Dear [Agent’s Name],

Roe knew Peace could never last in Terravale, but she never imagined it would end with a sword through her sister’s gut. With tensions already running high in the immense city, the death of a Magi girl on the blade of a human knight may be the spark the war mongers need to turn the streets into a battlefield. Very striking first sentence. Why is peace capitalized? Feels off. Otherwise, this is a captivating first paragraph that nicely sets up the world and the problem that hurtles Roe into the conflict.

Roe has no place in politics,(Either change comma to an em dash or make into two sentences) she just wants to know why her sister died. But when Roe’s hunt for answers lands her in the crossfire of an attack, she is rescued by the wrong side when the humans mistake her for one of their own. Trapped among people who live and die by their swords and feed traitors and enemies to wild beasts in the arena, all Roe wants is to get back to her own kind before she is found out as a lamb in wolf’s clothing. But the Magi Senate have other ideas. Never have they had a spy so well placed as Roe, and she will not be welcomed home unless she brings information with her. Now Roe must pass for human and train for war alongside her enemy, knowing that if she is discovered, she will not live to fight. And if she isn’t, she will have to decide which side she wants to fight for. Honestly, this is really good. The only thing I want is a better sense of what kind of girl Roe is on the inside. We get that she wants to know why her sister died, but what drives her? Revenge? A need to find closure? And why doesn’t she have a place in politics? The outsider who is ill-equipped for her mission and learns how to rise to the huge task in front of her is an awesome central conflict, but we need a little better sense of what makes her an outsider and why she is so ill-equipped. A couple of phrases woven into this paragraph should do the trick. Also, I added a few commas. J

[TITLE REDACTED] is a YA fantasy novel complete at 70,000 words. Thank you for your time and consideration, Perfect, but change the comma to a period. Best of luck with this! I would buy this book in a heartbeat.

Kind regards (comma)

[My name and contact information]

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RU Readers – what do you think? Would you buy this book?

Join us on Wednesday when Sara Megibow talks about the Wonderful World of Bloggers!

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Bio: C.J. Redwine is an author of young adult novels and an experienced teacher. After teaching high school for several years, she turned her love of using innovative teaching strategies to the publishing field and began creating materials designed to equip writers with the skills necessary to succeed. Her book QUERY: How to get started, get noticed, and get signed is available now for Kindle and Nook. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband, four kids, two cats, and one long-suffering dog. To learn more about C.J., visit her website: http://cjredwine.blogspot.com.

What do query critiques, blogs, and men fumbling through romance on Valentine’s Day? This week’s fabulous lectures! Join us for an enlightening and entertaining line-up of Visiting Professors.

Mon, 2/6 – Monthly columnist C.J. Redwine returns with a critique of a reader submitted query letter. Join C.J. as she celebrates the release of her query book and kicks off QUERY PALOOZA! http://cjredwine.blogspot.com

Wed, 2/8 – RU columnist and agent Sara Megibow shares her thoughts on blogs. Are they an effective tool in an agent’s toolbox? http://www.nelsonagency.com

Fri, 2/10 – Handsome Hansel’s humorous take on the trials, tribulations and occasional triumphs men experience while attempting to pull-off romance (with some form of sincerity) on Valentine’s Day. It seems most men still don’t have it figured out. http://thedanceofromanceonline.com/

All Romance University lectures are generously provided by our Visiting Professors. RU is a tuition-free zone!
All our best,
Tracey Devlyn, Jennifer Tanner, Becke Martin-Davis, Kelsey Browning, Adrienne Giordano, Robin Covington, and Carrie Spencer

New Year’s Resolutions For Writers

It’s the time of year when many of us make shiny New Year’s Resolutions designed to help us achieve our personal and professional goals. I don’t know what your professional goals are for 2012, but I do know several habits that will help put you on the road to a successful writing career.

1. Don’t query too soon It’s so exciting to type The End. You’ve finished a manuscript. You’re sure this is THE ONE. And you can’t wait to query so you can bring yourself one step closer to publication. Here’s the truth: No manuscript is ready to be viewed by a professional until it’s had some time to marinate. Put it aside for a month. Send it to trusted critique partners. Let the story play around in the back of your mind while you catch up on all the laundry you didn’t do while you were drafting. And then dive back in for a hard-nosed edit. Trust me. You want your manuscript in the best shape possible before you query.

