Posted by Emilia Plater on YA Highway Apr 26, 2011

Daemon's comment: "I can't deny it."
Call it a sneaky PR move on the interviewee's part, but man, has YA Highway scored an awesome interview today! It's true: not 48 hours after receiving his blood-soaked, smoking letter containing instructions and GPS coordinates, I had the chance to sit down with Daemon Cain: a professional villain of the Young Adult genre. Why? In Daemon's words, to "spread the teachings of the Ultimate Darkness." Not totally sure what that means, but I knew I couldn't pass this opportunity up.

Daemon was reluctant to share much information about himself, like whether he was a demon or a vampire, a mean girl or a futuristic mastermind (though we can guess). But he was eager to spill his deepest thoughts on everything from his worst pet peeves to his favorite fellow villain. Without further ado, here he is: Daemon!

What's one truth about yourself you wish the public would understand better?
Oh anti-Christ, I'm so glad you asked this question. Let me start by saying that I detest this idea that all YA villains are full of nothing but hatred and selfishness and evil. If the public just got to know us better, they'd find that we can be downright multi-faceted sometimes! If you expect me to be mean, that's what you're going to get. But I am highly layered person, you know, I'm not just trying to murder teens all the time...

So you're saying you're... not evil?
No, no. Hold up. I am definitely evil. If I wasn't, I wouldn't be a card-carrying member of the YAVS (YA Villians' Society). All I'm saying is I'm not evil all the time, and I really wish people would appreciate that and not act like I'm some kind of soulless piranha.

You know, in the trilogy I'm working on now, I've been taking my time off from the story to go work at the local animal shelter! But do they show that? No. They only show my insane attempted kidnapping of the main character a chapter later. It's slander, plain and simple.

Okay, I see your point. So as a professional villain, what else annoys you to no end?
Three words: Deux ex machina. I'm this close to achieving my goal, and then BAM! Something or someone swoops in, completely unpredictable, and grabs the main character from my grasp. It's so infuriating! I put all that work in for no payoff! I mean, what the hell?

Also - pretty-boys who call themselves villains because they're a danger to the main character, or whatever, but really they just want to get in her (it's always a her) pants. They're a disgrace to the YAVS, those guys. Announcement: real villains do not glitter.

Hey, I'd be annoyed by those things, too. So what are your thoughts on tragic endings - endings where the villain wins?
They're my ultimate dream. Unfortunately, they only come along about once in a blood-streaked moon. There should be more of them - they're so traumatic and awesome! I heard they depress readers, but honestly, you people just need to suck it up and rejoice in the dawn of a new villainous era.

Ah, yes, we should. Speaking of a villainous era, do you have a personal favorite villain - besides yourself, of course?
I know I'm supposed to say Voldemort here, and yeah, the guy's a legend, but... come on, story-dying at the hand of your own wand? He will never live that down, at least in the social circles I come from.

There's a ton of choices, but personally, I have to say... that Anna Morrison, queen bee girl! From Some Girls Are by Creator Courtney Summers. Dear anti-God, I met Anna at a YAVS conference last month and it was just horrifying. I thought she was going to tell the whole conference about my rash problem during her keynote speech. Instead she just made me get her coffee a bunch of times.

What makes a YA-literature villain different from an adult-literature one?
Well, the most important difference is that we're better. Why? We're more shocking. The fact is, you expect to see villains in the adult world. A bunch of 30-something wizards traversing the land in search of whatever? Of COURSE some dastardly warlock is going to come along and try to vanquish them. They can handle it, being adults.

But teenage wizards-in-training? If a villain comes along, it's like... holy crap, those are kids. I love it when a fan asks me whether I ever feel guilty for going after the small and immature. No way! It adds to the rush, the amazing feeling of evil. What does suck is when the kids vanquish you and it's like... I really need a coffee or something because that is just humiliating.

Final question: if you had no main character to fight, what would you do with your life?
No main character?

Yeah.
I... don't understand.

Like, if it was just you, doing your evil deeds, with no one trying to stop you or bring about your downfall.
What? But... someone has to try to stop me... where's the fun otherwise? I... (trails off)

Okay, good point. It's a lot more fun when you've got an epic battle raging between good and evil. Well, that's all for now, Daemon! Any last words?
I think I need to lie down....

***

Wow! Seems to me like Daemon is a pretty awesome villain. And that was a really fun* interview, even if he did sort of creep me out with his glaring. Who's your favorite YA villain? And what are your thoughts on the state of villainy in YA today?

