THE ART OF WAR

When people think of a battle, most envision soldiers and tanks, warships and weapons … possibly rifles and a cavalry. But there are many types of personal battles, as Fiona mentioned in her previous blog post. These include internal moral battles, relationship conflicts, and personal vendettas. How your character deals with these issues is very telling and gives the reader much insight into that individual’s personality. It’s also a chance for you as a writer to provide an opportunity for your character to grow and ratchet up the tension in your story.

So how do you write a compelling battle scene, whether it be an actual fight, where the loser may wind up injured or dead, or a clash between two high school rivals fighting to become class president? I’m not sure if this is true for every writer, but when I write tense scenes, there’s always an urge to resolve the conflict quickly and move on. This is how I operate in life, as confrontation makes me anxious. But the reader doesn’t want a fight that’s resolved quickly and easily—without conflict there is no story!

So, if you’re like me and want to smooth out your MC's hardships asap, how do you build suspense and write an exciting fight scene?

I believe it was The Art of War for Writers: Fiction Writing Strategies, Tactics, and Exercises by James Scott Bell that gave me some of the best advice for writing tense scenes. (Even if I’m wrong, it’s a great book—it’s been quite a few years since I’ve read it, and definitely deserves a reread.) To summarize the advice: whenever you have the opportunity to resolve the battle, throw another problem into the mix.

So, let’s say your MC is in a dangerous situation that results in an actual fight scene. Most readers will root for the protagonist to win, but how much fun would it be to read about the character throwing one punch and knocking the antagonist out cold? It’s better to create a fierce battle where the MC is the underdog, makes a comeback, and then just before success, something happens—the character drops a weapon, another person blindsides the MC, etc. The more the odds are against your protagonist, the greater the victory will be. Because in the end, most readers want the good guys to prevail.  

Marching into battle

This month, we're looking at marching our characters into battle. Now, I could take the obvious route and discuss good old fight scenes, but I'm pretty sure one of my other YATopian buddies will have that covered. So, instead, I'm going to consider the internal battlefield your MC has to contend with throughout the entire book.

It's important to know what your MC's internal battleground is. This is where you look deep at the root of your MC's conflict. What are the polar opposite feelings they have? Your character needs to struggle, so you need to think "opposing sides." Once you know the basic two emotional "armies" so to speak, you then need to break it down further. You don't have just side A and side B. If it was an actual army, they would be broken down into units - infantry, cavalry, etc. How does this relate to your MC's inner conflict? These are the layers of emotions you have. For example:

Say your character is in love with their co-worker, but they are both going for the same promotion. Perhaps you have chosen the opposing emotions of competitiveness and selflessness for your MC. Your character is competitive by nature and wants, needs perhaps for a physical reason, this promotion. However, they are selfless by nature, and this is the person they love they are competing against. So, what to do? What other emotions hide in there? Let's look at these armies...

Competitiveness


Infantry - fear of failure
Cavalry - desire to prove oneself
Artillery -  sense of self-worth

Selflessness

Infantry -feeling like a good person
Cavalry - approval
Artillery - battling against the bad parts of their nature and trying to outdo them


Okay, so this is a simple example, but hopefully it will show that when you think of your MC's internal battleground, you can go past the basic conflict, and really dig in and find lots of layers to really bring your internal battlefield to life.

Getting your swoon on...

I have to admit, I've got zero excuses for being a day late on my post. And I mean zero. I just got distracted by my website overhaul, opening my Tumblr, trying to figure out what the heck to do with Instagram (still confused, so if you have any tips, now's the time), and generally bumming around the internet watching comedy sketches.

However, I'm here now, and I'm going to talk about getting your swoon on. Or, more specifically, learning how to. I'll be 100% honest, swooning is not my gig. It's been something I've had trouble with for a long time, but it's something I'm learning one slow bit at a time. So, to that end, I thought I'd give you the top three tips I've learned so far. Hopefully, you'll get some use out of them, like I did when I got them.

1) Figure out what your main character values in a person. If you're going to have them fall head over heels, then it helps for the reader to see one or two of these qualities in the potential love interest. Those qualities can be hidden at first in some books, and revealed as the plot progresses, but there should be some indications sown in throughout the novel.

2) Make your love interest worth it. We all connect to different people for different reasons. However, if I said I was looking for dark hair, dark eyes, and someone loyal...well, that could be a lot of different, generic someones. So while that might be my first stepping stone, I'm looking for more. You know what attracted me to my husband-to-be when we met? On our first date, he very honestly said, "I'm divorced, have 3 kids, and they come first." I fell there and then (not that I told him that until a long time later!). Why? Funny thing is, I never wanted kids. Still don't. But family is the most important thing to me. And for someone to be that frank and honest with someone who might just turn and walk away? That is what caught me. The fact that he's also kind and loyal add to this. But it's the other things, too...the way he agrees for us to foster dogs, even though he finds the smell and hair hard to abide. The way he supports me working from home. The way he goes out of his way to do the little things that matter to me...turning up with a mini-cake just because he knows I feel crappy. These are the things you learn about a person over time. So make your MC learn these things about your love interest over time, and your reader will buy into them, hook, line, and sinker.

