My Writerly Reality Check.

A funny thing happened over the weekend. (And by funny I mean, "Man, that sucks.") In a nutshell, my story blew up.

First, let me tell you a quick story:
One day, in the middle of 11th grade Spanish class, a friend told me a fun word fact. I thought about this fun fact for the rest of the day and realized I felt quite smart. As I got older, I wanted this word to pop up at pub trivia nights so I could pluck this otherwise useless piece of knowledge from my brain and impress my friends.

Years passed and this fact remained stuck in my head until one day I came up with a story. But how could I tie all these pieces together? Ah ha! Eureka!

I went to work crafting riddles for my MC to solve before he could get the next clue. And at the crux of my very first riddle--the riddle that put everything into place and pulled it all together at the end--was the fun word fact floating in my head since high school.

My readers were stumped until I revealed the answer. They loved the riddle and never thought twice about the logic.

Fast forward another year and I'm back at the story, working on world building and character motivations. There's a lot of work ahead, but it's manageable.

Until...

Source

On a whim, I thought, "Self, you should do a quick check to make sure that factoid is still correct." Off to Google I went and .043 seconds later, my riddle blew up.

Oh, bleep.*
That one shiny factoid is wrong. Incredibly wrong. So wrong that it was never right in the first place.

Back to the drawing board I go. I'm not trashing the story, but it sucks when you realize you have to go back deeper than you had hoped. I spent a good portion of the weekend feeling frustrated and simply overwhelmed by the amount of work ahead of me. But it's kind of like untangling a ball of yarn--I need to sit down and spend some time carefully following each thread of an idea and see where they all lead.

How about you... how do you manage setbacks like this? Have you ever felt like the bottom dropped out of your story?

* = (I'm reading Kiersten White's Supernaturally right now and trying to swear less. Win/win.)

Pacing your reveals: The Hero and The Mentor

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of the Hero's Journey.

I enjoy this framework because when brainstorming my current wip, I can easily draw parallels to stories such as Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, or Star Wars (the latter one being an almost text book example).

For quick reference, here is the hero/mentor relationship as I see them (you may disagree with some of the mentors):

Harry and Dumbledore, HBP

Frodo and Gandalf
Harry and Dumbledore
Luke and Obi-Wan

In my MG adventure story, my main character (hero) first refused the call and finally accepted the challenge. Yet, as I go through and rework some scenes based on comments from my writing group, they all expressed a common concern:

Why isn't Strix (mentor) telling David (MC) this information sooner? 
Why is Strix withholding so much information?

My initial reaction to this was something like, "Because, he can't tell David everything right away!"

Imagine how different LoTR would be if Gandalf told Frodo all his secrets before leaving The Shire? Or if Obi-Wan told Luke about his father when they first met? Or if Dumbledore told Harry about the Horcruxes in book two?

But once my brain stopped pointing out all these examples, I came back to what my writing group was actually saying. My mentor was keeping too much information from my main character, and therefore, the reader. They felt the story would have a stronger pull if the readers weren't left in the dark so often.

This is my current struggle: finding a balance between revealing information--breadcrumbs, if you will--but not showing my hand too soon.

Anyone else have trouble with reveals? Or can you think of a hero/mentor relationship where the mentor shared everything up front? 

To the comments!

Why I held off on resolutions

It has been a lot of fun reading everyone's New Year's Resolutions and I can't lie... I've been reading and making notes for my own plans! (If you haven't read Kiersten White's, you can read it here. Warning: don't take a drink before reading!)

I want to accomplish many things this year, about half of them are writing related and the other half lifestyle/exercise related. After some thought, here's a quick run down:

Writing

• Finish the rewrite of my MG novel and send it to beta readers.
• Write the query letter. Then chuck it, go through period of self-doubt, get back on the horse, and write it again.
• NaNo 2012. 
• Read 30 books (read more about the challenge, here)
• Continue M, W, F blog schedule and work on blog re-design (and figure out how to format inane things like bullet lists!)

Lifestyle/exercise

• Improve on my 2011 half marathon time.
• Work on getting up on time on work mornings.
• Earn my health insurance gym credit (8 trips/mo) 9 out of the 12 months.
• Decrease my body fat percentage.

I'll spare you the rest of the details, but that's a start. Obviously, I'll be covering the writing journey on this blog, but don't be surprised if you see a blog or two from me freaking out before the half marathon in May. 

So, for now, all sights are on the query letter process. I'm reading blogs, making notes, and making horrible drafts. But we all start somewhere, right? If you have any great resources about the query process, please post them in the comments! 

Can you be TOO mean to your MC?

Hello! I'm finally making my way back to the blogging world after a lovely hiatus. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and New Year.

I had an opportunity this past weekend to meet a fellow blogging buddy. I got to have lunch with Sarah Ahiers! (waves Hi, Sarah!) We noshed and chatted about about writing groups, querying, and the overall path of a writer. It was so much fun that instead of going to the gym after, I went home and sat down to work on my book. Thanks, Sarah, for the wonderful company!

I watched ABC's Once Upon A Time marathon on New Year's Day and then the newest episode last night. In a very big nutshell, the main character, Emma, moves to a small town in Maine where everyone is someone from a fairy tale trapped in time compliments of the Evil Queen's spell. The townspeople have no idea they are fairy tale characters and the town is governed by the Evil Queen who is posing as the mayor. Emma is our hero who is trying to free all the characters.

Cast of Once Upon A Time

Like I said, that was a nutshell.

Anyway. The Mayor/Queen is an amazing antagonist. Clearly evil, but at the same time, you can't help but feel slightly sad for her plight. Yet, in last night's episode, I couldn't help but feel frustrated with the show's writers. Yes, bad things have to happen to the main character in order for her to triumph over evil.

But have you ever felt like sometimes, too many bad things happen to your favorite character? In the short life of Once, people have died, people have been betrayed, laid off, and overall abused by the Mayor. As a viewer, I can't help but feel like something good has to happen, and soon.

The theme of last night's episode dealt with good winning over evil. But how much does evil have to win over good to drive home the point? At this point, I'm half tempted to stop watching the show until the episodes are all online and finish the season in one marathon viewing because this is getting ridiculous.

Have you ever read a story or watched a show where the bad things seemed to be too much that you found yourself losing interest?