GENREALITY

Last night I discovered a new reality show called The Voice. It caught my interest because it has Christina Aguilera on it, and I love her voice, always have and always will. When I learned the format of the show- that the singers audition and the coaches have their backs turned so it’s all about voice – I thought “Cool.” But I knew I was hooked on the show when in the pre-package one of the artists (Rebecca Loebe ) said this….”Singing is kinda like talking, but from the deepest part of your heart.”

That struck me as something that can also be said about writing. While readers can easily judge a book by the cover when they’re strolling the aisles of a bookstore, or surfing a website, what they really care about is what’s between the covers, not what’s on it. Before I started writing I never really paid attention to why I liked a story, or an author. When I started writing I started to look at things in a different way. I want to be on readers keeper shelves so I began analyzing what it was that made me love those books on my keeper shelves.

As I watched the show, I realized that with the coaches having their backs to the stage in order to decide if they like the voice or not is a lot like when a writer submits their first work to an agent or an editor. They don’t get covers or review quotes to convince them the story on the pages is good, they only get the raw pages. And they have to see something on those pages they think is special in order to offer a contract.

There have been stories I’ve loved, but then I read the next release from that same author, and don’t love it. When I think about my auto-buy authors, it’s their voice that I love. It’s the combination of story, style, and intent. That’s the “it” factor that takes a story from something I like, to something I love.

In my opinion this special something, this “it” factor can’t be taught. It can be nurtured and guided, but it can’t be taught. What do you think?

WINNER…..Suzan H your number was chosen by hte random number genrator, and you get to pick a book from the Genreality Bookstore on Amazon. Please use the CONTACT link on my website to email me your choice. You have until Monday Night to collect your prize or I’ll choose a new winner for Next Tuesday’s post.

I’m a big fan of using Quotes to get myself hyped up and focussing on the right things….I’ve posted them here before, and thought I’d do it again…so here are some more that I hope will inspire you to go after what you want out of your career, and out of your life.

Which ones speak to you? Tell me in the comments for a chance to win any book you want form the Genreality Bookstore on Amazon. Be sure to use the menu on the right side of the bookstore to see ALL the books available by clicking on each authors name.

“Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.”
– Erica Jong, Author

“Don’t play for safety. It’s the most dangerous thing in the world.”
– Hugh Walpole, Writer

“I couldn’t wait for success, so I went ahead without it.”
– Jonathan Winters, Comedian

“A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.”
–Eugene Ionesco

“It only takes one person to change your life – you.”
–Ruth Casey

I often here writers talk about ‘the sagging middle” of a story. How they struggle to get through it, some writers struggle with how to tie things up at the end. Me…it’s the beginning. The first one thousand words of a short story or five thousand of a novel kill me.

I know it’s because I have that damn internal editor inside me questioning every word I put on the page, but knowing it’s a process does not make it any easier to get through. With that in mind I’ve put together a little list of things that help me start my creative engine and get over the hump.

1) A Challenge.
While I’ll often challenge friend to write 1k in 1 hour or see who can write the most in 20 minute sprints, It’s not good to depend on others to get myself started, so I’ve been known to use Dr. Wicked’s Write or Die program, or simply hermit away and use the the Neo with no internet access.

2) Do something.
When I find myself either staring at the screen for too long, or surfing the net too much I get up and walk away from the computer and do something else.e ANything else that isn;t writing oriented. Walk around the block, do the dishes, take a shower, bakes some cookies. Getting away from the computer and DOING something often helps me focus when I do sit back down.

3) Take a nap.
Yes, this is just the opposite of number 2, but at the same time it helps. I lie down with the story idea or problem in mind, and often the solution comes to me when half away. The key to this is that I have to start writing again as soon as I wake up though, or I forget whatever it was that came to me and start thinking too hard and questioning myself again.

What do you do when you need to get past a hurdle?

“Sex acts don’t drive erotica, the people who engage in them do.”
– Hanne Blank, Some Frank Tips For The Aspiring Author

In my opinion, the main key to building a writing career is being able to see your problems for yourself, and to fix them. An agent or an editor will only help you so much because it’s not their job to create a great story. That is the authors job, and an author needs to know enough about story structure and the craft of writing to spot the weaknesses, in a story, and how to fix it. I know, strange advice coming from me, the queen of ‘winging it’, but it’s true. I might not be a huge reader of craft books, but I talk about it a lot with others, and I learn not only from reading my favorite books and analyzing, but from my own mistakes.

In my mind there are two core elements of storytelling. Character and Plot. There are a ton of sub-elements like setting, conflict, atmosphere, theme….but in my mind those are all sub-parts, and they don’t really matter if you don’t get the top two right. .

So let’s start with Characters.
You have to know your character in order to be able to share them with the world via a story, and you have to know them WELL in order to share them completely. If you don’t know them, how is the reader going to?

There are a few different ways to get ot know your characters better.
Me? I like the FREEWRITE method. This means I sit down in front of a blank screen, set a timer for 20 minutes, and write something, anything, in that characters POV.
You can do it for any amount of time, but I suggest you don’t try it for shorter than fifteen minutes, as it often takes at least five to actually get in to the flow of writing. I like this method for a couple of reasons.

*I always learn something surprising about the character because once I get going it almost becomes like I’m channeling them instead of creating them.

*Nine times out of ten I can use what I come up with in my actual story.

Another way to get to know your characters and get in their head is to do a CHARACTER SKETCH, or to INTERVIEW them. Just be sure that these things cover more than basics like hair and eye color. Be sure to ask not just what they do for a living, but who they are, who their best friend is, do they have friends? If no, why not? What does your character want, and why can’t they have what they want?
Which leads us to Obstacles and Conflict, two things that are key to a good plot.

OBSTACLES can be things in the way of what they want, or things they might lose if they go after what they want.

The best CONFLICT in a story is one that gives the character a choice where there is no right or wrong, but instead where there is a difficult choice-one where the reader can not predict exactly what the character will do, and one where the final choice can change the characters as a person.

Our characters come from our imagination, we give them names, jobs, desires and foibles. They have good traits and bad, they are not flat, or one dimensional – at least we don’t want them to be! We want them to be three-dimensional. In order to accomplish that they have to grow and change, the same way we do.

“Let them live. Let them breathe,” Dr.Lyle says when talking about character at last years Novelist Inc Confernce. “Then pressure them into changing.”

Why should we pressure them into change? Because people don’t change unless they have to. Pressure makes things move and people change, which is why we throw obstacles in front of our characters.

It doesn’t matter if you’re writing erotica, or young adult, thrillers or science-fiction, the core basics of a good story are the same. Character, and Plot. The two elements work together, and if you want to be a successful author, you have to find a way to understand how, so you can always strive to write a better story without depending on others to tell you where you’re going right, and where you’re going wrong.

Here at Genreality we share the realities of life as a professional writer. We like to emphasize that genre that doesn’t matter so much because there are aspects of the life that we all share no matter what we write.

This is one of them.