Category: Writing

My thoughts on the writing process.

Posted in Writing, Writing: Help

Character Voice and First Person Point of View

Posted on by Amy McNulty

I’m a fan of first person narrative. I love reading it, and I love writing it, and thankfully it’s pretty common in my favorite genre (YA). There’s something so immediate about first person narrative that lets you slip into a character’s head better than third person, to picture the action from his or her point of view. Through one character’s eyes, you go on an adventure you’d probably never get to experience, you get romanced (sometimes~) and, in YA at least, are free to regress to a younger age when you were just getting used to the unfairness of the world (and overreacting to it), and you viewed things through a not-yet-adult-no-longer-a-child point of view.

I love writing when first person voice is unreliable especially. As the writer, you know your character isn’t seeing things as they truly are, but it’s fine manipulating the reader into seeing things from the skewed point of view, only to turn it on its head later.

My only problem as a writer of first person perhaps? Learning to give each narrative voice its own flavor. So far I have one completed manuscript in first person and two works in progress in first person—the newest will actually have four different first persons at that. I know, I’m crazy, but that’s the story I want to tell. (My other two works in progress are in third person and I’ve yet to become as attached to them, perhaps because I don’t feel as immersed in them.) I’ve seen multiple points of view first person done well (among them, one I’ve beta read and hope you all see someday), and I think I can come up with some strategies for trying to make each voice different. (We’ll see if others agree I’ve done a decent job distinguishing them, since I’ve yet to share more than one first person narrative with a single human being… My cat, though, she’s seen them while getting fur all over my laptop screen.):

  • Try to figure out who the narrator is before you start writing. What makes him or her different from the other characters you’ve written before? What are their strengths, and what are their weaknesses?
  • How would you write dialogue for this character? Chances are, you “get inside the heads” of dozens of characters all the time anyway when they speak to your narrator. This time you just have to think of how the new character would describe everything unfolding in the room.
  • How are they unreliable? Everyone is, to a certain extent. Figure out the “truth” of the scene, and then figure out how the character would interpret that truth. How would they describe a scene in a different way than the last character from whose point of view you wrote?
  • Don’t go overboard with the voice differences. Having one character drop the “g” off of “ings” seems like a good idea to remind the reader that this is Character B speaking, not Character A, but it’s really just distracting. If Character A is serious and Character B takes everything as a joke, there are ways to express that better than speech differences, like smarmy commentary.

What other tips and strategies do you have for writing different first person points of views? Share them with me!

Posted in News, Writing

My Friend’s Cover Reveal and Publication Date!

Posted on by Amy McNulty

A few months ago, you may remember that I posted about my friend’s sale of her debut novel, The Sight Seer. Today she revealed the publication date–June 14–and the gorgeous cover!

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The Sight Seer is a YA paranormal thriller with action, humor, romance and everything you look for in a gripping read! It’ll be available through Amazon in both paperback and Kindle book, so mark your calendars. I’ll post links when it’s available for sale.

Also, check back for news about a special event I’m holding here at this blog in honor of her book birthday next month!

Posted in Geek Out, Reading, Writing

The Fanfiction in My Head

Posted on by Amy McNulty

I read a tumblr post recently (sorry, lost the link!) in which someone asked a professor what he (she?) thought of fanfiction. The overall point seemed to be “write what you enjoy, and actually, all writing is fanfiction to a degree and has been for hundreds and hundreds of years.” The professor also said something about how before this stress on originality (and even then, how 100% original can we be?), readers really only wanted what was essentially fanfiction. A writer would take something like a King Arthur tale, for example, and make it even better than ever before.

In any case, the post got me thinking about fanfiction and my own experiences with it. I actually have never read much of it (for one, the best source for it is the Internet and I don’t like staring at a computer screen to read text for long, long periods if it can be helped), but I did write some when I was pre-teen and early teen. One was a relatively short pure Mary Sue about a “Sailor Universe” in the realm of Sailor Moon who had ALL of the senshi’s powers (before I knew about Sailor Cosmos, by the way). Another was a somewhat more original seven-chapter series about Genbu no Miko, a prequel to Fushigi Yuugi. In the original manga and anime, Watase hinted at a girl who had been the Genbu priestess in the past, but she hadn’t yet fully developed the story, so I took her hints and spun my own tale. Years later, Watase did her own version, which of course was infinitely better than mine.

