There have been times when I’ve felt a need, a hunger to write, just to get something down on the page. It didn’t matter what, and so I would pick up a pen, open the notebook, and start writing.

Three months ago I was having one of those days. You know the kind, when frustrations number more than the breaths you take. Well, sitting there in the coffeeshop, I started writing and a story emerged. I didn’t expect it, didn’t know where it would take me, but I kept writing.

First there was lightning. Okay, that’s cool. So what happened then? There was a girl, running, trying to get rid of something. She wanted to bury it. Interesting. What did she have? A necklace. But it wasn’t an ordinary necklace. I wasn’t sure why yet, but I went with it, eventually getting to the point where the girl is struck by lightning and the necklace was fused to her skin, becoming part of her.

Wow. I’d never even thought of it before, and yet an entire story opened before me. Three weeks later, I had written a 50,000-word book with plans for two more.

And it started one night when I was so frustrated I would have screamed had I not had a pen and some paper handy.

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Now, I want you to grab a pen and some paper or a notebook. (If you can write on a computer without going back to edit, that’s fine too.) Then start writing. Don’t think first. Just write.

Then, once you’ve got it all out of your system and the story ends or you have to stop to take a breath, I want you to come back here and tell us what happened.

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Oh, I know this looks like I am about to give you some tutorial… but nope.

I’m asking you, dear reader… how?

Here I sit starting at a query, and I know the story is a good one. I know it has a good hook, a great conflict, and frakkin awesome characters. So how do I summarize it and get an agent to read it?

A month or so ago Nathan Bransford did an agent for a day experiment on his blog.

Basically, there were 50 queries, and your task was to go through and decide which ones were actually published books. I got about three into the list and realized something. Queries are kind of boring, and they shouldn’t be!

Now, I’m frustrated because I don’t want to bore with my query. How can I hook them reader?

How can I get the voice of my smackin story into these two teeny tiny paragraphs?

How do you do it? I am dying to know!

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A couple of months back, we had guest blogger Beth Revis talk about the Scrivener software, but I was sad when I learned it was only for Mac users. She mentioned an alternative. The Page Four Software.

Now, I consider myself to be a bit of a technology freak, so when I read about the special writing software just for me, I had to try it out!

I contacted the software company, and they graciously offered me a copy of their software so I could write a review.

I have to say that while some of it took me quite a while to get used to, there are parts of this software that I find invaluable to my writing.

The coolest feature by far is the tabbed writing feature. Basically, each chapter of your book gets its own tab and you can move them around as you see fit.

I love the flexibility of being able to move my stuff around, reference notes and outlines easily, and to open a chapter without having to scroll around to find it. The tab feature alone makes me like this software, but another cool feature is the ability to quickly scan for over used words and phrases.

Not only can you scan for the phrases, but you can set all your own attributes, so if you don’t want it to search for something in particular, then it will just skip right over that.

I love this feature, and discovered things about my book that well… let’s just say I have a tendency to overuse certain words… okay?

It also has a really cool roll back feature that lets you look at older versions of your work, so if you decide you spent an entire day over editing the crap out of something and now you want it back–then all you have to do is roll back to a previous version.

I did find a couple of things I wasn’t so crazy about with the software though. Most of my friends write in word, which means they edit in word as well. We use the little comment bubbles out to the side and the track changes feature in order to peer edit each other’s stuff. You can’t use word bubbles in page four, and you can’t see the tracked changes, so if your friends are using that, then there’s really no way for you to check their comments other than to open up your MS Word stuff. You can upload .doc files into the software though, so that does make up for this flaw a little.

I really like the ability to comment out to the side of someone’s work, and I love the track changes feature for when I am line editing something, so this is a major thing to me. I wish that the software somehow offered the same amazing editing and change tracking that word offers while still having all the great features like the tabs and the overused phrase counter.

I am still mostly using word to write my documents, and haven’t completely fell in love with pagefour yet, but I have been using it more lately, and I promise to update you as I continue to get more familiar with it.

I would love to hear about the software you use to write your manuscripts with. Please let me know in the comments below.

