WEbook Blog

WEbook Writing Secrets #17: Defeat the First Draft Blues, Part 4

This is Part 4 of a series on revising the first draft of a novel. Read Part 1 to find out why it's important to take a break from your first draft before you revise it. Read Part 2 to discover why a messy first draft is a good thing. Part 3 teaches you how to take stock of what works (and what doesn't).

Step 4: Put the Vision back in Revision

"Strategic planning is worthless -- unless there is first a strategic vision." -- John Naisbitt, American writer and thinker

If you've followed steps 1-3 of the WEbook Guide to Revising a Novel, you should have a good handle on your book as it exists today -- warts and all. You may be tempted to get right in there and start applying liquid nitrogen to those warts. But then all you'll be left with is a toad with no warts. Why settle for that when you could have -- oh, I don't know -- a griffin, or a jackalope, or an animatronic space monkey?

In other words, they call it revision for a reason. Now that you know what your book is, it's time to create a vision for what your book could be.

There is no simple formula for discovering the greatest potential inherent in your first draft. You cannot plug in character A's strength rating, divide it by subplot B's development score, and multiply the whole thing by the square root of plot twist C. Instead, you must draw on the mysterious forces of inspiration and vision that led you to want to write a book in the first place. Luckily, there are a few signposts that can help you find your way in the dark.

Below, you will find eight questions that will guide you towards your greatest vision. Before you get started on the questions, establish some ground rules to help you get the most out of this process.

Forget what you think you know. Let go of any preconceptions you have about your book. Presumably, you started your first draft with some more or less definite ideas about plot, character, and/or premise. (Even if you started with nothing, you probably developed some ideas along the way.) Throw them all out the window. You may end up back where you started, concluding that yes, in fact, this is a realistic first-person narrative describing a lonely housewife's journey from depression to international pop stardom. But in order to find your vision, you must create space for the possibility that your book could in fact be a third-person narrative exploring the perspectives of twelve different roadies backstage before the once-lonely housewife's final arena concert.

So many possibilites, so few lifetimes. Once you open yourself up to the possibility that your book could be something other than what you originally imagined it to be, you may find yourself overwhelmed by all the somethings other it could be. Don't despair. Focus on finding the most promising path for your novel, and leave the other possibilities for another day -- and another book.

Keep it positive. Remember when you read through your first draft and took stock of what worked well? Let those bright lights guide you to your vision. As you reflect on the questions below, think mainly about the elements of your draft that stand out as great, successful, and/or energetic.

Grab a pen. Carve out some time in your day to sit down with a pen and a notebook. Devote roughly ten minutes to each of the questions below. If you need to, you can come back to some of the questions again -- and again -- until you're satisfied. You can also jot down other questions that occur to you as you answer these. Remember, you should answer these questions not necessarily about your first draft as it is, but about your book as it could be and as you want it to be.

Document your vision. Spend as much time as you want brainstorming about the questions below. When you feel that you have a solid grasp of the greatest possibility for your story, take one piece of paper and collect the downpour from your brainstorm into a single bucket. Write 2-3 sentences summarizing each answer. (If an answer covers more than one character, it's okay to devote 2-3 sentences to each character.) Incorporate your favorite ideas from the final question ("What if...?") into your answer to question # 7.

The questions:

1. Whose story is it? It's fine if the answer includes more than one person; however, it may be easier if you have one main person to focus on.
2. Who tells the story? This may or may not be the same person as question # 1. It also may or may not be a person in the story at all -- the person telling the story might be you, the author.
3. How does the story begin? Pinpoint the chronological beginning of your story -- not necessarily where you begin telling it, but where the story itself is set in motion.
4. How does the story end? See above, substituting "end" for "begin." Look for the place where the strongest elements of your story resolve themselves.
5. How do the book's characters change over the course of the story? What transformations occur -- or should occur -- to your characters between the story's beginning and its end?
6. How does the reader change over the course of the story? In your vision for your book, imagine what you want your reader to think and feel at the beginning of the book, and chart the changes in their perspective that should take place along the way. You may be mainly concerned with your reader's thoughts about people or events within the book; or, you may want your book to have an effect on your reader's larger worldview.
7. What events or elements of the story are crucial to the changes experienced by your characters and readers? Make a list of things that happen in the story that lead to character or reader transformations and shifts in perspective.
8. What if...? Finally, take ten or twenty minutes to brainstorm on possible new story elements that could strengthen the transformations you envision for your characters and readers. Repeat as necessary.

