The 9 Phases of Revising

Revising a manuscript is like being an old, rickety rollercoaster with no brakes and zombies climbing over the back cars to get to you while the ride plunges to the earth. Sometimes, like at the top of the ride, before you knew about the zombies or the brakes, you’re like, “This is pretty nice.” But then you look closer and realize there’s not thing nice about it.

When the excitement of finishing a first draft wears off, revising goes in stages*:

This is terrible. 

Did I really write something so terrible?

But maybe if I— Aha! I know how to fix it.

This is going to be so easy!

Sleep? What is that? What day is it?

WTF?

I hate this manuscript.

I wish you would just fall of a cliff AND DIE! And bleed to death slowly like the piece of crap you are!!!

I’m finished! I love you I love you I love you I LOVE YOU!!

*I'm at stage 5 right now...

RTW: Books In Music Form

Road Trip Wednesday is a blog carnival, where YA Highway’s contributors and readers post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody’s take on the topic.

This week, Road Trip Wednesday the prompt was: If your WIP(s) or favorite book(s) were a song, which song would they be?

It’s funny. So many times I hear a song and think that it embodies everything about a certain book. Or I think that a character from a book I’ve read would really love that song. (Haven’t we already established my insanity?)

Thinking back, it’s harder to pinpoint songs to go with my favorite books. I think what makes a song and story fit isn’t necessarily the lyrics. It’s that the mood of the book and the mood of the song are so similar that it seems one was written for the other.

These fit that description. The mood’s right. Listening to it makes me feel the way I felt while reading the book—at least mostly.

The Duff = “Loser Like Me,” by the cast of Glee

There’s a change in tone toward the end of this book, which doesn’t really fit this song. Forget about that, mkay? 

Anna and the French Kiss = “Pour un Infidele” by Coeur de Pirates

Here’s another because it’s a beautiful song. Also, I imagine Anna and Etienne holding hands at some Parisian café while this plays in the background.

What song would your favorite book be? Or your WIP?

Apologies

Dear anyone I offend while staring off into space,

It’s not you. You don’t have mustard on your shirt. Your skirt’s not tucked into your tights. You don’t have a booger hanging out of your nose ... at least not that I can see from here.

I’m looking in your direction but I’m not looking at you. (Well, yeah, I am. But not in the sense that I see you. Or that I’d recognize if you started motioning to me.)

See, here in my brain, I’m making characters talk and act out scenes. There’s a world I’m creating. When writers do that from scratch it takes so much brainpower that other bodily functions, like the ability to move the eyes or head, cease functioning.

It works great for us writers. Not so great for you.

Accept my most sincere apologies.

Tracey

A Lesson on Backstory From Feed

The other day, I read Feed by M.T. Anderson. I had been meaning to read this, but my to-be-read pile is the size of a small library, and it just wasn’t on top. (Okay, there may be more to my book choices than a random grab.) For some reason—probably all of the reviews that said it’s hard to get into because of the futuristic language—it remained unread.

The other day, I finally picked it up. The premise hooked me. The first line hooked me. Before I go any further, shall I bring you up to speed?

Blurb: Spending time partying on the moon and riding around in his “upcar,” Titus is an average teen of the future, complete with a computer chip implant—the “Feed”—that lets corporate marketers and government agencies broadcast directly into his brain. Then Titus meets Violet, and an anti-Feed hacker shuts down their Feeds for a short time; but when Violet’s Feed is seriously damaged, she begins spouting some radical ideas.

First line: We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.

Cool, right? I loved this book, and if you haven’t read it I suggest you get thy tukus to a bookstore, stat. The slang took some getting used to, but before the first chapter ended I had a good feel for the language. (And it’s so important to the book’s theme that I can’t imagine the story without it.)

There were a lot of things I loved about this book, including the way Anderson gets his message across, but I’m only going to talk about one* here: the way Anderson revealed the world.

I’m not against having a character explain the world to us bit by bit. Take The Hunger Games:

“Our house is almost at the edge of the Seam. I only have to pass a few gates to reach the scruffy field called the Meadow. Separating the Meadow from the woods, in fact enclosing all of District 12, is a high chain-link fence topped with barbed-wire loops.”

I loved The Hunger Games** and never felt like I was getting too much backstory. But what Anderson does in Feed is take it a step further. In that excerpt from The Hunger Games, we wouldn’t have already known what the Seam or District 12 were. We’d only know about the gates if Katniss noticed something unusual or annoying about them. We definitely wouldn’t know that the field is called Meadow. Or we wouldn’t know that what she’s calling Meadow is a scruffy field. And we wouldn’t be told that the fence encloses all of District 12—because, you know, she grew up with it and wouldn’t find it interesting enough to mention.