*Also, fictional (sadly). Hope you enjoyed the silliness!

Hello Fallen Friends,

Yet another year has arrived. More resolutions have been made. So many goals need to be conquered. Are we feeling overwhelmed yet? If not, kudos to you. If you're like me though, you're in that other group. Everything under the roof, hill, sun, and other things is keeping you from finding that precious time to stick with those goals. Never fear, good advice is here.

Okay, so maybe that comes across as somewhat cliched but you get the point. But really, everyone has a full roster these days. Kids, jobs, school, family, trips, parties, bills, etc. etc. We have to strike a balance between those things. I like to call it portion control. It's easy really. Simply sit down and...you got it, relax. If you get all worked up over everything you can and cannot control, you'll burn out. They key to life is simply knowing what to do next...after you take a moment to just NOT think about it all. But someone should write a blurb about finding the right shaped key as well, I think.

Regardless, you can conquer the dreaded list and meet your writing goals and even have time left over to tackle those new year resolutions as well. Take one or two portions each day. Set aside a time for balancing the budget. Make appointments to get your kids or pets checkups done. Then enter them in your trusty buddy calendar (and no, this doesn't have to be a smartphone version). The next day, repeat steps one and two but with the next items on your list. Soon, you'll find that happy medium so very necessary to succeed not only in writing, but also your life in general. And always remember the four vital 'F's to creative success: family, fun, food, and friends!

Yours in Prose,
KaSonndra

Originally posted by Lia Keyes on 4/8/10 via the Scribechat Review at http://scribechat.com/archives/1587#tb.

This week I participated in an engrossing #LitChat discussion of Gothic Romance and an hour just wasn’t enough time to explore all the questions that came up so I thought we’d continue the chat here on #ScribeChat.

Now, lads, before you throw up your arms and run away screaming thinking this is only for the girls, I’ve got to tell you that Gothic Romance isn’t what it sounds like.The ‘romance’ refers to the genre’s genesis as a throwback to the medieval romantic movement, but with a dark twist, and only took off in the late 18th and 19th centuries in England as a genre that combines elements of both horror and romance (as in legends and courtliness).

In this 18th and 19th century re-emergence, Gothic romances were mysteries, moving away from the fantastic and magical realms of the medieval romances and into the realm of the eerie. Often involving the supernatural and heavily tinged with horror, they were frequently set against dark backgrounds of medieval ruins and haunted castles.
Characteristics of the Romantic:

* The Romance is of loftier origin than the novel, approximating poetry.
* Standards are very much those of the epic
* Invests individuals with an absorbing interest, hurries them rapidly through crowding and exacting events in a narrow space of time, requiring unities of plan, purpose and harmony of parts
* Seeks for its adventures among the wild and wonderful, not confining itself to what is known, or even what is probable, grasping instead at the possible.
* Places a character in hitherto untried situations and exercises ingenuity in extricating him from them, describing his feelings and fortunes in the process.

(Adapted from William Gilmore Simm’s prefatory letter to The Yemassee, quoted in Chase, The American Novel and Its Tradition, p. 16)
Characteristics of the Gothic:

* An atmosphere of gloom, terror, or mystery
* Elements of the uncanny (unheimlich) that challenge reality, including mysterious events that cause the protagonist to question the evidence of his or her senses and the presence of seemingly supernatural beings
* An exotic setting isolated in time or space from contemporary life, often a ruined mansion or castle. The building may be associated with past violence and contain hidden doors, subterranean secret passages, concealed staircases, and other such features.
* Events, often violent or macabre, that cannot be hidden or rationalized despite the efforts of the narrator.
* A disturbed or unnatural relation between the orders of things that are usually separate, such as life and death, good and evil, dream life and reality, or rationality and madness.
* A hidden or double reality beneath the surface of what at first appears to be a single narrative.
* An interrupted narrative form that relies on multiple methods—inserted documents, letters, dreams, fragments of the story told by several narrators—to tell the tale.

(Definition supplied by Dr. Donna Campbell at the WMU website)

In many ways, the 19th century version of the genre was a reaction to the Industrial Revolution, the darkness of the settings and the sense of decay reflecting the pessimism many felt about the environmental and lifestyle changes being wrought by global industrialization. It provoked a quest for atmosphere in a world where the machine threatened craftsmanship in its race for homogeneity and mass production.

