Willamette Writers Meeting with Tex Thompson – June 6th

    The June 6^th Willamette Writers meeting was a wonderful time to be in community with one of my very favorite presenters from last year’s conference, Tex Thompson. Tex is a one-woman community, as paradoxical as that phrase might sound. From the moment she stepped on stage, she had the audience riveted, chuckling along to her witty humor and self-deprecating jokes. If anything rang true about that presentation, it was that Tex is someone you want on your side, and fortunately, she already is.

The presentation focused on how writers can promote and market themselves, a topic that has become more and more important as the entire publishing landscape shifts into an entirely different geography (think west of I-5 after “the big one,” that’s what’s going on here). From start to finish, writers have to be more aware than ever about what it is they’re writing, who it appeals to, why, and how this work can get to that audience. Teams of marketing agents no longer do all the work to promote your book; more and more often, the writer must take ownership of these aspects of publishing.

Tex did not tramp the same old tropes normally tossed around at seminars like these – i.e. develop your presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest. Rather, Tex gave the audience a formula for understanding our work in relation to the other passions of our lives, providing exercises that reinforce just how pervasive our passions are. And pervasive is a good thing because if you’re a fan of Firefly – like Tex is and as I am and as many others in that room and thousands more in this city and hundreds of thousands more are across this country (and that’s a vast understatement), then you already have your “in”. You have your way to relate what you’ve created, which may have some Firefly-esque themes, to others who would want to read it.

She also provided us a few nuts and bolts of what we can do in regards to self-promotion that doesn’t follow what you’ve heard already. Take your passions and write about them. Create a blog. Submit a magazine article. Write a review and post it on Goodreads (you were going to read that book anyway, right? Why not write a review about it and maybe get a few followers?). Some other ideas took me by surprise: organize an event. Sponsor a contest or fellowship. Create a group around what you’re passionate for. You get the idea – self-promotion does not have to be all about me, this book, me, this story, me…while your listener begins to stare off into space, eyes glazing as she mentally calculates just how far she can get away from you and how fast. Self-promotion can be all about doing the things you love, sharing them in a variety of ways, and building community with and for people who are your built-in audience.

Tex provided a road-map to the logline we can shoot out to an agent, and not surprisingly, it follows very closely the formula DongWon Song shared in his seminar a few months back: “My work will appeal to fans of X, written in the style of Y.” Also key, make sure your book comps come from within the past 5 years because agents or publishers want to know that you know what’s going on outside the little “word cave” you otherwise hole yourself up in.

The seminar wasn’t all fun and games, though, which is to say that it was all fun, but Tex doesn’t shy away from the harsh realities of this life we’ve committed ourselves to. She just piles enough humor on top to make them palatable. Did you know that 80% of published books are considered financial failures? That most books don’t even earn back the advances given to authors? I didn’t. But Tex said this, and I put a star by it in my notebook, “Success can’t be guaranteed. Let it be a byproduct of living a life you’re proud of.”

While you may never schmooze your way to the best-seller list or find yourself giving an interview to Terri Gross or accepting a Pulitzer, you can still do what you love, love doing it for as long as it’s good, and perhaps a little bit of success will find you along the way.

Now for the best part – Tex will be at our very own Willamette Writers’ Conference and I can already tell you I’ll be there, front and center, and I may even bust out my cowboy boots for fun.

Willamette Writers – April 4 Recap: Why Your Characters Do What They Do by Jessica Morrell

On Tuesday evening, Willamette Writers hosted author and editor Jessica Morrell. Having seen Jessica present at the 2016 Willamette Writers Conference: Willamette Writers’ Conference – Day 1, I can tell you she is an amazing presenter who provides an absolute wealth of information in a speck of time. She is truly a gift to the writing community and an exemplar of what I believe it means to be a good literary citizen. To decide for yourself, just check out her blog here and see how much information she shares with writers about craft, the writing life, publishing and more: Jessica Morrell

Now, if you have taken a workshop with Jessica, then you know that her presentations are bursting with information, so much so that were I to attempt to note it all down in the scant hour we had with her, I would be dealing with a hand cramp of epic proportions! So.

What I will present are the highlights from her presentation, along with a slide of some of the questions we should all be asking about our characters to ensure that each character in our novel (yup, I said “each”) has a believable and intrinsic set of motivations and goals.

First, all characters must have a reason for being in your story. They must perform some duty to the narrative arc. Jessica shared that she so often comes across characters in her clients’ novels that seem to be running around rather aimlessly, where they either don’t have goals at all, their goals are “goofy,” or the stakes of the story don’t match the goals.

Jessica made a key point that nearly all the answers of why characters do what they do links back to structure. For more on structure, take a look at Willamette Writers’ Conference – Day 2 and Willamette Writers’ Conference – Day 3 to read what Larry Brooks and Eric Witchey both have to say about structure and its importance in our novels – also amazing literary citizens.