They’re actually still on the Internet under a pseudonym (yes, we had Internet when I was that young, ha, although it looked a whoooole lot different), if you tinker around with the way back machine, but I’m not going to link you to it. Geh! I just visited the page and found another short fanfiction I’d forgotten all about: Usagi from Sailor Moon wishing she could leave Mamoru for Seiya. Too bad for Chibiusa, eh?

But then I was thinking, what other writing did I do back then? It may not have been fanfiction, but it was inspired by my love for something at the time. I read The Chronicles of Prydain, and I was writing my own (unintentionally hilarious!) attempt at high fantasy. I saw and read Centennial, and all of sudden I was writing a Western historical. And it sometimes still happens today. I got back into a Regency and Victorian era kick recently (not that I ever stopped liking them), and an idea for a Regency historical started kicking around in my head.

Perhaps most embarrassingly of all to admit, but ever since I could remember, I’ve “performed” (?) fanfiction in my head. Not as much these days since I have less trouble hitting the hay, but when I was younger, it’d take me quite a while to fall asleep after I went to bed. If sleep wasn’t happening, I imagined whatever book/movie/show/comic/anime was new to me or a favorite thing at the time, only with… Me. Basically, with a Mary Sue. And the very worst kind of Mary Sue, who has greater powers than the other X-Men, for example (a favorite “power” to give my Sue, as you can see from the Sailor Universe thing above, is having EVERYONE else’s powers, ha, like a single being wouldn’t like explode with the sheer force), and who’s befriended by all of her favorite characters. Now that I know what a Mary Sue is (I did start doing this in elementary school), it’s extremely mortifying to admit that that entertained me, but I guess it entertains a lot of people. The term exists for a reason, right?

That said, short of my young days of writing those few fanfiction, I don’t pretend that a Mary Sue I come up with would entertain anyone else. As a reader, I would hate to read about a perfect, deus-ex-machina character. (Not that I haven’t come across a few…) In fact, even in the fanfiction in my head, I prefer drama to everything magically going the Mary Sue’s way. There’s something about arguments, misunderstandings, obstacles and characters learning to improve themselves along the way that perfect Mary Sues just don’t hold a candle to.

Then again, apparently people are entertained by fanfiction and Mary Sues. I’m not even talking about the tons of free fanfiction available online to those who seek it—read what you love, and enjoy the well written stuff out there. But I just love informing the random women I come across who love a certain extremely insane-selling erotic book series how it’s a Twilight fanfiction. These types of women don’t usually know what fanfiction is, but once I explain the Twilight parallels (and how the author originally uploaded it for free with the Twilight characters’ names in tact and basically just did a search-and-replace with new names for publication)*, they start understanding: they love fanfiction! They love erotic fanfiction at that. And for them, that’s okay. Apparently I love fanfiction in my head, so who am I to judge? (Just maybe, the next fanfiction to get published could have a little better character development and prose? ಠ_ಠ)

*How do I know so much about these books? No, I haven’t read them, but I have read samples and articles explaining the original Twilight connection. That’s my story (but it’s truel!) and I’m sticking to it.

Posted in Reading, Writing

The Reading and Writing Never Ends

Posted on by Amy McNulty

I don’t remember exactly what J.K. Rowling interview I saw (or read, which would be more appropriate to this post, but I do think it was something I saw), but I remember her talking about how she can never stop reading, even if she has to read the ingredients in a bottle of shampoo when in someone else’s bathroom. It clicked with me because I’m much the same. All day, every day, I read and write and live in a world of words bouncing silently around in my head. I think it must be much the same for other writers.

