Day Twenty-Seven: Humor in Writing #BYBin30

comic by Robert Fyfe

Humor adds an element to fiction that keeps readers engaged. It gives them a break in the drama or suspense. It can produce some memorable lines. It can help create more realistic and multi-dimensional characters. There are many reasons to use humor in your novel, but there are also many types of humor that can be used.

1. Sarcasm or wit - This form of humor is usually shown through word-play. Your characters can be sarcastic or witty through their dialogue with one another. Sarcasm is the use of irony to show contempt for something or someone. Wit is more about the intelligence and ability to think quickly when using sarcasm.

2. Dark  - This form of comedy covers jokes about the morbid, evil or depressing. If your character makes a joke about the form of his imminent death, that is an example of dark humor. Dark humor is comedy that makes light of dark situations or subject matter.

3. Satire - This form of comedy points out human flaws while also making fun of them. Although it is meant to be funny, it usually has an underlying point to make. It is used to make fun of or point out people's vices or stupidity.

4. Slap-stick - This is physical comedy. If you have a clumsy character, you might employ a lot of slap-stick comedy in your writing. "The Three Stooges" films were full of slap-stick humor. The physical actions in slap-stick humor have no boundaries or common sense. This humor is often physically violent.

5. Farce - This is an exaggerated form of comedy, where your characters get themselves into completely improbably situations. It often incorporates slap-stick elements, and often has absurd plot twists. "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Dougless Adams is an example of farce comedy.

6. Parody - This form of comedy makes fun of other artistic pieces, either of previously written stories or of movies and shows. It tends to pretend to be those shows or stories while changing enough to make them utterly ridiculous. The relatively new influx of zombie stories based on literary classics, such as "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" by Quirk Classics is an example of parody.

One thing is certain, if your story make your readers laugh, they will remember it.

Day Twenty-Two: Using your Minor Characters to Fuel Your Story #BYBin3

In fiction writing, your story will have all sorts of characters: antagonist, protagonists, supporting characters and minor characters. The minor characters in your story can be immensely helpful to the development of your story.

Minor characters can help to show the reader your main character. Just as with supporting characters, you can show your reader your main character through your minor character's eyes, both their appearance and parts of their personality. A minor character might be helplessly in love with your main character or jealous of the main character's beauty. A minor character might be annoyed with the way the main character bosses him around. There are a myriad of ways that your minor characters can show your readers details about the main character.

In rare circumstances and only under certain conditions, you can even show your readers how others view your main character even if it's not an accurate view. For example, your main character might be accused of a murder he didn't commit and which the people in his town believe he is guilty of committing. In this instance, you can help show this through the eyes of one of his friends, a friend who isn't sure whether to believe in his guilt or innocence due to his own internal conflict between the damning evidence and his loyalty to the main character. In this situation, you can help show exactly how intense of a situation your main character is having to confront.

Minor characters can move the plot forward or create twists and turns within the plot. A minor character might decide to confront the antagonist on his own, because he has his own reason for hating the antagonist. This can result in his death, which could be another moment leading to the main character's negative view of the antagonist, or it could result in his capture, which will up the stakes for the main character. He might even win the battle, but at such a huge cost that the main character is faced with something even worse. Additionally, your minor character can make seemingly small decisions which can affect the main character or the main character's choices.

Minor characters need to be fully realized people, complete with flaws, idiosyncrasies and their own desires and hopes. Create a minor character to be a normal and imperfect human. Minor characters can sometimes take on very large roles within your story, so give them the same care and attention that you provide for your main character. And be prepared for them to try and take over the story, because they have been known to do that. Many stories have been written with main characters who once started out as minor characters.

*****

Give-away!

This week's give-away is a Write About Life Tile Coaster. The winner will be chosen from the active participants of the challenge. Must be a signed-up member to qualify. The winner wil be chosen by a random number generator on April 28th, 2014 at noon GMT. (Winner may choose alternate colors of this item, including a version with photographic background.)

Day Twenty-One: The Value of Your Book - Publishing Rights #BYBin30

Whether you are self-publishing or publishing through one of the traditional publishing houses, you need to know about your rights, and about the different formats your book can earn money for you. You also need to be aware of the fact that some publishers will buy many of your book's rights but not use them all, and, if you are like most writers, you will want your book to reach as many markets as is possible.

First, you need to know about the different formats your book can be produced in, each of which constitutes one of the "rights" to your book.

Digital rights (e-books): The term "e-book" has been around since the 1980s, and the term "e-reader" has been around since the 1990s. The original e-book were book files that could be read on your computer, but since the advent of e-readers, e-books have become increasingly popular devices used for reading books. The most well-known of the e-reader devices, making them the best markets for your e-book sales, are Amazon Kindle, the Apple e-reader (iBooks) and the Barnes & Noble Nook and the Kobo e-reader. When you sell your rights for the e-book format of your book, these are the main ones your publisher will be looking to sell those books through. If you are self-publishing, then these are the main markets you will need to publish through. E-books have no printing costs and therefore have the potential for greater earnings per book sold than print books.

Print Rights: Print books are the more traditional format, and the format in which we most want to see our books.There is something about holding our own book in printed form that is immensely satisfying. There are various rights when it comes to your book, such as first printing rights

Audio Rights: An audio book is a version of your book where a narrator reads the story out loud to the readers, rather than the readers having to read the book themselves. Audio books are still a growing market for book sales. Audio books are available for sale through Audible books, iBooks, Brilliance and other services.

Territories and Languages: Don't think that selling the rights to your book in print is the end of matters or even that having your book printed for sale is the end of it. There are also several languages your book can be printed in, and each language is another book "right" that your publisher might want to buy from you. Each language is also another market for your book for you to consider if you are self-publishing. Likewise, your rights to your books can also be broken down by "territories" for your book to be sold in.

Film Rights: Your book may have the opportunity to be made into a film. A publisher or agent might be better able to negotiate those rights for you, but he or she will expect a part of the proceeds from you. An option is when the production company rents the rights to make a movie version of your book. The person who writes the script will most likely be someone other than you and, in most cases, you will not have much say over the movie's production.

