to you all for advice. And I trust all of you to share your experiences with me.

So, could anyone advise me about getting a short story ebook published? These are YA stories, about 1,800 words, where I assume I need pictures that either I create [Yikes!] or have created for the story. Could anyone suggest a reputable online ebook provider for me to check out?

Eventually, I’d like to make a hard copy collection of short YA stories. Perhaps I’ll start with traditional publishing for the hard copy. I don’t have that infinite following or social media groups. Any advice on either of these endeavors? Feel free to leave links that might be helpful for me in your comment.  

I’ll be interested to see how you’ve tackled this month’s question. It’s great having a topic to share our thoughts on each month. And I am extremely thankful for all of you for being my sounding board and advisors in this writing and publishing game.

Thanks so much for visiting! Please follow Adventures in Writing if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in your comment so I can be sure to do the same for you.

This post was written for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. We post on the first Wednesday of every month.  To join us, or learn more about the group, click HERE.  

Insecure Writers Want to Know: What's the Strangest Thing You've Ever Googled in Researching a Story?

The strangest thing I’ve ever Googled for a story? Recently, that would have to be rip currents in the ocean. I sold a story to Cricket Magazine about a rip current. Rip currents are different from rip tides. Rip currents happen suddenly, which I needed for my story. 

You know how I like to place my teen-aged protagonists in danger; a danger they have skills to overcome. I researched rip currents and how to escape them at National Geographic. In my research, the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) defines rip current as:

“A strong, narrow jet of water that moves away from the beach and into the ocean as a result of local wave action. They can flow quickly, are unpredictable and are a result of the shape of the coastline. A rip tide is caused by the Moon's gravitational pull and is a predictable rise and fall of the water level.”

            I love Google to answer a question I might have and for initial research, but people—especially writers—need to remember that not everything on the internet is true. Allow Google to be the start of your research, but not the only resource. I still believe in books and experts—real people—to nail down any understanding of situations in life or in the life of my stories.

            Always be sure that you begin researching on a website you trust. I know! That’s getting harder and harder these days. So I go to names I trust. Since my stories mostly deal with nature, I start with the National Park Service and National Geographic. I talk to park rangers; I talk to police departments. It depends on what my question is at the time.

            As for my memoir about attending college as a mother of five, I’m crawling through what I hope will be my last major revision of the manuscript. At the same time, I’m considering titles for it.  

Educating Mother: A Journey from Community College to the Ivy League was my first consideration. It speaks of who the protagonist is and where she is going and where she ends up—at the Ivy League. Okay. Should it be An Educated Mother? But the main story is about Victoria actually going through college.

How about:

Educating Mom: The Power to Believe in Oneself. No journey. No mention of going from community college to the Ivy League. This memoir is about the power to believe in yourself over what others tell you. This title speaks of the internal struggle Victoria deals with in addition to struggling with college classes and family obligations.

*Please offer any insight you may have about these titles for my college memoir. I realize you have not read the manuscript, but if you’ve been reading my blog [thank you so much!] you know the main struggles of the protagonist. In that regard, do you suggest different wording or to focus more on the internal or the external struggle? I truly appreciate all your comments. They help me to move forward with my work.*

I’ll be interested to see how you’ve tackled this month’s question. It’s great having a topic to share our thoughts on each month. 

Thanks so much for visiting! Please follow Adventures in Writing if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in your comment so I can be sure to do the same for you.

This post was written for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. We post on the first Wednesday of every month.  To join us, or learn more about the group, click HERE.  

Boiling the Story Down for a Synopsis #AuthorToolboxBlogHop

            I’ve been trying to condense my college memoir story into two double-spaced pages for a synopsis. Not an easy thing to do, as many of you realize. How could you condense all the tension, the action, the angst, the characters of a 200 page story into two pages? Many writers have longer works of fiction or memoir. The key is you don’t include everything.  

Writer’sDigest defines synopsis like this:

“A synopsis conveys the narrative arc, an explanation of the problem or plot, the characters, and how the book or novel ends. It summarizes what happens and who changes from beginning to end of the story.”

I’d like to add that a synopsis should still read like a story and showcase your voice. But how does a writer do this in a short document? The information I’m sharing here is a combination of what I’ve learned in books and online about synopses.  

Just like in your full-length book, the reader of a synopsis needs to know where we are in space and time and who the main players are in the story. Please notice the words “main players.” You can’t possibly include every character in a synopsis. My suggestion is to include the protagonist, any antagonist, and any character who guides or changes the protagonist in his story journey. Think about the characters who take up the most space in your story, the pivotal characters who help to change your protagonist the most.

