Stacy Lyn Jensen

Writing Goals, Reading Goals

I am one of “those people,” I make goals. I like to make clear goals for myself. I make goals, and I write them down. There are people who go a step farther and even tell other people about their goals. I don’t want to be the really annoying person who keeps bringing up their goals. I have found a few things that are really important when it comes to actually keeping resolutions, and/or new goals. I would like to talk about writing goals, reading goals, and in general, just making resolutions that matter to you.

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Goal Making

Writing Goals

Making writing goals is easy, it’s just like any other goal, right? You can say you’re going to write 1000 words every day. Or you can say that you are going to write 50 words every day. Whatever it is, wonderful.

Now that you have your number goal. Think about time. How much time do you actually have to write every day? Do you have time to write every day? When are you able to write? Is it late at night? Or early morning? On your lunch break?

Once you have an idea of the time you have to set aside for writing. Does this change your number? If you only have a lunch break. You may want to give yourself a lower number, than if you have several hours in the morning.

Writing Goals: Reasons for Writing

Another consideration is the reason you are writing. Are you working on short stories, poetry, blog posts, a novella, a novel? For me, I am currently working on finishing a draft of a novel, and some blog posts. So when I am thinking about my word count goals. I usually have a smaller count for my novel, because I like to make sure I hit it. Then I finish at least one blog post each time I post.

If I were working on short stories or poetry, I would write a draft of a short story each time I sat down to write. I would say that you could probably get a polished story in a week or a month, depending on the length. With poetry, you could write several drafts of the same poem, or several poems in one writing session.

A good idea is to treat a writing goal just as seriously as you would treat learning a new skill, or building a new habit. Because that is part of what you are doing, you need to get into the habit of writing in order to reach those word-count goals.

Reading Goals

As the old saying goes, in order to be a writer, one must read. So, as the year begins anew, it is important to have reading goals. Personally, I have not had specific reading goals before. Usually I do things like “focus on reading classics” or “focus on reading outside the horror genre.” This year, though, I am doing a 52 book challenge. Which works out to be a book a week.

I think that goals are well done (like I’ve said) when they are written down, when they are specific, and when they are time based. I’m sure that many people have run into this method of goal-setting. I ran into it the first time, actually, at work. I’m pretty sure I rolled my eyes really hard at the concept, but I made the goals that were asked of me, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with trying to move your own life forward purposefully.

A thought on reading goals, when you read widely from authors that write well, that exposure is sure to find its way into your work. It’s like an artist studying celebrated works from Rembrandt or Dali, by investigating how those artists created their art, the budding artist is all the better for it. Their work doesn’t have to be the same as the ones who came before, but it’s okay to be influenced by those you admire.

Resolutions

Making them Matter

Every year, when New Year’s Eve comes around, peoples all over the world will give lip service to what they are looking for in their next year. All of us are looking to be a thinner, wiser, funnier, healthier version of ourselves. But, all of us are also guilty of making resolutions that we don’t care about. So, my advice, is to take some time now, tomorrow, before next new year to really think about what it is that you want to resolve to be. There are a million things out there in a world that you could resolve to do. I believe that what most want to do, and what we resolve to do, are two different things.

So, my challenge to anyone that reads this, is: next New Years, resolve to do something that you would love to do but haven’t yet. Something that will take time to do. Something that is hard to do, but maybe doesn’t cost you anything but time, and you will learn something from.

Writing Action Scenes

Many people enjoy starting a book written en media res, or in the middle of things. Most authors strive to put as much action into their prose as possible. Which is a good thing. However, there are a few tips and tricks to keep in mind when writing those action scenes.

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The first one is to make sure that if you begin with action, you pay off the promise. What I mean by that, is that if you start your book off with the promise of action, you need to actually get to the action. And, I suggest doing so sooner rather than later. I get annoyed when I read a book that has an action-packed prologue, and then I end up having to slog through 400+ pages before I get back to the action again. You will lose your audience if you do this. You can set up the problem, and make the reader care, all by chapter three. Any more than that, and your action-oriented reader will put down the book and not read anything you’ve written ever again.

Writing Action Scenes

Choreograph

You don’t have to choreograph the fight. Or the war, or the killing, or whatever it is that it bringing on the action. Unless it’s a screenplay, the reader does not need to know everyone’s exact location at every single moment in time. It will be confusing for the reader.

