So When's the Next #YayYA?

So on the side of my blog there's this contact form that is rarely used, but last week or possibly two weeks ago (sorry, time blends in college), I received an email from it.


"Dear Rachel,

When will the next #YayYA be? And do I need a Twitter to enter?


Lilly Anderson."


Dear Lilly (and everyone else who has probably been wondering this question),


Firstly, thanks for being such a loyal, interactive reader! Bloggers love that. Like, a lot.

Secondly, college does weird things to my schedule, but it's my hope to host another #YayYA sometime in December/January. I don't have an exact date yet, unfortunately, but it will be announced soon! Promise.

And thirdly, nope, you don't need a Twitter to enter. There's some chatting, questions, and entrant interaction that happens on Twitter during the rounds, but a couple of entrants in the past have been Twitterless and got as much feedback as any of the other entrants.

Also, bonus info, I've thought about maybe turning #YayYA into an agented contest, but that'll probably have to wait for next summer. Still have to figure out the hoops I'll need to jump through and how much more time that will take. So note the word "maybe."

For those of you wondering what #YayYA is, here's a link to the last round's rules: http://whatrachelwrote.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html


Yours appreciatively,

Rachel

Foolproof Tip on Writing Fantastic Narrative

"Read your work aloud."

No, that's not my foolproof tip. However, that statement, which you've probably heard before, is part of it.

I always wondered why I painstakingly agonized over word choice, and why I wanted it to "sound" just right, when most of my intended readers wouldn't be reading my work out loud. Then one day, in English, my professor tossed the textbook aside and started talking about assonance and dissonance. Another day he told me that my narrative "zipped through" until he got to one sentence he "tripped over." Why? Because my word choices suddenly flopped back and forth between ps and cs and ls. The rest of my narrative, however, was easy to read because I used steady amounts of subtle alliteration, vowel similarity, and consonant rhyme. I like my words focused in the lips and tip of the tongue. I tend to avoid words that use the back of the tongue, unless the sound is at the end of the word and flips easily to the tip of the tongue again.

It sounds super complicated and technical, and not at all conducive to sitting down and pounding out whatever comes to your head. It's not. It takes practice to develop a purposeful word and sound pattern, just like it takes time to practice developing a voice. There's a technical and mechanical side to every art. But it's not as hard as it may sound, pun totally intended.

Our brains read words the same way our mouths would. Tongue twisters are almost as hard to read as say. I don't know about you, but when I read extremely dissonant stuff, my brain stops, trips, staggers, stammers, what have you, and often times, I start reading under my breath in an attempt to clear this sewage clog of wordage.

So here's what you should do. Think about how you like your words to sound. If you haven't before, A, E, and I as opposed to O and U. As aforementioned, I also use a lot of letters and sounds focused on the tip of the tongue.  Me aside, you should't have to take to long to find your pet sounds.
then look at what you name your characters. You'll probably see some sort of pattern. I know I have pet sounds, especially with character names, and I know this because I made a master list of character names and looked for said patterns. There's a snippet in the photo on the right. The names listed are from different works-in-progress of different genres. You can see even from just these few that I gravitate toward hard constanant sounds and brighter vowels, especially long E and short A sounds.

What's the point of all this? Well, when our brains have to work less at processing the means to the end, the letters to the words to the story, it engages us more in the story and less in the text.

So there you go! It'll take practice and experimentation and a willingness to not story-vomit next time you sit down to pants, but it'll be worth it. My English professor will thank you.

Copying the Masters: Jane Austen

Ah, Jane Austen. Some of you may have seen that hilarious Buzzfeed post where Jane Austen got a modern editor's take on her work (I swear I snarfed my milk at the whole thing about Mr. Wickham being the main character). I promise we aren't going to have any of that in this post, but the truth is, while Austen has stood the test of time, largely thanks to her undying fandom following, she's probably not the greatest author role model.

Jane Austen

Some facts about Jane Austen:

1. She never married, and thanks to her sister destroying many of her letters, we will never really know if she ever had an understanding with anyone. Considering how intuitive her novels are, though, one likes to imagine.

2. Austen was terribly self-conscious about her work. She'd write alone, and insisted on keeping the door squeaky so she knew when people were coming in and she could hide her work.