Something else to consider, if going the traditional route, is the duration of rights. You most likely will not be granting a publisher rights to the entire duration of your copyright, and the duration for each right can be negotiated. Often, when a publisher buys the rights to a book, if the book goes out of print while the rights are still held by the publisher, an author might be able to buy their rights to their book back from the publisher.

*****

Winner!

It's time to announce the winner of the "Superhero Writer" t-shirt. The winner has been drawn by a random number generator selecting from active participants. (The shirt is white. I'm not sure why Blogger has decided to turn all the whites in my pictures grey, but lately, it has been an issue.) 

And the winner is:

Cecilia Clark!

Congratulations (again), Cecilia!

Day Nineteen: How to Successfully Weave Backstory into your Plot #BYBin30

In fiction writing, every story should begin somewhere in the middle of the action. You need to hook your readers right way. But what does this mean when it comes to letting your readers know why the action is happening and who the story is about? It means you will have to weave the elements of your protagonist's back story, and possibly your antagonist's backstory too, into other parts of the story.

Backstory is the story you have built up around your character which informs his or her motivations and actions. It ties in past events and your character's past histories that have helped shape current events and your character's personality. Backstory is what helps your readers care about your character. It explains why the story begins with the events in the first chapter.

There are several methods you can use to weave backstory into your novel's main storyline.

1. Flashbacks - Your scene or your characters thoughts can bring the reader into a flashback of previous events, but this flash back needs to fit within the story and not just be thrown in randomly.

2. Your character's inner thoughts  - Your character can be thinking about something in the past. These thoughts should be triggered by something in the present and should remain brief.

3. Leaving hints - Little things about your character can sometimes lead your readers to the knowledge of your character's backstory. Comments made, unusual fears or rituals, a piece of jewelry that they always wear and any emotion that would otherwise seem out of place can be used to lead your readers toward the true backstory in small increments.

4. Dialogue with another character - Don't let them blurt out the backstory in a bunch of exposition. Let them mention it in passing, or confront one another based on it, or even just hint at knowledge of it within their dialogue.

5. Changing from the past to the future, not as flashbacks but as separate chapter changes - This is done less often, but this works when the backstory isn't something that your character has experienced in his or her past but about events that have set the things in motion with which your character is now having to deal.

Beware:

Don't reveal to much, too soon or too much all at one time. Too much exposition can be boring. It slows down the story. It's the reason that a story works so much better when it begins in the middle of the action, which keeps the story more fast-paced.

Do your readers really need to know this? Your readers do not need to know everything that you do. Don't give too much detail. If all you're doing is filling in some backstory, your readers don't need to know every little detail about what happened, but only the things that are relevant to your characters actions and motivations in the present.

Day Eighteen: Changing Focus in the Middle of the Book: What Happens When your Book Has to Be Altered Drastically? #BYBin30

Unfortunately, writing a book is not always a smooth process. There are times when, after writing many thousands of words, an author realizes that there book is not going in the right direction or an author decides that his book needs a different focus. This can happen to both fiction writers and non-fiction writers equally.

When you are writing a non-fiction book, the first thing to consider when deciding whether or not you need to change its direction or focus is where your knowledge and current writing has taken the book. If what you have already written is leaning towards the change in focus, then the change will be much easier to implement.

The second thing to consider is what your readers, those who follow your blog and those who are your target audience will be most interested in reading; is it the original content you planned for your book, or will the new direction you are feeling compelled to move in be more suitable to your readers' interests.

Another detail to take into consideration is that changing focus can mean having to do a substantial amount of new research to cover the new focus for your book. Will some of the research you have already done help you in your new direction? If so, this will help to mitigate some of the amount of new research you will need to do.

Once you have completed any new research necessary for your book's new focus, there are a couple more steps to take. First, you need to read through the information you have already written and salvage the writing that will still be useful in your book despite the direction-change. Then you need to go back through all of the selected previously-written prose and make notations where changes need to be made in order to fit it in with the new version of your book.

When you are writing a fiction novel, you might also find it necessary to change the direction you book is taking the reader. Maybe you've come up with a different, but more suitable ending, or maybe you are finding, through the process of writing your story, that one of your secondary characters is taking on a stronger roll than your main protagonist and you have decided that your secondary character needs to become the main protagonist. For whatever reason, if you are going to change the direction of your story, you need to go back and make some changes within the writing you have already completed.

If you are making a secondary character the main focus, you need to read through your book and find the scenes where you have favored the protagonist over the secondary character. If your protagonist is now going to be a secondary character, you might be able to leave some of these scenes in the story, but more of them need to have their focus shifted to the new main character.

In whatever change you are approaching for your story, there will be newly created plot holes due to the change. You will need to go back, find them and fill them in. If your ending is changing, then you need to go find any foreshadowing added in the previous writing and alter it to suit the new ending. If you are changing a main character with a secondary character, then you need to go and fix some of the interactions between both of those characters with each other and with others to suit the new story. If you are changing the point of view of the story, for example switching from 3rd person omniscient point of view to first person, then you need to make sure that there is no over sharing (through the previous omniscient view point) and add in some of your character's personal views and thoughts, while also making sure that "he" or "she" and "her" or him" in reference to your character are changed with "I" and "me," and so on.

It can be a lot of work and can significantly increase your work load when it comes to finishing your story, but, most of the time, when a writer is pulled to make these changes, it is because the changes will strengthen the story. One thing many authors do when making these kinds of changes is to keep a copy of the previous story version, just in case.

Day Seventeen: Repurposing Old Blog Posts for your Book #BYBin30

If you are writing a non-fiction book, an easy way to gain material for your book is to repurpose old blog posts. This will only work if you have been writing blog posts on the topic of your book for longer than you have been writing your book.

Go through your old blog posts. Is there anything there that will fit within the chapters of your book? Is the post something that your readers enjoyed? Did you get good feedback on the post? Maybe your blog didn't get very much attention, but there was a post on it which you wished had been seen by more people. Does it fit with the content of your book?

After you find a post that you would like to repurpose for your book, your next step is to update the information in the post. The older your blog post is, the more likely it has some outdated information.