Head-hopping

Do not head-hop while you are in an action sequence. Choose a viewpoint and stick with it, whichever person has the most impact during that moment, or alternatively, who loses the most? Whichever person that is, that is whom you stick with during the entire action sequence. There is no reason to go from your protagonist to your antagonist in the middle of the fight. Even if the antagonist is having some fascinating thoughts. In fact, if you think that your antagonist is more interesting during the sequence. Then, maybe you stick with their viewpoint, if they are a viewpoint character.

It helps to think of the scene as if you had a camera. You can choose to focus on just a few key moments. You zoom in and catch close details, and then zoom out again. But, you can only do this a few times, and you need to pick the times that will best serve your story.

For example: if someone swings a sword and misses, but also causes the protagonist to lose their balance. At the exact moment that the antagonist is also swinging their sword. It hits the protagonist a blow that injures them badly. You will want to focus on a part of that moment, but which part?

Do you focus on the pain of the injury, the feeling of the sword going in, the blood pouring out? The inability to use a limb afterwards. Or, you could take a depth of field approach, and look at everything. The girl behind the protagonist, how she’s holding a shield and growling. Ready to move forward and kill the antagonist. Just after the protagonist goes down, she rushes forward. At the same time as the other person with the protagonist goes to help him in his moment of need.

Playing with Options

You can always play with different ways of writing action scenes, but the important part is to use a couple of moments of action to focus in on what you want your reader to see. Is the blood important, or the fact that the protagonist learns a lesson about teamwork, and doesn’t try to go forward alone? Or are the antagonist’s reactions more important? Is the fact that the protagonist missed the most important part? Getting to the important part of the moment is the best way to figure out what to focus on, and then after that, you will figure out how to write your scene. Once you know what to focus on, you’ll know your view point character, which details are the best ones to emphasize and which ones to leave out or gloss over quickly.

Summary

To sum up, you need to keep your promises, so if you give them action in the beginning, you need to continue to give action. There is no need to give a choreographed blow-by-blow action scene. Stay in one head. And, finally, figure out what is most important to the scene, and then write about that central piece, whatever it is that the protagonist is going to gain or lose needs to be the main focus, and then go from there.

Thank you for reading this post on writing action scenes, let me know if this is helpful, and if you would like to see more of this same thing, or something different!

Feedback; Getting, Receiving, Believing

At the beginning of this month, I joined a group that is doing a year-long writing challenge. And, as part of this challenge, at the end of this week I am supposed to post up a chapter for feedback. I have the chapter. In fact, this exact chapter has been with a feedback group before. But, I find myself hesitant to post it.

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Feedback hesitancy Reasons

There are a couple of reasons. The first one is simply that I am a little weird about posting my novel writing attempts online. I’ve always heard that if you want to publish traditionally, that it’s a bad idea to post anything online. I think I’ll have to ask the site manager how this idea is handled. The second one is that, this is a new group of people. I haven’t been taking English classes with them, they don’t know my writing style and I don’t know theirs. I have no way of knowing what it was that they were trying to get at when I read their work, and no way to help them find a better way to find the words. How do I know how to trust their feedback? How do I know what they will do with mine?

Why give feedback

I guess the easiest way to answer these questions are to think about my own intentions when I give feedback on a piece. When I give someone feedback, I am always working from the highest idea my mind can get to for the piece. I assume that the person who wrote the piece wants it to be the best that it can be, that they have aspirations of grandeur for their piece. And, even writing that is struggling in one way or another. There is always a glimmer of a story that is trying to come out and breathe. That is where I will go when I give feedback. I find the thread of story, and I will build on the thread. I tend to ignore grammar. The reason why is because that one of my biggest weaknesses, and therefore I don’t want to correct other people’s issues.

Telescope v. Microscope

Also, when we are looking at the story in a rough form, we are using a telescope, we are going really far away to see the big picture, getting at the whole idea from far away. When you are looking through a telescope, you cannot also grab a microscope and address sentence-level issues at the same time. You always want to look at the big picture things, and then move downwards. This is relevant when we are talking about looking at writing in the rougher stages.

Strangers

The other thing that is important, is, since this feedback is going to come from people who don’t know me; I will need to keep in mind that some people just won’t understand my writing. If one person is an outlier and just doesn’t ‘get’ something, that doesn’t mean it has to change. I don’t have to take everyone’s advice. It is important to take in feedback and learn from it, and better my piece from it. But it is also important to kind of figure out what needs to stay and what has to go. A good rule of thumb is if several people are confused or bored by something, then it should be looked into. But if there is just that one person, then you don’t need to look into it, unless it bothers you as well.