Here are Jessica’s Motivation Basics. Motivations must:

• be easy to understand; not easy to achieve
• be shown in actions and move the story forward
• become more complex and personal as story progresses
• showcase the protagonist’s core traits
• reveal the protagonist’s fears
• exact a cost as the story progresses – your protagonist must always sacrifice something
• create a catharsis at the climax

We also have Levels of Motivation:

• Primary
• Secondary
• External – tangible, visible, fuels story, creates action
• Internal
• Personal
• Public

As we see with the above, each motivation must have two sides, the side that is shown to the world of the story – i.e. the other characters – and the side that is available to the protagonist and reader alone. Clearly, quite a bit of tension can exist in the space between a protagonist’s apparent external motivators and his/her internal motivators actually are. Imagine this like a tight wire stretching between the two, your main character balancing as he/she walks back and forth. Whole novels have been built on the tension between what a character says they want, and what they actually want.

Now, here’s the slide with the questions you should be asking yourself about your characters’ motivations:

This covers some of the key points from Jessica’s very full presentation. And while there was quite a bit of information covered, it all boils down to this one thing: motivations – they are a must for your story to have any lift. Without a clear motivation and goal, readers don’t know what or who to root for, and if we don’t know what’s at stake, then there’s nothing at stake for us in reading it.

Again, please visit Jessica’s website through the link above. It is well worth a visit on a regular basis and she also intends to post more of the material from her Willamette Writers lecture on her site in the coming weeks.

Onwards, Writers!

Willamette Writers’ Meeting – Feb.7th: Leading a Literary Life with Kevin Sampsell and Monica Drake

This month’s meeting touches on a subject close to my own heart – leading a literary life. And it’s very important cousin – being a good literary citizen. Being a good literary citizen is all about supporting other writers, buying their books, going to their readings, and cheering on the successes of each of our counterparts while working toward our own literary goals.

The evening began with readings from both authors. Monica Drake read from a non-fiction work-in-progress, and Kevin Sampsell read his short short “Gloves” from his short story collection.

Next, Kevin led a discussion with Monica regarding the literary life. Both authors agreed that good writers must do these four things: Read – A LOT; Be around other writers; Go to Readings; and Participate in a literary community. Interestingly, another key aspect of being a writer is having plenty of things in your life that have nothing at all to do with writing. See Lorrie Moore’s story “How to be a Writer”for more. As Monica explained, her life was full of all kinds of random jobs – animal behavior intern at the zoo, art gallery employee, office worker, clown (which directly influenced her novel Clown Girl) and more. Because of this rich range of job experiences, she can pull various details that lend her characters believability and authenticity. This mirrors advice I once received from Portland author Vanessa Veselka, who said every writer must give him or herself permission to not write – i.e. to do other things that build the experiences that inform our writing. For instance, Vanessa once took off some number of months to work on a fishing boat in Alaska. She’s also a Kung Fu badass. She gives herself permission to take weeks and months away from the page to do the things that interest and intrigue her. And of course, that time ends up generating rich work.

As regards education, each author had very different experiences, with Monica completing a more traditional graduate program through University of Arizona, while Kevin said he taught himself to write through reading. Monica also got her start with Tom Spanbauer’s class, now titled Dangerous Writing. In general, writing workshops can be key to keeping a writer motivated, staying connected to a literary community, and finding support in that community. To that end, here are some additional links to workshops here in Portland that I have been part of and can highly recommend:

Willamette Writers’ Workshops

Literary Arts Writing Classes

The Attic

Tin House Summer Writers’ Workshop

In addition, community colleges around Portland offer a range of writing classes that are economical and a great opportunity for developing work. My current writing group came out of a Literary Arts class and I have been in other writing groups formed after Attic workshops and PCC community ed workshops.

Now, let’s cover the Q & A portion:

Q: Monica, how did you complete and assemble your story collection The Folly of Loving Life?

A: The stories were written over 20 years, created intermittently while Monica wrote Clown Girl and The Stud Book. The publishers of her two novels as well as her agent dismissed the idea of a collection out of hand, but Kevin once said, “hey, do you have a short story collection?” At that point, Monica explained that she took all her short stories and laid them out on the dining room table. She looked for cohesive elements and themes, and once identified, pulled out the stories that didn’t seem to connect with that linking element. She felt drawn toward connecting and linking her story collection with a narrative arc, something she said isn’t always necessary for story collections to be successful, but which she felt was important for this particular collection. Once she had her core set of stories, she then developed a few additional stories that further enhanced and linked the stories, making revisions to previous work to also improve the linking between them. She explained that it took somewhere around 1-2 years from when Kevin first suggested a collection to when it came out in print.