I work as a writer, and I prefer communicating with my clients (or with most anyone) by email, so I’ve never actually spoken with a number of clients who’ve offered me work, even those who’ve offered me work for years. I’m better at communicating my ideas in writing, and it was my strong suit in school. (And I’m grateful for the wonderful teachers in high school and college who encouraged me and helped me grow as a writer!)

I’m introverted (which is NOT the same as lonely, I enjoy solitude)—always have been—and besides my boyfriend and family, I don’t do much with friends. I do, however, have a wide network of dear friends to whom I once wrote handwritten letters. (I still do write to many of them by hand, but not anywhere near as often.) I’ve had pen pals since I was 7 years old! The Internet has made it easier to keep in touch with most of them online these days more often than not, but rarely a day goes by where I don’t check in with a number of them. And I keep in touch with school friends online, too. I almost feel like we’re reading each other’s minds. All of this communication happening thanks to words you never speak aloud. Kind of trippy in a way!

As for reading, well, most of the distractions on the Internet I enjoy consist of reading rather than watching videos. (Not that I never watch videos!) It’s always been easier for me to understand and learn something written down than via a visual or audio lecture about the topic for some reason. At breakfast and when I step away from the computer for lunch and I’m alone (and sometimes even when not), I read the newspaper or a catalog or anything within reach, whether I actually care about the topic or not. People sometimes lecture me for reading while eating, and I respond with a line that connected with me from the Steam Detectives manga a decade or more ago: “I’m not reading while eating. I’m eating while reading.”

This habit means you would expect me to finish more books in a timely manner, but it is rare for me to read for pleasure for long periods at a time other than right before bed. And sometimes even then, I prefer gaming.

I do watch TV and I love going to the cinema, but I also watch a lot of foreign language shows (mostly anime), so even then, I’m still reading thanks to subtitles. I think the only other times when I’m not reading or writing is when driving, doing chores, showering (baths are a great place to read, though!), exercising, eating with others (and even then, not always) and sleeping. I can’t stand to be caught without something to occupy my mind for more than a few moments if it can be helped. If I’m leaving the house and expecting even a minute of downtime, I bring a book or newspaper with me.

Are you a non-stop reader and writer? Do you think this helps you improve your writing?

Posted in Writing

Your Writing Accessories

Posted on by Amy McNulty

You’ve set aside a block of time in order to write. You’ve got your fingers poised over the keyboard (or piece of paper with pen in hand) and you’re ready for the words to start flowing. So what are the must-have accessories with which you surround yourself? For me, these include:

  • A mug of hot tea (or if it’s really warm out, a glass of iced tea will do)
  • A bottle of water (you can never be too hydrated)
  • A cozy blanket (but if it’s really hot, probably a blowing fan instead)
  • A pile of pillows
  • A tube of lip balm so I don’t have to get up every twenty minutes to apply it
  • Hand cream. I wash my hands a lot.
  • Tissues and a trash can (TMI? I blow my nose a lot even without colds or allergies!)
  • A wrist support strap, for those times every few months when too much typing makes me my wrist start hurting
  • My phone, in case the outside world needs to get in touch (landline phone, so there are no fancy cell phone gimmicks to distract me—the Internet’s enough for that already)
  • A flash drive to back up the session’s work
  • A cat. But only if she feels like visiting.

At one time I might have said a thesaurus or dictionary, but since I type all of my writing from the get-go, Word’s built-in function or the Internet can do the job for any word look-ups and research.

What are your must-have writing accessories?

Posted in Writing

Writing vs. Editing: Which Do You Prefer?

Posted on by Amy McNulty

I’ve been neglecting this blog the past couple of months, so I apologize for the delay in updates! Post holidays, I had a lot of work projects, but I managed to fit in writing and editing for my own creative projects, too, which inspired the topic for this post:

Do you prefer writing the first draft or editing it later?

I’ve heard people on both sides of the fence. I love my wonderfully inspired moments when I’m first drafting a project, but those aren’t as frequent as I’d like, and most days I only write a very little. When I’m drafting, sometimes the task ahead of me can seem gargantuan, which can be a bit overwhelming. So unless I’m struck by that “magic” where I pump out thousands of words in a writing session instead of hundreds, I prefer editing.