Remember these things

Things to keep in mind when getting feedback from strangers: 1-they don’t know you from Adam (or Eve); so they cannot tell what you were trying to say at any given time. This is a good and a bad thing, while they may not know the best way to tell you as a person what they think you were trying to say; they will be able to tell you if they understood. 2-If the person who is giving you feedback is not doing it from a high level (think telescope, not microscope) they are doing you a disservice, if you are in the beginning stages, that is. I am not done with a rough draft, so that’s why I’m expecting a very high-level regarding feedback. I don’t expect any grammatical corrections. 3-When taking feedback from strangers, you will need to weed out the people that just didn’t get it. There will be people that, no matter how many times you hit them over the head with it, just don’t get it. That’s okay. Take their feedback with a grain of salt. Use the feedback that you see multiple times.

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any feedback tips!

Horror-Tober: Horror Movie Madness

So this post does not have anything to do with books or writing AT ALL. But it is merely to “out” myself as a lover of all things Halloween and horror. Which, I suppose, shouldn’t be much of a surprise, if you’ve noticed the kinds of books I usually review or discuss. I do this thing that I like to call “Horror-tober” during which I watch a horror movie every day of the month.

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Horror-Tober

Horro Movie Watching

Last year, I was organized, and I had a calendar at the ready which had the movie for each day on it. That made things really easy, and I was able to just follow my own schedule, watch the movie I scheduled for myself, and it even made it so that my husband and I didn’t have to sit there after an exhausting day and figure out what to watch. Which is nice.

But, this year, right as the month started I caught a bug of some kind, and the bug has yet to let me completely out of its clutches. So, I have yet to get more than a vague list of different types of scary movies together and what streaming service they may or may not be located on. We have had several days when we’ve put a movie on and then changed it because we didn’t like how slowly the plot was moving, or the movie wasn’t doing what it was advertising, so, although I’ve put a movie on every day; I’ve not finished it each time.

Writing Challenge

In addition to this, I signed up for a writing challenge, where I need to make sure to record how many words I write toward my current WIP each day. That is super nice because I’ve made a lot of progress really quickly with that one step. I have had days when I haven’t written, but I am making up that time because I’m paying attention to how much I’m writing, and I am hopeful to have completed that first draft by the end of this year, which was my original goal.

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All the things

To sum up. My Horror-Tober horror movie month is going okay, I can provide anyone with a random list of movies, but I don’t have a wonderful calendar this year though, which is kind of sad. Maybe I’ll put up a final count, like these are the movies we ended up watching. That could be fun. And then I’m super excited about my progress on my draft since joining this writing challenge that requires me to record my word count at the end of the day. I guess, if you are ever wanting to join a writing challenge, but aren’t sure if it’s for you, do it, it’s like when you have to record your miles or your calories or something, you become more aware of them, and so they end up moving in the right direction.

Thriller Novel: What are the Requirements?

A thriller novel is all about action, suspense, unexpected twists and high stakes. Each scene moves into the next, and the descriptions are pared down and spare.

Thriller Novel

Thrillers are more about the plot rather than character. I’ve talked about character driven tales. Thrillers aren’t these kinds of stories. When writing a thriller, plot twists, and action scenes, and page-turning prose are the most important part. Emotional insight takes a back seat to twisty plots.

The thriller lives right next door to a mystery, a horror and a crime novel. It has a tendency to blend elements of all of these novels, often beginning with a crime (often a murder) and then having the protagonist become victimized by the antagonist for most of the book, while they are trying to solve a mystery so that they can overcome the villain before the book ends.

The nice thing about the thriller being a blend of several genres is that there is a little more wiggle room. If you are into mysteries, but you also like a good suspenseful book, then thriller is the way to go. You may even think you have a crime novel, only to start querying and find out that it’s a thriller. A good way to figure out this is to have your beta readers give you an idea where they think it fits, if you aren’t sure.

This genre of story often has a ticking clock. There is a very serious problem that has to be solved or else. The clock is constantly ticking, causing the reader to turn those pages to get to the end.

Word Count

The thriller word count is around 90,000 to 100,000 words. These can be a little longer than other genres, because of the expected complexity of the plot.