3. Her debut Sense and Sensibility was originally a series of fictional letters titled Elinor and Marianne, similar to Lady Susan. It only sold about 500 copies.


Some areas where it's not a good idea to emulate Austen:

1. No critique partners?

 As aforementioned above, Austen was secretive about her writing. She would read it to her family, but before publishing Sense and Sensibility kept it otherwise private. While we can't deny that Austen's work is in many ways brilliant, this is not a wise course to follow. Find critique partners and beta readers. A second pair of non-familial eyes (and a third and fourth and fifth, even) are crucial to your story's development.


2. Set the scene

Austen does a poor job at setting her scenes. Many portions of her books are merely conversation, and we're not even told where these conversations take place, including the famous opening exchange between Mr. and Mrs. Bennet over Mr. Bingley in Pride and Prejudice. Make sure you show us and ground us in your setting.

3. Allow the plot some drive

To quote a fellow writer, "I'm about to speak author blasphemy." Constantly we are told to have character-driven novels, but when we focus only on the characters and what they do, as opposed to giving them some plot to work with, you can end up with a story full of empty conversation, first-world problems, and a lack of conflict. There's plenty of conflict in Jane Austen's work, but putting that aside, when one takes away her satire and her goal of laying out the social traps middle-class women often found themselves in those times, we end up with a story about (yay) privileged people's social squabbles. For Austen's purpose, it works fine, but don't let your story be driven by characters alone.


Some areas where it's a good idea to emulate Austen:


1. Character development

Austen's characters are iconic for their humanity. While some might argue that Austen's characters

have petty desires compared to figures from other classic novels like Dickens, Austen's characters are so compelling with pursuing their goals that we can't help but root for them. In Austen's world, the true heroes and heroines are those that recognize their faults and, unlike most modern literature, set out to right them and improve themselves as individuals.

2. Balance your humor with genuine story

Comedy these days often gets so focused on cheap humor that it loses sight of story. Part of what makes PIXAR so great is that their animated films, unlike most in the same genre, are not purely comedic stories. They're also fully-developed stories. The same goes for romance. Romance can't just be about Hot Guy and Hot Girl falling in love. You need an actual story. Austen was brilliant at balancing humor, heartbreak, and plot.

3. Give your characters smaller goals

Most characters in today's market want to save the world from catastrophe. Austen's characters are focused on finding simple happiness for themselves and their loved ones. While the latter may seem more petty, giving your character a more personal goal makes it easier for your readers to relate to them.


To sum up, Austen, though undyingly popular, is also eccentric and unusual in her prose style. She was in her day, and she is in our day. Description of setting is entirely absent from her work, but where she fails there, she rewards patient readers with her brilliant character development and witty insight with social comedy. Creating iconic characters creates an iconic story. No one will care about your plot if you do not have relatable, three-dimensional characters. No one will appreciate your characters, three-dimensional or not, if you do not let them be honestly faulty. And Austen gently but firmly shows us her characters' faults, both men and women alike.



In the next Copying the Masters post, we'll be looking at the great Leo Tolstoy. 


Thoughts or comments? Feel free to share!

Another Reason You Need to Join the Writer Twitterverse

Twitter has a mind of its own. It often gets political and gossipy and noisy and argumentative. But the best circle on Twitter, in my humble opinion, is the Writersphere. And this humble opinion was only solidified further after this past Monday.

People in the pitch contests will tell you, "Remember, this isn't about winning and getting an agent. This is about making new friends and becoming a better writer!" We all really know that we're in there for the winning and the agents, but you know what? The new friends part is really true!

Back during the last #PitchWars, I happened to be tossing some fun questions out into the hashtag feed for people to answer instead of chewing their nails while waiting for requests to trickle into their inboxes. The newest one happened to be, "If your book was a movie, who would direct it?"

And then this exchange happened:

So we followed each other, and interacted more throughout #PitchWars, when I got a direct message from my then-soon-to-be college roomie. "Hey, that's my high school English teacher!" 

As someone who is thrilled by the world's smallness, I got pretty excited. Well, I'm even more excited to say that, thanks to my room mate, I got to meet Mrs. Cupps this last Monday! 

