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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?

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.

Children’s Literature, What are the Requirements?

For the first post on genre, I will go over children’s literature (or kid lit). We’ll talk about the requirements for each category within this varied genre. Without further ado, let’s talk about genre: children’s literature.

Genre: Children’s Literature

This genre is unique, in that children (not even young adults) don’t determine what they read. There are librarians, teachers and parents who look over each book and decide if it’s appropriate for the audience before they get a chance to read it.

The genre is also broken down by age. We have infants, the books in the case of small babies are for parents to read to their children. Then, we have toddlers and young children who are still read to. It’s only after children begin school that they start reading on their own. Once they are in school, books start out easy and then get more difficult as their reading levels increase. I go into detail for each age below:

Board Books

Board books are designed for infants and toddlers, before they can read. The children at this time are called “pre-readers.” The word count is 300 max, some having 10-20 words. They should have no more than 10 pages. Board books are heavy on illustrations and convey early learning objectives such as colors, or numbers.

Picture Books

Picture books are designed for young children. The children who these books are for are around ages 2-7. They word count expectations are no more than 900, with 500 or fewer being best. 32 pages is standard, but there can be a max of 56. Picture books are also designed to be read to the child. It should one plot, one question to the child, and answer the question and resolve the plot at the end. Most of all, it should be very simple.

Easy/Beginning Readers

Easy readers are for children who are just learning how to read on their own. They are for children between 5 and 8 years old. The word count expectations are from 750-1,500 words. They introduce beginning readers to the concept of chapters, they have slightly more words than a picture book. They present one concept, idea, or theme to a beginning reader. Furthermore, they are usually lighthearted in tone.

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Chapter Books

Chapter books in children’s literature are written for children around 7-10 years old, and are meant for children who are becoming fluent readers. The word count expectations are 4-12,000 words. Chapter books are not typically longer than 100 pages. These books begin to get into the more complex world of story, we begin to see setbacks, possibly a subplot. The sentence structures are more complex, but the paragraphs remain short, at two to four sentences long. There are few to no illustrations. The protagonist is normally 8 to 9, as this is the upper limit for children who read these books, and children typically read about children who are older than they are.

Middle Grade

Middle grade books are for children who haven’t yet started middle school yet, typically children 8-12 years old will read these. The word count expectations are 20-40,000, depending on the publisher. They are over 100 pages. Middle grade books have longer chapters than chapter books (above). Will not have any illustrations. The content categories are similar to adult books (mystery, thriller, etc.) Series are very popular with middle grade readers. Any intense content will push the book up into another category (YA comes next).

Young Adult

Young adult books are for ages 12 to adult. Word count expectations are 40-75,000. Content categories are the same as adult books, they read like adult books. Young adult books are often coming-of-age stories. A lot of identity stuff takes place in the young adult literature world, which makes sense. There are books about first loves, first heartbreaks, finding yourself after loss. These things are fantastic to have in this world, because the kids going through these things need a way to identify what is happening to them isn’t unique, and yet it is unique because they are all unique people who need works of fiction to help them through their time.

So, there are all the kid lit categories, in one place. I decided to make this post because I keep seeing people asking if the query for their 100,000 word YA book is any good. Which, yeah, I’m sure that the query is fine. However, the book is too long. I know that there are probably a million of these. But, I just wanted to add my part. Make sure that I am another place where people can get the information they need. Hopefully one day someone will see this, and they will realize that they can’t have a world count of 300 for a Board book or something. And then, my life will be complete.

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you would like to see more of this, or if you need different stuff.

Genres: What are they, why is it Important to Know?

This post is the first in a series where we discuss each genre in depth, so that you can have an understanding about each genre and the expectations for each. But, before we do that, let’s think about why this information is important? Genres, what are they, and why is it important to know your genre and the expectations that the audience has when you write in it?

Starting with an example. Let’s say you want to write a horror novel, but you decide to subvert those expectations, and make it from the point of view of the killer. Totally fine, seems like a great idea. But, if you don’t understand that the genre has expectations to start the atmosphere of dread early on in the story, that you are supposed to be giving your audience that delicious rush of anxiety and adrenaline as they worry if their favorite character is safe; you may fall into the mistake of creating a happy atmosphere instead of one that stokes the dread in the story. Your killer may be excited about what they are doing, but that isn’t the right tone for a horror novel.

Let’s start with a list of the different genres and a brief summary of what each one is:

Genres: What are They

Before we dive into the genres, I am going to say that my list is generalized, and I will put as much information into each specific post for each genre, but this is a brief overview of the general genres.

Children’s Fiction
Literary Fiction
Historical
Young Adult
Religious
Western
Thriller
Action-Adventure
Comedy
Crime and Mystery
Fantasy
Sci-Fi
Romance
Horror

There are a lot of sub-genres for each genre. What I will do is go into each genre specifically. I will do an overview of what the genre expectations are for each genre. The general things to know are word count expectations, and then normal plot devices. For example, in a mystery, the readers expect that a person will die within the first chapters of the book, and then that protagonist will be tasked with finding the killer, and they will somehow able to do it when others can’t. A book is not a mystery if there are not several suspects running around with means/opportunity and motive.

Essentially, when looking to publish in any genre, you need to know not only the logistics of what will be acceptable, but you need to know what your readers will enjoy and pick up. There was the brief overview of genres: what are they? Please let me know if you have questions, if you would like to see something else, all of that good stuff. Thanks!