WIFYR Recap #1: Jennifer Nielsen on Creating a Memorable First Chapter

I just got back from a terrific week at the WIFYR Conference. This year my workshop instructor was Martine Leavitt, award-winning author and faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts. We all had an amazing experience in her workshop. Martine taught us how to look at our own manuscripts in a totally different way, and I know many of us had important plot epiphanies. Our workshop group was also full of terrific, talented writers, and the critiques were both positive and helpful.

I've got a manuscript to revise following Martine's specific instructions for me, and I thought as I go over my notes, I could post some of what I learned on this blog.

In no particular order, I'm starting with Jennifer Nielsen, author of THE FALSE PRINCE series. In her afternoon lecture, she gave us tips on how to make our first chapters stand out.


Include at least one of these elements for a good first chapter/scene:

• emotions—fear, anxiety, worried about character’s outcome. 
• anticipation
• curiosity—mystery element—get hero in such a bad fix, don’t know they’ll get out of it.
• surprise
• use one of these in first pages to hook agent
• the moment right before the first kiss, holding breath kind of anticipation. 

Ways to do this include:

10 ways:

1.Make a great hero. (protag) 

• in trouble, but not stupid trouble they could have/should have avoided
• likely to lose
• goal
• fatal flaw

2. Great villain

• no villain is ever just crazy. round character.
• likely to win.
• have an advantage the hero lacks.

3. Add mystery or a big question

4. Foreshadowing of something bad that might happen. 

Game of Thrones: because viewer knows author is willing to kill off his good characters, increases suspense that main guys won’t always be safe. 

5. Exploit relationships

• romantic tension
• friction between characters
• betrayal
• suspicion
• loss of Mentor (the hero’s journey)
• has inner demons

6. Raise the stakes. You should constantly be looking for ways, in each scene, to make things worse. 

Caveat: heroes fortunes must rise and fall. (but mostly they are falling). A steady decline from bad to good is boring and predictable. The inconsistency is what makes a story unpredictable. 

7. Shorten the timeline—like Dorothy and wizard of Oz, the big hourglass, timeline builds tension. constantly remind hero of the time limit, then cut timeline in half. slow down key scenes. 

8. Create unexpected turns—perfect example—Katniss and Peta, can let two people survive, but then the capitol changes it and says only one. Twists and turns must be logical. If use a gun in act 3, better be on mantle in act 1. and if it’s in act 1, have to use in act 3.

9. Setting

10. Dilemmas –Jean Val Jean—Mayor of town, people rely on him, but if I speak I am condemned, if I stay silent, I am damned. 

Great suspense comes from cruel authors. Be willing to be tough on your characters—I noticed Jennifer Nielsen does this in her first book, which I'm reading—she kills off one of the boys early on to show the uncertainty of an antagonist who is willing to do that. 

Learning the Secret Agent Language

Do you ever get emails like this?

Compliments,

I am Mr.Van Voorst the former Sales Manager in the SNS Bank Rotterdam area
but am now based in United Kingdom after I retired, I have a proposal to
discuss with you is about a certain bonded account in SNS bank, which
shares the same last name with yours, Please contact me through my email
if you are interested to know more.

It will be beneficial to all parties concerned.

I didn't even have to open the email to know it was fake? Why? The language of the subject line: "This will be beneficial to all parties concern."

I don't bring this up to slam on anyone or get into a discussion of email spamming. Or to have a discussion of the finer intricacies of grammar.

Instead, how can we avoid looking naive or inept when we submit?

This ties into a post I read recently on SheWrites about "agent stalking."

We've all heard how important it is to research agents before submitting. Look for interviews by them. Go to sites like Literary Rambles. Know their submission preferences. Some prefer email attachments, but I've heard another agent say she never opens email attachments from an unknown source for fear of getting a bad virus instead of a bad query.

The SheWrites poster went one step further. Before querying an agent, she suggests following him or her on Twitter, and reading the agents tweets, or tweets about them, for at least a couple of weeks before you submit. That way,for example, you can learn about their extreme dislike of anything Star Trek before you submit a book with "Based on my popular Star Trek fan fiction blog" in the subject line.

My example: I plan to pitch to an agent I just learned doesn't particularly care for voice-driven books. In an interview, she said she prefers strong plots and fast pacing. I'd planned to present a book that's strongest in voice. Besides my momentary desire to drown my frustration in chocolate, I now know I need to reassess which book I present to her, and particularly how I pitch it.