Yet despite this doom and gloom, as a literary offshoot of the Romantic Movement, Gothic literature also embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness, awe of the sublime, admiration of the grand or heroic, and a quest for atmosphere. In the ruins of gothic buildings were represented the inevitable decay and collapse of human creations. English Gothic writers often associated medieval buildings with what they saw as a dark and terrifying period, characterized by harsh laws enforced by torture, and with mysterious, fantastic, and superstitious rituals.

Today, many people once more feel that we live in a maelstrom of change, that technology is moving faster than we are, and that there’s little time to think about the path we’re on developmentally. So what do we see? A re-emergence of dystopian novels and gothic literature reveals that writers, ever the litmus paper of social change, explore the beast within by exploring beasts on the page. By facing the shadows of decay and mortality in literature, we are more able to appreciate the light of life.

Of course, not all writers are aware of the reasons why they’re drawn to this genre. For some it’s merely a personal preference for the dark and dangerous, for living vicariously on the edge in a way they wouldn’t dare to do in real life.

Explore WMU’s site for a more complete academic definition.

FURTHER INFORMATION:
Prominent features of Gothic fiction include:

Terror (both psychological and physical), mystery, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses and Gothic architecture, castles, darkness, death, decay, doubles, madness, secrets, and hereditary curses.
The stock characters of Gothic fiction include:

Tyrants, villains, bandits, maniacs, Byronic heroes, persecuted maidens, femmes fatales, monks, nuns, madwomen, magicians, vampires, werewolves, monsters, demons, angels, fallen angels, revenants, ghosts, perambulating skeletons, the Wandering Jew and the Devil himself.
Examples of Early Gothic Romantic Literature:

* The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (1764)
* Glenarvon by Lady Caroline Lamb (1816)
* Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)
* The Vampyre by John William Polidori (1819)
* Melmoth the Wanderer by Charles Maturin (1820)

Victorian Gothic Literature:

* The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo (1831)
* The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe (1839)
* Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (1847)
* Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (1847)
* The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens (1870)
* Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)
* The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891)
* Trilby by George du Maurier (1894)
* The Turn of the Screw Henry James (1898)
* Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897).

Contemporary Gothic Literature:

* The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux (1910)
* The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft (1926)
* Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938)
* Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote (1948)
* “The Lottery“ by Shirley Jackson (1951)
* Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake (1946–1959)
* I am Legend by Richard Matheson (1954)
* A Stir of Echoes by Richard Matheson (1958)
* The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)
* We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (1963)
* Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin (1967)
* Last Summer by Evan Hunter (1968)
* Don’t Look Now by Daphne du Maurier (1970)
* The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin (1972)
* The Bloody Chamber (1974) By Angela Carter
* The Chocolate War (1974) By Robert Cormier
* Salem’s Lot (1975) by Stephen King
* Julia (1975) by Peter Straub
* Interview with the Vampire (1976) by Anne Rice
* The House Next Door (1976) by Anne Rivers Siddons
* The Shining (1977) by Stephen King
* Bellefleur (1980) by Joyce Carol Oates
* The Elementals (1981) by Michael McDowell
* The Keep (1981) by F. Paul Wilson
* The Woman in Black (1983) by Susan Hill
* The Secret History (1992) by Donna Tartt
* My Heart Laid Bare (1998) by Joyce Carol Oates
* The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red (2002) by Ridley Pearson and Stephen King
* The Little Friend (2002) by Donna Tartt
* Shutter Island (2003) by Dennis Lehane
* Shades of Grey: A Gaslight Gothic Mystery by Beverly Conner (2004)
* Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart (2006)
* The Thirteenth Tale (2006) by Diane Setterfield
* Nachtstürm Castle: A Gothic Austen Novel (Girlebooks Contemporary) by Emily C.A. Snyder (2009)

Contemporary Gothic Young Adult Literature:

* The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier (1974)
* Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer (2009)

Satire of the genre:

* The Heroine by Eaton Stannard Barrett (1813)
* Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (1817)
* Nightmare Abbey by Thomas Love Peacock (1818)
* The Ingoldsby Legends by Thomas Ingoldsby (1840)


You can follow Lia Keyes on twitter or stop by her Scribechat Review website to sign up for participation in a weekly chat on Thursdays from 6-7pm.

