©Stina Lindenblatt
I’m discussing the big-scene payoff today at Adventures in YA & Children’s Publishing (one of my favorite blogs).
Next Monday will be my last post of the month. Due to spring break, I’ll be away from the blogosphere until April 1st.
Juxtaposition involves placing objects close together for a contrasting effect. For example: weathered/new, rough/smooth, dark/light. It’s used a lot in photography, and is a great technique for heightening the emotion within a scene of your story.
For example, in my WIP, one scene takes place in the high school hallway on Valentine’s Day. The place is decorated with red and white balloons to symbolize the joyous occasion (for some teens, I guess). As my protagonist and her potential love interest approach his locker (the meaning of the day not lost on them), she notices the principal and a cop standing next to it.
All hell breaks loose and the guy is arrested, further causing my protagonist to question a few things regarding their relationship. I’ve juxtaposed a joyous event with a negative one.
Now, I could have written the same scene, but instead of placing it in the hallway on Valentine’s Day, it could have taken place outside (on a regular school day). In the rain. The protagonist is already grumpy due to the weather. This is your standard cliché setting: bad weather foreshadowing negative event.
Which one do you think will stick out in your reader’s mind? Which one will have the greatest emotional impact?
(I didn't take this photo.)
Are you ready to get your butt ready for bikini season manuscript in peak shape for querying?
Are you ready to sweat and feel the burn?
Then I have the workout for you. It’s guaranteed* to whip your butt manuscript into shape and leave agents drooling. And a drooling agent = The Call.
First, you’re going to need some equipment:
• Donald Maass’s Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook. You don’t have a copy, you say? Then stay tune. It will be one of the prizes in my upcoming contest to celebrate reaching 500 + followers. (note: if you don’t want to bother with the workbook (though I highly recommend it), you can still do some of the workout. Adjust accordingly).
Workout
Warm up:
1. Characterizations
2. Outline
Some people (also known as pansters) prefer to skip the warm up. I’m not going to make you do twenty push-ups if you do. Just remember, you may need to do more work to get your manuscript into shape compared to the outliners.
Donald Maass’s workbook has some great exercises to do for the warm up (found under Character Development and Plot Development). However, I did them after I finished the first draft of my current WIP. With my next project, I’ll do them during my preplanning, to make sure my characterizations and outline are properly warmed up before I start my first draft.
Light Aerobic Exercise:
1. Write your first draft. I don’t care if you speed through it or if your internal editor is peeking over your shoulder (like mine). Just do it!
2. Read through your manuscript and write notes about things you want to fix (like inconsistencies) or things you’re questioning. Go back and deal with them now if necessary.
Intense Aerobic Exercise:
1. Go through your WIP using the exercises in Donald’s workbook under the section Character Development. With my WIP, I went through the entire manuscript doing this step.
2. Go through the remainder of the workbook (Plot Development and General Story Techniques), completing as many of the exercise as you can. Some will have to wait until you analyze the WIP at the scene level (next step).
3. Now we’re going to do interval training. Divide your WIP into chunks, each containing about three chapters (depending on the length of the chapters). Why? Because after each chunk has gone through the interval training, it’s send off to your CPs. Of course, you don’t have to do it this way. But this is how I did it.
a. Go through each scene doing the exercises in the workbook (under Plot Development and General Story Techniques). Not all exercises will be necessary for each scene. Only you can decide which ones apply to a given scene.
b. After editing the scene according to the above step, do a dialogue pass. I talked about this last week on my Query Tracker Blog post (Strengthening Dialogue).
c. The final step is to Toss The Pages. Okay, I don’t actually toss anything. I randomly select the pages. But the main point is I don’t edit these pages sequentially. This enables me to focus on the writing and not on the story. I also use the RWA handouts list under ‘equipment’ during this part. Doing it this way helps me deepen the layers of the story (setting, emotion, etc). Check out the handout, From First Draft to Final Manuscript, and you’ll see what I mean. Really push yourself on this step. Don’t gloss over it, thinking the page is fine. I bet you can make it better.
d. Continue the above three steps then read through the chunk of chapters you were working on and edit if necessary.
e. Send to CPs (optional but recommended). Edit based on their suggestions.
f. Repeat steps a-e for next chunk of the WIP.
Cool Down
1. Once finished—and after you’ve given it some distance—read through your manuscript and deal with any areas you feel could be further improved on (like pacing).
2. Send to beta readers. Edit as needed.
Celebration
(I didn't take this either)
Yay! You are now ready to query. Just make sure you’ve put your query and synopsis through their own intensive workout.
Good luck!
Any other suggestions? How do you usually edit?
* Fine Print:
1. I’m using this workout with my current WIP, so I don’t actually know if it will work when it comes to querying it. But it has made MAJOR improvements in my manuscript, hence why I’m sold on it. Of course, both the writing and a unique concept are important too. This workout won’t help you there. Sorry.
2. I lied about it being a twenty-minute workout. But it got you to look, didn’t it? ;)