Strangely, editing can be just as gargantuan a task as drafting—perhaps more so—but it doesn’t feel that way to me when I’m working. I have hundreds of pages of text to work with, to cut and slash and move around. And yes, to add to, but for some reason, even adding an entire chapter or two (or ten!) doesn’t seem so bad when I think, “Well, I’ve still got hundreds of pages here already!”

Editing never seems to end, really! (At least perhaps until it’s finally locked in and printed.) But it doesn’t seem too difficult a task because you’ve spent so much time in your world by the time you’re on draft two or five that you feel like it’s just a matter of fixing this or that, rather than scrapping everything and starting over completely.

…Which I hope I don’t have to do with one of my WIPs that seems profoundly broken, even though I’m in the last chapter or two. Sadly, editing isn’t always magic enough to fix things.

But in my work, I tend to prefer editing to writing, too, and I enjoyed my time as a writing tutor helping people improve their essays. That’s another reason I love beta reading, too!

Posted in Writing

Was I Here or Was I There? Tricky Narration

Posted on by Amy McNulty

Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of beta reading a friend’s latest manuscript.I’ve done this in the past with her works, but this time she thought to ask, “Why do you keep changing my ‘here’s”to ‘there’s, my ‘this’es to ‘that’s, my ‘last night’s to ‘the previous night’ or ‘the night before’?” We’re talking in her first-person past-tense narration, by the way. I leave them alone in dialogue or in internal monologue, and I would have left them alone in present-tense narration.

But why do I change present-tense words to the past tense? Especially since, as I’ve been doing some editing of some of my own work lately, I still find instances of ‘here,’ ‘this,’ ‘now’ and the like in my own narration? (Which I then promptly change, but still, when I originally wrote them, they must have seemed natural to me!) And we both have found examples of the present tense in past tense narration in published works. She found one that had both “this” and “that” in the same sentence and it didn’t make much sense to me!

But that’s just it–I guess I change these words because they don’t make sense to me. I know that narration isn’t supposed to be a literal representation of the character talking about what happened in the past. (Who speaks in novel form, for one?) But that’s how I picture it. The character sitting with you now, in your living room, for example, talking about things that happened to them last week, last month or years ago, somewhere else. To me, if the narrator says “here” in the narration, she’s talking about your living room then. If she says “last night,” she’s talking about the night before you’re currently reading, not the night before action that took place days, weeks, months, years before.

My friend says she pictures the narrator like “cataloging” the events in real time, so she’s still talking about the past, but it’s just happened. She’s still wherever “here” is, she’s still one day away from “last night,” she’s just talking play-by-play as things happen, only in the past tense. So in other words, where my friend would write something like:

This key in my hand was how I was going to get out of here.

I’d prefer:

That key in my hand was how I was going to get out of there.

And if I wanted some immediate thought with “here” and “this,” I’d change it to internal monologue. Of course, this is editor-me speaking. Writer-me sometimes forgets that and I don’t catch it for a long time. And other readers don’t change it, either; it’s not necessarily “incorrect,” it just sounds weird to me!

Have you noticed the changes in tense in your writing or in published works? Do you prefer one style over the other, or haven’t you thought about it before?

 

Posted in Writing

NaNoWriMo!

Posted on by Amy McNulty

So November is National Novel Writing Month and I imagine that a lot of you who read this blog are lost in worlds of your own creation, aiming to have at least 50,000 words on the page (or the screen) by the end of month. I’d love to hear about any stories you’re working on! Share a link to your NaNoWriMo profile if you like.

I’m also curious to hear about NaNoWriMo success stories. Who’s reached the word count goal in the past? Did you go on to finish the novel? Did you query, publish or self-publish or move on to a new work? (Or both?)

I’m asking a lot of questions and would like to share my own NaNoWriMo experience, but I don’t have a proper tale to tell! I’ve never officially participated in NaNoWriMo. This year I’m too busy with work writing and I’m juggling three WIPs (one YA, one MG and one “classified” short project) and don’t want to start yet another new work.