If we use Harry Potter as an example, for a synopsis, you would include Harry Potter, Voldemort, Dumbledore, Ron, his first real friend, and Hermione. Many other characters have helped or hurt Potter through his journey to adulthood, but I feel these are the main players. And where are we in the Potter books? Mainly in the wizarding world at Hogwarts, a school for wizardry. As for time, it deals with each school year.

 In a synopsis, we also need to include why the story begins where it begins. If we turn again to Harry Potter, the real story begins when Harry reaches the age to begin wizarding school, his 11^th birthday.

 An important point to include in the synopsis is the protagonist’s internal struggle. What is the internal angst the protagonist is dealing with throughout the story? We need to include emotion and feeling in our synopses. I think the internal angst Harry deals with at the beginning of this series is finding people to love him, to help guide him to find his place in this new wizarding world.

Don’t forget to give the whole ending of the story in your synopsis, whether it is fiction or memoir. Write the entire synopsis in present tense and third person regardless of how you wrote the story, according to Jennie Nash of Author Accelerator.   

            In the synopsis I’m writing for my college memoir, I include myself, my special needs daughter and her situation as the impetus for my beginning college at this time, my father and his powerful words that lock me in feelings of inferiority and my other children and husband in general. By way of emotion I talk about Victoria’s struggles to be a role model for her children and her failures at college, her journey through community college and its awards making the Ivy League on scholarship a possibility. By way of an ending, I include that in Victoria’s ten-year academic journey, she learns that determination and hard work help her overcome her father’s powerful words and graduate cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania in May 2009.

*Please feel free to offer any insight or ask any questions regarding the details of my synopsis for my college memoir. It would be truly appreciated.* 

Has anyone prepared a synopsis for their story? I’m interested in how you set it up and what you included from your story. Please share any tips you may have in the comments section of Adventures in Writing. Thanks so much!

And thank you for visiting Adventures in Writing. Please follow my blog if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in the comment so I can be sure to do the same for you. To continue hopping through more amazing blogs or to join our Author Toolbox blog hop, click here. 

Insecure Writers Want to Know: The Benefits of Being a Writer Who Reads vs. a Writer Who Doesn’t

            I tried to simplify this month’s question a little in my blog post title. IWSG’s question is: It's been said that the benefits of becoming a writer who does not read is that all your ideas are new and original. Everything you do is an extension of yourself, instead of a mixture of you and another author. On the other hand, how can you expect other people to want your writing, if you don't enjoy reading? What are your thoughts?  

Let’s look at a phrase in the first part of the question, “all your ideas are new and original.” Think about this. Haven’t we all read—I know, but “read” is not a dirty word for writers—that there are no original plots or ideas for stories? I have. It’s the way we interpret what happens to our characters and what the character’s flaws and strengths are that make our stories unique. In other words, the basic framework may be the same, but the details are different.

As a writer, I do not see any benefit of NOT reading other stories, essays, or blog posts. For myself, I’m not reading to take any other writer’s idea, passages, or plots. I’m reading to learn through other people’s, or character’s, experiences in life. And yes, I read for enjoyment. I love stories, be they fiction or non-fiction.

Think about it. The stimulus for story is all around us. It comes through our day to day lives, our interactions, our adventures, and yes, in our readings. Many times I’ve read that writers ask “what if” when they read or hear a news story or a friend’s anecdote or experience. In fact, many of my YA adventure stories begin with my family’s adventures camping at national parks.

            Another reason to read fiction or memoir stories is to find comp titles when putting together a proposal for the publisher. As writers, we need to know what’s out there and where our works in progress fit into the literary landscape. I’ve been looking for recent memoir titles to read dealing with education or personal experience in college. I’m currently reading Lab Girl by Hope Jahren. I may need to broaden my searches. I should consider inspirational works; the power of choices, of believing in yourself, of finding or beginning a dream and seeing it through with perseverance.

*Please offer any recent memoir titles you’ve read that deal with life experiences; trying to better yourself or learning to believe in oneself, so I can add them to my reading list and see if they could be used as comp titles for my college memoir. I truly appreciate all your comments. They help me to move forward with my work.*

I’ll be interested to see how you’ve tackled this month’s question. It’s great having a topic to share our thoughts on each month.  

Thanks so much for visiting! Please follow Adventures in Writing if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in your comment so I can be sure to do the same for you.

This post was written for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. We post on the first Wednesday of every month.  To join us, or learn more about the group, click HERE.  

Universal Themes in Memoir or Fiction #AuthorToolboxBlogHop

            Universal themes in story can start out as statements. Love conquers all. Order leads to harmony. Heroes are always right. Loyalty to family is absolute. Universal themes are understood in any culture. They are assumed to be straightforward. Correct. Concrete. But in the writer’s hands, themes become human. They become specific. In other words, writers deepen these general themes and give them power by creating compelling stories.  

