Never Throw a Story Away! Great Advice from THE CANDLE MAKER Author Laura Thomas

We all have them: drafts and fragments of stories we tuck away in (real or digital) drawers, assuming we'll never look at them again. Today's guest, Laura Thomas, makes a great case for the importance of hanging onto those old stories.

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Returning to The Candle Maker
by Laura Thomas

I can honestly say that my latest book, The Candle Maker, was an absolute joy to write—possibly due to writing in the era of “A Christmas Carol”, which always warms the cockles of my English heart. I’m a multi-genre author, and sometimes I get a little turned around writing about a cute, displaced Octopus one day and an angsty, teenaged ballerina the next, but The Candle Maker was one of those stories that comes without the losing of hair or sanity. Bonus! 

It began its life several years ago, with the single word “candle” in a writing assignment with The Institute of Children’s Literature. I brainstormed “candle” in good old clustering fashion and created a Dickensian tale of a misunderstood candle maker. I needed a child to be the protagonist, so ten-year-old Benjamin evolved, making the story suitable for middle graders. Although it was merely a short story at this stage, I suspected there would be a deeper version to unravel one day…

Fast forward a few years and a few published books later, and I stumbled across my old Candle Maker friend in a file. NOTE TO ALL: Never throw a story away, even if you think it’s a painful reminder of how chronic you were as a writing babe. If nothing else, it will serve as a glorious reminder of how far you have come in your writing journey! I re-read the little tale and got to work fleshing out characters and improving the original storyline.

With a tad more wisdom under my writing belt, I added a little brother (I have two boys who give me ample fodder for sibling interaction) and an English bulldog (I have one of those, too, so it was an obvious choice—she would have been highly insulted had I used the Red Setter from the original manuscript.) The storyline already implied the ramifications of listening to rumors, and so I built upon that particular moral and added in some neighborhood bullying, a touch of poverty, and the issue of courage. 

I have to point out that my teenaged sons were flabbergasted that I finally wrote a “dude book” (my previous titles: Tears to Dancing, Tears of a Princess, Fairy Wings, and Pearls for the Bride… say no more!) even though they are significantly beyond its reading target age of 8—11 years. Better late than never. This is my first boy book and I’m delighted with the mix of mystery, history, family values, and the facing of fears. My “little guy”, The Candle Maker, was published by Dancing With Bear Publishing in July 2015.

BLURB:

“Every village has a mysterious character— someone to tell tales about, someone to fear. Meet The Candle Maker. One Christmas Eve in Victorian England, ten-year-old Benjamin Walker is forced to face the fabled old candle maker and see for himself if the ghastly rumors are true. Challenged by neighborhood bullies, lessons and lies, and an English bulldog along the way, Benjamin confronts his fears on a quest to discover the truth. But will this ragamuffin lad find the courage he needs in time to save a life?”

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You can purchase The Candle Maker on Amazon.
Learn more about Laura Thomas on her website; follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

Jocelyn Adams: Sometimes Characters Don't Listen

As any author of fiction can tell you, characters have lives of their own, apart from the humble writer who "created" them. My guest, Jocelyn Adams, discusses how that phenomenon came into play as she wrote her latest novel, Stone Chameleon.

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Thanks for having me take over your blog today, Anne.  Let’s talk characters.  Sometimes my characters don’t listen to me.  That might sound silly, since they come out of my brain, but it’s still true, the little bullies they are.  I don’t plot any aspects of the story.  I begin with a list of names, a general storyline, and a pretty clear idea of who my characters are in my head, and let the puzzle come together on its own as I spill out the story.

Once in a while someone I was certain should go left ends up going right.  Instead of funny, they’re serious.  Instead of the hero, they become the villain or vice versa.  I ran into a zig-zag with two characters in Stone Chameleon, though I’ll only mention one in this post.  It ended up being a big head-scratcher for me, especially since I’m a person who hates do-overs.

I started out wanting Amun Bassili, Lou Hudson’s potential love interest in book one, to walk that fine line between love him and hate him.  I wanted him strong, arrogant and charming as hell.  He is that, but an aspect of his personality came out that I wasn’t expecting.  A soft side, a vulnerability I didn’t know what to do with.  He’s a complicated character, driven by instincts that are unusual, from another culture that’s difficult to understand by those not living it.

My beta readers hated him.  I pondered for days what to do with him.  How to walk that razor’s edge and keep him on the love side of that love/hate line.  His issues kept me up, my stomach in knots, because I needed him to be a core figure in the series.  If I couldn’t get him right, then the foundation of the story would crumble.