Once the information in the post is all current, you will need to rewrite the entire thing. The reason for this is because, if a lot of time has passed, your writing style and your writing ability will have changed and grown since you originally wrote the blog post. Rewriting it will bring your new voice, the same voice and style you are using in the rest of your book, to the blog post you will be repurposing to your book. It might sound like a lot of work, but don't worry; it is less work than writing a chapter by scratch because you have already done the research and you can use the original blog post as a sort of outline for your rewrite.

Once your chapter has been written, you need to look at your book's outline and see where this chapter is going to fit. You can't just place it anywhere in the book without paying attention to the chapters around it. The more organized the chapters of your book are, the easier it will be for your readers to gain the knowledge they are seeking from your book.

If you are writing a fiction novel, you might want to look at old stories you have written. Sometimes, you can generate new ideas from them, find a paragraph here or there that, with tweaking, will work within a scene of your current story or even a character trait form one of your old characters that would enhance a character in your current story. You might even be able to recycle supporting characters, but always with plenty of tweaking to make sure everything fits within the new story.

Day Sixteen: Writing the Middle of Your Book #BYBin30

By now, you might be reaching the middle of your book. This is where, if you let it, your story might begin to sag. But there are ways to avoid writing a saggy middle to your story.

1. Use your outline. Not knowing how to get from the beginning of your story to the end can cause many authors to flounder in the middle, but that is why you are supposed to have written an outline, with a synopsis for each chapter. The outline should tell you what you need to achieve in these middle chapters and give you direction.

2. View each chapter as a scene. If this scene were a short story, how would it begin and how would it end? What can you do to keep your readers interest all the way through? Giving your story the same focus on each chapter as you would for a new scene or a short story will help you keep it interesting for your readers.

3. Increase the stakes. If the stakes go up in the middle of the story, your readers interest will remain hooked. Maybe your protagonist now has even more to lose if she doesn't overcome her problem, or something happens to make overcoming the problem less likely.

4. Introduce a new character. This won't work for every storyline, but if the character can fit in within the context of the plot, sometimes this can cause renewed interest by readers, especially if this new person is a mystery, causes a new conflict, increases the conflict in some way or provides some much needed advice for the protagonist. Don't just throw any new character into the story. He has to be integral to the plot and cause a change in some way.

5. Work on your subplot and use it to increase the tension in the main plot. Tie the subplot into the main plot. Spend some time developing it, while subtly increasing the tension of the main plot.

6. Create a setback. Maybe your character has almost overcome the obstacles by now, but you are only half-way through the book. You will need a setback to keep form ending your story early and so that the story can start moving forward again.

7. Use your characters' interactions with each other to move the story forward. Dialogue between characters, even the unspoken body language between them, can create tension and pull the reader in closer.

8. Ask a question. If your story gets to the middle and, instead of answers, your protagonist now has even more questions, readers will continue to read because they want to find out what the answers to those questions are. This also increases the tension in the story.

9. Reveal a secret. Is there something about your protagonist or antagonist that your readers don't know yet? Use the middle of the story to reveal it.

10. Create a twist. Has your story been leading your readers to a false conclusion? Perhaps the middle of the story is a good time to reveal that. As long as it isn't giving away the end of your story, creating a twist can be a good way to keep your story's middle strong.

Day Fifteen: How to Avoid Writer's Block and Get Your Story Written #BYBin30

In my third year participating in NaNoWriMo, I set a goal of writing 10,000 words every three days until I reached 50,000 words, and I beat that goal by reaching a word count of 50,020 words within the first two weeks. The following year during National Novel Writing Month, I wrote 100,126 words within the 30 days of the challenge. These are some of the strategies I used while writing my novel for NaNoWriMo. (I originally shared a similar version of these on my Imagine! Create! Write! blog.)

This is the half-way point in your writing, and for many, this is the point, when writing, that writer's block can sneak up on you or you might start feeling a lack of enthusiasm for your story. It's also possible that you have continued writing daily until this point, but you don't feel that you are getting the word count you were hoping for. Here are some tips that will help you to avoid writer's block and produce a high word count over the next two weeks.

1. Split your focus between different parts of the story-line. By writing different parts of your book at different times, whenever you feel stuck on what you are writing or just need a break from it, you will be able to switch to a different story to write about. This can work when writing a one-story novel or a non-fcition book as well. When you get stuck on a certain part of the book or just need a break from what you are writing, start on a different scene within the story or a different chapter within your non-fiction book. You can always go back to finish the one you started with and when you do, you will feel refreshed and full of new ideas.

2. Set aside as much time as you can spare for writing. You may find that you can sneak more writing time into your day than you originally thought was possible. If you're a parent, you can write when your kids are at school, when your youngest takes a nap, or when all of the children go to bed. Maybe you will stay up late to write. Take a notebook with you everywhere and write while on the bus or while waiting at the doctor's office. Wake up early to write before everyone else is up or before you have to leave for work.

3. Get rid of distractions during your writing time. Many things constitute distractions. Children can be very distracting, so write when they were in bed or at school. The TV is distracting, so make sure it is off when you are writing. Facebook and Twitter are distracting, so tell yourself that you will reach a specific word count before allowing yourself time on either site.

4. Challenge yourself. Try and beat your best record for word count in a day. Or look at how your friends are doing and try to beat their word count. Think of a daily word count that seems slightly out of reach for you and then challenge yourself to find a way to reach it that day.

5. Believe in yourself. No matter what obstacles seem to be in the way of you reaching your word count goal, believe that you will overcome them. Because you can.

6. Make writing a priority. There may be a lot of things that have to be priorities in your life, but if you are reading this, then there is at least a part of you that wants to make writing a priority too. So do it. Make writing something you will not allow yourself to set aside.

7. Get rid of your internal editor. Just write without looking back. When you finish your novel, you can go back and edit what you have written, but just let it go while you are in the middle of writing. You can't edit writing that hasn't been written.

8. When you are not writing your novel, talk about it with others. Not only is this helpful in coming up with new ideas or ways for you to think about your plot, but also, just the act of talking about it will help you to come up with new ideas on your own.

9. Give yourself a break from writing every now and then. Sometimes a change of scenery is all it takes to give yourself fresh ideas and keep the writing flowing.

10. And the one thing that is the most important is to have fun with your story! Enjoy every second of the world you are creating!

*****

Give-away!