           

            By building stories around themes, writers personify them. Think of any romance where “love conquers all,” Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, many wonderful present day romance stories, and the ever-present Chicken Soup for the Soul books. What they all contain is the human side of the theme. The writer shows through actions and characters how this theme holds up in the real life of a story.

            But showing the theme to be true or false is only the surface of the story. The difficult job for the writer in creating a memorable story is to add tension. Tension drives the story. Conflict, both internal and external, shows the deeper meaning of theme. Conflict should be specific to one character or a small group of characters in the form of a belief. If we think about the theme of family loyalty, we can see how easily it can become misguided; abused spouses staying with their abuser for family reasons; children believing it is their fault they are being abused. Of course the theme of loyalty can be political or faith-based too.  

            The struggles you show in the story branch off your main theme. They show the inner conflict and why the character behaves as he or she does. Story events show the literal obstacles the character faces in life that are hampered by that internal, often misguided belief of the theme.   

            If I use my college memoir as an example with a main theme of believing in oneself, through backstory, the reader learns that Victoria had struggled through elementary school and finally makes the honor roll [good grades] by eighth grade. But when she comes to her father, a man who has always shown her love, to have him sign off on her choice of college prep courses for high school, he wouldn’t do it. Instead, he told her college wouldn’t work for her. She wasn’t smart enough.

It comes to the power of words from someone you trust and love. Because her father didn’t believe she could survive college, Victoria becomes locked in a vicious cycle of not believing in herself, in what she could accomplish. What Victoria comes to realize in this memoir story is that the power to believe in oneself comes from within. This power to believe in oneself, to obtain it and keep it, is a constant struggle for many people of all cultures.

            Well, what do you think? Please feel free to offer any insight or ask any questions regarding the universal theme of believing in oneself for my college memoir. It would be truly appreciated. 

Thank you for visiting Adventures in Writing. Please follow my blog if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in the comment so I can be sure to do the same for you. To continue hopping through more amazing blogs or to join our Author Toolbox blog hop, click here. 

Insecure Writers Want to Know: If you could pick one place in the world to sit and write your next story, where would it be and why?

If I could chose any place to sit and write my next story or the revision of my memoir, it would need to be somewhere my family can’t find me. I also need to be in a place where I can’t look out the window. Therefore, I usually hide out among the stacks in the local library. If I sat by the windows looking out on the lake, I’d be thinking about walking around that lake and not focused on my writing. If I ever went to some beautiful vacation spot by the beach or in the mountains to write, I would get nowhere. I’d be too excited to investigate my surroundings.  

I’ve told you before about my desire to be outdoors, traipsing about my surroundings thinking. I love winter, spring, summer AND fall, no matter what the weather. I can splash through the puddles with the best of them! So I can’t have the beauty of nature calling to me when I’m trying to write. Social media can be distracting, but my favorite distraction is freeing my eyes and mind from the computer screen. And I do it best by going outside.

Presently, I’ve been spending much time outside with my family. I’ve come to the end of a draft of my memoir about attending college as a mother of five. It’s not the first draft; it’s much stronger than that one. But it surely will not be the last draft. I’ve written 170 pages and have roughly 55,000 words. Is it too short? Should I add in other threads?

I’m never one to pad my prose. The idea with longer manuscripts, whether they are fiction or nonfiction, is to add another thread to investigate or perhaps other scenes that address and show character relationships or add to the plotline. My college memoir’s focus is on education, college, and family. The points I hope it makes are:

Never give up on a dream. It’s never too late to start.
Fear and doubt are a part of life.
Perseverance matters in life. Effort counts toward success.
If you don’t try, you’ll be left with regret. 

The point of the book is to find the permission within yourself to try and achieve goals that may at first appear frightening or unattainable.

But how does someone find permission within herself to attempt a dream she was told not to try? In my case, it was through the love of a mother and child. A love that wasn’t afraid of struggle, but rather allowed for opportunity.

*Please offer any comments on the length of my college memoir or its focus or points. Your comments truly help me to move forward in revision.*

So, where do you like to hide--I mean write--if you could go anywhere?

Thanks so much for visiting! Please follow Adventures in Writing if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in your comment so I can be sure to do the same for you.

This post was written for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. We post on the first Wednesday of every month.  To join us, or learn more about the group, click HERE.  

Characters Look for Acceptance #AuthorToolboxBlogHop

            Just as real people want to be accepted by others, either into various communities or accepted by one special person, so too do our characters wish to be accepted in one way or another. Most people want that sense of belonging. Depending on our genre, as writers, we either make that sense of belonging happen for our characters or show why it does not. Of course, it can never be easy for our protagonists, whichever outcome we choose. The protagonist needs to struggle to make it happen or be forced to accept that it was never meant to be. And the reader wants to see that struggle. 