In Feed, the world and its rules are explained only when the main character is doing something that requires him to compare the present to the past. And even then, it’s a short description.

For example:

Instead of saying: “Our houses are built in the sky, each one in its own pod.”

Titus would say: “So I took the upcar above the Clouds™ until I saw our pod.” 

As readers, we understand that his society uses flying cars, that the clouds are manufactured, and they live in pods above ground. Being able to learn about Titus’ world slowly drew me in so completely. The gradual reveal, combined with the way Anderson uses advertisements within the story, set me firmly in the mind of Titus the boy, not Titus the narrator.

I’m not sure this backstory-on-a-need-to-know-basis technique will work for every book. (Or that every book needs to avoid any telling when it comes to the backstory. Backstory clearly worked in The Hunger Games.) But when you read Feed (because you’re totally going to read it, right?), pay attention to the facts you’re given, when, and how.

At the very least it’s a lesson in trimming backstory. You may think you need that Totally Awesome and Unquestionably Brilliant section, but chances are your reader will understand the story without it.

Has anyone read Feed? Did you find the lack of backstory interesting or annoying? And if you haven’t, how much is too much (or too little) backstory for you?

*If you want a full review, check out Pheobe North’s. She says everything I’d want to say.

**Which is why I scream like a fangirl every time a new cast member is revealed.

RTW: The Kiss

Road Trip Wednesday is a blog carnival, where YA Highway’s contributors and readers post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody’s take on the topic.

This week, Road Trip Wednesday the prompt was: Compare your first kiss with your favorite characters first kiss?

This one’s easy because my characters’ kiss is nothing like mine. Here’s how I imagined my first kiss:

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That didn’t happen. (I also imagined my first kiss would be with Leonardo DiCaprio, but that also didn’t happen.)

This was my first kiss:

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But, um, switch the roles here. Mmm…cigarettes and beer.

Right, so since I was putting my main character through hell (mwuahahaha) I figured she deserved a good first kiss. Like this:

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Let me preface this by saying that you’ll see a lot of references to Eli being hot here. While he is physically good looking, she’s being literal here. Long story short: He’s sick and something I won’t get into is causing him to burn up.

“I wish I could see it,” I said because I didn’t know what else to say. I couldn’t understand how my emotions could swing so suddenly. My stomach twisted and flipped. Eli rested a palm on my cheek, and I couldn’t tell if I was blushing or burning up from his touch.

I looked into Eli’s eyes, and for the first time I noticed they were blue. Then they were shut and he was so close I could feel the heat coming off of his face. He kissed me and his lips were light then harder, breath hot. I shut my eyes and in the blackness I saw galaxies expand and twist. His hand moved to the small of my back, sending electricity up my spine. With every kiss, the stars tumbled around me like snow, only they were bright and hot. My skin was on fire and I realized at that moment how much I needed Eli to be okay.

 How does your first kiss compare to your characters’?

Going to Write

 

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I should cook.

I should make a good, healthy dinner.

I should do the laundry so I have clean pants to wear tomorrow so that people don’t catch on that these are the same pants I wore last Thursday and Friday.

I should fold the laundry.

I should fold it and put it away.

I definitely should return phone calls and reply to e-mails so people don’t think I’m dead.

Oh, let ’em.

I’m going to write.

Gorgeous Libraries

I do all of my writing either on my bed or couch. It’s basically as glamorous as you can get when it comes to writing spaces.

In my fantasy world, my pet unicorn would transport me to one of these libraries to write:

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Trinity College library, Dublin

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Abbey Library St. Gallen, Switzerland

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Real Gabinete Portugues De Leitura, Rio De Janeiro

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Stockholm Public Library

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AD White Library Cornell University

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The Library of Alexandria. (What? I said this was a fantasy.)

And there would be a cupcake cart, naturally.

Which would you camp out at? Anyone up for a writing group in Dublin? I’ll buy dinner if you get the airfare.

RTW: The Scar Story

Road Trip Wednesday is a blog carnival, where YA Highway’s contributors and readers post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody’s take on the topic.

This week, Road Trip Wednesday the prompt was: RTW: What is the story of your best scar?

Hmm, well there was this one time He Who Shall Not Be Named tried to kill me, which left an ugly lightening bolt–shaped scar on my forehead. It’s unfortunate because I look terrible with bangs.

Right.

To be honest, I don’t have a lot of scars. That’s a minor miracle since I’ve been named Clumsiest Person Alive by People magazine twenty years and counting. I’m also surprised I haven’t severed a limb by now.