This week's prize is a "Superhero Writer" t-shirt. The winner will be drawn by a random number generator selecting form active participants. Must be signed up to the challenge to qualify. (The shirt is white. I'm not sure why Blogger has decided to turn all the whites in my pictures grey, but lately, it has been an issue.) winner will be drawn on April 21st at noon GMT.

Day Fourteen: Creating Fantasy Worlds & Creatures #BYBin30

Creating fantasy worlds and creatures is a talent that is specific to fiction writing, and, within fiction writing, it is specific to a particular genre. When writing fantasy, you are only limited by the boundaries of your imagination, and, as a writer, your imagination should be limitless.

There are several techniques to help you build your world and your characters in a fantasy novel.

Borrow ideas from history and build on them. You can create a fictional character based on a historical figure and alter them to suit the world you are placing them in, or you can create a fantasy world with elements that resemble the real world as it was in the past. Use different religions and cultures and twist them to fit in your world, different but with similarities.

Fantasy worlds and characters have their roots in reality. If the world you create is so fantastical that it comes across as implausible, you will lose your readers. While there are no limits in fantasy, it still needs to be rooted in something more easily believed. Your characters need to experience real emotions and act accordingly; it's what will help your readers identify with them even if the character isn't human or lives a life completely different than your readers live. And worlds, even fantastical ones, will follow simple rules. There will be good and bad people (or creatures) in those worlds and there will always be progress of some sort. Your fantasy world's cities might even have corrupt leaders, just like in real life. Give your readers something they can relate too, no matter how much the world or the characters differ from reality.

Use mythological creatures and tales. Our reality is full of stories, myths about gods and goddesses, legends about dragons, sirens and fairies. You can base the creatures of your world on these creatures of fable. Just because fire-breathing dragons don't live in our reality doesn't mean that they can't exist in the fantasy world you are creating. Likewise, trolls, ogres, vampires and more can easily exist in your fantasy world.

Avoid stereotypes and cliches. While you can use mythological creatures in your fantasy world, they don't need to be exactly as they are in our folklore. They are myth, and myth is built on stories, so create your own stories for them. Create something entirely new that none of your readers will have heard or read about before. The Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling are full of creatures that borrow from mythology but are so different from mythological creatures that we are not entirely sure about the resemblance. The Harry Potter universe also has completely new creatures and mythos. J. K. Rowling's world has its own legends and stories, and fables about good and evil. If all of the creatures in the Harry Potter series were recognizable from our legends and fables, we, as readers, would not have become as enthralled with the fantasy world portrayed in the books. Not only are there creatures that are entirely different from what we expect, but they often act in a way that we do not expect. This keeps things interesting for the reader.

I cannot emphasize enough the importance of allowing your imagination to be boundless when creating your fantasy world or characters. Werewolves don't have to change on the full moon, unicorns don't have to be on the side of good, there doesn't have to be only one moon and nothing has to be the way we expect. Build your world and build your characters as if you are their god of creation; your ability to craft this world and the creatures on it has no limits. Are you a loving god of creation, giving your most favored creatures an edge over others in this world, or are you a cold and uncaring god placing them in a hostile environment, where everything that exists in the world exist to kill or maim? As the writer creating your fantasy world and its characters, it's entirely up to you.

*****

Winner!

And now for the announcement of the winner of the "Novel Under Construction" mug, drawn by a random number generator.

The winner is:

Cecilia Clark

Congratulations, Cecilia! 

Day Thirteen: Creating Character Emotions #BYBin30

When writing a fiction novel, your portrayal of character emotions is a key part of the experience you create for your readers. You don't want your characters to come across as wooden and lacking in emotion. But how can you make sure you successfully convey your characters' emotions in a way that will enhance the story for your readers?

1. Show, don't tell. This is advice that is often used when it comes to writing a novel, but it is especially important when conveying character emotions. Don't tell your readers that Sally was tired. Show them the dark circles in her eyes and her constant yawning. Don't tell them that Jason is sad, show them the tears glistening in his eyes, his slumped shoulders and the trembling of his lips.

2. Use body language to convey character emotions. A person's body language can tell a story about what they are feeling, and this is never truer than when in a written story. It's another example of showing instead of telling. If your character is nervous, he might be pacing or fidgeting in some way. He might be sweating or jumpy. If your character is embarrassed, he might be blushing. He might be cringing or stammering. He might be looking down and avoiding eye contact. A happy person might have a smile on their face and a relaxed body. She might walk with a skip in her step.

3. Use internal physical symptoms to show what your character is experiencing. Your character might have a racing heart or quickened breathing. Or your character might have an upset stomach or loss of appetite. Maybe she feels her throat closing off or she's feeling a loss of energy. Maybe he's feeling an ache or pain in his heart or stomach or his mind is racing so much that he's experiencing insomnia. He could be feeling butterflies in his belly or his mouth has gone dry. All of these are internal signs felt by your characters that signal different emotions.

4. Use dialogue or the lack of it to suggest emotions. Sometimes the way a character says something can convey more emotion than through showing it in their body language, although a combination of the two usually works best. Instead of writing that your character thought Jason was an idiot, write: '"You're an idiot," Janice said.' Another way to use dialogue is by what your characters don't say. A poignant silence in response to a question can convey all sorts of different emotions, depending on the context. For example: 'Janice asked, "Do you still love me?" Jason looked away, silent.'

5. Use setting to convey character emotion. The way your character perceives the setting around him can suggest your character's mood or the emotions your character is experiencing. Your character might be experiencing a sunny day, but, while in a foul mood, all he notices are the clouds that linger. Or your character might be experiencing a grey and rainy day, but decide to go dance in the rain or be thinking about how nourishing the rain will be for the flowers in his garden.

There are numerous ways to portray your character's emotions without resorting to simply telling your readers what those emotions are. And if your readers are able to feel those emotions alongside your characters because you have engaged the five senses, used dialogue, body language and setting to help convey those emotions, your readers will be more invested in your story and in your characters.

Day Twelve: Taking a Break from Writing to Refuel Your Muse #BYBin30

By now, you have been planning, researching and writing your book for twelve days. You might be beginning to find your motivation waning or the idea for writing starting to fail you. Now is a good time to take a short break from writing your book. Taking a short break is not going to kill your manuscript or your momentum. In many instances, it is just what you need to fuel even more ideas and to prevent writer's block from creeping in and damaging your productivity.