So how do we show our protagonists longing for acceptance and receiving it or not? It’s all in the specific details we provide through story or memoir, both internally and externally.

Let’s briefly look at two classic characters who long to be included.

Harry Potter wants to belong to a family, to be loved, to have friends. Through the story, the reader [or viewer] comes to realize why he doesn’t have these connections and through thoughts and actions [events] how he comes to gain them.

Luke Skywalker longs to join his friends, to move on with his own life, to be accepted into the rebellion as a person who matters. And as the story unfolds, the viewer comes to understand why and how he obtains what he wants.

            In memoir, remember, you are looking for real life details to tell the story. In my memoir about attending college as a mother of five, Victoria looks for acceptance in the academic conversation at Penn. She yearns for a sense of belonging, not the feeling of being an outsider with nothing intelligent to say. She is a non-traditional, older student attending a school of highly intelligent students. She gets in, but constantly feels the need to prove herself in class. To show this struggle unfolding for the reader, I include thoughts and actions, events that demonstrate how Victoria fails, and how she feels about it, and eventually how she succeeds at her task.

More importantly, Victoria wishes to be accepted by the writers’ community at Kelly Writers House on campus. She wants her writing topics to be important, to make a statement about her experiences. Yet obstacles, both internal and external, hold her back. She has children; she doesn’t have the time the younger students have. For the story to move forward, she needs to take action. Victoria attends lectures and seminars at the House. She submits poetry in a university-wide contest and receives honorable mention for it. But she feels ignored during the celebration. A setback. She submits again to a larger writing community, the West Chester Poetry Contest, and wins second place with a haiku. This community welcomes her into its fold, if only for a short while. 

In memoir the story is told through the lens of the narrator. The reader can only be in the head of Victoria. It is she who interprets the reasons for what other characters do in the memoir. Writers cannot get into the head of other characters in memoir because it is truth—not fiction.  

            Of course, writers can’t dramatize every scene of struggle in a story. However, writers should choose larger scenes that show the most challenge to our protagonist and summarize the lesser scenes or actions. Writers need to remember to show the outcome—good or bad—to any action or scene. These outcomes do not need to be lengthy, but rather precise. I am still learning which scenes to dramatize or summarize and which scenes appear to repeat the same feelings or outcomes and are not necessary in my manuscript.

As writers we need to show progression in our characters. If the story is all struggle with no change in the protagonist, no change in the character’s mindset, readers could feel cheated. I still think that readers are looking to see how our characters handle challenge to perhaps learn how they might handle a particular situation. Readers want to learn something new even while being entertained by your story. At least this is why I read.  

Please feel free to offer any insight or ask any questions regarding Victoria’s struggles in finding acceptance at the University of Pennsylvania. It would be truly appreciated. 

Thank you for visiting Adventures in Writing. Please follow my blog if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in the comment so I can be sure to do the same for you. To continue hopping through more amazing blogs or to join our Author Toolbox blog hop, click here. 

Please note that I will not post in August of 2019. I have many writing projects I desperately need to address. Thanks for always reading my Adventures in Writing blog posts and sharing your insight. It means the world to me. Enjoy your summer!

Insecure Writers Want to Know: What personal traits have you written into your character(s)?

            Memoir aside, the biggest traits I offer my characters are a love of nature and adventure. Now these traits can be good or bad for characters depending upon the plot. Loving nature can lead a character astray; get him lost, both physically and mentally. And seeking adventure can always lead into danger, especially with young protagonists.  

            Stories are nothing without tension, remember. If we think externally, a love of nature can be defined as anything or any place outside of the protagonist or character. Adventure can be had on any quest or journey to either discover the self or the character’s surroundings. To discover the good or bad of society or the world. And these two traits can come into conflict in any genre.

            While I set many of my stories in national parks where a love of physical nature and adventure can combine, the setting for story can be anywhere. If you strip Star Wars: A New Hope down to its bones, the story could be considered a young man’s discovery of his abilities on a quest for adventure outside of his known space or world. In the beginning of this epic, Luke is a farmer on a desolate planet living with his aunt and uncle. He dreams of adventure in faraway places of the universe. His friends have left to find their place in the world. Luke wants to do this. It’s not until other characters enter his life that he is afforded the opportunity to try. Luke’s love of adventure sends him all over the universe. But inside, Luke is still trying to understand his own sense of worth, discover his own abilities.