2. Read more: The more we write, the less time we have to read. But reading is important. For one, it helps you remain aware of what’s out there. For another, it feeds your creativity and teaches you craft. I read a book a week. If I’m drafting, I read books that are dissimilar to the one I’m writing. That way, I inspire my creativity without worrying I’ll accidentally allow a book to influence the world I’m building.

3. Eyes on your own test paper: Stop comparing your career to everyone else’s. You can always find someone who seems more successful and someone who hasn’t made it to where you are yet, but what’s the point? To torture yourself because so –and-so got a three book deal and you’re still waiting to hear back on your submissions? Every career is unique. Focus on the things you can control and let go of the rest.

4. Be kind: Support your fellow authors. Cheer others on. Help publicize the books you love. Sow seeds of kindness wherever you go, whether others deserve it or not. No one ever regrets being nice.

5. Push yourself: Let this be the year you dare to do more. Write more. Finish a project. Take on the story you think is too big for you. Bring your voice to the next level. Network with others even though you’d rather hide in a hole. Try new things. Read new things. Write new things. Without risk, there is little reward.

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What resolutions have you made for your writing career for 2012? Do C.J.’s suggestions ring any bells with you?

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On Wednesday, Harlequin Blaze author, Tawny Weber,  shows us  how to brainstorm with the best by asking “what if” and “why”.

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Bio:
C.J. Redwine‘s debut YA fantasy DEFIANCE, the story of a girl who escapes her cloistered city to rescue her father and finds heartbreak, danger, and a new romance, comes out Fall 2012 from Balzer + Bray/Harper Collins. When C.J. isn’t putting her characters in danger or running after her four children, she creates tools designed to help other writers master the craft of synopsis and query writing. For more information on C.J., her books, or her writer’s tools, visit http://cjredwine.blogspot.com.

You know that feeling? That sinking sensation in your stomach? That awful certainty weighing down every word you manage to pry out of your uncooperative brain?

Yeah. That one. That’s the “Help, my WIP has turned against me, and I don’t know what to do about it” feeling. We’ve all been there. The good news is you don’t have to stay there. Here are a few ways to energize your story, awaken your creativity, and teach that WIP who’s boss.

1. Back It Up: Maybe the problem is that you wrote yourself into a corner. You pushed the story where it wasn’t supposed to go. You jumped the shark , and you’re only a third of the way into your story. The easiest way to fix this is to back up to the last point where the story was flowing organically and start writing new material from there.

2. List Your Options: Maybe the problem is that you’re out of ideas. You know your secondary conflict barely has a pulse. You know your plot twists have run their course even though you have another 40k to type. The easiest fix for this is to sit down and start listing everything that could possibly happen. Even those things that are remote possibilities. At minimum, come up with twenty-five options. You’ll find that ideas begin to spawn ideas until you see a thread of possibilities and you have more than enough “stuff” to finish your story in style.

3. Spend Quality Time: Maybe the problem is you don’t really know your characters, and therefore you have no idea how to put them into situations that will stretch them to their breaking points. Each of your characters must have an agenda. This agenda drives every choice (good or bad) your character makes, how he or she interacts with others, and determines how he or she contributes to the overall conflict. Sit down and either write it out or talk it through. Figure out what your character really wants (may be more than one thing), why he or she wants this, and what he or she is willing to do to get it. Then look at all the ways your characters’ agendas either align or contradict each other. Presto! Conflict.

4. Give It A Rest: Maybe the problem is that you need to let your mind wander in a different direction creatively for a while. This could mean you write on another project. Or it could mean you do something else artistic, something that allows your mind to play with your WIP in the background. Some writer friends of mine knit, paint, or cook when they need distance from their story. Some write a project that is just for fun. Before long, your story will start playing out in your head. New scenes. New dialogue. And suddenly, you’ll feel that spark of excitement that compels you to return to your WIP and lay down the words.

5. Start Over: Oh, that hurts to read, doesn’t it? If all of these other methods haven’t worked, it’s possible you need a blank page. This may mean you simply move a troublesome scene or two aside and write them from scratch. Or it may mean you open a new document and start over entirely. Ouch? Maybe not. I worked for six weeks on my next book only to realize that the reason every word felt like I had to chisel it from cement was that the book was wrong. I’d started in the wrong place. Rushed the action. Picked the wrong narrator. I finally stopped trying all of the smaller fixes and just opened a new document. Guess what? The story flowed so fast, I could hardly keep up with it.

