Okay, so Shannon Messenger shared a lovely time-waster on her blog yesterday, so instead of the thoughtful ,useful post I was going to do, instead you get these:

This one is made from the first two chapters of the book I'm querying.

This one is made from the first two VERY rough chapters of the new book I'm writing.

Eventually, I'll use this as a tool to identify words I use too much (like "just" and "back"), but for now, it's just pretty. Go try Wordle yourself!

When Do You Abandon a WIP?

So, you're writing along, loving your story, loving your characters, loving torturing your characters and suddenly . . . BAM! Wall. Maybe it's "writer's block" and you should just push through it. Maybe some part of your story or plot is just too flawed to fix without a complete overhaul. Maybe that other story that has been niggling at the back of your brain has just become too shiny.

Whatever the excuse, you are no longer excited to write the story.

You no longer love your characters.

Torturing your characters no longer gives you the thrill it used to.

You don't particularly care what happens at the end.

Were every last one of your characters to perish in a sudden ninja-zombie apocalypse, you'd be okay with that.

You've tried for weeks, and you just can't figure out why the antagonist wants what they want--or why the hero would be against that.

If you were reading this book, you'd put it down.  Forcing yourself to continue feels as exciting as studying for the bar exam. Writing one more page will cause your brain to melt.

So Stop. 

Last November, I participated in NaNoWriMo. All month, I pushed myself to write 50,000 words. And I did it. I wrote Every. Last. Word. Then, a few months later, I forced myself to outline (yeah . . . backwards). Most of the original 50,000 went in the wrong direction. (I'm not a very good pantser.) So I threw most of it out and started writing it again. I followed the outline. It was mostly interesting, but I just ran out of steam. I'd figured out what the antagonist wanted during the outline stage, but it made less and less sense as I wrote. Finally, though I was pretty sure what came next, it was just too boring to think about.

That's why I have this folder:

The Trunk isn't the end. Maybe I'll pull it out in a few months, dust it off, suddenly have an epiphany, and decide to finish it. In the meantime, it's just another half-finished novel. And that's okay.

I get to work on New-Shiny now.

Have you ever abandoned a WIP halfway through? Was it hard? Have you ever finished writing a book and wished you'd stopped halfway through?

Gearing Up to Get an Agent 2012

My awesome writing groupie, Deana Barnhart is again hosting the Gearing Up to Get an Agent blogfest. Deana, herself, does not need this, since she has recently acquired herself an agent. For the rest of us, though, she has lined up a bunch of agents and small publishers who will be perusing our polished pitches for possible representation/purchase. Cool, huh?

Also, this year I'm helping. Even cooler, yes? :)

So go here to find out more and to get signed up, then start hopping around to all the other blogfest blogs to say hi (or you can wait for the September festivities. Either way).

So are you gonna play?

Write On Con

I'm posting a day early to tell you about Write On Con. It's a free online writer's conference.

Actually, just trust me on this: go there and play. You'll need your query, your first page, and a thick skin. Also some luck, a love of ninja agents, and thirst for knowledge. You'll want to post your stuff on Monday so the ninja agents can see it starting on Tuesday.

Go! Go! Go!

How NOT to Write a Query 6: Breakdown

On Tuesday, I broke Dan Wells' excellent book blurb on PARTIALS. This is about how.

First, let's look at my bad version again:


Sixteen-year-old Kira lives on Long Island with the tens of thousands of humans who survived the war with the partials—engineered organic beings identical to humans. The weaponized virus which destroyed the rest of humanity is still working: no baby has been born immune to the disease in over a decade. Desperate to find a cure, the government passed the Hope Act—which could soon force Kira to become pregnant . . . and watch a new child die every year to provide data for the scientists’ disease research.

Kira knows she's too young to start that, but she is determined to find a cure—and she’s willing to go to tremendous lengths to make that happen.

Before we move on to the good version, notice that this blurb suggests that Kira's main goal will be working to avoid being used as breeding stock for dead babies. We know that she's going to go to "tremendous lengths" to find a cure for the virus that makes that necessary, but we don't know if she's planning to dodge an unwanted pregnancy or if she's planning to reluctantly submit. What, exactly, are these tremendous lengths? Not a clue.

So let's look at the real blurb:

Humanity is all but extinguished after a war with partials—engineered organic beings identical to humans—has decimated the world’s population. Reduced to only tens of thousands by a weaponized virus to which only a fraction of humanity is immune, the survivors in North America have huddled together on Long Island. The threat of the partials is still imminent, but, worse, no baby has been born immune to the disease in over a decade. Humanity’s time is running out.

When sixteen-year-old Kira learns of her best friend’s pregnancy, she’s determined to find a solution. Then one rash decision forces Kira to flee her community with the unlikeliest of allies. As she tries desperately to save what is left of her race, she discovers that the survival of both humans and partials rests in her attempts to answer questions of the war’s origin that she never knew to ask.

[I left off the paragraph that talks about how awesome the book is--we don't get to write those things for our queries.]

So what's the difference? STAKES. The real blurb tells us clearly 1) What Kira wants (to save her friend's baby), 2) What stands in her way (the virus that will kill the baby), 3) What she's doing to get it (hint: she's not getting pregnant--she's off somewhere else looking for the cure), and 4) What happens if she fails (humanity won't be saved).

