What Are You Feeling In This Moment?

Do you struggle with flat characters? Flat dialogue? Flat emotion? Read on.

photo credit: rachel_titiriga via photopin cc

When I was a senior in high school, the drama coach took a chance on me--shy little soft-spoken me--and gave me the lead role in the school's only stage-play that year. I'd studied acting in an actual drama class the year before. I loved acting, but I was still very green. Fortunately the drama coach saw something in me that was worth developing. And I'm so glad she did. I still refer back to things I learned in my acting days that can help me now in my author days.

Because I was so shy, insecurity strangled my emotions more often than not. I would hear my lines coming out flatter than the stage I stood on, and it bothered me, but at the time I didn't know how to fix it. My drama coach did. That's why she was the coach and I was the player. She coached me when I needed it.

There was one day I still remember quite clearly, when I was having an especially rough day at school (senior year was not one of my high school favorites--but that's another story for another day), and I didn't want to be at rehearsal that day. It was one of those days I felt empty, not just broken. From somewhere in the auditorium seating my coach kept shouting for me to speak up, she couldn't hear me. And when she could hear me, the real problem became obvious.

We took a break. She pulled me aside. She asked me what I was feeling in that moment.

Nothing, I said. Or maybe I said nothing. I don't remember which, but it's the same thing.

She told me I hadn't missed any lines, but my lines were missing everything.

You can't just recite them, she said. You must live them. Every line spoken comes first from an emotion. They aren't just words, they're feelings. She gave me a few minutes alone to recite the scene in my head and figure out where those words were coming from inside my character.

I knew I should be doing this. It's a basic element of acting. But I needed the reminder that day.

Then we did the scene again. I could feel the difference, but was certain I was still doing it wrong, because everyone was so quiet afterward. The drama coach said we were done for the day. She told me good job, keep it up. The other cast members said good job too, but we always said that to each other. We had a camaraderie like that.

I didn't realize how much better I'd actually performed until someone came up to me that I'd never met before. He was an underclassman who worked on the stage crew. I never even saw him at rehearsals because he was always in the lightbox. To this day, I still can't remember his name, but I do remember something more significant.

His reaction to what he'd seen me do that day.

He was a freshman who worked crew and I was a senior who was the lead in the play. I intimidated him, even though, offstage, I was just as shy and insecure as he was. He didn't know that. It took a lot for him to do what he did, and I am so glad he did it, because from that day forward I used his reaction as a motivator to keep the right mindset while performing.

After the stage had cleared, I sat on the edge of it, my legs dangling down like a little girl, looking out at the empty auditorium, dreading the ever-approaching opening night that I was surely going to bomb. And this gangly fifteen year-old boy with a set of ginormous headphones cradling his neck, looping a fat black wire between the crook of his thumb and the bend of his elbow, walks out of the lightbox, right up to me, and says,

"That was pretty amazing."

"What was?"

"You."

"Me?"

"Yeah. You made me cry a little."

"Oh."

"It's okay. It was good."

Crying was the right reaction. It was that kind of scene. His tears made me smile.

Every time I felt the spotlight on me after that, I heard him say in my head, "It's okay. It was good," and imagined him trying to wipe his eyes without screwing up the stage lights.

The point of all of this is that your audience/reader WANTS to feel what the characters are feeling, because when they do, "it's good." If they cry when they're supposed to cry and laugh when they're supposed to laugh, get angry when they're supposed to get angry, etc, etc, etc, the story resonates. And they will not feel that unless you, the author, feel those emotions when you write the performance.

You can't just spew words onto the page. You must live them. You must know where they are coming from inside the character before they are born into the scene. So ANY time you write ANY action or dialogue from ANY character, even if it is not a viewpoint character--anyone who is in that scene--ask yourself, "What are you feeling in this moment?"

Because if it isn't first there inside you, you can't release it into your story.

~Lydia

MISMATCHED Cover Reveal

My inner geek is loving the fact that I get to reveal the cover of my fantasy novelette on Star Wars Day. May the fourth be with you!

The above image is owned by Musa Publishing. Please do not copy or share without permission.

MISMATCHED will be available to purchase on May 24, 2013. Please check back for details! In the meantime you can add it to your Goodreads shelf, here.

Have a great weekend!

~Lydia

Devouring a Heaping Plate Full of Busy

edit: Apparently I failed to announce that you can now request my signature from Authorgraph. Yay! You don't have to purchase one of my books to request a signature, and the request itself is free. If you have a computer or mobile device, you can get my 'graph. I can even send you a personalized message along with it.

click here!

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Just a quick note to let you all know that posting around here is going to be sporadic over the next few weeks. I'm not taking a hiatus like I normally do this time of year, but my workload is filled to the brim so posts will be irregular.

Today is the first day of my workshop. This runs through May 17 and then I will have first chapter critiques to do.

Mismatched releases on May 24. Trying not to stress.