Dealing with a stubborn WIP takes guts and creativity. Sometimes you have to try several of these methods before you unlock the story and find success. What other methods have worked for you?

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Do you sometimes feel your WIP is out to get you? Do C.J.’s suggestions ring any bells with you?

*Special Notice!* This week, RU presents a 3-part mini-series called “The Other Side of the Bookshelf” by long-time Barnes & Noble Community Relations Manager Linda Keller. You won’t want to miss it!

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Bio:
C.J. Redwine‘s debut YA fantasy DEFIANCE, the story of a girl who escapes her cloistered city to rescue her father and finds heartbreak, danger, and a new romance, comes out Fall 2012 from Balzer + Bray/Harper Collins. When C.J. isn’t putting her characters in danger or running after her four children, she creates tools designed to help other writers master the craft of synopsis and query writing. For more information on C.J., her books, or her writer’s tools, visit http://cjredwine.blogspot.com.

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Thanks again to Kristen Boe for allowing C.J. to review her query letter. Kristen, please keep us posted on your submission process. 

On Wednesday, agent Sara Megibow talks about the creation of an agent’s to be read (TBR) pile. Please stop by again!

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C.J. Redwine‘s debut YA fantasy DEFIANCE, the story of a girl who escapes her cloistered city to rescue her father and finds heartbreak, danger, and a new romance, comes out Fall 2012 from Balzer + Bray/Harper Collins. When C.J. isn’t putting her characters in danger or running after her four children, she creates tools designed to help other writers master the craft of synopsis and query writing. For more information on C.J., her books, or her writer’s tools, visit http://cjredwine.blogspot.com.

We all know every story requires conflict. And most of us start writing our stories with a glorious, shining piece of conflict in mind. The problem is that most of our initial glorious, shining pieces of conflict are inadequate for sustaining the interest of a reader throughout the entire story. There’s a balance to writing good conflict. A way to pace it so that it steadily grows throughout the story, keeping your reader glued to the page.  Here are some suggestions for ways you can escalate the conflict in your story.

1. Use all three types of conflict: Your hero should have a difficult internal conflict, relational conflict with other characters, and an external conflict against his environment or circumstances. Developing all three strands of conflict gives your story depth and keeps your reader constantly invested in reading more.
2. Use fear: What does your hero fear the most? Make him face it. Don’t pull your punches. Shove your hero face to face with his biggest nightmare.
3. Cliffhangers: A fabulous way to keep the reader engaged is to end each chapter on a cliffhanger. It becomes next to impossible for your reader to put the book down. Even if you’re writing a chapter where the characters have some breathing space, you can use cliffhangers by ending the breathing space with the start of the next piece of conflict.
4. Pacing: The pacing of conflict in your story should look like this: Conflict Simmers à Conflict Boils à Conflict Explodes à Breathing Space à Repeat as necessary.
5. Pacing #2: All of that simmering, boiling, and exploding should look like peaks in your manuscript while the breathing space looks like valleys. Your peaks should get progressively higher and higher as the story nears completion. If you have two or three peaks in a row that are all at the same level of risk/intensity/stakes, you aren’t at a peak. You’re at a plateau, and you need to reassess those conflicts and figure out how to escalate them.
6. Make it worse: In every instance of conflict, ask yourself “How could this be worse?” If you can think of several ideas, it’s time to either find a way to use those ideas as you move through the manuscript, or make the original instance WORSE. Again, don’t pull your punches.
7. Have inner and outer conflict meet: When your hero’s choices in how to face his outer conflict lead to increased inner conflict (isolation, fear, guilt), you’ve done a good job of escalating the conflict.
8. Lose it: What does your hero need to lose? What would hurt the most? Cripple his resolve? Set fire to his good intentions? Push him irrevocably closer to that final conflict?
9. Mystery and suspense: Using mystery and suspense increases the tension and feeds both the hero’s fear and the reader’s as well. Each answer should raise a more harrowing question. And don’t kill the suspense by having the hero be too stupid to figure out what’s right in front of his face. Put thought into your mystery. J
10. Surprise: Surprises are an excellent way to escalate conflict. Sudden obstacles the hero has to scramble to overcome. Left turns in the plot that force the hero to contend with a new set of circumstances. Reveals that deepen the mystery and push the hero closer to the final conflict. Just be sure your surprises rise authentically from your plot, your setting, and your characters’ choices. Beware the convenient surprise! That way lies the death of interesting stories.