In the past, though, I sort of participated twice–I’m thinking 2007 and 2009 (but don’t quote me on that). I didn’t think I could officially participate because you’re supposed to write something brand new, if I understand correctly, and I was in the midst of my never-ending first draft for a YA book (120,000 words in the end and still not half way finished, ha) that took me nine years to finally abandon once and for all, after I mined the very best 5000 words or so and melded it into my first completed novel. So both of my unofficial NaNoWriMo experiences I worked on that manuscript, only I didn’t follow the rules in another way: I wasn’t aiming for 50,000 words. I was just determined to write half an hour a day at minimum in honor of the occasion, and that’s what I did. I even kept that up for some time into December.

I did also have similar experiences earlier this year. For one, I wrote 58,000 words in nine days early in the year when I had the inspiration for what would become my first completed draft of a book. In August of this year, I eked out almost another 50,000 words on a WIP because I had less work than usual. This time, it took me the whole month, and not every day of writing went smoothly.

And of course, I write tens or even hundreds of thousands of words each month for work, but that’s not quite the same!

Posted in Writing

Handwriting or Typing?

Posted on by Amy McNulty

Do you write your first drafts by hand or on a computer? (Or by typewriter? Who knows, maybe some nostaligic people still use those!)

This question seems less and less relevant in the digital age, but I’m still surprised to hear about authors who prefer to handwrite their works, at least initially. I’m so used to my computer that it just seems easier for me to type my ideas out, and I type pretty quickly, too, although not via the proper Mavis Beacon-approved method. (At some point that method, taught to me in elementary school on an old 1980s Mac, morphed into a three-fingers-on-each hand thing that I’ve used ever since.) Also, from years of school, I’ve learned that my taking notes by hand in a hurry amounts to chicken scratch. I’m not sure the method of handwriting my manuscripts would be able to keep up with the pace at which my brain comes up with the words on a good writing day–sometimes even typing is too slow.

That said, I tried it once a few years ago. (When I was really young, I wrote stories in notebooks all the time before I typed them up, but I wonder if that was more because of a limited access to computers.) By the time I scratched out half the words on the page, I knew I wasn’t getting anywhere, and back to the computer I went.

I do, however, handwrite letters to pen pals. Yes, old fashioned snail-mail pen pals; I started pen palling when I was 7 and have never fully stopped, although I admit my letters are far less frequent these days and I keep in touch with a large number of my pen pals online rather than by snail mail. There’s something fun about receiving handwritten notes from a friend across the country or the globe, and I wonder if this tangibleness is part of the appeal for authors who write their works by hand.

Or maybe it’s about being better able to shut out distractions and not having to deal with the headache of staring at a screen for hours on end. I’m definitely not a fan of either of those downsizes to typing.

Do any of you prefer to handwrite? Do you know why? Or do you prefer typing first like me?

Posted in Writing

Multi-Person Writing Projects

Posted on by Amy McNulty

There’s much to be said about working on a writing project by yourself. When you’re tackling the first draft of a project, it’s all your own. Of course, if all goes well, you’ll have multiple readers and professionals down the line giving you input so you can shape the story or poem into the best possible version of your vision… But what about projects that you tackle with other writers right from the start?

I haven’t done it too often, but one of my favorite creative writing exercises is where one writer writers one sentence, another writer writes the next, building off that first sentence, and so on and so on. I’ve participated, but I actually haven’t seen any finished products.

I also love alternatively writing with a friend. I’ve written a comic series script with one of my friends and I’ve read a work in progress she writes as letters from one character to another with another writer. It’s a really fun, inspiring way to write. Can’t think of where a story goes next? Leave your part on a cliffhanger and let your co-writer figure out what comes next!

In honor of multi-person writing projects, I’ll go ahead and write the first line to a short piece of fiction. The first commenter can write the next line, and so on! (I apologize if my delay in approving comments gets things out of whack, but it’s all in fun.)

“If Pepper had to explain the origin of her name to one more stranger one more time, she was going to have to start carrying pepper spray with her wherever she went.”