Join the Conversation

Share your revision wisdom and woes with fellow WEbookers on the WEbook forums.

WEbook Writing Secrets

Got a secret I don’t know about? Share it with the world in WEbook Writing Secrets. To submit a secret, email me or visit my profile and send me a message with the subject line: Writing Secrets. The best secrets will be published here and in the WEbook Toolbox. Authors will be credited with a byline and a bio.

Get Feedback on your Novel at WEbook

Find readers for your work – sign up for WEbook today.

-- Melissa

WEbook Writing Secrets #16: Defeat the First Draft Blues, Part 3

This is Part 3 of a series on revising the first draft of a novel. Read Part 1 to find out why it's important to take a break from your first draft before you revise it. Read Part 2 to discover why a messy first draft is a good thing.

Step 3: Survey the Damage

So you've taken a nice, long break from your novel, and you've made peace with its imperfections. Now it's time to survey the damage -- but don't worry. You won't be making a list of all the things you did wrong. Instead, you'll be looking at what you did right, and asking yourself some very important questions.

Find What Works

When you come back to your novel after a break, the first thing you need to do is read it. That may seem obvious, but it's important that you set some guidelines for how you will read the first draft.

• DON'T change a word. That's right, not a single word. Don't add a comma, don't remove a quotation mark. Don't make any changes at all to your manuscript.
• DO read in big, uninterrupted chunks. If you can manage it, set aside a few consecutive days to get through the book. You may not be able to do it all in one sitting, but the last thing you want is a two-week break between page 100 and page 101.
• DO print your manuscript. Working from a hard copy instead of a computer screen has many advantages. It will make it easier to resist the temptation to start "fixing" things. (See above.) And, you can scribble all over a piece of paper. (See below.) That doesn't work so well on a monitor.
• DO break out the highlighters and colored markers. How you choose to mark up your manuscript is up to you, but it pays to get creative.
• DO look for what works. Underline or highlight any passages that are particularly resonant, well-written, and effective. Write notes in the margin, pointing out sections of strong characterization, setting, action, etc. 
• DO ask questions. As you read, leave yourself memos asking what, where, how, who, and, most importantly, why. 
• DON'T get too focused on flaws. You could agonize over why a scene doesn't work, only to decide later that the entire sub-plot it belongs to needs to go. For now, think of yourself as a doctor treating a patient with an exotic, unknown disease. You can't make a diagnosis, much less prescribe a treatment, until you take the patient's history and make a list of all the symptoms. As you're reading, jot down a note if a scene moves too quickly or slowly; if dialogue is stilted; if a character does something implausible; or if something just plain doesn't make sense. Then let it go, and move on to the next page.

Ask for Help

Feedback can be a great help to a writer -- but it's important to get the right kind of feedback for whatever stage you're at with your novel. When you're planning a revision of a first draft, ask your readers to follow the above guidelines, with one modification: tell them not to focus on the flaws at all. Let your readers know that the manuscript is very rough, and you'll be working out the kinks soon. For now, you're interested in hearing what elements of the book your readers like the most.

Coming Soon: Defeat the First Draft Blues, Part 4: Find your Vision

Join the Conversation

Share your revision wisdom and woes with fellow WEbookers on the WEbook forums.