Yours in Prose,
KaSonndra

Hmm. The infamous which kind of animal would you be question. Tonight I'd choose the skunk. And why would I choose such a lonely, dejected, stinking, low-down, and dirty individual animal to represent my desires right now? Because the skunk is the anti-doppelganger to the social butterfly. Type A personalities, well we can be overrated. Sometimes we even have type B stuffed at the bottom, somewhere near where the feet touch the ground. So it'd be nice to have a day of repelling everything for once. Bring on the black and whites!!

Kay

Posted by Author Megan Curd at http://www.megancurd.com
Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 4:12PM

A Twitter Guide (According to me...Which shouldn't count for much)

Ah, Twitter. The social media outlet that can excite some, and incite others to hide under a rock in the fetal position. Whatever emotion it brings out in you, Twitter is definitely one thing: a way to connect to others and learn more about your niche.

Whether or not you like it, Twitter is a great way to meet new people and to get your name out there. In the publishing industry, it seems like many people think that once the book is sold, that's all an author does. Not so. We're pretty much in charge of our publicity, save for the few lucky souls who get the 7 figure deals and what not. While I hope everyone has the chance to get that (dude, who am I kidding? I'm doing my 7-figure dance as we speak. hah.), we need to be realistic and understand that much of our publicising comes from US. Therefore, Twitter becomes a more important tool. ::cue the groans from anti-social media-ists...::

So how do you manage the wild world of Twitter? I'll admit, it's a tough thing to get ahold of. I've been on Twitter for a little over a year, and just now learning how to navigate the waters. There are SO MANY great people on Twitter it's unreal, it's just tapping into those great minds sometimes can be hard when you're inundated with spammers. Sometimes you'll want to quit. I promise you this, though, if you keep at it, you'll meet some WONDERFUL people and learn a lot along the way. These are the suggestions I can give from my experience:

1.) Don't overtweet about yourself. Your work will sell itself if you are a good Tweep. Encourage and promote others. Overtweeting about yourself only frustrates other Tweeters...and it's kinda boring. Spice it up a bit! :)

2.) Get into groups. Find hashtags that you connect with. If you're new to twitter, hashtags are like continuously running chatrooms. I follow #yalitchat, #amwriting, #wipfire and #querychat, for example. You'll meet people in the same boat as you, connect with others, and hopefully learn some new things! Hashtags will broaden your Twitter horizons.

3.) Utilize #WW and #FF. #WW and #FF are golden opportunities to meet new people and again, broaden your Twitter horizons. WW = Writer Wednesday. This is when people get to give virtual "high fives" to their followers who are writers, showcasing others and encouraging new follows. People appreciate the #WW and will reciprocate. It's a win-win. #FF = Follow Friday. Same deal, just a different day. If you're not a writer, #FF works a little better since it's more of a free-for-all. Either way, showcase your followers, give them high fives for following, and give someone else a new person to follow! It's paying it forward. Karma, baby...make it work for you. :)

4.) Retweet good tweets. There's a RT (Retweet) button for a reason...like something that someone said? RT it! Give it to your followers! Maybe they'll like it too, and pass it along as well. When you're RT'ing and sharing the love, others see that, and appreciate it. Maybe some of your tweets will get RT'ed.

5.) Follow leading tweeps in the industry. How are you going to learn about the industry if you're not following the leaders IN the industry? Use their expertise to further your own. :)

FINALLY, and MOST IMPORTANTLY, BE A FRIEND! I am so thankful for the Twitter friends I've made. I have met some truly amazing people on Twitter, people that otherwise I wouldn't know. Georgia McBride (@Georgia_McBride) was the first Twitter friend I made. She took me under her wing, showed me the ropes, and has become one of the truest, kindest friends I could have asked for. She's definitely an amazing woman, and you'll want to read her book, Praefatio, when it comes out. I promise. Italia Trent (@ItaliaTrent) actually scared me when I first met her because I thought she was *too* nice. As if there were such a thing!! I'm so glad that Italia and I met, because she's made of awesome. Her book is incredible. She's introduced me to some amazing people and she is SUCH a wonderful friend! Love this woman. :) Hope Collier (@HopeCollier) is one of the wonderful people that Italia introduced me to, which has been awesome. Hope is literally my twin. She is an awesome writer and she cracks me up! I actuall had the opportunity to meet Hope in Chicago this past weekend, which was an absolute blast. Meeting a Twend like her was great! Can't wait to play with her again. :)

There are so many people that I've met and come to appreciate. I can't even begin to name them all, but I'll include some of my closest twends below for your perusal. You can't go wrong following any of them, and I encourage you to branch out and meet some amazing people yourself! Twitter is big, but it's still a small world. You may just find some great beta buddies and lifelong friends. :)

Tweeps to Follow:
@Jesterhay
@MindyRuiz
@Kailmeyra
@Jenn_Bookcrazy
@EisleyJacobs
@Spookypastor
@CA_Marshall

And, if you ever get bored, tweet me! :) I promise I won't bite. :) Hope this helped, have a wonderful Wednesday.