Q: What are the advantages of publishing with the Big 5?

A: Money. Monica explained that in her experience with Hawthorne Books and Kevin’s press Future Tense Books, small presses do as good of a job with editing, cover art, etc. – i.e. all the smaller steps of publishing a book – as the large publishers. She said, “ultimately, you’re going to make your money in different ways,” but that each writer has to decide what “success” means to him or her. Thus, you should determine where to submit based on what your desired outcomes are. For more help finding local, small presses, take a look at Literary Arts’ Guide to Small Presses and Magazines. You can find some helpful information about the 10 biggest small presses here: Lit Reactor’s 10 Portland Press Powerhouses.

Q: How much of what you write is what you’ve lived versus researched?

A: Both authors expressed that the majority of what they write comes from personal experience. Kevin said he will do plenty of research into topics that he’s passionate about, such as collage art, and when it’s a topic you love, it’s not as hard to do the research. As mentioned before, Monica’s research has largely been her own life and experiences. As we’ve all experienced, a fair amount of fiction writing is speculation, but those speculations are still drawn from what we believe we might think or feel in a given situation, even if we haven’t directly experienced it. Here, I’ll insert my own two cents based on the novel I’m currently trying to find an agent for, which is mainly set in Bath, UK in 1804 and heavily involves the life of Jane Austen. Because I was already a rabid Jane Austen fan, I didn’t need to do much research, and the research I did have to do was just more of the kind of reading I do for fun. This goes back to that adage: write what you know. (Yes, yes, there’s plenty in that other camp that say write what you don’t know, but you can find their blogs and read them later ) And I would suggest that writers choose topics that they are already drawn to. That is, don’t write a novel set during the Napoleonic Wars because you think it’s a cool idea. Write a novel set during the Napoleonic Wars because you also happen to be a nerd for the Napoleonic Era outside of your life as a writer. Otherwise, you’re just slogging through research that you otherwise couldn’t give two figs about.

Q: What are your thoughts on publishing online while attempting to find other publishers?

(Here, I think the questioner was asking if we should self-publish our books, such as through kindle or Nook, while also looking for a traditional publisher. If this is the case, then what I’ve discovered in my own research is: DON’T DO IT! At least not if you ever want to see your book in print. Many book publishers won’t come near a book that has already been published online. And yes, there’s those outliers who were discovered through self-published books and then given a huge book deal, but we’re talking lottery chances here. For more on this, read my post below as Dong Won Song addressed this very question. As regards short fiction, poetry, and essays –  the same applies. My experience is that when a journal asked for previously unpublished work, this includes your blog or website; they want work that has never appeared anywhere before.)

A: Publishing online is the way to go these days. Ten to fifteen years ago, there was a stigma around online publishing, as if it weren’t as legitimate as print publications. Both Monica and Kevin expressed that this stigma is largely done away with since online publications get much more traffic and can be much more easily shared than their print counterparts. Online publications are especially key for poets, short story writers, and essayists/creative non-fiction writers to get their name established. They tend to be more open to new voices than print publishers, as well. Monica suggested Long Reads as a journal that accepts longer form works, which often have a hard time finding a home online. For more on both online and print publishers, see my posts: Resources for Writers: Print and Online Literary Journal Databases

Q: What is your process for getting in the creative mood?

A: Monica shared that because she’s balancing so many responsibilities between parenting, teaching, and writing, she often stores quite a bit of material in her head and when she has a moment to write it down, she’ll do that. She also expressed that having a deadline, such as the Willamette Writers’ meeting that very night, can be key to getting the writing going. In fact, the piece she read for us was written that day for this particular meeting. Most writers agree that deadlines can be key to productivity, and this is another reason why being part of a critique group or signing up for a workshop can generate work.

Kevin also expressed that he has no set schedule. He balances two full-time jobs between his work at Powell’s and his press, and is also a collage artist, so he doesn’t always have a lot of time for writing. However, on his days off, he’ll set aside 2-8 hours to dedicate to his writing. Kevin also shared that he’s a very careful writer and will spend a long time thinking about the words before putting them on the page. The benefits are that the words tend to come out just as he wants them, with little revision necessary. He also expressed that his novel came out very quickly – written in about 2 years. He said that snippets and pieces would come to him and he’d bang out 1-2 pages in the 10 minutes before bed, accumulating a novel through that process.

Q: What advice would you give to those who want to seek work in the world of publishing?

A: Kevin fielded this question as a publisher, saying that there are many tracks to entering publishing. One could do the traditional thing and move to New York and work one’s way up from reading slush, but that success could be found in other avenues. For instance, in his work at Powell’s, he’s seen people start as cashiers, get promoted over a section, become the buyer for that section, and then move into the role of buyer for a large publisher. Great experience can be had working in bookstores, small presses, and magazines. Finally, he said, you could always start your own press. Future Tense Books began as Kevin’s endeavor to see his own work in print, and then writers would come to him and say, “can you help me get my book out?” This then led to being a publisher now listed on Lit Reactor’s site as the first small press publisher of note in Portland.