Thanks for reading. Let me know if you like this, or if you have any thoughts about writing a thriller novel, or if you would like to read something different! Thanks!

Art from Artist: What Does it Mean to Separate the Art from the Artist, and does it Mean Anything for Writers?

Recently, the idea of separating the art from the artist has been floating around a lot. It comes up when discussing movies, there’s always another director or actor who did something awful. In the fiction novel world, there are times when authors are found to have troubling beliefs or ideas, as well.

When this happens, there’s discussion around two schools of thought on the subject. The first is to not spend any money on the works of the author. The second is: separate art from the artist. The idea is that you–as a person, can take anything from the art that is out in the world. Yes, the ideas of the person behind that creation matter, but only to an extent.

Separating the Art from the Artist

The second school of thought is the one I subscribe to. There is a reason for it, personally, I would hate it if something stupid I said online one day, some idea I had was taken the “wrong way.” Or someone read too much into something I said. And, I was labelled in some way.

If someone is asking questions and seeking understanding, then there isn’t a reason to be judgmental. You don’t have to agree with their belief system to enjoy their creation. You can support your local library instead of them by just borrowing instead of purchasing, if you don’t want them to profit off of you.

Summary

To sum up, in my opinion, it is okay to enjoy the art made by a person who has troubling ideas if it’s inspirational to you. You don’t have to agree with their belief systems in order to enjoy their creations. Take what you will from their works, and leave anything that doesn’t inspire you, behind.

Thanks for reading! What do you think?

Book Review: Two for One

I’m enough of a dork to be a frequent visitor on Reddit. One of the sub-Reddits that I like to visit is called “horrorlit.” In this space, horror fans will ask for and receive book recommendations. I recently came across a post where the OP was requesting books with an unreliable narrator. I thought this was interesting. So, I took a look myself, and grabbed some of the titles to read. I ran through two such books fairly quickly. Because I read them back-to-back, I am reviewing them together, in this double book review post. Enjoy!

Book Review #1

I’m Thinking of Ending Things

I will start by reviewing Iain Reid’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things. It’s worth noting that there is a Netflix series made from this book. I’ve not seen the series. So, I won’t make any comparisons there. The plot of the book is simple, on the surface. It’s a journey/travel novel. A lot of the action takes place in a car, or at places that are unknown to the protagonist.

Once you reach the end, it’s hard to say whether the narrator is unreliable or not. Are they really that unreliable? Or are they simply playing out a fantasy? Do they believe the fantasy? Or do they understand everything that happened? You have to decide. The ending is not ambiguous, but the reliability or unreliability of the narrator, in my opinion, is up for debate.

The prose is incredibly precise, and the book is a work of art unto itself. Yes, I picked it out of a horror literature forum, and that’s probably where it’s shelved in a bookstore. However, based off of the character-driven plot and the beauty of the prose, this book is very likely considered literary.

If you are reading this book as a writer, and you are looking precisely at how to write unreliable narrators, this is a great book to read.

Book Review #2

A Head Full of Ghosts

So the next review, Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts, is a very different tale from the first. This one is the story of a crumbling family. There is a mentally ill sister, a suddenly religious father, a stressed mother, and a little sister who is witness. In addition to this, there is a camera crew who is there to record the family’s undoing.

This story is one that wants you to ask questions from the start. It invites you to try and figure out what’s going on. The argument for the unreliability of the narrator is made because she’s young.

But the narrator presents herself as reliable, and the readers never find any reason not to trust her. Even at the end, where the audience learns that things happened differently than everyone would have believed in the world of the book, she still doesn’t appear, to me, at least; to be an untrustworthy narrator.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, if you are looking to write something with an unreliable narrator. It is important to present evidence for the readers that shows the differences between the world the character sees, and the way things actually are.

In, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, the title itself has two meanings. By the end of the book, the tragedy of the whole thing crashes down on the reader. How much do I misunderstand? How much of a life can pass a person by? In A Head Full of Ghosts, much of the misunderstandings can be explained either by the youngness of the narrator, or by the fact that she wouldn’t have been told certain things, etc.

Both books are excellent examples of their genre. Both are stories worth reading, but only one has a truly unreliable narrator, even though they are both first person, which does mean that the narrators will be unreliable–to a degree.

Thank you for reading! Let me know if you enjoyed this double book review and if you would like to see more of this, or if you’d like to see something different. Thank you!