WEbook Writing Secrets

Got a secret I don’t know about? Share it with the world in WEbook Writing Secrets. To submit a secret, email me or visit my profile and send me a message with the subject line: Writing Secrets. The best secrets will be published here and in the WEbook Toolbox. Authors will be credited with a byline and a bio.

Get Feedback on your Novel at WEbook

Find readers for your work – sign up for WEbook today.

-- Melissa

WEbook Writing Secret # 15: Defeat the First Draft Blues, Part 2

This is Part 2 of a series on revising the first draft of a novel, dedicated to all the NaNoWriMo winners out there. Read Part 1 here.

Step 2: Embrace the Mess

When I was a kid, my mom had a cross-stitched sign in our living room that said, "A messy house is the sign of a brilliant mind." If I knew how to cross-stitch, I'd hang a similar sign over my desk: "A messy first draft is the sign of a brilliant mind."

I know a few good writers who edit their work as they write it. Sentence 1 has to be just right before they can move onto Sentence 2. Chapter 1 has to be perfect before they write Chapter 2.  If they get to Chapter 13 and decide to make a change that affects Chapters 1, 2, 5, and 9, they go back and fix those chapters before they write Chapter 14.  Some of these writers even manage to finish books!

This guide to revision is not for those writers.

Let's assume that your first draft is a total mess. You wrote it (maybe in a single month); you left it alone long enough to get some perspective; and now you know for sure:  This book is a piece of junk.  No one in the history of time has ever written a book this bad.  At the beginning of the book, your main character's name is John; by the end, it's Jan.  You have no idea how or why Jan spent three chapters in Bangladesh shopping for a puppy -- she lives in Indiana, and she hates dogs.  Plus, you forgot to give Jan any friends, family, or source of income.  Whoops!

Good thing writers are so famously crazy.  You'll need at least two separate personalities to deal with this mess.

Personality #1: The Creator.  The Creator is great at coming up with cool ideas (like sending your main character to Bangladesh).  Flashes of insight and inspiration are the Creator's specialty.  Without the Creator, the world -- and your book -- would be very, very boring.  However, the Creator is lousy at logic and planning.  That's why you need...

Personality #2:  The Editor.  The Editor cleans up the messes the Creator leaves behind.  Editors are great at seeing the big picture, making outlines, setting deadlines, fixing details, and refining language.

If your first draft is a mess, that's a sign that your Creator has been hard at work -- which is a very good thing.  A mess means you've been thinking big, and you probably have some really great ideas buried under all the digressions and mistakes.  Now it's time for the Editor to take over for a while. 

In the steps to come, you will learn when to delegate responsibility to the Editor, and when to call on the Creator. For now, make a deal with yourself: The Creator and the Editor are not allowed in the same room without a chaperon.  

And stop worrying about the mess.  If you want to build the Sistine Chapel, you have to spill some paint.

Coming Soon: Step 3: Survey the Damage

Join the Conversation

Share your revision wisdom and woes with fellow WEbookers on the WEbook forums.

WEbook Writing Secrets

Got a secret I don’t know about? Share it with the world in WEbook Writing Secrets. To submit a secret, email me or visit my profile and send me a message with the subject line: Writing Secrets. The best secrets will be published here and in the WEbook Toolbox. Authors will be credited with a byline and a bio.

Start Writing Now

Put your secrets to work – sign up for WEbook today.

-- Melissa

WEbook Writing Secret # 14: Defeat the First Draft Blues, Part 1

National Novel Writing Month (a.k.a. NaNoWriMo) ended November 30, but for the 21,683 writers who successfully completed a 50,000-word (or longer) draft of a novel, the work has just begun. If you're one of them -- or if you've ever stared at a first draft of a novel, wondering, "What's next?" -- WEbook Writing Secrets are here to help.

This is the first in a series of practical tips for writers facing the first draft blues.

It's Not Over!