This concludes our evening with Monica and Kevin. Many thanks to these writers for sharing their experiences and wisdom. If anyone feels I’ve captured something incorrectly or missed a key detail, please add it to the comments section.

 

 

Take the Plunge! Publishing Short Fiction in Online Literary Journals – class begins Jan. 21

Saturdays, January 21 – February 25

10 am – 11:50 am

Interested in publishing but nervous to take the next step? This class will explore a range of literary online journals. We will review submission guidelines, investigate the aesthetics of particular journals, format digital submissions, and write cover letters. Students will exit this course with the knowledge, resources, and confidence to submit for online publication.

PCC Sylvania

12000 SW 49th Ave, Portland, OR 97219

TCB 208

REGISTER AT: http://www.pcc.edu/community/

TUITION: $79               REGISTRATION CODE: 16993

Willamette Writers- January 3rd Recap

  Willamette Writers launched their 2017 year with an excellent presentation and Q&A session with local agent DongWon Song, who agents for Howard Morhaim Literary Agency. DongWon also participates in the publishing graduate program at PSU and is a frequent speaker/agent at the Willamette Writers’ Conference in August. More about him can be found at http://www.dongwonsong.com/, including his literary interests and submission guidelines.

(Photo provided by Willamette Writers)

Now for the good stuff. I’m going to recap the key ideas from DongWon’s discussion, as well as a few key take-aways and strategies for going forward. This session was specifically geared toward the process of getting an agent, and as DongWon explained, this all starts with the pitch. To give us some perspective, he explained that the pitch you make to an agent becomes the pitch an agent takes to an editor and which an editor takes to the publishing team and on to the sales team and ultimately – most importantly – the pitch you give to the reader on the jacket copy, the hook that gets them to buy and commit to your book. DongWon shared that some of his best pitches have indeed become the jacket copy for the books he’s sold.

In my recent experience (as I am actively sending my book out to publishers), I can tell you that the majority of Submissions Guidelines even say things like, “Give us a 1 paragraph synopsis of your book. Imagine this is the jacket copy for your novel.” I also recommend starting a project by writing the potential jacket copy because if we can capture the core characters, key conflicts, and critical plot moments, we also have a compass during the drafting phase of our novel. I started my last project by writing the jacket copy first (as an exercise in a workshop through Literary Arts, to give fair credit), and I found myself returning to that jacket copy when I felt I was getting off track.

Many writers feel awkward or self-conscious when delivering pitches. Too often, writers approach DongWon with, “Oh, I hate talking about my writing” or “I just can’t talk about my book.” As you can imagine, this is a bit of a turn-off. Why? Because if the writer him or herself can’t talk about the book, why should an agent? At this point in the process, the only one who cares about your book is you, and you have to be able to talk about it succinctly and positively. The remedy? Practice, practice, practice. DongWon suggested writers should be constantly pitching their projects to friends, family members, children, dogs and cats. He also recommended pitching other projects – try to convince a friend to read a book you’ve just read or watch a movie you’ve seen. By pitching other things, we practice the art of distilling the core ideas down to a 10 second persuasive pitch. It reminds me of one of the reasons I love being in a writer’s group: critiquing my colleagues’ work is the practice I need to see the flaws and potential in my own. Same goes for pitching others’ work.

What makes for a great pitch? The key thing we need to know is that agents and publishers want to understand the context and have a frame of reference. If we launch into our pitch with something like, “well, see there’s this kid who lives on a farm, and then he….” the agents and publishers are spending all their mental energy trying to place information that feels random. Without context, agents have no idea what you’re talking about, and it becomes very easy to say no. For more about this, do a little research into pattern recognition. A book recommendation was Pattern Recognition by William Gibson, a novel which, though fiction, nonetheless captures the sense of this concept.

DongWon provided an excellent formula for giving our listeners the context they need so they can hear what our story is actually about:

A + B = Awesome.

The A and B in this calculation are comp titles (comparative titles). When we pitch our books, we should have a sense of what other books out there resemble our own. The benefits to doing this are that agents and publishers have a frame of reference and their brains don’t have to parse out every bit of information, but can focus on what makes our book unique to those titles.

An example of this is The Hunger Games. DongWon suggested that someone pitching this book might say it’s Battle Royale (a Japanese book about kids killing kids) meets The Giver (a book about a dystopian futuristic world). The overlap between these ideas is that you have kids killing kids in a dystopian futuristic world. Think Venn Diagram – you’re presenting two ideas, with your novel residing in the overlap. Once the agent has the frame of reference, the writer can then hone in on what specifically makes his or her project unique and compelling.