Taking a day off from writing might cause you to fall behind on your preferred word count, but it is only a day's worth of writing that you will fall behind on and, with your creativity and motivation renewed by a day of rest, it will be a simple matter to catch up on that missed day of writing in the days ahead.

Taking a day off from writing doesn't mean that you only take a break from writing; it also means you take a break from other writing-related tasks, such as researching your book, working on the plot structure or outline of your book and even planning the next scene in your head. A day off from writing means taking a complete break from your book.

Use the day off to experience things away from your desk or computer. Go on a picnic with your family. Go see a movie that you've been wanting to see. Go out to dinner with your significant other or a good friend. Spend a day cooking up some of your favorite dishes. Go on a hike somewhere pretty and lush with nature. Go volunteer at a shelter, soup kitchen or food bank for the day. Take your kids to the aquarium or spend a day at the beach with family and friends. Go swimming. Spend time working out at the gym. Read a book you've been wanting to read for ages. Take a luxurious bubble bath. Go for a massage or spend the day at a health spa.

Spend the day refreshing your mind, relaxing and pampering yourself. Feel yourself living in the moment. Then, a day later, when you get back to your writing and working on your book, the ideas will flow and your creative muse will be just as refreshed as the rest of you.

Day 11: Writing a Series Book #BYBin30

When people discuss series books, they very rarely are referring to non-fiction books, but, in the non-fiction context, a series book can be several books on different aspects or subsets of one more general topic. A good example of this is the writing books by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. Currently, they have three books which all fall within the same topic, but are more specifically targeted. Their series of writing books, "The Emotions Thesaurus," "The Negative Trait Thesaurus" and "The Positive Trait Thesaurus" are all thesauruses written for writers, but they each address a different sub-topic within the writing paradigm.

More commonly, when people reffer to series books, they are referring to fiction books.

A stand-alone novel is one that can be read on its own. It does not continue in a later book and every issue or conflict introduced in the book is successfully resolved by the end of the book. These books can be long or short but must always resolve the conflict within the one book.

A trilogy is, essentially, a much longer stand-alone book that has been divided into three separate books. Trilogies must resolve all of the conflicts and issues that are introduced within all three books by no later than the final book in the trilogy. Some trilogies work like series books in that they have an over-arching conflict that doesn't resolve until the final book, but also have smaller conflicts that are individual to each book that are resolved within that specific book. Other trilogies leave major cliffhangers at the end of each book, waiting for the final book to resolve the cliffhangers from the previous two books.

Series books usually differ from stand-alone books but not always. Occasionally, series books function as stand-alone books but have the same characters dealing with different conflicts in each subsequent book. The Nancy Drew series is a good example of this. Each book is about a different mystery that the main character, Nancy, solves, but each book can also be read as a stand-alone book because each mystery is introduced at the beginning of the same book that it is resolved in by the end. And there is no over-arching conflict or mystery that remains unanswered from book to book.

More often, series books differ from stand-alone books because of an over-arching theme or conflict that carries over from one book to the next, usually not getting resolved until the final book in a series. These books usually have a sub-conflict which each particular book deals with, successfully resolving towards the end, while still keeping the main conflict unresolved. Each book continues with the same characters and, normally, the same setting. They tend to be plot-driven, but, because they can cover a long span of time, they often have characters who grow and change throughout the story.

A good example of series books is The Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher. The books deal with the same characters and they happen in the same world, but each story is self-contained, while at the same time leaving something to be resolved by the next book. The over-arching theme sometimes changes after being resolved in a previous book, but, though it changes, there is always one that carries over to future books.

Series books are usually not overly long books, but there are some series books which have successfully overcome that trend. A good example of a series of books that has very long books for each book in the series is the Game of Thrones series by George R. R. Martin. The first book in the series is over 800 pages long and has won several awards.

One thing to consider when writing a series book is foreshadowing. In foreshadowing, you lay the seeds for future events in the book early on in the storyline. In series books, these seeds can be laid down to sprout within the storyline several books later.

Some series authors choose not to resolve any of the conflicts introduced in the first books, and sometimes not even in the second or third books in the series. They leave major cliffhangers at the end of each book. For some authors, this can work as a device to keep the reader interested and wanting to read more. But there is a significant number of people who do not like reading books with this type of cliffhanger ending within a series book. Writers need to keep that in mind that with a book that doesn't resolve anything; they might be alienating some of their readers.

Day Nine: An Alternate Method of the Hero's Journey #BYBin30

Trade paperback of Buffy: Season Eight, Volume One,
The Long Way Home, written by Joss Whedon

The Hero's Journey was first written about by Joseph Campbell in his "The Hero with a Thousand Faces." He called it the monomyth. He posited that numerous myths from different times and places all shared similar stages and structures.

In the Hero's Journey, Joseph Campbell describes 17 stages. But for the modern day writer, the breakdown of a simple hero's journey can take far fewer stages than that.

His first stage, the Call to Adventure, is one that every story needs. This is where the protagonist lives an ordinary life and something happens to change it. Either information is received or an event occurs and this leads to the protagonist needing to start their adventure. In the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" series by Joss Whedon, the protagonist, Buffy, is living an ordinary life as a cheerleader at her school. She is not aware that there is anything special about her. Then vampires attack and she learns that she is specially equipped to fight them. I call this the Call to Action, because whatever has happened, it has called the main character to take action.

Many books, though not all, include Campbell's stage Refusal of the Call.  This is where the hero doesn't want to be special or needed. The protagonist just wants to continue living in their ordinary world and doesn't want to answer the call to adventure. In the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" series, the protagonist, Buffy just wants to be an ordinary girl, and she tries to deny her calling at first. I think the current name for this stage fits it perfectly.

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is the perfect example of Campbell's next stage in his Hero's Journey, called "Supernatural Aid." This is the stage where the protagonist comes across a mentor. For Buffy, this mentor is Giles, a librarian at her school who is also a Watcher and on a council whose members have studied vampire slayers and learned how to train them. Not all novels include a supernatural element, so I call this stage the Meeting the Mentor stage.