Unless you're Jack Kerouac, chances are good that the work you create in a white-hot frenzy is nowhere near publishable quality. (Frankly, I've always had my doubts about old Jack, too.) Even if you're not sure you want to publish your novel, you can learn just as much -- and perhaps more -- about telling a story from editing and revision as you can from writing a first draft. Here's how it's done.

(Note: These tips come from my experience working with writers to get their first -- or second, or third, or fifteenth -- draft of a novel in shape for publication. None of these steps are compulsory. Plenty of people write, revise, and publish novels without following my advice. If you have work habits that work for you, keep working 'em!)

Step 1: Take Five

A first draft of a novel is a lot like a really, really dense forest. There may be a path in there, but if you're lost in the trees, you'll never find it. Get out of the forest. In fact, go far enough for long enough that you completely forget what the forest is like. Then, rent a helicopter and fly over the forest, making a map of what you see from a distance. When you get back into the trees, you'll be less likely to get lost.

What does this mean in non-metaphorical terms?  Quite simply: Take a break, then come back and read your entire first draft with fresh eyes, making notes before you start changing anything. Your break should be long enough that you forget a lot of the details of what you wrote. The length of this break will vary depending on how much your mind resembles a steel trap. There are a few things you can do to speed up the process. Choose one of these cross-training activities, or combine a few.

1) Read one great book. Pick something long and difficult that you've been meaning to tackle since high school. Anything written by a 19th-century Russian writer or an early modernist European should do the trick. Spend a week or two on War and Peace or The Magic Mountain, and you'll have no idea what you were working on before. Beware! Reading dense old books can infect your writing style. This is more of a danger during the composition process, but you should be on guard for accidental overdose nonetheless.

2) Read three silly books. The books should be reasonably well-written (you don't want to rot your writer's brain), but light and fast. It's best to steer clear of your novel's genre -- if you wrote a horror novel, don't read Stephen King. For all writers, I recommend anything by P.G. Wodehouse.

3) Complete a physical challenge. Train for a 5K, a 10K, a marathon, or a triathlon. Hike a segment of the Appalachian trail. Climb a literal mountain.

4) Become an art enthusiast. Take two weeks, and see as many plays, dance performances, concerts, and museum exhibits as your schedule and your town's cultural offerings will permit. Don't go to literary readings -- they lead to nothing but pointless, poisonous fantasies about what you'll wear to your first book signing.

5) Don't stop writing -- but don't work on your novel, and don't start anything that can't be finished in a day. Your goal is not to start new projects during this time -- you just need to keep the old writing muscles in decent shape. Think of yourself as an athlete in the off-season, or an opera singer between shows. You want to run drills and sing some light scales, but you also need to rest. Commit to a few weeks of free-writing for an hour or so a day, or write some 200-word short short stories. File the stories away for later. When you're done with your novel, you can pull them out and use them for inspiration for your next project.

Coming Soon: Step 2: Embrace the Mess

Join the Conversation

Share your revision wisdom and woes with fellow WEbookers on the WEbook forums.

WEbook Writing Secrets

Got a secret I don’t know about? Share it with the world in WEbook Writing Secrets. To submit a secret, email me or visit my profile and send me a message with the subject line: Writing Secrets. The best secrets will be published here and in the WEbook Toolbox. Authors will be credited with a byline and a bio.

Start Writing Now

Put your secrets to work – sign up for WEbook today.

-- Melissa

WEbooker of the WEek Writes a Novel in a Month

Every November for the past ten years, thousands of complete lunatics -- er, I mean writers -- have congregated online to write a novel in a month.  According to the NaNoWriMo website, 119,301 writers signed up for the challenge this year, and 21,683 met the 50,000-word quota -- that's the highest "win" rate of any NaNoWriMo yet! 

A hefty handful of this year's NaNoWriMo winners came from WEbook -- read all about them here.  This WEek's WEbooker, HorrorPunk, is one of those brave writers.