3) Make your characters interesting! In fiction, characters need to be dynamic, imperfect, entertaining, devilish, loyal, larger than life, down to earth... Now, you don't need to make them have all these qualities. But what you do need to do is make sure that you give them something to stand out from the pack.

So, I hope this helps. And if you're interested in more of my blog posts, you can check out my blog, too.

2018 Writing Decisions

Start the year off with some solid decisions!

Did you start off January 2018 with a list of resolutions? Writing goals for the upcoming year? Well, me too! Just like I do every year. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with setting yourself goals and aspirations for the following year – I find it inspirational and vaguely cathartic; it’s the time I forgive myself for not reaching those same goals the previous year. “It’s OK,” I tell myself, “you have another chance!”

But while that’s all well and good in the shiny new month of January, by the time May rolls around and you realise you’re no way near finishing that second book; haven’t landed your dream job; your gym membership card is gathering dust; that healthy-eating cookbook is less dog-eared than the epic classic book your friend leant you that really isn’t your thing but you promised you’d read… (not that any of this is personal to me, of course…), well, those January goals can seem a little defeating.

So, this year I’m concentrating on decisions, rather than resolutions or goals. My writing decisions are crafted so that the end result will be more projects get finished, but I’m not judging my success with anything solid enough to feel deflating when I haven’t reached my goal.

To give you an example, they go a little like this:

A)   

   Dedicate more time to writing by creating a routine that works around my other commitments and sticking to it.

B)      Being more selfish with my writing time. I’m guilty of treating writing time as something that can be side-lined for other things, like phone calls/emails/texts or just about anything else that seems like a priority at the time. I need to start seeing writing as a priority; then others will value my writing time, too.

C)      If a project isn’t working, take a break; go onto something else and return to it at a later date when I can give it the enthusiasm and positivity it deserves.

How about you? Have you got any writing decisions for the upcoming year? If so, share them in the comments below! And celebrate any goals or resolutions you met in 2017!

Aspiring in 2018 with Laura Steven

Dreams are often portrayed as things that’ll only happen in the distant future. Aspirations a longing to get there. But what if we defined them in another way? What if our aspirations weren’t an endless longing? What if we blocked off the deafening noise in our heads that say “one day, one year, I will achieve this NEW BIG SHINY THING and I will struggle every inch of the way to get there.”? (In the case of writers this is often: get an agent, sell a book, wow readers, get good reviews, great sales, rinse, repeat.)

Instead, what if we break that aspiration down and think to ourselves “what dream can I achieve TODAY?” We can work toward the larger goal, but not just focus on the larger goal. I believe we should turn our attention to something much more important: the day-to-day. You wake up in the morning: what is your dream for this one day? What do you want to achieve? Reach out and connect with a reader? Market a book? Put your feelings on the page? Choose that goal and aspire to meet it and relish in the power of achieving it.

I’ve started to adjust my perspective on my aspirations. Yes, I aspire greatly to publish my book. That’s a given. But how do my daily dreams build up to that?

Today, my dream is to create a blog post that connects to someone. Even if it’s just one, single person. Someone who finds connection with me. Maybe I connect to more people. Maybe I don’t. Maybe this person will be a future reader. Maybe they won’t. Maybe they tell someone else about what I do and think they’ll get value in it. But whichever way you cut it, if I can connect with someone, then I’ll be honored they have read my post and find something worthwhile there.

Tomorrow’s goal? To make a reader happy. To recommend them a great book I think they’ll like. Or perhaps help a writer get a boost on Twitter, or Facebook, or by word of mouth. Or work on a marketing idea, or on my website.

I don’t want to call these steps toward success. I want to call them daily dreams that I can achieve. Today, I dreamed of one person connecting to my blog post. Let’s see if that happens. How will I make it happen? Talk to people, invest in them, find out what they want, what they aspire to. Because other people’s aspirations count just as much as yours do. And on that note, I’m honored to have Laura Steven as my blog guest. She’s a wonderful, heartwarming, genuine person. And yes, she’s a writer. But she’s just incredibly lovely. And, of course, it goes without saying that you need to watch out for her book THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF OKAY, debuting in March 2018 from Egmont.

Damn, look at how awesome that cover is!!!