You can visit Megan's site at http://www.megancurd.com. She's the author of the upcoming Bridger series. Plus, she's a really cool person.

Yours in Prose,
KaSonndra Leigh

Posted in the Women on Writing Blog
by Susan Sundwall

Don’t you wish you could crawl inside the head of a great young adult fiction writer like say, Patricia Reilly Giff, Bruce Coville or Lois Lowry? What the heck are they thinking when they start a book? Perhaps they’re able to tap into an ‘inner teen’ that appears with regularity to deliver the next sure-fire YA best seller. Maybe they disguise themselves as teenagers, hang out in malls and gather stories by osmosis. Yeah, right. My guess is they work hard at whatever idea presents itself and then run it to ground until it’s wholly a story.

There are many and varied gifts these writers possess, but one thing they all have in common is—that slippery eel of the writing world—voice.

“Crude, tentative, tender, bold, sarcastic or comical, each has a place in the young adult genre.”

Find It!

Just as you have your own particular speaking voice, you also have a “voice” that comes across in your writing. The idea you have in your head comes out in a string of words onto paper. How those words are placed in relation to each other (syntax) and what words you choose (diction) are the mechanisms that reveal your unique voice. Take a look at these two sentences:

“Aw, crud,” said Lester. He turned quickly to see if anyone was looking. If he ran now, nobody would know who spilled the glue.
Uh oh, Lester thought. Now what? Maybe he should walk away quickly, and nobody would notice the spilled glue for a while.
Each sentence presents the same scenario but how the character handles it is shown in the words used to convey his thoughts, and we get two different pictures of this guy Lester.

The tone or “voice” is crude in the first sentence with the character saying, “Aw crud.” Our mental shot of him might be one of a schoolyard bully or the terror of the back alley brawl. The number two voice is more tentative, shown by using words like “uh oh” and “maybe”. This Lester could be the class geek who’s going to try to get away with something for once. Both tones will translate into a different sort of voice for your reader. My own choice would be the second voice because my crude side wouldn’t make for very good reading. Also, the second Lester lends himself more to a humor angle, and I love humor.

So what do you want your voice to be? Crude, tentative, tender, bold, sarcastic or comical, each has a place in the young adult genre. Each will appeal to a different sub-group within the larger definition of young adult. Some will like a loud, brash, fast paced story like Feed by M.T. Anderson. This group might consist of teenage boys who get into the irony of a future world where only a few words of “teen speak” are used to describe everything.

Another, and perhaps younger group, will prefer the melodramatic voice that Lemony Snicket uses in A Series of Unfortunate Events. Here, the melodrama has a sort of “in your face” style which we see even in the first sentence of the first book:

“If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book.”

Ugh. Can you imagine the author, handkerchief dangling from the hand at his forehead, writing these foreboding words with the other, as Egor brings him his evening sherry? What a picture. No matter what sort of story you write, you will still do it in your own recognizable voice—eventually.


http://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/14-FE-SusanSundwall.html

An author's life is a difficult one. But now I see a successful author's life can be almost an impossible one. Too much romance and there's instant comparison to Twilight. Too little romance and we say the story is depressing. Too much presto magic and we say the story's unrealistic. Where is the happy medium? These observations are what led me to post this blurb about the latest installment of the Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay.

The author set out to accomplish what she intended to do in the series. Period. There's no fluff. No over the top romance. No gimmicks. No holds barred. We all knew when we opened the book that what we were about to experience wouldn't be nice or gushy. This isn't romance, fantasy, or zombie land. The people are real. Circumstances resulting from a world at war are perhaps too realistic. Maybe that's why so many feel as if Collins failed her readers. I do not feel that way. As I plowed through the book, I didn't skim as I have done so many novels these days. I took my time. As a person who has not lost a loved one to war, but know plenty of people who have, I feel I've pretty much lived in a bubble compared to what the characters experienced in this novel. By the end, I was...enlightened.