Fortunately, knowing an agent's tastes and pet peeves isn't so secret in this internet age. Since we don't want our queries deleted before our emails are even opened, we're going to have to take some time to learn each agent's preference language.

Write Tight

In the same way deadlines sometimes make us work harder, a word count can help writers with concise word choice.

Last year I participated in a writing exercise with the Throwing Up Words blog. The hardest assignment for me was writing a story in 100 words. Frankly, mine stank. However, I learned a lot from the effort.


I submitted a revised 196 word version, to Utah Children's Writer's 30 Days, 30 Stories project this week.

Here's the link if you'd like to see it.

http://utahchildrenswriters.blogspot.com/ (Thursday, April 18th)

I encourage you to try writing something, perhaps your latest query, taking out 1/3 of the words. Even if you go back and add to it again, as I did with my short fiction, it's worth the effort.

When You Get Stuck as a Writer

Lately I have been in a writing stall.

I can blame spring break, getting sick, editing, and redoing my query another 101 times, all of which are true.

But none of those change the fact that I have to keep writing.

This week I went back to a yoga class after a long break. Ow. I am so sore. Yes, I've still exercised, but in that class I used muscles I haven't felt in too long. I could easily tell when I couldn't lift my arms the next day. (Okay, I'm exaggerating.)

I've heard it said you can be in hiking shape but not tennis shape, dancing shape but not running shape, etc. In a similar way, if we want to be good writers. We have to write.

So even though I'm still editing, I have a goal to start writing something new again. Just a little. I use 750 words.com, but you don't have to have a site count your words, just make a goal. Fifteen minutes. One hour. Write while waiting to pick up kids, or during that interminable meeting you had to show up at but really don't need to listen to. Just keep in writing shape.

Maybe try getting in shape for a different sort of writing. This week I wrote a blog post for Authors Think Tank. I'm in the process of revising an old flash fiction, which has been a good reminder of how a short word count really encourages concise word use. I also had to write a short talk. Non-fiction uses different brain muscles as well.

So if you get stalled, keep writing. Write something, anything. Well, almost. The grocery list doesn't count. Unless, of course, it's a really creative grocery list, complete with adjectives, and maybe some dialogue. If you write one like that, I'd love to see it.

Ben's Book Bomb: Help Someone in Need

Dave Wolverton (aka David Farland) has been very influential in the local writing community, and it looks like he could use some help right now. Besides, his books are great, so what do you have to lose? I've been wanting to read Nightingale since I heard about it at LTUE.

Help Someone in Need: A Book Bomb for Ben Wolverton

Ben Wolverton, age 16, was in a tragic long-boarding accident on Wednesday the 4th, 2013. He suffers from severe brain trauma, a cracked skull, broken pelvis and tail bone, burnt knees, bruised lungs, broken ear drums, road rash, pneumonia, and is currently in a coma. His family has no insurance.

Ben is the son of author David Farland, whose books have won multiple awards, and who is widely known as a mentor to many prominent authors, such as Brandon Sanderson, Stephenie Meyer, and Brandon Mull. Costs for Ben's treatment are expected to rise above $1,000,0000. To help raise money for Ben, we are having a book bomb (focused on Nightingale and Million Dollar Outlines) on behalf of Ben.

You can learn more about Ben's condition, or simply donate to the Wolverton family here: http://www.gofundme.com/BensRecovery

Writing is Hard, But Nothing is Impossible

Julie Olsen, Utah author and illustrator, shows us a great example of how it's done: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onoh1xfXpjc&sns=em

Writing a Query for a Middle Grade Book: Why Mine Isn't Working

Writing for Children is one thing. Then there's writing the query. Try taking the entire contents of your house and cramming them in one suitcase. Or putting an entire pantry shelf of food into your mouth in one swallow.
Yeah, it's about that easy.

I have been dutifully reading all the posts at Query Shark, and have two thoughts about why I've written so many version of this latest query, all of them about as tasty as chomping cereal still in its box.

First, a good query is much more than condensing the plot into a few lines. Not the pantry shelf swallow, in other words. According to Janet Reid aka Query Shark (http://queryshark.blogspot.com), isn't a list of what happens, but how the characters react to what happens to them.

Second, when I gave the query to my critique group, they commented that what they like about my newest book is the voice, and that doesn't show up in the query at all. You can't write a query in first person, so how do I do that? Again from Query Shark, the language used in the query should sound similar to the wording in the book. So even if I can't put it in the character's voice, I can at least cut the words that sound like they're written by his middle school principal.

My goal for tonight: write it in first person, pick out the language I want, then write it in third person again.