Now, the other benefit to providing comp titles, is you also give publishers a sense of the market viability of your project. If you can show that two or three similar books sold 50,000 copies, then you have a pretty solid argument for why your book is going to sell 50,000 copies.

The A + B = Awesome portion of your pitch needs to come right up front, along with some context for the genre – “I’ve written a YA novel [genre] in which Battle Royale meets The Giver” [comp titles]. Once you’ve set the context, you then build out how your particular book is unique, and you can do so in one of four ways (or a combination of them):

1. Plot hook – what about this plot is particularly interesting
2. Idea – what is the high concept (most common to memoir) – “What if….”
3. Setting – what about this setting is unique or intriguing – “In a world where….”
4. Character – who is this character and why will readers engage with him/her (this is the most common type of pitch)

This portion of your pitch should be about 2-3 sentences, with the whole pitch taking around 10 seconds. On a query letter, you have more room to do this, with many agents often asking for 1 page that includes the pitch, synopsis, marketing, and author bio – i.e. what about you makes you the right person to write this novel. If you’re delivering this pitch in person, say at the Willamette Writers’ Conference next August, then you deliver your 10 second pitch and wait to see if you hear the oh-so-longed-for “Interesting, tell me more.” If you get a pass, DongWon suggested using that time to chat and just generally be a friendly person – relationship building that may result in a yes on a future project. After all, agents and publishers are more than vending machines; they are people too. 🙂

Now I want to transition to some of the questions which were asked. A question was raised about self-publishing and how an author goes about getting an agent for a book he/she has already self-published. DongWon expressed it is very difficult to sell a self-published book to a publisher and he generally passes on those projects. The main reason is that even if you can show you’ve sold 500 copies, the publisher will say, “well, that’s 500 books we can’t sell” and it also becomes an indication that perhaps the market for your book is only 500 readers – thus, your successes also become your limitors. DongWon put it this way: self-publishers have to have an entrepreneurial spirit. They have to be the CEO of their books, hiring a team of proofreaders and editors, cover art designers and formatters, and a publisher. They then have to go to conventions and set up a table to handsell their books. If you’ve ever wanted to be a small business owner, he said, then sure, self-publish. If those aren’t your skill sets and you’re not willing to build those skills, then traditional publishing is the best route.

Another question was raised about the author – agent relationship, and the extent to which an author should interview the agent rather than just scream “yes, yes, yes!” into the phone. DongWon shared that when an author asks questions about the process and questions him as an agent, this shows the author is informed and invested, and it reflects well on the author. However, he also warned some agents may be turned off by this, but of utmost importance is making sure that the fit is a good one. Too many careers have been ruined or stagnated, he said, by a poor agent-author relationship, a situation that can be very painful to both parties for a long time.

Another question of note was how a pitch for non-fiction is different from a pitch for fiction. The information above mostly pertains to fiction, however, there is quite a bit of overlap. Of most notable difference is that a non-fiction project (i.e. research heavy) will often be represented and sold based on the proposal and thus the writer doesn’t actually begin to write the book until it has been bought. Memoir operates more like fiction, though, in which you should have the manuscript ready before seeking representation.

Next, a question was raised about an author’s platform and presence. DongWon suggested the best way to show you have a readership and following is to create an email newsletter and get others to subscribe to it. Blogs are out (ahem, except this one, of course). Facebook and Twitter are great, but even if you have thousands of followers, you can’t know which of them you’re actually reaching – and thus, those numbers aren’t that important either. Apparently, publishers look at how many email addresses you have attached to your newsletter, so if you have a New Year’s resolution to build your online presence, do it through a newsletter. (Now, personally, I still think we should develop our online presence in whatever way feels right for us, but to be honest, I don’t write this blog because I think it’s going to do something for my career. I write this blog because I feel it’s my way of being a good literary citizen. I want to share information I’ve obtained and which may help you. Whether that leads to readers or not is kind of beside the point. Oh, hello, soapbox.)

The final question was about when to start querying agents. Don’t start looking for an agent until you have a finished, polished manuscript in hand. As DongWon said, “I don’t care if this book is going to be finished in 3 months. If I want it, I want it now.” It can be difficult to embark on a process without knowing if it’s even viable, but this is the risk we all take as writers. Ultimately, even if a book isn’t picked up by an agent, the practice of writing it becomes the building blocks for the next thing we create and the next and the next.

This wraps up the core ideas expressed in DongWon’s presentation. If anyone else was present and feels I’ve missed something, please add them to the comments section.

Below are some additional resources suggested by DongWon in terms of finding agents, as well as a few links from my own researches.