Last week in this blog, HorrorPunk told WEbook's TsungChi about his book Agoraphobia, in which "a recovered agoraphobic tries to grow closer to his ex-therapist-cum-girlfriend by sharing her love of nature."  You can read Agoraphobia on WEbook, here. To get the story behind the story, I asked HorrorPunk a few probing questions.

Q:  What is the (brief) story of your life?

A: I'm a single father going to school, and I have always had a passion for the written word. I'm currently studying to be an RN.

Q:  Where and when did you get the idea for Agoraphobia?

A:  My novel was outlined on the back of an overdue bill, days before the challenge began.  Luckily, it remained pretty much untouched through the whole manic process.

Q:  What was the hardest thing about the NaNoWriMo challenge? What was the biggest lesson?

A:  Most definitely the hardest thing to learn from the NaNo was to stop editing. You just have to plow ahead, and ignore how bad you think your unedited work is.

Q:  What's next? Do you intend to keep working on this project, or are you on to something new?

A:  Despite finishing 50,000, the novel is not quite done yet. I need about another 11 chapters. Then it's off to edits-ville for a few months -- oh, joy!

Q:  How do you balance being a single dad with writing and your career as a student?

A:  Being a student helps, because I don't have a 9-5 job that keeps me away from home a lot. That way I have more leeway than most in jumping between roles of writer and dad.

Q:  If you could offer your son one life lesson, using only six words, what would it be?

A:  Don't do what I did, boy.

WEbooker of the WEek

Do you have a line on the wonderfullest writer on WEbook? The fantastickest feedbacker? Or anyone else who goes above and beyond to make WEbook the best writing, reading, and publishing community on the internet? Drop me an email, or visit my profile and send me a message with the title "WEbooker of the WEek" to nominate your favorite WEbooker and he or she will have a shot at joining the ranks of the immortals -- and getting a free WEbook T-shirt to boot.

Join WEbook Today

Sign up for WEbook today and start reading, writing, and feedbacking.

-- Melissa

Featured WEbook Project: Write the Story of Someone Else's Life

One of the joys of writing is using your imagination to bring to life situations, events, places, and people you've never actually encountered in real life.  But this imaginative work isn't always easy.  Suppose your main character suddenly decides she wants to spend a few weeks in Taos, New Mexico -- but you've never been west of the Mississippi.  How do you get the details right? 

What if you're writing about a love affair between a prep cook and a busboy at a greasy spoon -- but you've taught high school English for twenty years?  Where do you go to find out the flavor of the day-to-day life of a diner worker?

Maybe you just finished writing your 300th draft of your novel telling the story of the summer you spent working on a fishing boat in Seattle -- and you'd like to work on something that's not about you, for a change.  How do you find inspiration and information to get you writing outside the "box" of your own life?

The solution to these dilemmas (and more) can be found in a new WEbook project, Need an Expert for a Plot Problem?  In Need an Expert...?, WEbookers are pitching in to trade life experiences and expertise with their fellow writers.  Whether you're a writer in need, or a volunteer willing to talk to someone about your life -- or both -- Need an Expert...? promises company, inspiration, and not a little bit of good, old-fashioned learning.

Here's how it works:  Altruistic WEbookers visit Need an Expert...? and make a deposit in the "experience bank" by creating a submission that briefly describes either a place, a career, or a life event that they know something about.  Writers come along and scan the submissions.  When they encounter something that piques their interest -- or meshes with a current project in progress -- they send the author a private message to find out more.  A correspondence develops, and before you know it, the writer knows everything he or she could ever hope to know about what it was like to be in Memphis on the day Elvis died.  Voila!  A story is born.

Need an Expert...? currently contains 75 offers for information, ranging from court reporting to surviving spinal meningitis.  Visit the project today to submit your own experiences, and to get inspired by the rich lives your fellow WEbookers have led!