There is always something waiting for me to read in my submissions queue from Entangled. Not just read, but also write a report. I love doing this (love it! not at all complaining!) but it takes time away from blogging.

Some of you might remember the Gay YA blog that was on hiatus for the past few months. Well, they are active again and asked if I'd like to continue reviewing books for them. Of course I said yes! So now I have that too.

Plus writing two new novels at once. And a novelette that will hopefully be the sequel to Mismatched. And maybe I have a secret project that I can't tell you about. Maybe. (okay yes, fine, you forced it out of me--I have a secret project ~zips lips~)

Oh and I'm querying agents too. Responses have been positive, but that is still another Thing on My Plate.

That's all just my writing/publishing related work. I also have two other jobs that have recently increased my workload as well. And I'm successfully maintaining a regular exercise routine--YAY!--which fills about an hour of every day. And then there is this thing called A Family and Home that I have to take care of. So I'm devouring a heaping plate full of busy right now. Sorry if it seems I'm ignoring you or neglecting you because it's not intentional. I love you. I love you all.

If you really need to get a hold of me, or just want to check-in and make sure I haven't had a brain explosion or something (quite possible!), you can ping me on Twitter or Facebook, and there's always email.

~blows kisses~
~Lydia

Guest Post: Success After Rejection by SS Hampton, Sr.

Please give a warm welcome to this week's guest blogger SS Hampton, Sr.!

This will be our final guest post for a while. Thanks so much to all who participated over the past few months!

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Well, So...My Story Was Rejected

The sales of my writings have not set the world on fire, but one can always hope. After all it has only been a little more than two years since I shifted my focus from e-magazines to e-publishers.

In 2011 there was a Call for Submissions for an anthology about lesbian shapeshifters. I debated about making a submission. After all, I am a man—what did I know about lesbians, let alone shapeshifters or werewolves? But the idea would not go away. I was intrigued by the challenge. Once, while researching a different story about werewolves I came across a reference to the Greek historian Herodotus and his mention of a tribe who were said to turn into wolves once a year.

After more thought, research, and outlining, “Second Saturday” was created on 24 June 2011 at 1,948 words. On 16 July 2011 I submitted the 4,500 word short story to the anthology.

It was rejected. No problem—rejection is a way of life for a writer. Get used to it or go run an acorn farm.

However, “Second Saturday” would not go away. I let it rest awhile as I do with many of my writings after rejection. I continued my research because there was a host of questions to be answered. I felt this had the potential to become a series. I needed a framework to write within. Everything had to make sense, and when there was a deviation from history it had to be a plausible deviation.

On 6 November 2011 I assembled all of my research into a background document.

The world of the Neuri, a prehistoric tribe of werewolves, was alive with possibilities. I had a good idea of where their homeland was located thanks to Herodotus, but I also knew that their “creation myth” told of their origin far to the north, in a world of snow and ice and where colorful spirits danced in the night sky. I knew the Neuri’s strengths and weaknesses, their social hierarchy, and how they lived in the surrounding world of mankind.

But still, what foods did prehistoric peoples eat? What clothing did they wear? How did weapons evolve from stone to bronze to iron? What was going on in the world around the Neuri as the human race emerged from the Stone Age and began building with mud bricks and learned to write on clay tablets? Were people aware of the Neuri or did they whisper superstitious stories about them around campfires? Did the Neuri avoid contact with humankind, or did they venture into the human world? Why? To learn, to hunt, or to conquer their two-legged cousins? How did they venture into the world? As wolves or in hairy albeit human form? If they change into wolves, then what the hell happened to their clothing and weaponry? Do they appear as wandering families or clans? Perhaps the Neuri sent out small packs of men, women, and children who traded with people far and near, and thereby learned about the human world.

Finally, all tribes begin somewhere. What if some of the Neuri families grew in importance and became clans? Over the span of thousands of years, what if these clans developed into migrating tribes and, identified by a corruption of their original names, they someday burst onto the Greek and Roman stage as tribes written of by Caesar and Herodotus?

And, do the usual conventions of a silver bullet (arrow or sword) killing a werewolf apply? How do wolves act individually and in packs, and how do they hunt? How do wolves establish their hunting territory? And how does this wolf behavior translate into human behavior and vice versa?

By the time I finished my final edit of the story, I understood the world of the Neuri as well as I could understand a still-evolving tribal history. I did not reveal everything in my first story as I wanted everything to gradually come to light through a variety of stories.

I submitted the 6,700 word short story, “Second Saturday” to Musa Publishing on 27 November 2011. It was accepted!

And I began working with a wonderful editor who helped the story become better than ever. Of course, the editor and I did not always see eye to eye; however, as she is the editor and brings fresh eyes and experience to bear on the manuscript I usually accepted her recommendations. Sometimes I even learned a few things, such as when she commented (paraphrasing here), “Women don’t get turned on that way.” Oh. Okay. I am learning. After all, I am a man writing lesbian werewolf erotica.