I’d also like to extend a special thank you to pagefour for providing me with a free copy of their software for review. If your company makes a software designed specifically for writers, you can contact me at jamie (@) totally the bomb (.) com (remove the spaces and parentheses) or just leave a comment below, and I will be happy to review it.

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We have been talking on this blog about writing what you know.

Writing “who you are” is equally important, and here’s why:

Let’s face it, there aren’t many original plots left. If you analyze the books and films we have till today, the number of plots boil down to seven different types. The immortal Shakespeare stole all his plots, so what are the odds of any  ordinary mortal not doing so? But how is it then that successful writers tell us the same old story so as to pique our interest?

They tell it from their own perspective, of course. From the way they perceive reality or constructed reality. They know what pushes their own buttons, what hits a nerve, and why they want to tell a specific story in that particular way. They know themselves, and according to James Scott Bell, they create their “personality filters” in order to create an original story based on one  or more of the seven plot types.

So, how does Bell reckon you know yourself? According to him, here are a few of questions all writers should answer when they approach the plotting of their novel:

What do you most care about in the world?

If you were to write your own obituary, how would you want it to read?

What is your physical appearance? How do you feel about it? How does it affect you?

What do you fear most?

What are your major strengths of character?

What are your major flaws?

What are you good at? What do you wish you were good at?

If you could do one thing and know that you would be successful, what would you do?

What are the three events from your childhood that helped shape you into the person you are today?

What are some of your annoying habits?

What secret in your life do you hope is never revealed?

What is your philosophy of life?

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I am plotting my first MS, and I sat and wrote down the answer to all these questions. All I can tell you is that it made me re-think quite a few aspects of my work, and how to change them in order to make my work more resonant.

So pick up a pen and paper, or your laptop, and take a few minutes to answer these questions. You might be intrigued by what you find, and how it can affect your next novel.

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Write what you know.

How many times have you heard that? I am guessing if you’ve been at this any amount of time… quite a few. What’s that? You write fantasy and you’ve invented a whole new world entirely in your head so how could you possibly write what you know?

I am here to let you in on a little secret… that isn’t what that means! Do you think  JRR Tolkien knew a tiny creepy grey guy consumed with greed that lived in a cave? Probably not. But, chances are he did know a thing or two about greedy people and how they acted… so when he wrote Gollum, he used the voice of one of those guys!

That’s the key. You can tell any story you want, and I don’t care if you set your story inside a giant’s cell phone… as long as you use voice to make your characters like real people, then your story will be relatable. I know it isn’t as easy as it sounds, because if it were then my pomeranian would be churning out a novel right now…

But remember, you know voice. You hear people talking and see them acting every day, and each of those people has their own voice. So next time you see some crazy cat throwing a fit at the bank… pull out your notebook and write it down. Their words, their hand motions. Even the reaction of the bank teller. Your story will be that much better for it.

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For writers, a wide reading is an asset. Whether you are a romance writer, a fantasy writer, or a writer of literary fiction, reading across the genres gives your writing a sort of depth few other things can provide. There is a cross germination of ideas as you read. Sometimes, you stand back from something you like and wonder how the author did it and at other times, you read terrible writing, and learn what not to do.

I’ve been reading Lost Horizon by James Hilton, and what I really liked about the story is the way Hilton has created a world–a hidden, legendary lamasery in remote mountains, the Shangri-la, where people live longer lives, where the lamas devote their time to contemplation and academic preoccupations.

I particularly love the descriptions:

“To Conway, seeing it first, it might have been a vision fluttering out of that solitary rhythm in which lack of oxygen had encompassed all his faculties. It was, indeed a strange and half-incredible sight. A group of coloured pavilions clung to the mountainside with none of the grim deliberation of a Rhineland castle, but rather with the chance delicacy of flower petals impaled upon a crag…An austere emotion carried the eye upward from the milk-blue roofs to the grey rock bastion above, tremendous as the Wetterhorn above Grindelwald. Beyond that, in a dazzling pyramid, soared the snow slopes of Karakal.”

So what have you been reading recently? And what has moved you the most in the books you have read?

Feel free to post an excerpt from your reading in the comments, so we may all get to know new and exciting, or old and undiscovered books for our future reading lists!

–Damyanti

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