            The best stories have internal and external struggles—even in memoir. Giving characters traits that the writer may possess is a beginning. From there, the traits of characters, both good and bad, need to be finely tuned to the story you are telling.  

What personal traits do you give your characters? Are they used for good or bad? Thanks so much for visiting! Please follow Adventures in Writing if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in your comment so I can be sure to do the same for you.

This post was written for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. We post on the first Wednesday of every month.  To join us, or learn more about the group, click HERE.  

Please note that I will not post in August of 2019. I have many writing projects I desperately need to address. Thanks for always reading my Adventures in Writing blog posts and sharing your insight. It means the world to me. Enjoy your summer!

Endowing Your Characters with Traits to Solve Story Tension #AuthorToolboxBlogHop

            The characters you create need to be given certain knowledge or abilities in order to solve the story tension. Whether characters need to conquer self-fears, solve mysteries, get out of danger, or survive day-to-day traumas, writers need to choose specific qualities that would help their characters accomplish this. 

Knowledge is a big trait in many stories. In one of my short stories, my teen protagonist needs to help her younger brother who’s having an asthma attack in a cave. But as writers, we also need to explain how the protagonist obtains any knowledge. In my character’s case, she learned how to control her brother’s asthma from watching her mother do it. In another story, my young teen needed to understand how to back away from a wild animal on a mountain. Again, the knowledge was explained through story. The teen listened to park ranger talks.

Character abilities are another trait. Think of the superheroes’ abilities to fly, create fire, or shoot webs. Each of these traits helps the hero accomplish something important in the story, whether they are protecting the world, snagging the criminal, or saving their own skin. Everything that happens in a story needs to be there for a specific reason. It needs to move the story forward. Whether we endow our characters with the knowledge of the life cycle of bats in a cave or the ability to become invisible, the traits must be given to help the character solve the story tension. And they need to be specific.

Character traits must also solve the tension in memoir. In memoir, many times the protagonist is finding a way to cope in a particular situation. In my memoir about attending college as a mother of five, Victoria is finding ways to accomplish the foreign language requirement at the Ivy League level. In the pages just submitted to my editor, I’m up to 140 pages now; Victoria takes a twenty-page French placement exam. Believe it or not, she places into French 120 [French II].

In three semesters of French at Penn, two three-hour classes per week, Victoria deals with discussing racism and genocide, social and psychological issues and politics in class, writing weekly essays in French, creating blog posts and oral and video presentations, writing research papers, attempting listening and speaking tests in French. She is grossly out of her comfort zone and desperately searches for ways to cope in French class because she needs at least a B average to keep her scholarship.

To accomplish this she studies French vocabulary constantly, obtains a tutor through the university, seeks the prof before class to be able to explain in English her difficulties with learning the language, [you were not permitted to use English in the classroom]. And when all else failed, Victoria asks the younger students in class what the professor is talking about—when the prof is not looking of course. Tears of frustration are shed. Then Victoria learns about being able to take the language requirement as pass/fail, but she still needs to turn in and pass all the work required. Many times, her husband finds her asleep at her computer five minutes before the midnight deadline to post the work.

So what are Victoria’s traits at this time in the memoir? Perseverance. And when the last professor tells Victoria she does not pass the language requirement because she is not fluent in French, Victoria finds the courage to stand up for herself and speak with the Dean of Romance Languages. In doing so, she passes the language requirement at Penn.   

Our characters are unique. They require specific traits in order to solve the story tension. And as writers, we need to remember to explain how the character came to acquire that knowledge or ability, no matter what genre we are writing in.

So what character traits or abilities do you give your protagonists to be able to solve the tension in the story you are telling?

Please feel free to offer any insight regarding Victoria’s struggles learning French at the Ivy League level. It would be truly appreciated.  

Thank you for visiting Adventures in Writing. Please follow my blog if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in the comment so I can be sure to do the same for you. To continue hopping through more amazing blogs or to join our Author Toolbox blog hop, click here. 

Insecure Writers Want to Know: Of all the genres you read and write, which is your favorite to write in and why?

I love to read both memoir and fiction. I enjoy discovering the insight provided by the memoirist when she makes her point in the slice of life story she is telling. In fiction, I enjoy the more plot and action-based stories of adventure, cozy mysteries, and romance. 

But to write, I think writing fiction is far easier than writing memoir. Because in fiction, the writer can make up whatever she needs in order to make the story work, to make it intriguing. Is it easy? No. Not for me. But I can do things in fiction that I can’t do in memoir. Let’s say the protagonist in a fiction story needs some deep-seated reason to be fearful of relationships or to be afraid of bears. The writer creates the circumstances. Let’s say the writer needs an informant. Created. An antagonist? No problem. The characters need to be three-dimensional to appear real? Backstory can be made to order in fiction.