So, after much difficult labor “Second Saturday” was born in July 2012.

I am glad the story was not accepted by the anthology. If it had been the odds are that I would not have created the world of the Neuri in detail and planned additional stories about them. You know—additional stories like my WIP, “The Lady of the Evergreens,” that begins in the present and takes a deeper look at the Neuri emerging from the shadows of prehistory.

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About the author:

SS Hampton, Sr. is a full-blood Choctaw of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, a divorced grandfather to 13 wonderful grandchildren, a published photographer and photojournalist, and a member of the Military Writers Society of America. He is a serving member of the Army National Guard with the rank of staff sergeant.

His writings have appeared as stand-alone stories and in anthologies from Dark Opus Press, Edge Science Fiction & Fantasy, Melange Books, Musa Publishing, MuseItUp Publishing, Ravenous Romance, and as stand-alone stories in Horror Bound Magazine, Ruthie's Club, Lucrezia Magazine, The Harrow, and River Walk Journal, among others.

Melange Books

Musa Publishing

MuseItUp Publishing

Amazon Author Page

Goodreads Author Page

Where to Find "Second Saturday":

Musa Publishing

Amazon

B&N

Goodreads

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Thank you so much for being with us today--and congrats on your success!

~Lydia

It's Okay to Make a Mess (if you intend to clean it up)

photo credit: martinak15 via photopin cc

The novel I completed last year had a very clean first draft. I don't mean clean in the sense that it didn't need any kind of revising or editing--there is no such thing. First drafts ALWAYS need to be fixed. What I mean by clean is that the entire story flowed from start to finish as I wrote it. There was very little jumping around. A lot of note-taking, yes definitely, but in terms of actually writing the story, it was all done in one smooth forward-sweeping motion. It was also finished relatively quickly, in just a couple of months.

Revisions, on the other hand, took much longer. In fact, a year later, I'm still finding things to tweak.

But that's neither here nor there. What I really want to talk about today is how different my current novel-in-progress is from all the others I've finished.

same author + new project = different process

I've completed five novels before this one. Each has come about in a different way and across a different span of time. My fourth novel took me 10 months and several re-starts (one of which included scrapping 200 pages) just to finish the first draft. My fifth novel required exactly zero re-starts (the opening scene is one of the few things that hasn't changed much from first draft to fiftieth) and I had a complete draft ready to be revised within a couple of months.

Novel number two was even faster--three weeks from first word to done--while my third novel was somewhere in the middle, taking a ho-hum three or four months to complete a first draft followed by about the same number of months revising. It was also my first novel to garner any kind of attention from agents, so don't underestimate what may seem like a boringly average writing process.

(Novel number one? We don't speak of that evil here.)

This year is much different for me from years past. This is the first year I'm working on new projects while simultaneously going through the editing, publishing, and promotion process with two other books. This is also the first year that I'm working for a publisher, in a position that requires me to not only read several mss per week but also write up a report for every ms I read.

I love this work. I love it all. Definitely not complaining.

But this has naturally slowed down my first drafts due to the simple fact that I have less time to devote to them. Plus, right now, I am simultaneously writing novels number 6 and 7. I've been ping-ponging between them because they each are requiring a slow build of development. They are both pretty complex, and since my brain is already stretched in a million different directions, I'm finding it difficult to come up with clever plot details as quickly as I usually would.

Novel number six, especially, is proving to be a difficult first draft. I've even gone as far as to dub it Problem Child #2 (the first problem child was novel number four--some of you might remember my struggles). It's a good story. I'm not giving up on it, no way. It's just being difficult, as novels sometimes are.

So I had to start working on number seven in between bouts of frustration on number six, or I would have lost my frigging head.

Novel number seven, though, is much more of a joy ride. My brain views it as its personal playground. But that doesn't mean it hasn't been without its own set of issues. Namely, it isn't lending itself to a linear first draft.

I've been scene-jumping. A lot. In addition to writing pages upon pages of unorganized notes--basically just writing whatever happens to come to my head at the time it comes, just to get it out. Whether that be notes on the plot, a character's backstory, an actual scene, whatever.

I'm making a HUGE mess with this book. But it's a good mess. It's the kind of mess you made in elementary school, when you were forced to wear one of your dad's old button-down shirts backwards so you didn't get paint or clay or glue or whatever all over your clothes. It's the kind of mess that makes you appear so gleeful and carefree as to be insane.

I've never written a book like this before. Sure I've scene-jumped before, and I've made messy notes before, but never to this degree. My actions kind of scared me at first. I'm a perfectionist. I hate messes...unless they are the good kind. The kind that frees your creative mind.

I had to literally step back from this manuscript and tell myself it's okay. All of it will come together eventually and it will be amazing. After all, it is lucky number seven.

Number six will be okay too, I'm sure of it. Maybe even better than okay. But number seven, you...you are already my favorite, because you are a beautiful mess.

Happy writing,
~Lydia