Featured WEbook Projects

Know a really great project on WEbook? Want to spread the word? Send me an email or visit my profile and drop me a message to nominate it as a Featured WEbook Project!

Start Writing Now!

To get started, sign up for WEbook today.

-- Melissa

WEbook Writing Secret # 13: Surprise! It’s your Character!

By FirstYearGrad

The better we know someone, the more they surprise us with their inconsistencies.

I once worked with a woman who color-coded her desk drawers.  She sorted her pens and pencils into three separate holders, depending on the duty they were to perform, and never thought to put a plastic coated paper clip into the same pot as the shiny silver wires.

One day I agreed to pick her up for work.  When I got to her house, I was shocked to see that her kitchen table was covered with last night’s dishes, and her sink was full of even older dishes.  A great orange tabby cat walked up and down the counter, carefully picking its way around newspapers and old mail.  The floor may have been clean, but it was hard to see it under the pile of dirty laundry.

Now, if I had put this woman into a story before I visited her house, her character would have been flat, one-sided, and uninteresting.  As I got to know her better, she surprised me all the time with new sides to her personality.

So, writer, know your character -- and you best know them better then that person you sit next to at work.

Desperately Seeking FirstYearGrad

Are you the author of this clever writing tip?  If so, please visit my profile and send me a message so I can include a short bio with your entry!

WEbook Writing Secrets

Got a secret I don’t know about? Share it with the world in WEbook Writing Secrets. To submit a secret, email me or visit my profile and send me a message with the subject line: Writing Secrets. The best secrets will be published here and in the WEbook Toolbox. Authors will be credited with a byline and a bio.

Start Writing Now

Put your secrets to work – sign up for WEbook today.

-- Melissa

WEbook Writing Secret # 12: Make Your Own Book Club Guide

By Marieke

Many serious novels, especially those that tackle social subjects, come with a reading guide, which supplies questions for book clubs, students, and other committed readers. If you’re writing a novel, why not make up your own reading guide as you go along? Imagine the questions your readers may have about your book’s themes and characters – this will help you find the strengths and weaknesses of your story.

Here are some suggestions for questions to include in your “Writer’s Reading Guide”:

1. How do the first and last scene frame your novel?

2. Why are the main characters friends? And what do they fear from each other?

(After the Reading Guide to The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini )

3.  Discuss the topic of marriage as it is represented in your novel.

4. What are your thoughts on the structure of your novel?

(After the Reading Guide to The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan)

5. What rules, both written and unwritten, do the characters follow in the novel?

6. In what ways do the settings affect their residents?

(After the Reading Guide to The Cider House Rules by John Irving)

You can find more reading guides on readinggroupguides.com.

About the Author

Marieke van Buytene from the Netherlands is freelance writer, editor and creative writing teacher, so fate has decreed that she’ll never get a novel published.  Fortunately, a friend tipped her on WEbook in August 2008, so now at least she can share The Devil’s Virgin, and soon also her comic mystery stories and more.

WEbook Writing Secrets

Got a secret I don’t know about? Share it with the world in WEbook Writing Secrets. To submit a secret, email me or visit my profile and send me a message with the subject line: Writing Secrets. The best secrets will be published here and in the WEbook Toolbox. Authors will be credited with a byline and a bio.

Start Writing Now

Put your secrets to work – sign up for WEbook today.

-- Melissa

WEbook Featured Project: The Devil’s Virgin

The Devil’s Virgin, a novel by WEbooker marieke, opens with an attention-grabbing prologue: A young girl, the narrator, sits on the beach two weeks before her fourteenth birthday. She’s accosted by a strange man, who turns out to be the devil. The devil offers to make the girl his companion. “The rewards,” he promises, “will be great.”

The book goes on to tell the story of a young girl, the daughter of a brothel owner in Thailand. When the girl begins seeing visions, local villagers believe that she has special powers, and they come to her to tell their stories of hardship, poverty, hunger, abuse, prostitution, and addiction – as well as their dreams of escape, rescue, hope, and happiness.  The Devil’s Virgin weaves these stories together into a rich chorus, made up of the voices of the oppressed and forgotten.