She's absolutely lovely and though our visit was brief, it was so fun to talk in person about our work, when we're normally restricted to 140 characters! So if anything, I hope this encourages to join us and many other fantastic writers in the Twitterverse. You may not win contests, but you will definitely make new friends, I promise. 

Star Trek and Sesame Street and Diversity

"When this movie first came out, there was thunderous applause because that officer there was the first woman on Star Trek to captain a starship."

So said my classmate, one of a few who are introducing this Star Wars nerd to the universe of Star Trek, while we were watching The Voyage Home. Now, before I continue, let me quick clarify that I'm not a Star Trek expert. I've only seen Wrath of Khan, Search for Spock, Voyage Home, and a couple episodes of Next Generation. So when I refer to Star Trek, I'm referring to those.

I wasn't too surprised by his statement. But what struck me more while watching these classics for the first time was the amount of racial diversity. Perhaps the main characters were still mostly white, but it was still a lot more varied than Star Wars, where we have Lando and Mace Windu and that's about it. More unfortunately, it's a lot more varied than most entertainment in this diversity-hungry day and age. But worst of all, this show, several decades old, handled it way better than most diverse stories on the market.

It reminded me of Sesame Street. When I was little, the show took up a good chunk of my allotted television time, what with its hour-long spot. I never really noticed it at the time, but Sesame Street did a marvelous job at portraying diversity, both with race and special needs.

But why didn't I notice it at the time? Because I just accepted the diversity as normal. I was a kid. What I saw was a neighborhood of fun people doing fun things and force-feeding the alphabet and my numbers into me. And if I hadn't been trained as a writer to watch for diversity, I'd probably watch Star Trek and simply see humans in space on cool ships following fantastic plot lines. 

Here's the thing. Diversity is political. It just is. Especially nowadays. But it doesn't have to be for kidlit. As someone who went to a well-mixed kindergarten outside Philadelphia, has some Japanese and Cherokee heritage, and has a lot of international friends, I can tell you that as a child, I never noticed I was different from my playmates until people told me I was. 

This is probably why Maniac Magee is one of my favorite books. The main character finds himself in a similar situation to me, where as a kid, the concept of racism is thrown on him in the playground realm. There's this part where he looks in a mirror and wonders why people call him white and his friends black, when they aren't actually the solid colors black and white, and instead are many shades of color and many shades of personality. This resonated with me a lot when I first read it. 

Circumstances are circumstances, yes, but people will always be people. And in today's day in age, where diversity has become an American Ninja Warrior ropes course of do's and don'ts with your reputation at stake, I wish we'd go back to Star Trek and Sesame Street and promoting normality. 

Where's Rachel Been?

What She Wrote?

This past month and a half, nothing.

LOL.

Okay, in all seriousness, one of my past posts informed you all that I would be going to college and that I would still be blogging. Between then and now, only one of those facts was true. Time to change that.

It's fall break! Yay! So I'm writing as many posts as I possibly can while hanging at my roommate's house before going back to school. I WAS hoping to vlog, but genius absent-minded freshman that I am, I forgot my camera (along with my coat). In the meantime, here's a little update for all of you lovely readers.

Ah, Geneva. Our tiny campus is gorgeous. Our football team is okay. Our band is awesome. But I must be biased and say that our choir is the best. I'm singing soprano two but I'm so tall they stuck me in the bass section for concerts. That's okay. They're pretty awesome, too.

Middle, second row from the back, gray and pink striped sweater. Yup, that's me.

I also have two jobs, one in the dining hall where I run food to the buffet at lunch (I dread tater tot day, grease everywhere. But free ice cream is cool), and an internship with public relations where I take photos of people, usually when they aren't expecting it. Then they either pose or run away.

But I also started a Geneva-themed spinoff of HONY with my friend Hayley. Check us out HERE :D

My friends and I are also entering a film contest. I'm directing with a couple international student friends and co-starring with a friend from choir. The college has it every year and according to the student development guy, we have one of the biggest casts to ever participate. You'll get to see the movie in December, I promise!

Our cast and crew!

