500 Writing Prompts: Message in a Bottle

As I sit in the fallow zone between projects (letting novel 8 marinate and waiting on novel 6 beta readers), I find that I am itching to write. Something, anything, to scratch that existential need. Usually I say that I will fill the space with short stories, but that almost never actually happens. I don’t have a strong affinity for shorts, and whenever I come up with an idea I am passionate enough about, I end up wanting to turn it into a novel. So while I was at Barnes and Noble, looking to spend a gift card I’d won in a drawing at work, I saw this book of prompts and knew it would be perfect. Short, easy bites, a chance to write without the sometimes-exhausting effort of creation, and a chance to write outside my normal wheelhouse. I picked it up and planned to do one prompt every night.*

 



That hasn’t exactly worked out, but I have done a few of them and found them to be an interesting thought exercise. (Like the one that made me realize I don’t have ten items to put on a bucket list—I need more aspirations in life, apparently!) I thought I would share the very first one I did, and perhaps I will return to this and share some future ones if they resonate.

*I am still planning to do short stories, of course, but I just am trying to be realistic about how that usually goes.

While at the beach you decide to write a message in a bottle. What would it say? Who would you like to find it?

The message would mostly be for myself. After all, I could never be sure who would find it or if they even would. I would probably write down a small piece of me. An attempt to define part of who I am when there is no audience to please. Not necessarily a secret, but an intimacy. Describing my situation when I wrote it, what I was doing and feeling. And if someone did find it, I would be free of the burden of knowing how and why they would react. But I would hope that it would help them. Give them an insight into the human condition. Give them a glimpse of someone who is of a different gender or race or class or even time. I would probably include a message of hope. Hope for myself, hope for the finder, hope for the world.

Or, if I was marooned, it would just be a plea for help with as many details as I could come up with. And I would hope the Coast Guard or their analogue would find it—and quickly!

Life-Cycle of a Nora Novel

Okay, maybe a Nora novel isn't an officially recognized category—yet!

In any case, I have a pretty methodical way that I go about writing a novel, refined over several manuscripts. So I thought I would share that method in case it is helpful and/or interesting for anyone else!

The video describes it pretty well, but I thought I would also include a short summary here, in case you don't want to watch me blabber for 11 minutes. Or are at work, not that any of us would be thinking about writing at our day jobs!

The ideas for my novels usually get entered into my ideas notebook long before I start writing or even planning them. It's an outlet for all those plot monkeys that demand to be written while I'm trying to finish something else. There are all kind of random things in my notebook, ranging from snippets of dialogues to character sketches and title ideas. For example:

A long stretch of moonlit road. Dry grasslands as far as the eye can see. A lone horse rider, the clop of hooves a slow staccato, the rider slumped in the saddle. A faint wind stirs dust along the road.

This is written in my notebook with zero context. Just an image I had one day a few years ago. Anyway, I take one of these ideas that I want to work on, and I start to brainstorm. I like to do the one sentence premise -> paragraph -> plot summary progression. Then I write an outline. An honest-to-goodness, I.A.i.a. outline. From that outline, I create an Excel spreadsheet scene list. Here is where I plan out the details of the timeline, the POV, who is where, and what happens.

Then I write!

For the most part, I stick to that scene list. I guess that may seem boring to some, but for me, I like the structure it provides. It's like a checklist—butt in chair, write this scene. If I get wild inspiration, I'll pause to work it in, but that just isn't the way I normally work. Eventually, voila! A draft!

The revision process is pretty simple. Read through it, take notes. Create a new Excel sheet and, from those notes, come up with a revision plan checklist. Copy the scene list and modify it as needed to accommodate the changes. Then go back and make all the edits! X them off as I go, so I get to see my Excel percentage go up. Rinse and repeat until it feels done. Somewhere in there, try to get feedback from beta readers to incorporate into the revision notes.

Once I'm happy with it, write a query and a synopsis, and begin sending it out! At this point, the novel is basically done. If I get a partial or full request (very rarely...), I don't go back and re-read or edit, I just send what I have. Only if I am having a really bad response do I then go back and maybe do another edit.

So that's it! That's as far as it goes for me, for now. Someday I hope I will have to worry about agent edits and editor edits and all that fun stuff, but that's a future!Nora problem. Right-now-Nora needs to worry about writing that damn synopsis for Novel 7 and picking out an idea to flesh out for Novel 8...

Mental Tongue Twisters

I've had a few ideas percolating around in my brain lately (why is eggnog so delicious, will these cookies really go straight to my love handles, how feasible is it to take a redeye to see my boyfriend for about 4 hours, maybe this manuscript can write itself...okay, but I swear there are a couple pertaining to a blog post!), so here I am finishing up a blog post at 11 PM on Christmas Eve. Well, I live 3000 miles from anyone I'd want to spend Christmas with, so it's no skin off my back! Besides, I'm so full with hot spiced cider and eggnog that I could not possibly go to bed right now.

I Stumble my way around the internet a lot, and the other day I came across a list of 11 tongue twisters. Of course, human nature being what it is, I had to try them out. Some were easy, some were hard, and it wasn't always the obvious ones either. But I thought I made a pretty passable attempt at them in just my first couple tries. Proof:

Yup, I was way too proud of myself. But I had fun!

Okay, so, writing. Phew.

This collided with some other thoughts I had been having about writing, specifically in regards to naming and dialogue. I've been struggling with finding the right balance of naming in my current work. It takes place about 500 years in the future, so is Bob Smith a realistic name? And I came across this great quote on my @AdviceToWriters feed: "Realist dialogue doesn’t exist. We are all actors and we all play roles." (Jospeh L. Mankiewicz).

So what great conclusion did I draw from this weird amalgam of tongue twisters, unique names, and good dialogue? Don't use tongue twisters in your names or dialogue!

Seriously. I know it sounds kind of stupid, but it's astonishing how often this is ignored. Especially in SFF. Sure, you're a writer. Words on the page is your business. K'en'tisdl YuOli'main looks awesome on the page (it doesn't), so what does it matter? Because anyone who is reading that is going to react to it, and not in a "Wow, he sounds like a really great guy that could totally save the world even though he's just a farmboy" kind of way. They'll try to say it out loud, and they won't be able to. Yes, even with your handy pronunciation guide in the glossary. And then every time they come across the name, it will just be a blur of nonsense to them. He'll probably become "Ken" or "that K guy," and it's hard to get personally invested in someone you think of as "that K guy."

This same thing applies to dialogue. If you try to read your dialogue out loud, and your mouth has difficult making the words, then it's not good dialogue. It's someone trying to sound fancier than they are. So unless that very specific effect is what you are going for, avoid the stilted speech. Characters aren't going to be any better at spouting "She stood on a balcony mimicking him hiccuping while amicably welcoming him in" than you or I are.

So, as sad as it makes me, I think it's probably time to admit that the surname Ykterby, which I was rather fond of for one of my secondary characters, is getting the axe.