Next month, C.J. will be critiquing one lucky reader’s query. To submit your query, please go to the tab above labeled “Labs.”

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These are just a few ways you can escalate the conflict in your story. Which method did you find most useful? Do you have something you’d add to the list?

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Join us on Wednesday, October 5th, when author Inara Scott talks about “Discovering the Genius in Your Writing”.

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Bio:  C.J. Redwine writes YA fantasy adventure. Her debut, DEFIANCE, comes out next fall from Balzer + Bray. When she isn’t writing fiction, she’s working on materials to help other writers conquer the dreaded synopsis or write a winning query. For more information on C.J. go to http://cjredwine.blogspot.com

In our last Writing a HolyCowAwesome Story post, we’re going to look at ten ways you can create vivid, compelling characters. Characters are as integral to writing an amazing story as conflict and pacing. Your characters must be memorable, relatable, fascinating, distinct, flawed … they must leave an indelible imprint on the story. In fact, their choices, flaws, and agendas must drive the conflict.

How do you write characters that breathe life into your story? Here are ten suggestions:

1. Understand your character’s backstory: You should be able to sit down and write each of the pivotal moments in your character’s past. You don’t HAVE to write them out, but you need to know these moments like you know your own. Your character doesn’t arrive on page one as a blank slate. The things that happen in your story aren’t the only things driving your character. There are wounds, agendas, fears, foundations, beliefs, misconceptions and more from your character’s past: What happens in the story must either reinforce or challenge these.
2. Learn what music defines your character: This is a trick that works really well for those of us who respond to music. Get inside your character’s head and then create a playlist of songs that resonate with him. (Grooveshark.com is an excellent place to create free playlists.) Every time you sit down to write this particular story, start the playlist. Before long, you’ll find those songs instantly transport you into your story’s world and more importantly, into your character’s head.
3. Know what your character wants: You must know what drives your character—what motivates the choices he makes. In every single scene, your character wants something. If you can’t easily explain what your character wants in each scene, you’re either not delving deep enough into your character, or the scene is superfluous. A well-motivated character resonates with readers and drives the plot. Every character, no matter how minor, has an agenda in every scene.
4. Give your character complicated relationships: I don’t just mean complicated relationships with the new characters he comes in contact with. Your character should have relationships fraught with pain, misunderstanding, anger, not-quite-healed wounds etc. that carry over from your character’s past. These relationships serve to give your character authenticity and help you to SHOW the character’s motivations rather than tell them.
5. Develop your character’s voice: Each character in your story should sound distinct from all the rest, just like every person in your life sounds distinct from each other. A character’s voice is made up of his unique perspective, dominant personality traits, understanding of a situation, upbringing, longings, education, interests … you see where I’m going with this. No character will ever be exactly the same as any other character, and it’s your job as a writer to make sure you bring those differences to life on the page. For a master’s class in how to make a huge cast of characters all vastly unique, study the Harry Potter books.
6. Know your character’s strengths: What is your character good at? Where does he excel? Look at physical, mental, creative, social, and moral traits and figure out where your character’s strengths lie. Once you know these, you know a) how this character will choose to handle conflict, b) what kind of situation/conflict will push him to his limit, and c) how to use these strengths against him.
7. Know your character’s weaknesses:  Where does your character fail to excel? What are his flaws? Where is he likely to struggle, need help, or give in to temptation? Again, look at physical, mental, creative, social, and moral traits. Once you understand these, you know either what your character must overcome or what will be his Achilles heel.
8. Write in deep POV: Depending on the type of story (and your narrative style), writing in deep POV can be an excellent way to create vivid characters. To do this effectively, you must SHOW your character’s emotional reaction as things happen instead of just telling the reader how the character feels. For example, if a character is angry, you can tell us he’s mad enough to punch someone or you can show him punching a wall. Writing in deep POV requires you to cut out author intrusion (telling) which often show up in long passages of exposition. Instead, you as the author disappear inside the character and show conflict, emotion, and the developing arc through action and dialogue.
9. Give them opposites: A good way to really make your characters come off the page is to create a character who is the opposite of your hero in many ways. You can do this by having both characters share an agenda but have opposite methods for achieving what they want. You can set up two characters who have opposite agendas, but who share similar traits in how they work to achieve their goals. The end result will be tension and conflict, the primary drivers for any good story.
10. Push your character to his limits: Expose your character’s fears. Cause your character pain. Push your character to the very edge of what he is capable of handling mentally, emotionally, and physically. Let your character battle his weakness and find strength. Those are the characters that burn themselves into our hearts and won’t let us go.

