Serve me up another cockroach … I feel the munchies coming on.

by A.G. Howard

Mmmm. Tasty.

*Shudders* Okay, so I’m not really into eating bugs, although I've heard rumor they're high in protein.

The subject title is referring to my fear of writing action scenes, fight scenes in particular. In the earliest draft of my adult vampire fantasy (a book I wrote a couple of years ago), I skimmed through the biggest fight scene of the book, writing it in the narrative with the heroine looking back on it.

My writing group called me on the mat and said, “Write out that sucker, you lazy bum.” Okay, not in so many words, but they did subtly denote that I was above cutting corners at this point in my writing. The scene is toward the climax of the book, and truly, the reader deserves to see it played out.

For me, it wasn’t so much about being lazy as being FEARFUL. I am terrified of writing any kind of action scene, but fight scenes trump them all. Something about blending the movement and emotion of the characters—wanting to keep them real without feeling mapped out, wooden, or staged—really stokes my paranoia to a full fiery flame.

It’s like being on an episode of Fear Factor for writers. Remember this show?

 One of the most popular stunts was to make contestants eat live insects, like this lovely cave spider from Africa:

Yes, folks. Those are indeed claws. Imagine trying to swallow this fellow down while he's hanging onto your tonsils for dear life... *insert horrified scream here*

In my writer's worst nightmare, instead of handing me a plateful of cockroaches and earthworms to nibble on, the host hands me a blank piece of paper, a pen, and a prompt with the words: write a fight scene between a sisterhood clan of halfling vampires teamed up with a priest and their vampire enemies to defeat a rogue band of vampire super-beings; be sure to incorporate both martial arts and street fighting tactics, because the bad guys ain't gonna play nice.   

Eeps. I think I’d rather munch on a plate full of creepy crawler slaw. At least then, the only one who will be sick as a result of my stunt is me.

I was just curious, for the other writers out there, what's your Fear Factor episode? Is there any particular kind of scene that makes you curl up inside your shell, afraid to stick your head out? And how do you psyche yourself up to write it without resorting to the amateur “tell don’t show” tactic?

And for the readers, what are some of the best written fight scenes you've ever read? I'd love to have some good pointers for a fight scene I have coming up in my current work in progress. Or maybe I’ll just munch on some grilled crickets and call it a day. ;)

Back It Up!

By Dan Haring

Is there anything worse than pouring your blood, sweat and tears into something you created, only to have it disappear?



Oh, well sure, there's THAT.

But I'm talking about non-life-threatening things.

More specifically, your manuscript. You know, that thing you've been slaving over in the hopes that someday the world will read? What would happen if it got deleted?

I'm sure there would be a fair amount of this.



But that's not going to get your book back, is it?

Trust me, it won't. And you'll just feel ashamed for, A. losing your work and, B. doing the ugly cry.

This actually happened to me with my last post on this blog. I posted it and everything was fine, then I went in to edit it and *poof* it was gone. Luckily I had a backup, and I can't stress how important it is to do the same with your work.

How? You might ask. 

There are plenty of ways, but I'll list a couple that I know about.

When I told Jordan about my problem, she suggested something called Windows Live Writer. I haven't looked into it too much, but it looks like a good option.

But let's say your computer pulls one of these:


Your files are just gone forever, just like Sarah Jessica Parker, right? Not if you're smart.

The first option is the external hard drive. These are great and for like a hundred bucks you can get a 2 terabyte drive.

For those non-techspeak people, 1 terabyte will hold a couple million pages of text files. So grab one of those drives and you should be set for life, even if every book you write is longer than Ulysses.

Unless you accidentally knock the hard drive over.

A friend of mine in animation school had all his files on an external drive and he accidentally kicked it, and he totally did the Dawson cry.

So if you're going to get an external drive, I'd recommend a solid state one. They're more expensive, but also more durable.

But what if you're travelling when your computer spontaneously combusts and you don't have access to your external drive?

There are a number of online options for file backup. I've used MediaFire.com and Dropbox.com. You can get a free account with a couple gigs of storage space or pay some money and get a bigger storage limit. Be warned though. I just got an email from Mediafire saying they might delete some of my files because I hadn't accessed them recently. (It's probably been about a year) I'm not sure, but Dropbox may have a similar time limit.If you're accessing it regularly you should be fine.

But my favorite method is free, easy, and allows me to have access to my document wherever I have internet access. It's called....Gmail.

That's right. My email account. I actually wrote my first book, all 76,000 words of it, in an email that I saved in my drafts. That way I had easy access to it wherever I had internet, and it would have been very hard to delete.

I'm still a little paranoid about losing my work, so on my recent manuscript, which I wrote in Word, in addition to cutting and pasting the text into an email and saving it, I would periodically email the Word document to myself. Easy enough, right? That way my computer could get nuked and I wouldn't have lost a word of my work, because I could just download it from Gmail whenever I wanted. It ensures I don't lose my work, and it keeps my keyboard free from those bitter tears that might otherwise fall.

So that's what works for me. What about you?