Campbell's next stages in his Hero's Journey are Crossing of the First Threshold, where the hero starts her adventure, leaving the known and crossing into the unknown and Belly of the Whale, which represents the hero's willingness to separate from his known world and enter into the adventure fully. In many cases, these are not separate from the Supernatural Aid stage but happen concurrently, and the two stages can actually be combined. In "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," the protagonist accepts her role as vampire slayer, but she never really gives up on being able to lead a somewhat normal life, so the Belly of the Whale stage doesn't fully come into the story as she never fully accepts that she is not going to ever have the same things that normal teenagers get to have. I call this stage the Journey Begins. This stage, as I see it, is interchangeable in order with the Meeting the Mentor stage. Sometimes the mentor will be needed to convince the hero to accept the adventure, but sometimes the hero will start on her journey before she meets the mentor.

In Campbell's Initiation stage, the hero undergoes a series of tests or trials. These tests or trials often come in threes and the hero doesn't always pass them all, sometimes failing one or more of the trials. Taking our hero Buffy into account again, because her story is a series of stories, we find she faces many more trials than just three. It's true that she doesn't face all of her trials successfully. I call this the Three Trials. Many book forms, including picture books, chapter books and adult books, include the three stages of the main character trying and failing to succeed at their goal, usually only succeeding on the third attempt. If the book is the first in a series, then there may be three trials in the first book and three new trials in the second book, and so on.

In Campbell's the Meeting with the Goddess stage, this has to do with the hero encountering an all-encompassing love. In many cases, this is where the hero is meeting the love of his or her life. The difference between Joseph Campbell's theory about this and modern day novels is that a modern protagonist does not always meet only one love. Using "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" as an example again, she meets the love of her life, Angel, early on in the series, but later, he leaves and a new love is introduced, Riley, and, when that doesn't work out, another love is introduced, Spike. In "The Hunger Games," the all-encompassing love is the protagonist's love for her sister. I call this stage the Reason for the Journey. If not for love of self (i.e. the hero does not want to die) or love of others, then why is the hero on this journey?

Campbell's stage Woman as Temptress is another frequently found stage in novels. In this stage, the hero faces a temptation, or perhaps many temptations, which tempt her to leave the adventure and give up her quest. This is not necessarily a woman, but can be many things. The "Woman" in the title of this stage is merely a metaphor. For Buffy in the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," this temptation rears its head in many forms, usually in the form of a way to leave her responsibilities. In one instance, she is led to believe that she is insane and that if she just kills everyone she loves within her "dream world," she will wake up in that normal life she has left so long ago. In another instance, she dies and is, presumably, in Heaven, but her friends and family bring her back and she must choose to continue to fight. I call this stage, simply, Temptations.

In my method for writing a good fiction novel, once these things have occurred, there should only be four stages left. There should be the Complete Failure stage, where the hero is at the bottom. In this stage, the hero has failed utterly and it is difficult to see any way that the hero can now turn things around.

Then there is the Refusal to Give Up stage where the hero finds an inner strength and resolve not found prior to this point in the story. The hero can even find something that will help them in the battle ahead.

Then there's the Final Battle, where the hero battles to save the world or save her family or just to save herself. This is where the hero finally confronts whatever antagonist she faces within the story structure and wins. Taking Buffy as an example again, this stage occurs when she and her friends have the final battle in the depths of the Hellmouth against hundreds (or thousands) of master vampires.

And lastly, there is the Winding Down stage where everything is tied up neatly into a happy ending.

So here are the 11 stages in the alernate method of the Hero's Journey:

1. Call to Action
2. Refusal of the Call
3. Meeting the Mentor (not in every story)
4. Journey Begins (can come before or after stage 3)
5. Three Trials
6. Reason for the Journey (can occur at any point in the story)
7. Temptations
8. Complete Failure
9. Refusal to Give Up
10. Final Battle
11. Winding Down

Day Eight: Writing memorable dialogue #BYBin30

Every fiction novel needs to have well written dialogue. If your dialogue is stilted or forced, it won't help move your story along, and it can even turn away your readers.

Some things to avoid doing when writing dialogue:

1. Telling instead of showing. The dialogue will have a part in your story, but it shouldn't be the whole story. Your characters should also show the message they are imparting through body language and more subtle means.

2. Providing too much information at once. Using dialogue for large chunks of exposition sounds forced. Don't try to skip over a crucial element of the story by having a character explain it all. That's lazy writing and will not engage your reader.

3. Don't use superfluous adverbs. For example, '"I won't do it," Jessica shouted angrily.' Look for those words ending in "-ly" and get rid of them.

4. Using too many dialogue tags. The only tags you should ever need to use are "said," "asked" and maybe, once in a while, "answered" or "replied." Many children are taught to use as many different dialogue tags as they can think up, but this is because it helps them to learn vocabulary; it's not the correct way to write dialogue in a story.

5. Using your characters names too often during dialogue. In most instances, you should have already made it clear who is speaking. And in realistic speech, most of the time people don't say each other's names while speaking to them. Your characters do not need to address each other by name, unless, for example, there is a specific incidence where someone is giving individual directions to a group of people.

Some things that are okay to do while writing dialogue:

1. Use silence instead of words. Sometimes what your character is not saying is as powerful and meaningful as what they are saying. For example, if one character asks another character who is at fault for some mistake that has occurred, the character's silence instead of answering speaks volumes.

2. Use different speech patterns for different characters. A teenager living on the streets is going to sound different from an elderly grandmother enjoying a cup of tea while sitting on her porch. However, you need to be careful not to over-do the differences. Try not to have every character sound like you. Re-read what you've written, and if the speech patterns sound forced or unnatural for your character, then you know you need to rewrite it.

3. Use actions of your characters to punctuate their dialogue. This is a way to bring the scene into the dialogue and also a way to show the story rather than tell the story. For example, if your character is pacing, this shows some tension or worry behind their words, which might not be as easily conveyed through words alone.

4. Skip some of the more mundane dialogue. You can skip your characters saying "hello" and "goodbye" to everyone in the room. A neat trick for this is to skip the beginning of the conversation and the very end and just write the meat of the dialogue, the middle.

5. Break up the dialogue. Large chunks of dialogue can be too wordy and tend to lack some of the emotion that can be shown through your characters actions. A great way to show emotion in dialogue is for your character to have stumbles and restarts, maybe even some fumbling of his or her words.