Poets & Writers Agent Database

Agent Query

Publishers’ Marketplace

Writer Beware – for Science Fiction and Fantasy

Query Shark

Noteworthy Newsletters

Cindy Brown’s Newsletter

Max Gladstone’s Newsletter

 

Resources for Writers: Print and Online Literary Journal Databases

Hello Readers!

As promised, here is an updated list for print and online journals. I managed to transfer my online database into Excel, but I’m still Wording it for the Print journals. I know Excel would be easier, so that’s on the list for the future. For now, though, here are some journals – get out there and Submit!

Online Literary Journals

The Short Story Writer’s Literary Journal Database

Willamette Writers’ Conference – Day 3

Controlling Story Layers with ED ACE – Eric Witchey

Eric Witchey’s seminar on story layers was another of those “aha!” seminars, just like Larry Brooks’ the day before. In addition, Eric was incredibly generous with the resources he provided to attendees in the shape of an entire craft booklet to assist with understanding story layers. Again, your best resource is to visit Eric Witchey’s website and try to find a seminar you can attend.

To break it down a bit, story layers is the concept that a story is driven by emotion – wow, big surprise, right? While we can all acknowledge that story is drive by emotion, what we may not understand – or be doing yet in our writing – is moving through the story layers completely. Here it is: Emotion drives Decision. Decision drives Action. Action leads to Conflict. And Conflict results in Emotion. The cycle starts all over again with the new Emotion. Characters in our stories are constantly moving through this process, and may even be engaging in more than one ED ACE cycle.

For more on this, and so find one of Eric’s seminars, go to his website: Eric Witchey

Rx for Middle Maladies – Jessica Morrell

Unfortunately, the demons that live in our computers corrupted Jessica’s file for this presentation, but we nonetheless had an engaging discussion and were able to still learn much about the vital role performed by the middle of our novels, what we often think of as Act II.

Act II should start with the First Plot Point – a moment of major fall-out for the character in which everything changes and the protagonist must make a change or decision. We then begin climbing the mountain of rising action as more and more trials come into play and threaten the protagonist’s ability to achieve his or her goals. Act II is also where the subplots should play out. Allies will appear in Act II. Act II continues until the crisis – the moment when all hope seems lost and the protagonist hits bottom.

Besides the above beats that we want to hit in Act II, the over arching theme of Act II should be the continual denial of the goal, the rising of the stakes, and pushing the protagonist into deeper, darker places, often resulting in the narrator making mistakes and crossing a moral line. Overall, Act II is about playing keep-away with your protagonist and creating situations that further heighten just how badly the protagonist wants something while simultaneously making it feel as if he or she will never achieve it.

To learn more about Jessica, visit her website through the link I provided on Day 1.

 

Punching Up Your Prose: Part I and II – Tex Thompson

Listening to Tex Thomspon for 2 hours and being continually captivated by her genius and entertained by her constant wit and humor was worth the conference fee alone. Tex was absolutely riveting in her discussion of punching up our prose. Using her knowledge of rhetorical devices, Tex explained how we can use various techniques to make our prose more vivid, eye-catching, and ear-popping. As Tex herself said, these are the techniques that keep readers seeking out the “eargasms” in our writing.

One of Tex’s points about sentence structure and length was that “excellent writing should look like interval training.” We should use the length and structure of our sentences to underscore what’s happening in the story. Short choppy sentences = action. Long winding sentences = description/exposition. We can use positions of emphasis to help readers follow our meaning: the last thing in the sentence is the most important; the first thing is the second most; and the middle of a sentence is for the least important. Alternately, we can flip that expectation on its head and hide important information in the middle of a sentence (such as a clue in a mystery or thriller), or we can flip the expectation on its head to catch the reader’s attention.

Tex is another of this year’s presenters that I cannot speak of highly enough. I strongly recommend reading her work and keeping an eye out for any workshops or seminars where she is teaching. You can learn more about Tex at: Tex Thompson

Willamette Writers’ Conference – Day 2

Excellence 102: The Essential Nature of Dramatic Arc – Larry Brooks

I cannot recommend Larry Brooks highly enough. Larry is personable, funny, and warm. And his ability to analyze story structure and present it to writers is truly a gift to any who can attend his lectures or read his books. Reading Larry’s craft book Story Engineering helped me to create the novel that I finished and pitched at this year’s festival (and received 4 out of 5 Yes’s to). Larry is also incredibly generous with his resources, making much of his work available online. Attempting to condense Larry’s brilliance down to a paragraph or two would not do justice to the depth of his knowledge, nor could I possibly explain it as clearly and approachably as he does, so I’m going to provide a link to his website and let you all experience the magic of story structure for yourself.