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How do you create vivid, compelling characters? Did anything in this list resonate with you? 

Tomorrow, we have a special lecture with the fabulous Margie Lawson. Stop by and see what she has in store for us this time!

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Bio:

C.J. Redwine writes YA fantasy and is repped by the fabulous Holly Root. Her debut novel, DEFIANCE, will be published in Fall 2012 by Balzer & Bray. To learn more about C.J., visit her blog at http://cjredwine.blogspot.com.

Welcome, C.J.!

In my first segment on how to write a HolyCowAwesome story, I discussed the top ten reasons I’d put your book down and walk away. I hope you had the opportunity to take a hard look at your manuscript and diagnose any issues that post brought up. If you’re anything like me, you looked at your beautiful, shining Novel of Perfection and began to notice a few cracks in the foundation. Maybe a cosmetic flaw or two. Maybe you discovered you had a Sagging Middle. Maybe you realized your characters are no more substantial than those cardboard cutouts they stand along the walls in the movie theaters. (Dibs on Captain Jack Sparrow!) Maybe you looked at your novel’s stakes and had the uncomfortable realization that you aren’t sure they actually matter to anyone but your mother and your supportive best friend.

The good news is, every writer has those realizations. Some of us have those sucker-punch-to-the-gut epiphanies on every single book. That’s a good thing! Why? Because everything I just mentioned can be fixed. It seems to me (after hours of critique reading, book reading, and discussing plot synopses with clients) that the most pressing issue facing writers of every skill level is this: How do I raise the stakes and make the conflict matter to the reader?

Here are my top ten methods for addressing this issue:

1. Make the characters matter: A character, even a secondary one, isn’t there to serve the plot. A character is there to participate in the plot. And every character, including those who briefly wander across a scene and are never heard from again, have a history that influences how they participate in the plot. If you want readers to care about the conflict, you have to make them care about the characters. You can do this by using deep POV (Writing from one character’s point of view in a way that feels like the reader is literally sitting inside their brain experiencing thoughts/events/emotions through that character’s very personal responses/filter.) You can make sure you push yourself to give the readers non-verbal cues to your characters’ emotions. You can really get under the skin of each character and make sure each voice is unique. If you aren’t sure what this looks like, grab a book you’ve read whose character is indelibly etched in your heart and read it again, paying close attention to how that author delivers that connection.
2. Make the inner conflict matter: It honestly doesn’t matter so much what your character’s inner conflict is as long as the choices she faces will cost her something either way. Even a simple conflict (Should I try out for cheerleading?) can have deeper layers as long as you understand what it costs the character to say no and what it will cost the character to say yes. And please, PLEASE, do yourself the favor of having threads of inner conflict that aren’t resolved. No one goes through a short phase of their life and exits out the other side with all the answers tied up in a pretty little package, so why should your character? You can resolve things, maybe resolve the major inner conflict for that story, but leave more for your character to learn and discover. If you don’t, your character has now become stagnant and that is the death of good storytelling.
3. Have a strong external conflict: The external conflict must be strong enough to propel the story from start to finish. No Sagging Middle for you! The external conflict must matter enough to push the characters into action, force them to make choices, and then deliver consequences for those choices. If the characters’ choices don’t have consequences, your conflict will wander off into the corner and die a quiet, lingering death. If you aren’t sure your conflict is strong enough to propel the story, then take a hard look at it and ask yourself, “How could this get worse?”
4. Have continuous conflict growth: Don’t start with a bang and then find yourself at the 30k mark with nothing causing problems for your characters until they finally wander through enough exposition and setting to hit the 50k mark where things finally get good again. Start strong and escalate. I prefer to break up my word count before I start a book and figure out where I want my big “game changing moments” to fall. Then I figure out what those game changing moments will be. I have three. One at the 1/ 3 mark, one at the ½ point, and one at ¾ which forcibly propels the characters into the final showdown. You may have a different pacing or method for plotting, and that’s fine. The important thing is to make sure your big conflict moments are escalating: each worse than the last.
5. No obvious solutions: Nothing bugs me more than a book where I can see the solution coming fifty pages from the end, and then I wind up being right. Boring! If you must let a character try an obvious solution at any point in the book, I suggest having it blow up in that character’s face. What an intriguing surprise for your reader. It’s a lot more work as a writer to toss out the obvious solutions and force our brain to come up with something else, but I promise you this: if the problem of how your characters will finally overcome their obstacles is keeping you up until 2 a.m., it will keep your reader up too.
6. Push your characters to their limits: No matter what kind of book you write, you can push your characters to their emotional or physical limits. Or both. Give them tasks that require them to perform at the very edge of their skill set. Make the reader worry about the outcome. The instant you let up on your characters, the fizz begins leaking out of your story.
7. Don’t neglect the emotional impact of the conflict: Here’s a simple formula to remember: escalating outer conflict increases inner conflict. If your character stops reacting emotionally to his or her surroundings and circumstances, if your character no longer weighs decisions or regrets choices, you’re neglecting the emotional impact of your story. If you neglect the emotional impact, you risk writing a forgettable book.
8. Don’t take away your character’s hard choices: What if J.K. Rowling had decided it would be too hard on Harry to realize he was the unintended Horcrux? What if she’d kept Dumbledore alive so maybe Harry wouldn’t have to face dying to save the world? Then I wouldn’t have spent half of Harry Potter 7.2 bawling my eyes out at the theater while my children cringed in embarrassment. Give your characters the hard choices. The road paved in broken glass. Let them hurt.
9. Don’t neglect the consequences for their choices: Each choice a character makes has fallout that should propel the conflict and push the character closer and closer to the final showdown. And please don’t make the mistake of protecting your hero/heroine by making all the consequences for their choices good. Characters make bad choices. Or make good choices that end badly. They should pay the price for that, and so should everyone around them.
10. Don’t forget that victory costs something: If you truly want your stakes to matter to the reader, they must matter deeply to your characters. Your characters must want their preferred outcome more than they want any of the other choices in front of them, even though it will cost them something. What did it cost Harry to take up Dumbledore’s quest and pursue Voldemort’s demise? His relationship with Ginny. His last year at Hogwarts. His relationships with any remaining father figures within the Order. Nearly his friendship with Ron. A comfortable roof over his head. And finally, his life. He didn’t wander into those consequences on accident. He chose them because in his eyes, they were a worthy sacrifice to his goal of bringing Voldemort down. Did your character willingly choose to actively pursue his/her preferred outcome, regardless of the cost? Is the cost so high the reader will worry the character might not be able to pay it?