In memoir, the story the writer tells is true. There are demonstrative facts showing it to be so. The writer can’t, or shouldn’t, make up a memoir story. The writer can’t change when things happen or where they happen. She can’t create fictitious characters or change the beliefs of a real person whom she includes in her personal memoir story to make the story more exciting. She can’t add scenes that never happen to increase tension.

In memoir, the writer needs to find the story in the slice of life she wishes to share with the reader. She needs to find her point to be sure she knows what it is so she can relay it to the reader. Then the memoirist proves her point by shaping the true story in an interesting way, by creating scenes with true details and populating them with real people who matter to the protagonist in her journey. Then the memoirist interprets these scenes and happenings for the reader, to show the reader the insight gleaned from what really happened, to demonstrate the shift in mindset of the protagonist.   

That being my understanding between the two genres, I like to write adventure story. I’ve had the most success creating young adult adventure story, “man or woman versus nature” adventure. As some of you know, I have camped with five children for years. You can discover our adventures camping across the United States and up into Canada at Camping with Five Kids. 

Most of my YA adventure stories begin in a location we have visited while camping with kids. But as many of you know, any children’s writing needs to have a child protagonist who saves the day—not an adult stepping in to “fix” things. This is where the fiction comes into play. In fact, the first story I sold to Cricket Magazine had my teen protagonist with her younger brother lost in a cave. I needed to give the protagonist the backstory to be able to get them out of the cave without help from an adult. After I’ve sold several stories to Cricket, my editor did ask me in a confidential e-mail if I’ve ever let my children go explore a cave by themselves or hike in a national park by themselves and meet a mountain lion. The answer, of course, is no. That’s where the “fiction” comes in. But my editor does check out my Camping with Five Kids blog to see where we’ve been and the photos of national parks or the difference between the sugar cone pine cone and the redwood and sequoia pine cones.

My family and camping adventures are my inspiration—especially for my YA adventure stories. Where do you find inspiration to write in your particular genre? Thanks so much for visiting! Please follow Adventures in Writing if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in your comment so I can be sure to do the same for you.

This post was written for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. We post on the first Wednesday of every month.  To join us, or learn more about the group, click HERE.  

Make Your Characters Vulnerable #AuthorToolboxBlogHop

I’m 100 pages into my memoir about attending college as a mother of five and at the point where I’ve won a scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania and am about to begin. I’m scared to death!

Were you ever too eager to please someone or a group of someones? A boss? A hopeful romantic interest or co-worker or editor?

Like in many stories or movies, this is where the protagonist usually messes up. At least in her first few attempts at acquiring the desired goal of pleasing those in charge. This can happen for a variety reasons; i.e., not thinking before you speak, doing inappropriate actions, or not consciously listening to those around you.

At this stage in my college memoir, I felt the need to prove to those at Penn that I could be an Ivy Leaguer. I wanted them to see that they did not make a mistake in granting me the Phi Theta Kappa Scholarship. I needed to make a good first impression at Penn, and of course it backfired on me.

Transfer students had a summer reading project, The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, and I needed to interpret a connection to one of the topics in the book. A lively discussion had ensued that hot August afternoon in a packed College Hall. While all of the other incoming students connected to topics through academia; sociology, psychology, and business practices to name a few, I connected to teaching preschoolers through the use of the Sesame Street television show. This topic in the book talks about how small lessons can make big improvements in the education of children.

Yes. I heard everyone else speak. In fact I was almost the last student to speak. I was afraid to speak because my connection was from life experience, not academic study. I thought possibly these academics hadn’t had the experience with Sesame Street I had raising my five children. I thought they might appreciate my insight because it was so different from all the intellectuals in the room. So while everyone else received comments or questions or further discussion into their topics from the panel of Penn administrators, my topic crashed into the floor like a lead balloon. No discussion. You could hear the air conditioning unit cycle on again.

Just like characters in stories, our protagonists need to make mistakes, need to feel defeat, anxiety, or humiliation in order to be real to the readers. Readers want to connect to our characters, especially our protagonists.

So while our stories are unique, what our characters do is unique, there needs to be some base feeling or action that our readers can connect to. Embarrassment is a good one. So is fear of the unknown or hurt from someone we love or trust. Characters need to be vulnerable at one time or another in our stories to be real, no matter what genre we are writing in.

So how do you make your characters seem vulnerable to the reader or other characters in the story you are telling?

Please feel free to offer any insight regarding Victoria’s summer reading project scenario. It would be truly appreciated.  

Thank you for visiting Adventures in Writing. Please follow my blog if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in the comment so I can be sure to do the same for you. To continue hopping through more amazing blogs or to join our Author Toolbox blog hop, click here. 