This is slightly different from How NOT to Write a Query 5,where I talked about not being vague and including specific details about your world and your plot. This time, we're focusing on the stakes--what the protagonist has to do and what will happen if s/he fails. That needs to be in there somewhere, folks. More, you need to give the agents some hint about what the protagonist will be doing about that. Because that's where the story is.

Setting isn't story. Premise isn't story. Character isn't story. Story is someone trying to get something, something standing in their way, and that person doing what it takes to overcome the obstacle to prevent something bad from happening.

I'm ashamed to confess that it took me a year to understand this. That I thought until very recently that my query didn't need all that. That the goal and the obstacle and what my MC would have to do to overcome it was a secret. That the potential consequence was the biggest secret of all. *sigh* Be wiser than I was, okay?

Specific details about the actual stakes faced by the protagonist can help make the book sound like something someone will want to read.

So go look at your query and make sure it says, suggests, or hints the following:
1. What does the main character want?
2. What stands in his way?
3. What will she have to do to get what she wants?
4. What, specifically, will happen if he fails?

Is it there? Has it always been there? If so, you're a year ahead of me.

What lessons have you learned while writing bad queries?

I'm planning another installment of this series for the first Tuesday of each month. If you'd like me to feature (read: rip apart without mercy) your own real query--either anonymously or with full credit and linkage--email me at robinweekswriter [at] gmail [dot] com.

How NOT to Write a Query 6

Time again for another round of:

If you're just joining us, this is a series where I explore all I know about queries . . . which mostly encompasses the mistakes I've made along the way.

This post explores something REALLY OBVIOUS that took me a year to learn. Seriously, I spent a year thinking my own query didn't need this. *head desk*

Once again, I've bastardized a book blurb of a really awesome book and turned it into something a novice query writer might write. Since this is Dan Wells's book, PARTIALS, and since Dan is not a novice query writer--and didn't have to query this book (quite the opposite)--my rewrite is the absolute worst this particular blurb has ever been. Probably. Also, I totally stole whole phrases from the real blurb while I was writing my screwed-up version.

In any event, if you haven't read this excellent book yet, please keep in mind that this is the bad version. Don't judge the book on the bad blurb. Come back Thursday for the real version.

Sixteen-year-old Kira lives on Long Island with the tens of thousands of humans who survived the war with the partials—engineered organic beings identical to humans. The weaponized virus which destroyed the rest of humanity is still working: no baby has been born immune to the disease in over a decade. Desperate to find a cure, the government passed the Hope Act—which could soon force Kira to become pregnant . . . and watch a new child die every year to provide data for the scientists’ disease research.

Kira knows she's too young to start that, but she is determined to find a cure—and she’s willing to go to tremendous lengths to make that happen.

---

So what do you think? If you haven't read the book, what do you think the main conflict is? If you have read the book, does this version of the blurb sound at all familiar? What's missing?

Breakdown coming on Thursday . . . .

Free Will

Hundreds of writers have imagined a better world. One with less crime. One with less poverty. No war. No random strangers who enter movie theaters to gun down innocent strangers. Where everyone enjoys peace and posterity and a reasonably long life. Where everyone gets along and serves their community and handles infrequent conflicts with grace and logic and understanding.

These writers write a genre called DYSTOPIA.

One thing that all dystopias have in common is that, to achieve their dream of peace, the government which sought to create a utopia found they had to restrict free will in some manner.

The most extreme dystopias will use brain implants or drugs to control strong (destructive, doncha know) emotions. Others try to convince the populace that all the rules about who they're supposed to marry, how they're supposed to think, and what they'll be when they grow up are GOOD and RIGHT and THE ONLY WAY TO LIVE.

There are degrees of control, but no dystopia can survive without some loss of free will. Even with free will restricted, people are forever breaking out of these perfect societies, rebelling against them, trying to take them down. Hardly anyone looks at these books and thinks "Oh, yeah. Now that's how I'd like to live."

We value our free will above almost any other gift, blessing, or right. We value our ability to make our own mistakes, to claim credit for our own successes, and to rule our own lives--even if we do it very, very badly. We chafe whenever the government gets too up in our lives, telling us we can't do this or to stop doing that, when it wasn't even hurting anyone!

But.

We don't value free will in others. We don't want someone else to use their free will in a way that impacts our lives in a negative way. We don't like it when other people make mistakes. If we could, most of us would create a don't-mess-with-me bubble around our lives so that no one else could make anything bad happen.

And when that doesn't work, when someone has the audacity to use their free will to run rough-shod over our perfect world, some people wonder why a benevolent God doesn't step in and restrict that horrible man's free will. Doesn't stop the mess before it starts.

Writers and readers already know the answer.

In life, as in fiction, trials come to create a change in the protagonist. To test us and to try us. To make sure we're not some stagnant boring hero with a soft spine and a rubber resolve. To give us a honed edge.

Those qualities we value in fictional heroes are also important in life--and we don't get them when our lives are perfect.

So don't wonder where God was when a madman disrupted a movie in Aurora. With all respect and sorrow for those whose lives were torn apart that day, He was there. Letting free will take its course and standing by to help us pick up the pieces.

I don't wax religious much here, and I know not everyone shares my faith, and that's okay . . . but it has to be said: God's greatest wish for us is for us to learn how to live in His utopia someday. One where everyone chooses to be good and nice and decent to each other. Where no one is forced--not even by Him--to act in a certain way.

That will never happen if we're too weak to learn how to choose good for ourselves, even when everything goes wrong.

God has read all the dystopia books and He doesn't want that for us, either. Can there be any doubt about that?