As someone who trained writing short stories, I never thought I had a novel in me. I’m a “pantser” when it comes to short stories, but through his book and website, I found a path to my novel and am starting the outline for my next one. Truly folks, stop reading my blog (thanks for doing that, by the way) and go to his website: Larry Brooks – Story Fix

 

The Web of Character – Hallie Ephron

This seminar on character presented the idea that characters are all at work for or against your protagonist. Most often, the characters in our novels are working both for and against the protagonist, and from the juxtaposition of various character needs and wants, we arrive at conflict, tension, and an engaging narrative arc. In this lecture, we explored the characters in The Wizard of Oz. At the center of the web is Dorothy who wants to get home. Around Dorothy are the others characters in the story, such as Glinda and the Wicked Witch, as well as the Wizard, the Tin Man, the Lion, etc. Take the Wizard, for instance, his greatest desire is for the witch’s broom and in order to get the broom, he must send Dorothy into the witch’s castle to kill the witch (something he doesn’t tell her she’ll have to do). The bargain he strikes with Dorothy – broom for help getting home – puts Dorothy in danger, thus the Wizard is both working for and against Dorothy. Characters such as the Tin Man or the Lion are Dorothy’s allies, but they also have their own agenda: to get a brain, to get a heart, etc and because of their characters, they also work against Dorothy, such as the Lion’s repeated fear of going into the unknown, which is exactly where they need to go in order to succeed. Each character in our novels should have multiple goals – i.e. either to work with or against the protagonist, but also to achieve some agenda of their own.

To learn more about Hallie and her publications, visit: Hallie Ephron

 

Corporeal Writing Part I – Lidia Yuknavitch

Stop what you’re doing right now (and thanks for coming back here after visiting Larry’s site, by the way) and go to Lidia Yuknavitch’s website: Corporeal Writing with Lidia Yuknavitch.

Lidia’s seminar on Corporeal Writing: writing on the body – was another of the life-changing seminars I attended. Ok, so that sounds pretty dramatic, right? Life-changing? Seriously? YES.

This seminar alone has generated some surprising writing and will continue to generate writing that I can use in my fiction or memoir writing for years to come. Lidia’s approach is all about putting it on the body, looking for that place in or on the body where the emotional truth of a story has landed. Here’s what Lidia had to say: “My body had a story that my mind was hiding from me.” To try this out, do this exercise from our class: Close your eyes and take some deep breaths. Where does your mind go or center on? It could be a place that’s uncomfortable or tingly or just hyper-aware. Now, take that spot of your body and write a story about it from childhood, preferably a true one, but you can make it up if you need to. Then, write about that place on your body right here and now. What does it feel like, what is it telling you? Now, go through both pieces of writing and circle the descriptive words: adjectives, adverbs, or particularly active verbs. Transfer this to a list. Study the list. What is this list trying to tell you?

Briefly, here’s how this exercise worked for me: I centered on my lower left back, a place that frequently hurts or aches. I wrote about rolling down the hill at my grandmother’s house and how we would bump along the hard-packed Indiana dirt. For whatever reason, this memory sprang to mind, probably because I bruised my back (and my body as a whole) doing this. Then, I wrote about how that pain felt as I sat in that seminar room and compared it to a sunflower, the long stalk rising for weeks, the slow blossoming of the yellow petals, and the seeds ready to be plucked and roasted. My list contained a lot of color words, nature descriptors, and cooking metaphors. What did this tell me? That I am drawn to writing about nature and that who I am now is highly informed by my youth in Indiana. I can look to these places to generate more work – work that will be true and evocative.

I gave you her website right up front because I simply can’t explain it with the same level of humor and clarity that Lidia provides. She leads workshops in the Portland area and you need to get on this asap since all her workshops are currently sold out.

 

Writing for Television: A panel – Moderated by Waka Brown with Sandra Leviton and Kaila York

In this panel discussion, Sandra Leviton and Kaila York discussed the pathway to becoming a television writer. The truth is, unless you’re willing to move to L.A. and move through the traditional route, writing for television can be very difficult, but not impossible. For those of us who are rooted in Portland, our path would involve finding an agent or manager who can get our original pilot to a network producer. Then would come meetings (in L.A.) and should our pilot get picked up or should our agent find us a spot writing for a current television program, we would still need to move to L.A. for the season. They suggested that the best path for non-L.A. residents is to submit our work to contests and fellowships. There are many websites where you can search for these kinds of contests, but one I’ve found helpful is: MovieBytes Screenwriting Competitions.

Willamette Writers’ Conference – Day 1

  This was my first year attending the Willamette Writers’ Conference, and I was inspired by the love of craft and dedication to practice displayed by the attendees and presenters alike. Here is my brief re-cap of the sessions I attended, as well as links to the presenters’ websites so you can connect with them. Most of these presenters lead additional workshops and seminars or have wonderful craft books.