I really only have one scar that I can think of: one a bit smaller than a pencil eraser above my right eye. Here’s where I wish I could lie and tell you it happened while skiing or during a particularly intense game of Gimme The Remote with my sister. But the truth is, I was standing perfectly still when it happened.

It was the morning of my gymnastics recital. I had gotten over the chicken pox earlier that week, so my body was covered in fading spots and ugly scabs. My mom was afraid the other parents would assume I had an infectious disease or something.

Well there was this one scab right over my eye that couldn’t decide whether to hang on or fall off. Looking back, it was probably disgusting. So she ripped it off. And I’ve had a chicken pox–shaped scar ever since.

Also, I gave up gymnastics. Not because of the scar, though. I finally learned that it wasn’t the best sport for klutzes.

What’s the story behind your scars?

But Why YA?

For some reason, every interview with a YA author I’ve ever read starts like this:

Why YA?

(Side note: I’d love to interview an author of literary fiction or thrillers or women’s fiction and say, “So, why did you chose to write literary/thrillers/women’s fiction instead of YA?” I’m not so sure the rest of the interview would go so well. Journalist’s intuition here.)

So here’s my answer:

I have no idea. I like to read YA. And that’s just how the idea came to me. For some reasons, characters or story ideas pop into my mind at that age—when everything in the world is changing and strange and unfair and exciting.

That’s why.

I probably will never write a story about an adult. They have obligations and baggage. Besides, I’m an adult every day of my life. For my escape, I want to think like a teen.

So there.

The Revision Freak Out

I’m in the middle of revising my YA sci-fi novel, which means sometimes I look like this:

Like when I re-read a passage and I actually love it. Or when I’m sucked in to my own story. But most of the time I look like this:

Usually I stare at my revision to-do list and have a minor freak out because the draft sucks and I’m not sure I’m capable of reworking it the way it needs to be reworked. You know when you stare at the last five chapters and think they’d be better off in the trash? Yeah, I’m there.*

And it’s not that the words themselves bother me. It’s the fact that those words in those paragraphs and in those scenes don’t quite belong in that order. Sigh.

So I’ve been working through my revision notes methodically, attempting to ignore the crazy amount of yellow comments in future chapters. It’s kind of like ignoring an itch when someone tells you their house has bedbugs. Which is to say, almost impossible.

But because I’m not overwhelmed enough, I decided to follow all of the tips Donald Maass tweeted last month. And of course they’re all awesome. And of course following them will make my manuscript better to the Maass degree.

I won’t list them all here since I’m guessing most of you have seen them, but I wanted to point to a few that have inspired changes in my story so far.

#14 In your climactic scene, what are 3 details of place that only your MC would notice? Cut more obvious details, replace with these.

#18 Give your MC passionate feelings about something trivial: e.g., cappuccino, bowling, argyle socks. Write his/her rant. Add it.

#26 Whom is your MC afraid to let down? What is the sacred trust between them? What would cause your MC to break it? Break it.

#30 What’s the worst thing that happens to your MC? Work backwards. Make it something your MC has spent a lifetime avoiding.

How do you revise? Do you have any tips to add to these?

Also, a huge congrats to my friend Erin Bowman who just sold her YA trilogy! You can read the Publishers Marketplace blurb on her blog. (Sneak peek: It sounds amazing.)

*Please tell me I’m not the only one who feels this way...

RTW: Books In 2111

Road Trip Wednesday is a blog carnival, where YA Highway’s contributors and readers post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody’s take on the topic.

This week, Road Trip Wednesday the prompt was: RTW: What do you think publishing will look like in 2111?

Thank goodness I brought my crystal ball with me today. Here’s what I see:

It’s April 6, 2111. I’m in a library, a monstrous building lined on all walls with white doors. Dozens of wide screens hang in the center, suspended from sturdy wire. They might not even have it, I tell myself. It’s been so long.

I walk up to the only empty screen and tap the center. The index page flickers on, revealing a list of buttons. I click the one labeled “Young Adult,” and a line of book covers appears on the screen. As I swipe my finger sideways over the screen, the covers fly by. Something blue flashes and I scroll back. The cover bounces and then fills half of the screen when I press it. A description, trailer, and reviews take up the other half of the screen, but I don’t pay attention to them. I type my fourteen-digit code into the space at the bottom right corner of the screen.

The screen flips off. A disk smaller than my palm pops out and I pocket it, searching for an empty room. I head to the back of the library, where most of the doors glow with a green light. Inside, I lock the door and pull my connector from my bag. The room is dim and warm, a lounge chair the only piece of furniture. I collapse into it—I’ve been tired ever since I woke up from my cryogenic sleep—and plug a wire attached to the chair into my connector. I tape the connector’s electrode to my temple and insert the disk. It whirls to a start. My eyes slip shut.