Still from the film 

So basically, I'm super busy and haven't got much writing done. Like, at all. But I've found fellow writers, some of whom have actually gone ahead and self-published! So I'm going to read their books sometime and fangirl over them on this blog. Also, my English professor (he draws scary cartoons, makes us suffer through Samuel Beckett plays, throws candy at us in class, and is generally awesome) has introduced me to people as "that student who wrote eight novels before coming here." He's actually reading some of my short stories now, which is cool. Part of our recent meeting to go over my paper involved talking about how bossy characters are. 

I haven't changed much otherwise. I've been added into the fandoms of Twenty-One Pilots and Star Trek. I've become better with a frisbee and am the official proofreader, hug-giver, and stink bug killer on my dorm floor. 

The one thing about Geneva is that its making me really, really want to write NA. NA is generally debauchery-clogged, which if you know anything about me or Geneva College or both, this doesn't really fit into that category, but I'd love to see NA jump out of its scum and villainy into better college-focused novels. Anyways, soapbox over, it's amazing how many story ideas come to mind while I'm here, and how few words I actually manage to get out. This is evident in how I've neglected you all so terribly. Thank you for bearing with my absence (unless you were glad of it, in which case thank you for bearing with this post.)

See you around the interwebs! 

7/7/7 challenge!

I was tagged by my Twitter friend @vanessapeay to participate in the 7/7/7 challenge!! 

RULES

• Go to page 7 of your current WIP
• Scroll down to line 7
• Share the next 7 sentences in a blog post.
• After the blog post tag 7 other writers to continue the challenge. 

I actually have a couple WIPs that are very different, so I'm going to post qualifying selections from some of them (you only have to do one, I'm just going further for fun!)

From YA Urban Fantasy AMERICAN LEPRECHAUNS:

The overhead lamps slowly buzzed to life and his Converses kicked loose gravel. A few more driveways. A few more split level houses framed by sweet, rotten crape myrtles screaming magenta. A few more lopsided mailboxes with paint-chipped stands. One motorcycle, two barking spaniels glaring through a fence, one fire hydrant, a whole lot of rain later, and Harrison crossed up Sean Campbell’s yard. The Miura gleamed in the driveway, aquamarine and glorious. He stubbed his toe on a sprinkler. Bump. Pain through socks and sneakers.

 “Heck.”

From YA Historical Fantasy, THE DARK AND THE SAPPHIRE 

He was propped with one knee up on one of the windows, examining both the empty streets below and the half-eaten apple in his hand. Fyr reached over, took the gnawed fruit from her brother, and bit off a large chunk.

 “Fyr!” he protested as she handed it back, wincing at its acidity.

But she ignored him and peered past his hair out the window. A few Shusheni troops in the archaic tunic and metal cap uniform of the footsoldier were meandering aimlessly below, guns slung over their shoulders and powder horns on their belts.

“Look at them,” Fyr muttered despondently. “The Vlalonnans have pelisses and shakos and two overcoats a piece, and yet the Shusheni soldiers, subjects to one of the wealthiest empires in the world, don’t even have matching rifles, and they’re wearing the same uniforms issued in the Baroque Era.”

She kicked air and ground her palms into the massive table before her, formerly the dining table of the governor of Cixi, but he had evacuated, with most of the citizens.

“This table,” she said angrily, stabbing its surface with her finger. “It’s solid gold. The money it took to make this could have bought an entire Banner knapsacks or a cannon or horses. Stupid emperor, and stupid Craft of Combat!”

From MG Urban fantasy (fairytale continuation), IMOGEN THE GIANT-SLAYER:

I guess Mom and Dad wanted, ahem, unusually named kids, because I don’t know any other Thankfuls or Auburns or Imogens. But I do know one Curtis, and he’s a monkey at a zoo. I give my brother a hard time about that one.

I galloped into my closet of a room. It’s painted bright green. I like that. What I don’t like is when Thankful or Auburn poke their noses in and say “What a bear pit.”

I dragged my suitcase out from under my stuffed animal-clogged daybed. and looked around thoughtfully, scratching my forehead.

I'm not going to tag anyone due to time crunch and too many lovely people to choose from, but feel free to consider yourself tagged if you want to participate!! :D