The Art of the Unlikeable Character – Miriam Gershow

In this seminar, we focused on how to make unlikeable characters, particularly narrators, successful in fiction. The major take-away from this seminar is that the unlikeable narrator/character is developed through a strong, unique voice, clear desires and goals (often ones that readers might find reprehensible – but that’s what makes them interesting, right?), and perhaps most importantly, relatability – some characteristic or quality that readers can relate to. Let’s face it – every one of us could possibly be an unlikeable narrator in our own stories, right? Everyone is a blend of likeable and unlikeable characteristics. The unlikeable narrator just wears their ickiness a little closer to the surface than the rest of us.

To learn more about Miriam and her publications, visit: Miriam Gershow

 

Location, Location, Location: Settings that Breathe, Create Mood, and Influence Story Events – Jessica Morrell

This was the first of two seminars led by Jessica Morrell which I attended this weekend. In this seminar, we focused on setting. Because Jessica provides such a wealth of information, I could write pages on this seminar (because I took pages of notes!), but I’m going to focus on the key takeaways:

• Settings have to be believable – make use of resources such as Google Earth and Google maps to ensure accuracy
• Settings should enhance and underscore the emotional landscape the characters are moving through
• Settings should be specific and authentic – the setting is where you root your reader in the world – don’t skimp on the details!

Resources for helping with setting are, as mentioned, Google Earth and Google maps, as well as a website suggested by another attendee: Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness, which he explained was a website where you could write to someone in, say, Winnamucca, NV and ask him or her to give you information on some aspect of the setting. I have not used this yet, but it sounds like a great resource!

For more on Jessica Morrell, her publications, and her craft books, visit: Jessica Morrell

 

Poetry as Prose – Robert Vivian

In this seminar, I was expecting a little more talk on craft – i.e. how to make our prose sound more poetic. This seminar was ultimately more of a discussion on how the publication system and we as writers create false boundaries around the idea of genre – that fiction can only be fiction and not poetry; that narrative non-fiction can only be essays; and so on. Robert Vivian is a brilliant writer, and I greatly enjoyed listening to his lecture on breaking free of form and pushing through the limitations of genre. For experimental writers, this is probably already an integrated part of your writing life, but for myself and I sense others in the room, this was a wonderful “aha” moment. I would still have liked a little more craft to this seminar, such as suggestions and exercises for helping us to write into the poetic places of our brains, which for me does not always come second nature. All craft aside, Robert was warm, personable, and heartfelt. I strongly recommend reading his works, which are now on my list for my next trip to Powell’s.

To learn more about Robert Vivian and his publications, visit: Robert Vivian.

 

The Life Changing Magic of Revision – Natalie Serber

Revision has slowly evolved in my life from a thing to be despised and avoided to one of my closest allies. Whenever I write about revision, I bring out that old hat: “writing is rewriting.” Why? Because It’s True! In my younger writing days, I would write story after story after story, determined to become the kind of writer who could just write the perfect story right out of the gate. Then I pulled my head out of my you-know-where, and I started revising. Good strategies for revision are a must.

And part of revision is also realizing there is more than one way to tell a story. In Natalie’s class, we took a scene and rewrote it four ways to see how these changes evoke different aspects of the story. As Natalie said in her lecture, “compressed experience evokes emotional truth.” To try this out, write a heated scene between two people; it must contain dialogue. For your second pass, write this same exact scene from the perspective of a fly on the wall, a dog, a cat, or an inanimate object. For your third pass, write the scene with only action, no dialogue at all. And finally, for your fourth pass, write the scene in which both characters say everything they are thinking. Explore your four scenes – what evolved? What emotional truths come out? Are these truths best displayed through dialogue, the perspective of an objective narrator, or action?

Natalie also shared a revision strategy in which she takes a sheet of paper and draws a diagonal line from each corner, creating a giant x. Then, she puts a circle in the middle and writes the character’s name. Then, in each quartile, she describes what the character would see in front, behind, to the left, and to the right. Doing this has helped her discover new props and items within the scene that lead to unexpected actions, dialogue, and so on. She suggested this method for when you hit a wall and are unsure what the character would do or say next. Imagining the character’s world in this way can uncover unexpected props that lead to the next moment of action.

To learn more about Natalie and her publications, visit: Natalie Serber

Take the Plunge! Online Publishing for Literary Short Fiction

Take a PCC Community Education Class to learn more about publishing your short fiction in online literary journals!

Interested in publishing but nervous to take the next step? This class will explore a range of literary online journals. We will review submission guidelines, understand the aesthetic of each journal, format submissions, write a cover letter, and submit your work. Students will exit this course with the knowledge, resources, and confidence to submit for online publication.

When: Saturdays, April 9 – May 14, 10 AM – 11:50 am

Where: PCC Sylvania, Building Scb 20

REGISTER AT: http://www.pcc.edu/community/

TUITION: $79               REGISTRATION CODE: 27128