I hope you found one or two nuggets you can take with you to your manuscript so you can whip it into shape! Next month, we’ll finish discussing how to write a HolyCowAwesome story by listing ten ways you can create vivid characters who come to life on the page.

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RU Crew, what’s your favorite way to hurt your characters? What hurts your heart (you know those little twinges I’m talking about) when you read a book?

Stop by Wednesday when we highlight a post by Michael Hauge on how novels and movies differ.

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Bio: C.J. Redwine writes YA fantasy and is repped by the fabulous Holly Root. Her debut novel, DEFIANCE, will be published in Fall 2012 by Balzer & Bray. To learn more about C.J., visit her blog at http://cjredwine.blogspot.com.

I’m a busy woman. At the moment, I work a day job, have writing deadlines to meet, do my best to keep up with my toddler, and ride herd on three boys intent on destroying a chunk of middle Tennessee with the cunning use of bottle rockets, toothpaste, and lack of personal hygiene. I don’t have a lot of spare time.

Which means I don’t get to read nearly as many books as I used to. (Please note that my lack of reading time has IN NO WAY diminished how many books I purchase. My TBR pile is ridiculous because I cannot resist the Ooh, Shiny! feeling I get when I see a cover or read a blurb that attracts my attention. Please also note that you should not feel obligated to share that fact with my husband.)

When I do get a chance to read a book, I want it to be HolyCowAwesome. I want to be totally captivated by the characters, immersed in the world, and unable to put it down because I simply have to know what happens next. If I start reading a book, and it doesn’t deliver what it promised with its Ooh, Shiny! cover and premise, I simply stop reading. I don’t have the time to soldier forward in hopes that it will somehow get better.

I know a lot of other readers who do the same. So, how do you, the writer, make sure your reader gets infected with One More Chapteritus? I’m going to take cover this topic in segments since it’s multi-layered, and since nailing THIS means grabbing a reader/agent/editor and holding them until the very last word.