An important step to take when writing dialogue:

Read the dialogue you have written out loud. This is the easiest way to see where the dialogue is not working.

***** 

This week, the prize that will be drawn from the signed-up Blog Your Book in 30 Days members who are actively participating is a Novel Under Construction mug. The drawing will be done by a random number generator on April 14th at noon and will be announced at the end of that day's blog post.

Day Six: How to Create Convincing Villains #BYBin30

art by Robert Fyfe

The topic of creating convincing villains is only pertinent for fiction novels. In the next chapter, we will cover the non-fiction topic of becoming an expert in your subject.

Villains are the characters in your book that your readers love to hate. Your antagonist stands between your protagonost and what they want. Villains can be the main opposition to your protagonist or they can also be a supporting character who causes extra conflict and difficulties for your main character.

Some stories have villains that are simply one dimensional with no redeeming qualities. For example, in the Harry Potter series, Voldemort's only positive trait is his intelligence, and even that he uses for malevolent purposes. He has no remorse for his actions, no love for any of his fellow wizards or for humans and, even his followers are not safe from him. There is nothing redeeming about him, and readers of Harry Potter love to hate him. He is a great foil for Harry Potter.

But your villain can't be one dimensional. To the reader, your villain has to be real, and real people or creatures have a past, even if it's not discussed within the confines of the book. They have reasons for being the way that they are. Voldemort has an innate hatred for humans, and, as he calls them, muggles. Perhaps this is caused by his upbringing in an orphanage or perhaps, he was just born bad. The reader is shown glimpses of his years as a student at Hogwarts, showing that he was scheming and had bad intentions from very early on.

In contrast, the character of Snape in Harry Potter is a different type of villain, one who becomes redeemed by the end of the series. This is an example of another type of villain in a story; some stories have villains who have redeeming qualities but choose to act against them. Snape is an exception in that, despite his antagonistic behavior towards the main character, he is actually acting to keep Harry Potter safe. His main redeeming quality is his love for Harry Potter's mother and his loyalty to that love.

A better example of a villain with redeeming qualities would be Loki in Marvel's Thor and Avengers movies. He starts out as a younger brother who fights by his older brother's side. It becomes clear, as the story goes on, that he is jealous of his brother, and, there are instances where the viewer gets to see, in the midst of his villainous actions, that he is really acting out in a desperate attempt to gain his parents' approval and love. The love they show him isn't enough, because he has always felt that they loved his brother more. He's a rebellious child, but he still has redeemable qualities that make the viewer wonder if he can ever be redeemed. In fact, at one point, he helps his brother Thor save the woman he loves, but he then uses his assistance as a way to escape and the viewer is left, again, wondering which side Loki will fall on years down the road, and if future experiences of his will change him for the better or for the worse.

A villain with redeeming qualities always leaves the question in the reader's mind of whether or not he will be redeemed. It leaves the reader with just enough hope to wonder, but not enough to ever root for him over the protagonist.

Day Five: Supporting topics/Supporting characters #BYBin30

In non-fiction books, supporting topics can be useful to help give credence to your topic or to enhance it in some way. These topics should, of course, have a strong connection to your main topic. For example, if you are writing about how to grow a container garden, it can be helpful to also let your readers know about the benefits of eating fresh produce free from chemicals and hormones or about the environmental benefits gained from growing your own produce.  Or if you are writing a book with instructions for weight lifting properly, it can be good to also write about how a healthy diet can enhance fitness levels or about the way our modern lifestyles have changed the way we commence exercise since the days of homesteading in the 1800s.

In fiction novels, supporting characters can be anyone. A supporting character can be a parent, a friend, a sibling, an aunt or uncle, a cousin, a neighbor, a pet or even someone brought into your protagonists life through the events of the story. The supporting character can have a personality and traits that are similar to your main character, but it usually works best when their traits are different. Those personality and physical traits can compliment your protagonist though.

Supporting characters are an important way to show off more of your main character. Through dialogue and interactions between your protagonist and your story's supporting characters, the reader can learn more about your protagonist and find even more reasons to become invested in the outcome of the novel. The way your protagonist interacts with the supporting characters and reacts to their actions becomes a way to display more of his or her personality, strengths and weaknesses.

Your novel's supporting characters can help to move the plot along. For example, in one of my stories, the main character has a best friend who is trying to help her survive the threats from one of the antagonists in the story, but, when the protagonist thinks she might have found a solution, the antagonist turns his evil intentions toward the protagonist's best friend. In this way, the tension is increased and the task before the protagonist becomes even more treacherous for her to navigate. Another example of a supporting character helping to move the plot along can be when the protagonist is an amateur detective and his or her friend or parent is a police officer. The police officer can impart information that is vital to your protagonist's investigation.

When naming your supporting characters, it is best to begin their names with a different letter than the one with which your main character's name begins. You don't want similar sounding names, because this can sometimes be confusing to the reader. I once read a story that had three characters with names that began with the letter A. They all had the same syllables within their names too. The book had many characters, and I found it difficult to keep track of which one I was reading about whenever one of their names turned up in the book.

Normally, it is not a good idea to write too many supporting characters into your novel, unless your novel is an epic fantasy that will progress over many years and several books. As in the problem with naming character,s this is because it can become confusing to your readers. Sometimes, the reader won't know whether to get invested in a certain supporting character or not when there are too many supporting characters.

Day Four: Conflict #BYBin30

It might seem strange to refer to conflict for non-fiction books, but I think of it more as introducing the reason for your readers to want to learn whatever it is your book has to teach them. For example, I recently discovered a YouTube video for mermaid lovers who want to swim like mermaids. The video explained what the conflict was: Buying professionally created mermaid tails is very expensive and many people can't afford them. And it presented itself, a video on how to make your own mermaid tail inexpensively, as the solution. In a travel guide, the conflict is that you want to travel but don't know which hotels are the best or which sights there are to see in the place you want to visit. The travel guide itself is the solution to the conflict.

