The Darker Side of Controlling your Characters, by Katie O’Sullivan

You get to a point when you’re reading a book when you understood all the characters. Who’s the hero, who’s the heroine, who are the bad guys… You’ve got them figured out. Then someone goes and does something you totally didn’t expect. That completely changes your perception of them.

That happens to authors too.

At least, it happens to me.

In the second book in my Mermaids of Cape Cod series, one of the key characters is the sorcerer Zan. He gets a mention in the first book, but all of his scenes were cut from book one during the editing process. Even though he’s part of the inner circle of evil guys trying to overthrow the Atlantic kingdom in Son of a Mermaid, we never actually meet him in the first book.

But we see the deadly consequences of his magick. The tornado that destroys Shea’s home in Oklahoma. The storm that kills Shea’s grandfather and uncle. The poison that makes its way into food at the Solstice banquet. Prince Demyan may have given all those orders, but Zan followed through with their execution.

In Blood of a Mermaid, we meet Zan right from the get-go, with the first chapter in his point of view. We know he’s still in league with the evil prince and signing up for more dirty work. When I started writing Zan, he was pretty one-dimensional. A bad guy.

Originally, Zan was only going to narrate the very first chapter, to give the reader insight into what the bad guys were up to, setting the whole plot into motion. But as I was writing subsequent chapters, Zan’s voice kept popping up, asking me – begging me – to let him tell the scene from his perspective.

I decided to let him have a voice. And he surprised me!

Something happened to him when he went to kidnap Kae. Giving him one of the point-of-view voices let him show me what was going on inside of his head, and gave voice to his inner doubts.

Bad guys aren’t supposed to have doubts. But Zan did. He wanted to be better, to be worthy of a mermaid like Kae.

By the end of the book, he’d redeemed himself in my eyes. Even though he was originally going to die – yes, really, I planned to kill him off – I didn’t want to punish him at all. He’d done terrible things under orders from Prince Demyan, but I convinced Shea to let him off the hook… except a full pardon didn’t sit well with beta readers or with my editor.

Evil deeds demand consequences.

Zan’s character at the end of the book is not who I thought he was going to be. I gave up trying to control him and I like the way he grew up.

What do you think of characters who change and grow into something different? Or do you prefer to read characters who are black and white, with no grey wiggle-room for redemption?

 

About the Book: 

Mermaid blood.

When Shea MacNamara fell into the ocean for the first time, he found he could breathe underwater. The son of a mermaid, the sea is in his blood. Literally. The best part of Shea’s new life? His girlfriend Kae, who also happens to be a beautiful mermaid.

But darkness lurks under the sea. When evil mermen kidnap Kae, the king reminds Shea that having royal blood means making tough choices. 

 

An Arctic dungeon, a fiery plane crash, the legendary halls of Atlantis…and narwhals? 

Having mermaid blood just got a lot more complicated.

Grab your copy of Blood of a Mermaid on Amazon today.

The Dark Deliciousness of Working with Crit Partners aka a Love Letter to My Crit Partner

Writing can be so super lonely. You sit at a desk for hours at a time, no other voices or encouragement in your ears, type-typing away ALL ALONE.

When I started writing, this loneliness was one of the things that surprised me the most. I’m a pretty independent worker, but I found I missed being able to stop and bounce ideas off other people. And I liked being that springboard for other people, too--there’s such a great feeling in helping someone else reach the idea they want.

It was this feeling that drove me in search of a crit partner, and so one summer a few years ago, I logged onto my local SCBWI group, randomly emailed someone who said she was writing YA, and totally changed my life.

I don’t know what lucky star was watching over me when I connected with Natasha,* but I am so grateful for it. She’s smart, funny, insightful, and always willing to hear my many (many many) complaints about how this whole writing thing is going.

She’s been with me since my first, horrible, fledgling manuscript began to take shape, through some of the best (and all of the worst) moments of my writing career, all the way up to now, where she still encourages me, checks in on me, and tells me everything is going to be okay.

If loneliness surprised me when I started out writing, it’s the friendships I’ve made that surprise me now. I’m not sure what it is about writing that causes these friendships to be so strong and personal. Maybe it’s that you’re just with someone who gets it, but I honestly don’t know where I would be without Natasha and the other writing friends I’ve made.

Crit partners are so vital to this process. Not only for their editorial eye and their honest opinions but for the less-tangible things they give: friendship and support and membership in the tribe of writers. We really are all in this together, we can’t do this alone, and, thank goodness, we don’t have to.

Looking for your own crit partner? Check out SCBWI for fellow children’s writers in your area.

*Her name is Natasha Sinel (write that name down, people!) and I can’t wait until her amazing writing is out in the world and I get to stop strangers in the bookstore and say, “THAT’S MY FRIEND AND SHE IS AWESOME.”

Beating Writer's Block by Cherie Colyer

Writer’s block: the inability to write another word. 