In the next couple of months, I’ll dive into specific things you can do to make your story HolyCowAwesome. This month, I’ll cover a few of the things that make most readers set your book aside and move on to the next Ooh, Shiny! story in their TBR (or slush!) pile. Ready to take a hard look at your story? Here are the top ten reasons why I would set your book aside.

1. You barely skimmed the surface of your main characters. I love to sink beneath the skin of your characters and live in their heads for the duration of the book. If your heroine has the emotional capacity of block of wood, don’t expect me to care if she gets put in mortal peril in chapter twenty. At that point, chances are good I’m rooting for her to bite the big one and put us all out of our misery.

2. Every character in your book is stunningly beautiful and perfect. I have a confession to make. Stunningly beautiful/perfect characters bore me to death. If you have an entire cast of them, I’ll wonder if some cruel trick of fate has landed me in the middle of an episode of America’s Top Model. I was about to say the only thing worse than reading an episode of ATM would be doing a workout with Richard Simmons, but at least he makes me laugh.

And he’s not afraid of sequins.

3. Events happen that go against what a character would authentically do/choose simply so you can have the plot twist where you want it to twist. This a) is lazy writing and b) assumes I’m too stupid to realize you’ve hijacked your characters for the sake of sticking with your outline.

4. Your main character is never in any real danger. I don’t necessarily mean physical danger, though most of what I choose to read includes that component. Emotional danger works too. At some point, I need to worry the hero/heroine won’t get what he/she needs. I need to be afraid he/she won’t live, won’t succeed, or will be broken beyond repair. If you can’t deliver stakes like those, what’s the point of reading the story?

5. You repeat things I already know. It’s one thing to revisit an important fact/idea occasionally throughout the book. It’s another thing to SHOW me a character laughing and then fill up the next two paragraphs TELLING me the character found something funny. Give me the action and trust me to understand its implications. If more explanation is needed, do it in a way that doesn’t assume I’m too stupid to have figured it out on my own.

6. You rhapsodize endlessly about a certain feature on your hero or heroine. I love a sexy hero as much as the next girl. I don’t love endlessly reading gooey descriptions of the hero’s lips. Eyes. Jaw. Pecs. Whatever. Now, this one is certainly a matter of personal taste. I’m sure there are readers out there who enjoy having the hero’s adorable cleft chin referenced on every other page. I’m not one of them. I’m much more interested in what’s going on within the hero’s heart and mind. And I like to think the heroine is the kind of woman who’s intelligent enough to get past her initial OOOH! Cleft chin! reaction and start looking for signs of heroism beneath the external.

7. Your villain doesn’t scare me. Voldemort scared me. The killer from PSYCHOPATH (Keith Ablow) scared me. A villain who has the opportunity to cause pain and uses it instead to endlessly explain his every little move (All the better to give the hero a chance to arrive, my dear!) does not. I think it’s fantastic when a villain offers some sort of insight into the way his mind works. I just need it to be done in a way that increases how threatened I feel by him. If I’m not afraid of the villain, I don’t care about the story.

8. If I can see a convenient way out of the danger/situation, if all the hero/heroine has to do is do x instead of y and x doesn’t cost him/her anything, I’m done reading. I love to be on the edge of my seat, unable to see how the hero/heroine could either a) get out of the situation unscathed or b) pay the cost of the decision they’ll have to make. You do that, and I’m hooked for life.

9. Your ending is heavy on the exposition, light on the action. This is an easy mistake to make. You’ve got loose ends to tie up. Questions to answer. A foundation for the next book to lay. I get that. But I’ve been reading feverishly for the last two hundred odd pages to get to this point and I don’t want to sit back and read the equivalent of Driving Miss Daisy. I want action. Danger. Life-threatening/emotionally-scarring stuff. I want to be unable to put the book down because I’m so afraid the characters I know and love won’t come through.

10. Your stakes suck. For a story to really pull me in, the stakes have to matter. Really matter. I have to care deeply about the characters and the outcome of their struggle. I have to want them to make it. I have to see that the cost of them not making it is painfully high. It doesn’t actually matter if the stakes involve physical danger, saving the world, or finally making a romantic commitment to their soul mate–the stakes have to really matter to me. For the stakes to matter, you have to push the characters to their limit. You have to make me frantically turn page after page because I have this terrible fear that somehow the characters won’t pull it off.