My first novel, published in 2013, plays in my mind. The electrode on my temple sends out short shocks, zapping my brain so I can smell the burning firewood, I can taste the ice cream. I watch the book like a movie, only I think what the narrator thinks. I only see what she sees. The software detects I don’t know a word—iPod, though it seems vaguely familiar—and uploads the definition to my brain.

When I’m finished, I flip the disk and watch the bonus material, a video of one of my author talks. Most books contain videos of the author speaking to the camera, but my book was written a long time ago. The bibliomakers had to scrap together whatever they could find.

Books weren’t always like this. People used to read on hard electronic tablets and before that in clunky books that took up endless space. Before that, on large unwieldy scrolls. And before all, on tablets, characters chiseled into stone.

I smile at the size of the disk and slip it into my back pocket.

And then my crystal ball goes foggy, as crystal balls tend to do. That was it.

What do you predict books will be like in 2111? (And, yeah, you can be more realistic than I was.)

We Have A Winner

Remember that time Carolina Valdez Miller got an agent and you were all like, “Congratulations,” and I was all like, “Hey, want a free book?” and you were like, “Yeah, of course,” and I was like, “Okay cool”?

Well, I spent this weekend* tallying your entries to find out which of you will be getting a copy of Beth Revis’ Across the Universe. I wish I were super rich so I could say, You all get one! And then I’d finally feel like Oprah.

           

Unfortunately for you I’m a writer. So, Random Number Generator says the winner is…

LexieBookBug

Congrats! Email your address to tracey(dot)neithercott(at)gmail.com and I’ll get your prize right out to you.

In case you were wondering, I did use Saturday and Sunday to revise. I got through a good chunk before I was interrupted by the need to pay bills and sleep. Are these really necessities in life?

Finally! Welcome and hello to my new followers**. (Was it the promise of weekly brownies that caught your eye? Because I might have lied—just a little—when I said A. I would bake them, B. I would send them to you, and C. that you’ll be getting brownies at all.)

Ahem. Anyway, thank you for thinking my blog’s worth following. It makes me all sorts of happy. And since you made me smile, I’ll return the favor:

My plans for this week include finishing revisions (ha!) or at least working on them (more likely).

What are your writerly goals this week?

*Well, maybe not the whole weekend…

**Since I hit 200 followers during this giveaway, I think I'll buck the trend and wait until 250 or 300 before I host another. But THERE WILL BE ANOTHER. If those capital letters don't assure you I mean business then I'm not sure anything will.

More Ways To Win Stuff

Okay so here’s the deal: This is the first weekend in way too long that I don’t have to

A. Box up my entire life

B. Move to a new apartment or

C. Unpack and squish a two-bedroom apartment’s worth of junk into my new one-bedroom place.

Not that those things aren’t SO FUN.

So I’m taking the time to write nonstop. And when I say write, I mean rewrite. And when I say rewrite, I mean tear apart and piece back together with glue and love.

by Debbie Ridpath Ohi

I will also be torturing people over and over again.* Call me a sicko, but I kind of enjoy it.

Hey characters:

Anyway. I also wanted to congratulate Christine Fonseca on the release of her book, 101 Success Secrets for Gifted Kids: The Ultimate Handbook. Here’s the blurb: 

Pssst! Want to know a secret? 101 Success Secrets for Gifted Kids: The Ultimate Handbook is a must-read for gifted kids ages 8 to 12 who want to find success in school and life. If you know gifted kids, they will love the 101 awesome secrets, tips, and tricks included in this book!

Chock full of fun suggestions and practical strategies, 101 Success Secrets for Gifted Kids covers topics including bullying, school performance, perfectionism, friendships, and sibling rivalries. Fun quizzes, tip sheets, and practical Q & A sections from other gifted kids and preteens make this book fun to read and give gifted kids insight into everything they’ve ever wanted to know about being gifted. Proven strategies for dealing with stress management, parents’ and teachers’ expectations, anxiety, cyber-bullying, friendship troubles, and more make this the must-have guide for every gifted kid!

You should know that Christine is having a month-long launch party. Translation: author tips plus a gazillion giveaways for books, swag, Caribbean vacations**, critiques, and more.

The fun starts today on her blog.

P.S. Today is your last change to win a copy of Beth Revis’ Across the Universe from me and a boatload of other prizes. Click here for info. I’ll post the winner of my Across the Universe contest on Monday.

*Dear FBI, don’t worry. They’re fictional.

**Not really. Just checking to see who’s paying attention.