Insecure Writers Want to Know: What was an early experience where you learned that language had power?

            For me, it was simple. I was a communications and English major at college. This particular community college didn’t have a journalism degree at the time. Once I became editor of the college newspaper, I discovered how powerful my words were in covering the news on the college campus. While the monthly newspaper had come out sporadically before I took over, maybe once a semester, I made sure it came out every month. And I organized it into sections and put substance in it. I discovered I liked sniffing out news stories for the paper. I became an advocate for the student body, finally finding my college voice at the community college level, investigating life on campus from why the administration closed the pool to why some buildings became a lake each time it rained.

Anything that affected the student body and college campus found its way into the student-run college newspaper. Where the administration had been all excited about the new look and content of the student paper, department heads and vice presidents soon started to glare at me and hold their tongues until I made them understand that I was going to report on an incident whether they spoke to me or not. I permitted the administration equal space within the article to inform the student body what was being done about certain situations.  

But how did I know administration was upset with my coverage of events at college? Once a semester, all leaders of student organizations met with the president of the college and the provost and vice presidents. We students introduced ourselves and reported to the president what our organizations were doing around campus. We also brought up any concerns students may have. I had no problem with this, as I was doing it already in the newspaper. The president zeroed in on me and relentlessly drilled me as to why I kept harping on any problems the college was having. If it wasn’t for the provost reminding the president that I was only doing my job, he was a college reporter in his time too, I thought the president was going to kick me out of college. I really got under her skin.

 But the important issues in life need to be brought up, need to be discussed if we’re ever going to make things better in this world. That’s why we need honest and moral writers to bring the issues into conversation to help those in charge see the importance of addressing the issues.

I can’t wait to see how you learned that language had power. Thanks for visiting! Please follow Adventures in Writing if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in your comment so I can be sure to do the same for you.

This post was written for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. We post on the first Wednesday of every month.  To join us, or learn more about the group, click HERE.  

Chicken Soup for the Soul Mom Knows Best #AuthorToolboxBlogHop

My mother has been my guiding light all my life. She believed in me when I didn’t. She told me that I could accomplish anything I put my mind to. These are the types of positive people writers need around them as they struggle to accomplish their writing goals. Unfortunately, I lost my mother to cancer at the end of the summer. Mom may be in Heaven now, but some of her sage advice lives on in the new Chicken Soup for the Soul Mom Knows Best issue released on March 19, 2019.  

Have you ever had an essay included in a Chicken Soup issue? Which one? Was it your first attempt, or did it take a while for them to accept one of your essays?

For me, it took quite a while for Chicken Soup for the Soul to accept one of my essays. I have been trying to break into this niche on and off for years. Several friends in my South Jersey Writers Group have been published in Chicken Soup. They gave me courage to try again and again. There is no charge for submitting to Chicken Soup for the Soul. Here’s the link.  

            Like any other writing project, it’s always best to begin by studying the market. Read other Chicken Soup for the Soul books to see what they are publishing. Break down the essay to see how the writer put it together. Notice how tightly the prose is, how specific the details about place are. Notice there are no extra words or throwaway dialogue and thoughts. Then check Chicken Soup’s website to see what topics they are currently looking for and start drafting your essay.  

Although the editors at Chicken Soup give you lots of guidance on how to prepare your story, nothing beats a critique partner, especially someone who has already been published by the market you wish to enter. Ask to see their document of the essay they submitted to the market. This will be what they sent in as opposed to the one that was edited by the publisher before publication. It helps to see how they structured their essays.   

I was ecstatic when I saw one of my own stories in the
Chicken Soup for the Soul Mom Knows Best issue.

And keep the essay simple. This was my biggest problem. I could study issues from Chicken Soup, strip down the essays, study the language used, and feel I have created just what they want, and receive silence for all my effort. Chicken Soup for the Soul will contact you ONLY when they want your essay. Otherwise you don’t hear from them.

And God knows, be persistent! Like I said, it doesn’t cost anything to submit to Chicken Soup, so why not follow these steps and send in your best advice on a topic they’re looking for. Good Luck!

Chicken Soup for the Soul: Mom Knows Best is on sale now. You can find it in bookstores and online here. My particular story, Evening Things Up, will be featured in a podcast from Chicken Soup on April 29, 2019. You can listen to the podcast for free by going to Chicken Soup's website and clicking the podcast tab. 

My beloved mother, Elaine McDonald

Thank you for visiting Adventures in Writing. Please follow my blog if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in the comment so I can be sure to do the same for you. To continue hopping through more amazing blogs or to join our Author Toolbox blog hop, click here. 