Historical Fiction: What are the Publishing Requirements?

Historical fiction has special rules. Because of this, you’ll need to ask yourself a couple questions when you first decide to write in this genre. The first question would be if you are writing far enough in the past to be considered historical. The answer to that question, which I found here; is you need to be writing at least 50 years in the past.

The second question, which is a bit more complicated, is does your work fit in another genre? Sometimes you are telling a story that’s really literary fiction, just set in the past, or maybe it’s really women’s literature, again just set in the past. If the thing that the story is about is how the people in that time lived and worked, and of course there is a story there–then it’s historical fiction. But, if the story is really about how the words cascade like a waterfall down the page, how they live and breathe for themselves; then it’s probably literary. Or if it’s about a woman who would not give up no matter the odds, then it may be a women’s literature piece. Or, if it’s really more about the romance than anything, well… I mean, I think you get it. You probably get it.

Another thing about the historical novel, is the readers are very picky about the details. So, you have to do your research and get it right. Whatever timeframe you are writing in, it has to be accurate. It’s very easy now to read something that you think may not be exactly correctly and then check it, so you, as a writer in the genre, has to be better at checking everything than your readers could ever dream of being.

Let’s talk word count. For Historical fiction, the length is a bit longer, they come in around 100,000 to 150,000. Take that however it makes you feel.

Thanks for reading about historical fiction requirements. If you are looking for information on a different genre, check out literary, kid lit and Religious publishing requirements. There will be more information to come on the other genres shortly. Thanks!

Literary Fiction

How does literary fiction differ from genre fiction? There are several differences, but also a lot of similarities. It’s a type of fiction where people win awards, considered a prestige category. It’s normally the kind that you are assigned to read in school.

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Literary Fiction Definition

Literary fiction’s definition is: a category of novels that emphasize character, theme, and style over plot. Basically, if you have a work that is more concerned with the inner character arc over the plot and moving it forward, that work is a literary work.

There is a lot of crossover between genre fiction and literary fiction. The determining factor is if the work is focused on the plot, or other elements of literature. If you are writing something, and you think it will be awesome to write the entire thing without using the letter c or something, to emphasize your character’s complex emotions around their own cock; that is going to be a literary piece. If, however, said character is going around killing people with a chainsaw that he calls Zip instead of using the word chainsaw (because of the letter c) then, it may be more of a horror novel. However, it does depend on how it’s written more than anything.

Differences in Vocabulary

Literary novels have a tendency to use words like magical realism (instead of fantasy) and verisimilitude when talking about great world-building. Because this is a ‘prestige’ category, they have a tendency to use different words from other genres when they mean the same thing. The books are normally about the inner journey about one person. Someone said that genre works are about extraordinary events happening to regular people, and literary works are about ordinary events happening to extraordinary people. Basically, plot v. character driven.

Length

The length of the literary novel: anywhere between 40 and 120,000 words, new authors should stick between 70 and 100,000 words. Good advice for any new author to any genre, if you are attempting to get traditionally published, do not submit something over 100,000 words. Also, do not say that it’s the first in a series of 17 or whatever. Although queries are their own thing, their own post.

Thank you for reading!! Let me know if this information is helpful or if you would like me to write about something different.

Religious Publishing

woman in white hijab holding clear glass cup

So I began to look into the different genres of publication. The one that I have little information about is religious publication. I am not a religious person, therefore I wasn’t sure where to start. I was able to grab some stuff about religious publishing. Here it is.

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If you would like to be traditionally published, and you have written a book about religion, you will need to submit a proposal to the publisher you want to use. The proposal would include what the book is about, what it will lend to the subject (i.e. why it needs to be published), and what your expertise is (why are you the person to write this book).

Here is a link to Harpercollins about this kind of publishing.

This is similar to how non-fiction publishing works. When you are looking to traditionally publish a non-fiction work, you would do the same thing. It makes sense.

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I assume that if the work is a complete work of fiction, then maybe you would just find a different place for it to live, and just put the religious undertones in there. Like a work of fantasy, with a really heavy moral undertone? I know for the LDS religion, they have specific imprints that they use for the fiction that they approve for the consumption of their flock (don’t have a better word for that). So, I assume there are others for different religions. Although I’m not having much luck finding stuff at this time. I’ll update if I find some better requirement information.

Thanks for reading, sorry this wasn’t of more help.