 

At first I thought I’d have to rip him out and start over from scratch, but then I realized it wasn’t truly him that was the problem.  It was his culture and the readers’ understanding of that culture.

The instincts of his species are beautiful and natural to him even though readers found them hard to accept.  I realized I hadn’t painted his background and upbringing well enough for the readers to understand why he did/said the things he did.  Once I figured out what the problem was, it took only a few passages, adding some color and texture to his story and personality, and a few lines of additional dialogue, to bring him back into balance.

After I finished with my edits, he seemed completely different even to me.  He became more real to me, and, after a second round of beta testing, my readers agreed.  I really hope I never get myself into that big of a pickle again, but since I have at least a zillion more stories spooling in my mind, I highly doubt it.  J

I’d love to know who your favorite character of all time is.  What did you love about him or her?  Drop a note in the comments and chat with me.

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Learn more about Jocelyn Adams on her website.

You can purchase Stone Chameleon here:
Amazon.com  |  Barnes & Noble  |  MuseItUp Publishing

Of Publishings and Editings

Greetings, all. Just a round-up for the week. Several things to report:

1. The zombie anthology So Long, and Thanks for All the Brains, containing my story "Stir-Fried Cerebrum," has been released. You can purchase it here.

2. My fractured fairy tale, "An Exceptional Clothier," has been accepted for publication in Enchanted Times, to appear sometime in 2012.

3. I've received first edits for my middle-grade paranormal mystery novel, Ebenezer's Locker. Nice to have that process up and running.

4. I'm three-quarters finished with the first draft of the sequel to my middle-grade medieval mystery novel Trouble at the Scriptorium. This new novel, featuring several of the same characters, is called The London Hurdy-Gurdy.


5. My story "Cheering Up a Friend" is published on Knowonder! You can view it here.

6. My story "Sisters' Sight" is published in the pagan anthology Etched Offerings, from Misanthrope Press. You can puchase it as print or e-book here.


I hope you're all having a productive December. I'll be taking next week off from blogging, so I wish you all a wonderful holiday!

A Novel Sort of Fatigue

Well, this is a new sensation.
In the past three years I've finished two novels, both 38K-word middle grades. Now I'm reaching the end of an adult sci fi, which I'm expecting to be about 67K words.

The rhythm feels different from the previous two, and each day I can't believe there's more to write. Of course, 67K isn't all that long for a novel, but to me it's massive.

I've set myself a strict deadline of July 15 for completing the draft. At my current rate of output, that's reasonable, but I find myself pushing through brain fog that thickens with each passing day. How very thrilled I will be when I can move on to the next stage! Hope I like what I see when I come out the other end.

Author Blog Hop: Do You Write in Logical Order?

Thanks to Amy Romine for this interesting blog hop question.

There are two issues in answering the question:

First, what is meant here by "writing"? Are writing and drafting the same? Perhaps the question is: Do I draft in the order in which the material will eventually be read? The answer to that, of course, is that I can't know while I'm drafting whether that will be the final order of the prose or the final logic of the story. In any case, whether or not I write each scene in the order that I assume it will be used, I do have a sense of that order in my head, even if I write the prose for the last scene before I write the first scene.

Secondly, if by "logical," the question is asking whether I tell a story in temporal order, event by event, then I would say, yes, usually, but there are certainly exceptions such as flashbacks. My temporal appoach on the whole is conventional, although I admire authors who can fragment or even dispense with time in their storytelling. That's really tricky to do well.

Thanks again. It's been fun to think about this!

A Little Celebration

Nothing deep or pensive today. I just finished drafting the final chapter of the new novel. Within a few weeks, Ebenezer's Locker will start making the rounds. Wish us luck!

The Long Way

Never mind all the time one is expected to spend marketing one's own books, looking for new places to submit, finding out what editors are seeking, etc.  Never mind.  Let's talk about the act of book-writing itself.

I've been reading more and more interviews with successful novelists, and what I see is alarming enough to scare me off the pursuit of success.  One person writes 2000 words per day (that's eight double-spaced pages) come hell or high water.  One writes six drafts of a chapter each week until he has all the chapters, then throws away the first chapter and re-does it, no matter what.  One throws out every chapter as she goes, deleting the file from her hard drive, forcing her to start from scratch with each draft (how is that a draft, anyway?).  One regularly kills off her characters, requiring her to re-think her plot details.

Maybe when I've been at this a while, I, too, will have some writing quirk that makes me look like a workaholic madwoman.  Right now, I don't have the time or energy.