Author marieke shares the story of the book’s conception:

“I should have gone to church.  Instead, curiosity got the better of me before I even had breakfast, and I started that lazy Sunday by reading my email messages. The first message I opened had a picture in it, the size of a postage stamp, and a link I didn’t recognize.  I usually delete anything that looks like spam immediately, but something about the picture made me take a closer look.  It was the tiny image of a man between a woman’s legs. Only something was wrong with the picture. The woman wasn’t smiling, and she seemed very small compared to the man. She didn’t have any breasts, or any shape at all. When the realization hit me that I was looking at a man and a young girl – a child – I gagged.

“Before I could delete the message from my screen, my two-year old daughter came running into the room.  In front of my eyes, two worlds clashed. I quickly deleted the message and held my girl, sobbing into her hair, telling her, "Sorry, sorry," over and over again. I was sorry her Mama was so upset and couldn’t explain.  Sorry she lives in a world where these terrible things happen.  Sorry for the girl in the picture.  Sorry for all the girls and boys this is happening to.  Sorry there wasn’t anything I could do for them.

“It was easy to delete the image from my mailbox, but it turned out to be a lot more difficult to delete it from my mind. That Sunday, it dominated my thoughts. It seemed that with every fresh chore I took on and every new distraction I sought, it jumped to the front again, demanding my attention. Every time, I felt sick.

“I have never been abused myself. In fact, I had a pleasant childhood with little to no threats to my safety. The only times that I did feel harassed, were when I came across stories of child abuse or examples of child pornography.  I think what bothers me most is the feeling that this abuse is happening and nothing can be done to prevent or stop it. This feeling of hopelessness is, to me, the worst feeling in the universe.

“That Sunday, it was different.  For ten years, I had been writing stories – light, fluffy, funny material, like children’s stories and small-town murder mysteries. Writing is my passion. That Sunday, I decided to  combine my passion with my obsession. I decided to write about child abuse. And because I don’t want to look at any more pictures, I decided to take on the hidden world of child prostitution, where the abuse of power is enforced by money.

“I placed The Devil’s Virgin in Thailand because that country is infamous for sex tourism. I was living in China at the time, a country estimated to have just as many child prostitutes as Thailand – about 200,000 – but spread over a much larger country and population, and practically hidden. I chose Thailand because there was plenty of information on it, and maybe also because it was a bit father from home.

“I focused the story on a girl who is being ‘saved’ to sell her virginity at a certain age. This is a common practice, especially for daughters of prostitutes, who, often illegitimate, uneducated, and with no social status whatsoever, seem destined for the sex trade.

“In hindsight, the decision to write the book was the easy part. Researching child prostitution was difficult, not because there was not enough material but rather because of the abundance of information. I found too many cruel statistics, too many stories of children as young as ten – their bodies so small and fragile – working in the sex trade, servicing two to twenty men a day.

“Writing this book was the hardest thing I have ever done, made worse by throwing all the horrible stories of abuse I’d heard through the years, like the newspaper article about a grandfather in Africa abusing his baby granddaughter and loaning her out to friends, in a misguided attempt to have sex while avoiding AIDS.  I started seeing child abuse everywhere. For a time, I could not enjoy life anymore.

“Fortunately, I found it hard to stay very angry for long, thanks to my toddler and her natural sense of humor. (Sloshing around water is fun. Throwing rocks is fun. Writing should on the walls is fun. Even poop is fun.) My girl made me smile.

“I believe that a book that’s difficult to read should reward its reader with a happy ending. Is that realistic? Statistically, perhaps not. But the story of the The Devil’s Virgin is fiction, after all.  And I have this sliver of a belief in my mind, that there always is hope.  I would love to spread that hope to people, especially children.