Insecure Writers Want to Know: If you could use a wish to help write one chapter in your book, which would it be?

            Now there’s a complicated question! I guess if I could only have one place in my college memoir where something magical could help me write it, it would be the first chapter. Since wishes are magical to me, that would mean someone who knows more than I or possibly could see into the future would help me be sure I was starting the story in the correct place. Beginnings are so important in story.  

            Beginnings to novels or memoirs are different from what they were in past eras. No longer can writers indulgingly describe settings or characters. Today, the story must jump right into the action or problems of a story. Every scene must drive the story plot forward, even if only a tiny bit. There is too much other stuff competing for a reader’s time. A writer needs to show the possibilities of problems to come on that first page, almost, in order to keep a reader reading the novel.

            Not only do writers need to hook readers with juicy plots, but also wow them with real characters to care about. You could open with an exciting plot; aliens invading earth or two boys barreling down a raging river. But if you don’t connect the plot to a sentient being, no one will care about it. Our stories need to be about someone in particular; some vulnerable, flawed person the readers can connect to. And the story should begin in scene. We need to be someplace, even if we are just thinking. We need to ground the reader in time and place.

            Is my college memoir starting in the right place? Gosh, I hope so. This is where that magical wish could show me for sure.

            I begin my story with a scene. And through that scene, I hope to connect readers to a person, a particular person with hopes and dreams and problems.

The memoir opens with my special-needs daughter signing up for high school classes. She wants to go to college, just like I did all those years before. And just like what happened to me, someone important tells her she shouldn’t go to college. Within this guidance counselor scene, Victoria’s backstory begins to unfold, showing [I hope] why this particular situation is pivotal. With this initial scene, I want to demonstrate Victoria’s struggles as a mother, what she feels about a college education and the reasons for her feelings. This initial counselor meeting forces Victoria to revisit her own dreams of a college education in order to help her children. This initial scene also allows for Victoria to revisit her feelings about being educated toward the end of the memoir once she finishes her own college journey.

That’s a lot for one opening scene to carry. How important do you feel beginnings are to novels or memoirs? I would truly appreciate your insight into the beginning of my college memoir.

I can’t wait to see where you would use your special wish in story writing. Thanks for visiting! Please follow Adventures in Writing if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in your comment so I can be sure to do the same for you.

This post was written for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. We post on the first Wednesday of every month.  To join us, or learn more about the group, click HERE.  

What’s the Cost to Your Protagonist to Accomplish a Goal? #AuthorToolboxBlogHop

Everyone makes choices. People are a sum of the choices they’ve made in life. But each choice usually costs them something. Think about your own personal choices. Are you married? Then you are making a commitment to love and honor your spouse and not someone else. Do you have children? Then you’re making a commitment to care and educate them in their lifetime. Are you religious? Did you choose a career? All of these choices cost you something to commit to. Relationships and careers take time and effort to deal with the problems that come up in life. 

In fiction or memoir, our protagonists must make choices in their story lives that cost them something in return. It must cost the protagonist to change internally or externally or even deal with a plot problem. Does she get what she’s after? The goal must cost her something, emotionally or physically, to attempt it.

Think about Kathryn Stockett’s novel The Help. One of the main protagonists is a young white woman who wants to be a writer, Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan. It’s the early 1960’s, and Phelan’s mother wants her to get married and have babies, like Phelan’s friends. There is so much to unpack in this novel. I’m going to choose one tiny piece. Phelan chooses to write a book about the horrible treatment of “colored” maids in the Deep South. This takes much effort and time for Phelan, and she requires assistance to gather the information. But her choice to compose this book costs her the love of a man she had initially wanted a meaningful relationship with. It also costs her acceptance in the neighborhood. In fact, Phelan ends up moving north to be a writer.  

                                                                                                      

So what does it cost Victoria to choose to begin college as a mother of five?

The major cost is time with her family. This affects others. And it hinges on another cost for Victoria. Internally, because she struggles with feelings of inferiority, and works twice as hard just to keep up in college, Victoria can’t seem to relax or take a break. So Victoria believes she’s wasting time and effort that could be spent making life better for her family.

No, she can’t be the Mom she was before attempting college, spending most of her downtime with the children. She needs time to study if she wants to show those children how to be successful. Her children need to mature enough to understand this. So does her husband. And, most importantly, so does Victoria. She must learn to stop worrying about taking too much time away from family because she learns differently and studies constantly.

Please feel free to offer any insight regarding the costs in this college journey. It would be truly appreciated.

Thank you for visiting Adventures in Writing. Please follow my blog if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in the comment so I can be sure to do the same for you. To continue hopping through more amazing blogs or to join our Author Toolbox blog hop, click here.