If you’re a writer, you know the feeling. You’re working on a project, ideas are flowing, glorious words are filling the page, and then BAM. Nothing. Nada. Zip.

It’s an awful feeling.

But, come on! Writers are making this stuff up as they go. How hard can it be?

Let me tell you, it’s not easy.

Writer’s block is something all writers experience. We hit a point in our project where we stare at our computer screens or a blank sheet of paper unable to figure out what to write next. It can be quite frustrating.

I shared 9 Ways to Conquer Writer’s Block on my blog before, so instead of reposting the same information here, I figured I’d talk about what you can do if you hit a road block in your story. This happened to me recently with my current work-in-progress. No matter how I revised the first few chapters, the story didn’t work. This novel is told in two point-of-views, and I realized that I needed to change one of the players. I tried weaving him into what I had written, but the more I revised the more frustrated I became. It wasn’t working. The characters as I had them weren’t working.

Thing is, I believe in the story and I believed in the characters. I knew I was missing something important. So I visited my post on conquering writer’s block. I mapped out different options. Spent time with my characters. Discovered their passions. Their fears. The obstacles they would face. I then did what I was fighting before. I tossed out what I had and started fresh. (a.k.a. tried a different approach.)

A complete rewrite is what this story needed. The characters are stronger for it, and so is the plot. I discover my writer’s block was really just a need to rewrite the story. It allowed my characters the freedom they needed to come alive.

Now, I’m not saying that it’s necessary to scrap everything and start over each time writer’s block strikes. And sometimes you just need to rewrite a scene or even a few pages to get your creative juices flowing again. One thing's for sure, you’re story will be better for it.

Have you ever scrapped what you had written and started fresh? Do you prefer to revise or rewrite?

FAVORITE FIRST LINES by Kristi Helvig

As an avid reader as well as a writer, there is nothing quite so powerful to me as the first line of a novel. I can often gauge how much I’ll like a book by that very first sentence. From when I was a young girl and got hooked by “Where’s Papa going with that axe?” I understood the magic of a great beginning. So, I thought I’d share a few of my favorite first lines from young adult novels and in each case, I knew I’d love the book from that first sentence (and I did).

“The early summer sky was the color of cat vomit.” Uglies by Scott Westerfeld

“It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened.” The Giver by Lois Lowry

“Everyone thinks that it was because of the snow.” If I Stay by Gayle Forman

“They say that just before you die, your whole life flashes before your eyes, but that’s not how it happened for me.” Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

“First the colors. Then the humans. That’s usually how I see things. Or at least, how I try.” The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

“Late in the winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided I was depressed, presumably because I rarely left the house, spent quite a lot of time in bed, read the same book over and over, ate infrequently, and devoted quite a bit of my abundant free time to thinking about death.” The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

And finally, from one of my all time fave YA books:

“My father took one hundred and thirty two minutes to die. I counted.” On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

Feel free to share your fave first lines in the comments!

Kristi Helvig is a Ph.D. clinical psychologist turned sci-fi/fantasy author. She muses about Star Trek, space monkeys, and other assorted topics on her blog and Twitter. Kristi resides in sunny Colorado with her hubby, two kiddos, and behaviorally-challenged dogs. Grab a copy of BURN OUT on Amazon, Indiebound, or Barnes & Noble.

Tuesday Teaser: An Excerpt from My Tethered Soul by Dorothy Dreyer

Today I’m sharing a teaser from the second book in my Reaper’s Rite series, My Tethered Soul. Before you read the excerpt, let me fill you in on the book’s synopsis.

MY TETHERED SOUL

Reaper's Rite Book Two

Expected Publication August 19, 2014, from Month9Books

It’s been months since Zadie faced her sister’s Reaper, months during which she’s been under her mentor’s magical protection. But now that she’s turning seventeen, that protection is about to run out.

When dark forces lure Zadie to wander at night, she’s manipulated into committing unspeakable acts. With her friends and family at risk, Zadie must try to use her powers to break free from the Reaper’s grasp, or surrender to the Reaper’s Rite, which can only lead to death.

Excerpt

“Leave me alone!”

As an answer to my shout, a low guttural growl filled the room. The floor began to shake, knocking items off the bathroom shelves and rattling the shower curtain. I backed up, searching the room for the shadow. My foot caught a patch of water and I fell backwards, landing on my back. A sharp-sounding crack filled the room as the back of my head hit the floor.

Cringing in pain, I grabbed my head. A shadow floated across the ceiling.

“Mara!” I screamed, unable to move.

The shadow swept across the wall, the form of the Reaper almost concrete now.

“Mara!”

The doorknob jiggled.

“Zadie, the door is locked!”

I turned my head, and was punished by blurred vision. I hadn’t locked the door. This was the Reaper’s doing.

The growl came again.

Be sure to add MY TETHERED SOUL to your Goodreads shelf.

And don't miss book one in the series, MYSISTER’S REAPER

Read MY SISTER'S REAPER today

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