“The picture of the poor girl in the e-mail still pops up in my mind in moments. Even though the actual image is getting fuzzier, the memory still disgusts me to the point of nausea. But now I can tell her, and myself: Hold on, my love. I am telling the world about you.”

Featured WEbook Projects

Know a really great project on WEbook? Want to spread the word? Send me an email or visit my profile and drop me a message to nominate it as a Featured WEbook Project!

Start Writing Now!

Today’s featured project is open to feedback from all readers! To get started, sign up for WEbook today.

-- Melissa

WEbook Writing Secret #9: Story Writing by the Letters

So you want to write a short story, but you don’t know where to start? No worries – today’s WEbook Writing Secret is here to help.

The key to overcoming writer’s block is structure. Counter-intuitive as it may seem, giving yourself less freedom rather than more can help jump start the creative process. Blame it on humankind’s will to overcome obstacles. If you see a mountain, you’ll climb it. No mountain? Might as well stay in bed.

As a writer, you have lots of options for finding structure. Deadlines, contests, and writing classes are all good ways to harness your boundless energy into real words on the page. But even if you don’t have any deadlines, you can give your writing some structure by using the A, B, C, D, E formula. What’s it stand for?

A = Action
B = Background
C = Conflict
D = Development
E = Ending

By breaking down the story-writing process into five simple steps, you narrow the billions of possibilities for starting and writing your story into just one concrete, practical approach. Of course, it’s called a formula for a reason. Stick to the plan too rigidly, and your story might turn out…well, formulaic. You and your readers will have more fun when you add complications and twists. But, just like a jazz musician, it’s worth practicing your scales before you move onto improvisation.

Here’s how it’s done:

Action: Start your story with a compelling action. This action should raise questions in the reader’s mind. Example: Jack and Jill went up the hill. The reader might wonder, “Why did Jack and Jill go up the hill?” This curiosity gets your reader to turn the first page.

Background: Imagine what circumstances could have led up to the initial action – this is the background. The background should at least partially answer the question posed by the reader in response to the action you started with. Example: To fetch a pail of water.  The background section should not be too long in relation to the rest of the story – otherwise, it might seem as if your story is about what happened yesterday, instead of what’s happening right now. Your story will be most compelling if you can find a way to convey background without being purely expository.

Conflict: Next, introduce the central conflict of the story.  The best, richest conflicts provide a story with forward momentum – they require the character to make an action or choice in the scope of the story, which will have real consequences, changing the character's life or outlook in some way.  The conflict should involve both motivation (the character wants something) and stakes (something is at risk).  Example: Jack fell down.

Development: The longest part of the story is usually development.  Development of what? Of the conflict, of course! This is the “what happens” of the story. As the story develops, the conflict will exert pressure on your characters, and they will make choices in response. Those choices may involve resolution of the conflict, escalation of the conflict, or the introduction of a whole new conflict! Example:  And broke his crown.

Ending: At the end of your story, the conflict must be addressed, if not completely resolved. There can still be a conflict at the end – stories shouldn't all end “happily ever after” – but it should be a different conflict than the one you started with.  Something needs to have changed, whether it's something subtle or something big. Some of the best endings are those that could potentially be the beginning of a whole new story. Example: And Jill came tumbling after.

Ready to give it a shot? Write your own story using the A, B, C, D, E formula and share it with your fellow WEbookers by posting it in this project. Bonus: The first five writers to submit a story will receive personalized feedback from yours truly – priceless!

WEbook Writing Secrets

Improve your writing with WEbook Writing Secrets, featuring writing tips from masters of the craft. Got a secret we don’t know about? Visit my profile and submit a writing tip of your own.  The best of the bunch will be published here and in the WEbook Toolbox. Authors will receive credit, and a link to their personal writing or website.

Start Writing Now!

To try your hand at writing short stories, sign up for WEbook today!

-- Melissa