Wherein a Shoe has a Soul.

by A.G. Howard

Looking back over some old manuscripts, it hit me how many of my stories have secondary "characters" that are inanimate objects. I started pondering how often writers do this, giving life and breath to objects, maybe without even being aware of it.

Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights is a perfect example, where the house itself becomes a character in the book. Ms. Bronte flawlessly wove personality into the surroundings by using melancholy and unnerving descriptions so that the house and setting emanate actual emotions: anger, hatred and jealousy.

Here's a quote taken from an online essay: “Wuthering Heights ... suffers from a kind of malnutrition: its thorns have become barren, its firs stunted, everything seems to crave for the ‘alms of the sun’ that sustain life.”

Throughout Ms. Bronte's story, the characters fall into despair, madness, and unrequited love: a self-fulfilling prophecy mirroring the home's ugliness and dilapidation. The proper literary term for this is objective correlative.

In one of my historical love stories, there's a pair of 16th century Italian shoes which harbors a gypsy curse and has an amusing yet creepy tendency to move about without a wearer. The heroine is drawn to the shoes, almost to the point of obsession. They hold a mystical power over her, even without her realizing they also hold the secret of her lost past.

Another example is my gothic literary love story, where a flower which embodies a man's spirit becomes an active participant in the intensely emotional relationship between the ghost and the flower's keeper, a young deaf woman.

Even in Splintered, worn-out and mutilated toys play too big of a role to be considered mere objects.

Anytime an "inanimate thing" serves as a game player or mirrors the characters and their arcs, it evolves to more than just a prop. It takes an active role in the plot, a role that without which, the story wouldn't survive. Thus it becomes -- for lack of a better description -- a character. Within the confines of the story, it develops a soul.

What stories have you read where there are objects that could be considered pivotal characters?

The “Twenty Stupid Things” List

Carol Tanzman here.

You’ve heard of The Bucket List. That’s the movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman in which two men go on a road trip with their wish list of things to do before they “kick the bucket.” I’m going to tell you about a different kind of list that I sometimes create.

My “Twenty Stupid Things” List.

In the last post I wrote, I told you I’d talk about a trick you could try if you get stuck writing your story. I heard about this technique only a few years ago and used it the next time I got really stuck, which happened to be when I was writing dancergirl. And then I used it the next time… and the next… well, you get the picture. It goes like this:

Let’s say you’ve written your character, Miranda, into a metaphorical, and literal, corner. The bad guy’s attack dog is well, about to attack, and you can’t figure out how to get her out of the situation. You take out a blank sheet of paper, or start a new document, (I like paper and pen for this one but you can use the computer). You literally title it:

20 STUPID THINGS MIRANDA CAN DO TO GET OUT OF THIS SITUATION

Then you put number one on the page and you write down the first idea you get. NO MATTER HOW STUPID! Because, see, the title says, “Stupid Things.” So you can write:

1. She spits her bubblegum at the dog.

Good. That’s nice and lame and couldn’t possibly work.

2. She reaches into her pocket and all she has is a paper clip and she throws it at the dog.

Also lame. Excellent.

3. She kicks the dog.

Maybe she’s wearing combat boots and she’s a martial artist. Could work but Miranda has on sneakers and likes to draw. She’ll probably end up getting her leg bit. Another stupid idea. Great!

4. She starts to sing the National Anthem and she has a terrible voice and the dog howls and runs away.

Ummm.. lame again. Very good. BUT

5. She starts to sing the National Anthem because she realizes this dog has been trained so that when he hears that particular song he will sit down and salute. Hmmm, that’s actually weird but sort of … interesting.

6. She starts to sing the National Anthem because she knows that the song is a signal for the dog to roll over. That’s not in the story but what if I go back into Chapter Three and add it to the scene when she first meets the bad guy and his dog, (when she didn’t know he was the bad guy,) and she saw the dog do that…

Now you might like this idea. Maybe number five is the one you think is more fun. You’re pretty sure you could make it work, and it would make the story more interesting. You can add that the bad guy was in the military. Or Uncle Fred was in the military and he once told Miranda that he and a bunch of guys trained a group of Dobermans to salute whenever they heard the National Anthem…

You can stop there, keep dreaming on the idea…. or, what I like to do, is KEEP GOING. Just in case…

7. She notices a bottle of perfume on the table next to her. She opens the bottle and tosses it at the dog’s eyes. Lame.

8. She conjures up a piece of meat and tosses it way across the room. Good, except Miranda isn’t Hermione, Harry Potter’s friend, and she doesn’t know magic.

Sometimes, I’ll hit upon an idea I like better at number 11, say, or sometimes, I just can’t stop thinking about number five so I give up at number 8 and excitedly start to figure out how to make number five work.

It doesn’t matter. The point is that by giving yourself permission to come up with as many stupid ideas as you can, an interesting, workable idea usually shows up!

Let me know what you think about this – or if you have any ways to get yourself out of the metaphorical corner of your story. Unlike an old dog who just has to salute at the sound of the National Anthem, I’m always eager to learn new tricks!