So, Laura, first of all, thank you for being so kind to come onto the blog. So, why don’t you tell us about THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF OKAY, and importantly, why this story is in your heart and who you aspire to connect with through your words?

Hey! Thank you so much for having me! The Exact Opposite of Okay is about a teenage girl who finds herself at the heart of a national scandal when a photo of her having sex with a politician’s son is leaked online. No, it’s not autobiographical. How dare you.

The book deals with slut shaming, victim blaming, toxic masculinity and a bunch of other issues teen girls struggle with. Through this series, I really want to inspire young women to speak up and fight back against the never-ending stream of misogyny diarrhea they have to face on a daily basis. Sometimes this sexism may seem innocuous, like the Friend Zone phenomenon I explore in The Exact Opposite of Okay, but I wanted to highlight how problematic this stuff really is in the bigger picture. It's not just teenage melodrama. It matters. How the world treats teenage girls matters. 

At the start of the year, I felt the need to bring happiness into my life. Through the small things in particular. Tell me, what were the small things that happened (or that you felt) when working on THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF OKAY, and why did they mean so much to you?

The best thing this book gave me was the realization that I could make people laugh with my words – but also make myself laugh. Izzy’s voice arrived fully formed in my head, and immediately brought me back to life after two years of publishing hell (more on that painful time here). So there Izzy was, waiting for me to give her an outlet. She was sarcastic, witty, bright but not conventionally so, and something really shitty had happened to her. So shitty that she wanted to write a blog about it. That’s all I had, but I knew. I knew. This voice was gold. Still in bed on a dreary Saturday morning, I wrote the short introduction to the book on my iPhone notes, laughing merrily as I did so. I will always look back on that moment as pure alchemy.

As authors, ideas always sneak in. Do you have a W.I.P? Any hints about what it might be or what you aspire for it to become? And, just as importantly, why did this book burrow into your heart, too?

Absolutely! Having just turned in the sequel to The Exact Opposite of Okay, for the last few weeks I’ve been working on a YA thriller about death row, complex brains and a viral true crime podcast started by a vulnerable teenage girl. The plot bunny came to me first, but the thing that’s kept me going for the first 30,000 words is my love for the characters I’ve created. They’re complicated, morally compromised, but deep down good people. It makes putting them through hell hard, but it’s worth it.

I want you to imagine a reader holding your book in their hands and they’ve just read it. What would you like to say to them once they close the final page?

Go and raise hell. For me, for Izzy, for yourself.

If you could give someone advice on their aspirations – writerly or otherwise – what would it be?

Persevere. It will take longer than you think it will, but it will be worth it. There is no such thing as overnight success, so don’t cut corners. Pride yourself on doing the work, on showing up even when it gets tough, on holding onto hope even when it feels like there is none. You truly never know when your breakthrough moment will strike.

Is there an interview question you’ve never been asked but would like to be?

Yes! “What are your favourite Pokemon (from the original 150)?” Well, dearest interviewer, Eevee is my ride or die, and I have a particular fondness for the legendary birds – specifically Articuno. I’m also into aesthetically pleasing fire-types, such as Vulpix, Growlithe and Ponyta.

Lastly, I know you’re not just an author. I know you wrote a TV pilot, and you work for Mslexia, and you’re a wonderful person. So, tell me things we don’t know. Anything goes….

I have done many ridiculous things in the name of journalism – anything for a good feature. I’ve flown to Serbia to cover a musical festival in a fortress, thrown myself out of a plane at 15,000ft, played zorb football, interviewed Olympians and stand-up comedians, walked on the roof of a football stadium without a harness, learned professional blackjack strategy, and eaten a burger made with glazed donuts instead of bread buns.

----

Thank you again for coming to the blog, Laura. We talked about aspirations and what they are and mean. I aspire to get great books into the hands of readers, but more than that, I aspire to connect readers with authors. Not just one book. Not just one series. I aspire for readers to get to know that author through their thoughts, emotions, and experiences that they spill into their work, onto their blogs, and through their websites and social media. I aspire to help people find their reading and writing tribe. YATopia readers, I sincerely hope you join Laura’s reading tribe, as you’ll grow your reading and writing in a way that will give back for years to come. And you can start with THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF OKAY.

Links

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Bio

Laura Steven is an author, journalist and screenwriter from the northernmost town in England. The Exact Opposite of Okay, her YA debut, will be published by Egmont in March 2018. As well as mentoring aspiring authors through schemes like Writing In The Margins and Pitch Wars, Laura works for Mslexia, a non-profit organisation supporting women writers. She has an MA in Creative Writing, and her TV pilot Clickbait – a mockumentary about journalists at a viral news agency – reached the final eight in British Comedy's 2016 Sitcom Mission. Laura is represented by Suzie Townsend of New Leaf Literary and Media Inc.

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