Having read all three novels, I thought this one was the saddest, but also the most true to purpose one of the series. Maybe I'm alone in this thinking, but I thought Katniss' love for Peeta matured in this novel more than the other two. True, they were apart and not slobbering all over each other every other sentence. But isn't that what wives of soldiers at war experience all the time? Love for someone thousands of miles away? Someone they have to watch over a video screen, or even worse, see tortured by the enemy while they can do nothing but watch? Remember, love is emotional as well as physical. So in a sense, the author succeeded in portraying the perils of love in war. The romance is still there. You just have to be willing to see how it affects Katniss in an entirely original light.

I like that Collins didn't leave dangly questions carried over from the last novels. Even small things were answered. And for a meticulous reader like me, that means more than an ending cooked up to satisfy...well, me. Even though I found myself sitting at work teary eyed. Was a bit upset the meat of a good subplot happened in the epilogue. And hope that someday, we might get to see a companion novel that details the years in between the ending and epilogue, I'm still satisfied. Maybe it didn't end the way we wanted it to. But perhaps it ended in a way we needed to see.


Yours in Prose
KaSonndra

I can remember very clearly the professor responsible for the direction my life took. For sake of privacy, I'll call him Prof. Green. He was my English professor. We'd been assigned to write a paper describing a surreal moment in life. Both giddy and excited about my first collegiate task, I plowed through the assignment. We turned our papers in to him the next day. I was all smiles. Reviewed the assignment in class. To my horrors, I quickly discovered I'd done the paper wrong. BUT! The professor was so impressed by my work that he gave me an A anyway. Encouraged me to continue writing. Even though I felt pretty sucky about my skills. Nominated me for an award. And over a decade later, that same paper became the inspiration for my first novel. So whenever I feel like I truly suck and no one will ever buy my writing, I think of Prof. Green. Sometimes the tiniest bit of inspiration can last a lifetime.

Kay

Boy can I answer this question with a resounding YES! I can remember the day clearly. I was 14 and at a Junior Encampment with my Girl Scout troop. We'd chosen a gorgeous lake area where we had the little sunfish sail boats as our entertainment. One condition though: swim test before hopping in the water. Needless to say, I wasn't the very best swimmer, even at 14 (yikes! right?). And neither was my partner. She passed the swim test. I failed. Did that stop me? Heck no! We snuck me onto one of the boats. Keeping a long story short, we lost control of the boat. I fell in. Thankfully, I was smart enough to have worn my lifejacket, but I still panicked and fought against it. So I kept sinking and losing my breath. Lake must've been haunted because I saw all kinds of white 'things' down in the water. All I kept thinking was I wouldn't see my little dog snowball again because I'd been stupid. But the Girl Scouts come prepared for kids who break rules. The lifeguard pulled me out of the haunted lake. Girls laughed at me all weekend. That experience was even an inspiration for a scene in the novel I wrote. Lesson learned: If you fall in a lake and don't know how to swim, let the freakin' life jacket do its job!!!

Yours in Prose
KayLeigh

Posted by Kristin Briana Otts Jul 27, 2010

When I first started writing, simplicity was a concept I didn't really get. I assumed that if you were drafting a book, your job was to pack twists and subplots and side characters into that baby until your reader's head spun. I thought that your job was to infuse your story with obscure metaphors that caused betas to contemplate the meaning of life and the universe and everything.

Well, I was wrong.

Because when I started doing revisions for my agent, one of the first comments she had was, "We need to simplify."

I'm pretty sure I felt something short-circuit in my brain.

"What do you mean, simplify? I spent two years outlining this book and nailing down every detail of the world and creating character charts - it's not supposed to be simple. It's supposed to be deep and multi-faceted and full of symbolism!"

And this is the point when I realized why my agent was my agent and I was not. Because throughout these revisions, I began to understand that a simple storyline does not take away from the story itself.

Here's an example: I recently read a book that I really, really liked. It had wonderful characters and a gorgeous setting and a lot of awesome, intricate mythology. But after a certain point in the novel, I started to get confused. Suddenly the mythology was too intricate. There were too many characters. The gorgeous setting was getting lost under layers of excessive description. It was all just...too much. The book was rich and complicated, but the complexity took away from the heart of the story.

You can cut your character's three-page backstory without ruining the character. You can simplify the world-building without making the world crumble. You can limit yourself to a few lines of description without detracting from the beautiful setting.



http://www.yahighway.com/2010/07/keep-it-simple-storyteller.html