Tune in next month to learn how to raise the stakes and make the conflict matter to the reader. Until then, I’ll be busy wrangling my four kids, writing my own HolyCowAwesome story, and searching the bookstores for the next Ooh, Shiny! to add to my TBR pile.

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So tell us readers, what makes you turn the next page, what keeps you reading when you SHOULD be in bed?

Join us on Wednesday for James Scott Bell and his special lecutre on writing The End of the Story

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Bio: C.J. Redwine writes YA fantasy and is repped by the fabulous Holly Root. Her debut novel, THE COURIER’S DAUGHTER, will be published in Fall 2012 by Balzer & Bray. To learn more about C.J., visit her blog at http://cjredwine.blogspot.com.

Welcome, C.J.!

I went to the bank a few months ago and stood in line behind a woman who was a low income couch potato whose social life revolved around her fifty cats.

How do I know that?

I don’t.

What I do know is that the woman in front of me was overweight, her hair was yanked up in a sloppy ponytail, her accent was what most southerners instantly recognize as “redneck”, and she wore cheap gray sweat pants with GIANT cat paw prints embroidered across her generous backside.

Now, it’s very likely that this is a warm and wonderful woman who was simply having one of those days. Maybe she has six children, another two she’s taken in from a sick relative, and she’s lucky to have made it out the door. Maybe the only clean garment she had at the time was the awful pair of kitty-paw-print sweats her great Aunt Mildred gave her for Arbor Day. Probably she was on the way to serve soup to the homeless.

Most people would never get past her initial appearance to figure that out because first impressions are tough to overcome.

Chapter One is your novel’s first impression – your one chance to hook your reader into your story. Don’t ruin it by choosing what requires the least effort from you.

Your first chapter should:

1. Introduce your main character: “Introduce” is not a euphemism here for “give the reader every last detail”. “Introduce” is code for “seduce the reader into rooting for your m/c”.
2. Plunge your reader straight into the action: “Action” here is not a euphemism for “conversation whose main goal is to establish background or give story details”. “Action” is code for “action”. As Miss Snark always used to say, give me a flaming corpse on page one and you’ve got me.
3. Set up the conflict: You don’t have to deliver the whole ball of wax in chapter one. You do, however, need to give me a sense of the stakes and a reason to keep reading.
4. Ground the reader in setting: This doesn’t mean you need paragraph upon paragraph belaboring the details of the world in which your story is set. You can ground your reader in setting with some well chosen sentences sprinkled throughout the chapter.
5. Enchant the reader with your Voice: From paragraph one, your reader should be drawn in by your unique Voice. If your chapter reads “flat”, start re-writing until you nail it.

Avoiding the Paw-Print Bottoms:

Don’t open your novel with anything that screams cliché. A few clichés to avoid are:

• someone’s dream
• a long inner monologue involving mundane daily details
• someone driving to work/school/church thinking about their day
• conversations between two characters that don’t instantly generate conflict
• long descriptions of the weather (unless, of course, the weather is your villain)
• a group of characters doing nothing important

Check yourself:

• Do you spend too much time on painting the scene and not enough time making your reader care about who’s in the scene?
• Are you aware that your novel has a slow start but are hoping that since it picks up by chapter five, your slow beginning won’t matter? (Agents/editors/readers aren’t going to read to chapter five if you can’t hook them on chapter one!)
• Does your m/c stand out in chapter one as unique, interesting, different…something to make me want to turn the page and see what happens to her?
• Is your conflict either a) unique from other books on the shelves or b) a fresh take on an old idea?

Your first chapter is what will grab an agent’s attention, bring in the requests for more, and later, what will seduce a reader into buying your book. Pull out all the stops. Re-write, re-write, re-write until your first chapter is a tightly written, fast-paced showcase of your Voice.

Your readers don’t need every detail in chapter one. They just need a compelling reason to keep reading.

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So, do we have any paw-print bottom first chapters out there? Care to share the first sentence in your current work in progress? Readers, what’s the best first chapter you’ve ever read?

Please join us on Wednesday for author Deborah Blake’s lecture on how to use magic to improve your writing.

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C.J.’s Bio:

C.J. Redwine writes YA fantasy and is repped by the fabulous Holly Root. Her debut novel, THE COURIER’S DAUGHTER, will be published in Fall 2012 by Balzer & Bray. To learn more about C.J., visit her blog at http://cjredwine.blogspot.com.