In non-fiction books, the conflict is implied rather than written into the book. The book itself is the solution to the conflict. If you want to learn more about Christopher Columbus, you find the solution - a biography about him. If you want to grow your own garden but don't have a lot of garden space, you might find that a book about container gardening will give you the answers you need. If you want to sell your own house, you can easily find a book on the subject which will help you learn what you need to know.

Fiction novels have a deeper dependency on conflict within the story. Without conflict in a fictional story, you won't have much of a story. Conflict is the driving force in the story. The conflict that your character faces drives his or her actions. The goal of the story is for your protagonist to overcome the conflict. There can be other conflicts in the story which help to fuel the main conflict, such as your character having an argument with the one person who holds the answer to something your protagonist needs to know or your protagonist and his or her charming secondary character/sidekick getting separated and needing to find each other again before they can, together, defeat, whatever it is that's causing the original problem.

If done correctly, the journey to overcome the conflict your protagonist faces, should, in some way, change your protagonist. He or she should grow as a result of defeating the obstacles along the way. Every decision your protagonist makes and every event that occurs as a result of those decisions should help shape your protagonists later decisions.

There are four main types of conflict in stories: man verses man - you have a protagonist and an antagonist pitted against each other, man verses self - where the biggest challenge for the protagonist is to overcome his or her own shortcomings, man verses nature - where man must overcome the forces of nature or creatures within nature to survive, and man verses society - where man must overcome the restrictions of society in order to succeed. These can sometimes overlap in stories. Others have suggested that there are more types of conflict for modern stories, such as man verses fate, man verses the supernatural and man verses technology, but, again, many of these types of conflict will overlap within stories.

If you are writing a non-fiction book, ask yourself; what is the implied conflict for which my book is the solution?

If you are writing a fiction novel, ask yourself these questions:

What does my protagonist want?

What obstacles or problems is my protagonist facing?

How will my protagonist need to change, or what will he or she need to do differently, in order to overcome the obstacles or problems being faced?

Day Three: Hook your readers in the first chapter #BYBin30

The first chapter is important in a non-fiction book but it is crucial to the success or failure of a fiction novel.

In a non-fiction book, your readers need to establish that are getting value from reading your book. If the first chapter doesn't teach them anything or clarify anything for them, then they will not bother reading the rest of the book. They have bought your book because it is about something they are interested in or because they want to learn something from it. You have to show them, within that first chapter, that they did not make a mistake in buying your book. Give them what they want. Don't wait until later in the book, because if the first chapter doesn't do anything for them, they probably aren't going to get to "later" in the book.

In a fiction novel, your first chapter has to hook them. There are several things that you need to do in the first chapter, and these things need to be done in such a way that your reader doesn't even realize you have done it; they will just continue reading because they are hooked.

1. Start in the middle of the action. This doesn't have to establish your main conflict for the story, but some action should be happening as the reader gets introduced to the story and the characters. This establishes a sense of urgency and keeps the reader reading further.

2. You need to establish who your main character is. Male or female? How old? What do they look like? Do NOT have them looking into a mirror and cataloguing their appearance. A description of the main character needs to be much more subtle than that.

3. You need to establish a reason for the reader to empathize with your main character. What is it about the main character that a reader can relate to? What is it about your main character that is likeable? Why is the reader going to want to root for the main character? Some books have successfully introduced anti-heroes, or protagonists that do not have overly redeeming qualities. Usually, the only way this works is if the antagonist is even worse than the protagonist, and if the hero has at least one redeeming quality. For example, when an assassin refuses to kill children and then spends the rest of the story trying to save a child who is on a "hit list" from another assassin who doesn't have the same aversion to killing children. (This story-line has been done before, many times, but, here, I am only using it as an example of an anti-hero.)

4. Present the conflict of the story. It doesn't need to happen in the first chapter, but there should at least be some foreshadowing of what it is going to be or that a conflict is coming. This gets your reader anticipating more of the story.

5. Establish the setting for your story. The reader doesn't need to know every detail about the place they find your characters in this opening chapter, but there should be some indication of where they are. Is it set in a different world? An alternate dimension? Are they in a building or a house, or are they outside? What time period is it? Establishing these things can be done in a variety of ways. For example, the way your characters are dressed, how they talk, their surroundings and how they interact with those surroundings and the technology that is around or not around are all some ways to establish the setting.

Introducing the Blog Your Book in 30 Days Challenge #BYBin30

Blog Your Book in 30 Days is a challenge to write the first draft of your book by posting one chapter a day for an entire month. During the month of the challenge, helpful blog posts will be shared on the website.

The challenge is here to help you write the book you have always wanted to write but have never written. Whether you want to write a memoir, a fiction novel, a comic book, a children's chapter book or middle grade novel or a non-fiction book, this challenge is going to help you get it done.

Every day, you are going to do any research that is needed for the day's writing and your are going to post a blog post of one chapter of your book. By the end of the month, you should have 30 chapters and a completed first draft.

This way of writing your books works best if you are planning to self-publish your book, but there are some instances where blogs have garnered the attention of agents and publishers and resulted in book deals. Those instances are the exception though, not the rule.
Rules:

Sign up. You will not be entered into the prize drawings unless you are signed up. Go here to sign up.

Every day, you are going to do any research that is needed for the day's writing and your are going to post a blog post of one chapter of your book. By the end of the month, you should have 30 chapters and a completed first draft.

You have from the first of the month until the 30th of the month to complete the first draft of your book. No starting early, unless it is only research and outline you are working on beforehand.

On the 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th and 30th of the month, you will do a quick comment on that day's blog post posted on this blog about that week stating how the week has gone for you and anything you have learned or achieved from the challenge that week. Your comment might be quoted in the Blog Your Book in 30 Days book when it comes out or later in the blog itself and, by commenting, you are giving permission for your quote to be used.

Each day, you are to write one chapter and then copy and paste it into your day's blog post. By the end of the challenge, you should have a final word count. On the 30th, your comment will include your final word count and whether or not you have finished your first draft. Everyone who completes their first draft will be entered into a prize drawing. (The prize is yet to be determined.) Every time you leave a comment on (one comment per post) a blog post, you will earn one more entry into the drawing. Your comments on the 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th and 30th will earn you two entries into the drawing, and my favorite comment from each of those five days will earn an extra entry.



This challenge is self-driven and monitored. It is a way to keep yourself accountable as you write.