Candice Hughes

Last Sunday I arrived home from the RWA National Conference.  This was my first national conference for RWA. All I can say is “Wow!” The flavor of this conference differs substantially from any other I’ve been to in several ways. First, attendees are overwhelmingly women. Second, everyone I met was extremely open, friendly and supportive. In some ways, I felt as though I was sitting around a fire eating cookies in fuzzy slippers with college buddies. (But these were women I’d only met minutes earlier!) Yet the conference still maintained a strong intellectual current with top notch workshops.

One workshop I (and some of my friends) enjoyed was given by Donald Maas. By posing questions to the audience on characters and motivations, he challenged all of us to think about and rework our stories on the fly as he walked us through his process. The workshop was based on his new book. I’m betting he’ll sell lots of copies of the book!

Another workshop that I found eye-opening was on Intellectual Property and was given by Amanda Brice and Jennifer Williston (both attorneys) with input by Nora Roberts. Nora discussed a situation where her novels were plagiarized. Amanda and Jennifer then did a mini-skit acting out an author/attorney discussion of potential legal “hot spots” with a hypothetical novel. They touched on plagiarism and copyright law. A copyright for fiction provides multiple rights including reproduction, distribution, adaptation and performance. Authors should understand all these rights. Authors also need to be cautious that they don’t infringe on the rights of other authors or entities when they create their own works. Some uses are clearly allowed or not allowed under the law. However, others fall into a grey zone. For example, exactly how much is too much in taking ideas, concepts or text from another work? Copying a few lines from another copyrighted work might be alright depending on how core the lines are to the work but copying pages is not acceptable. Another grey zone is parody. A parody must make commentary on the work being parodied. Many authors have been tripped up by this aspect of copyright law. Any situation that falls in the grey zone has to be settled in court if the parties can’t agree on their own.

After learning so much at RWA and ThrillerFest, I am hard at work giving a final polish to my words. But that’s the most exciting aspect of writing- you’re never done learning! Very soon novel 2 will be sparkling and ready to step out!

CraftFest and ThrillerFest is over for another year. This year’s meeting was as enjoyable as last year’s. I am continually astounded by how generous leading authors are with their time in teaching up and coming authors the tricks of the trade. Today I will highlight a few tidbits that stuck with me from the conference.

Andrew Gross gave tips for how to keep readers turning the page. One tip was to focus on the essentials of each scene. Don’t get bogged down in unnecessary description, explanation or character definition. Short focused chapters also help. With that said, there is also a spectrum of “pace focus” in thrillers. Some authors voice will call for more description/characterization/atmosphere than others. Writers through exploring their work will find their comfort level in the spectrum. But at the same time writers must realize that the more the book focuses on atmosphere, etc, the more the pace will be slowed down. Readers will gravitate toward authors whose pace is comfortable for them as well.

James Rollins advised writers to set a target number of pages to be completed each day and do it. I find myself that if you focus on a large project in it’s entirety, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. So I agree with his focus on daily small goals to achieve a larger goal.

On marketing of thrillers, attendees heard from Robin Cook about his innovative “prequel” movie that was released in installments before his recent novel (Foreign Body). (Note, this is not an inexpensive undertaking so you may not want to try this at home!)

That’s the wrap up for ThrillerFest. I better get to work on my target pages!

Today, there was a strong focus on structure and plot. I’ll give a brief recap. Start your thriller with action, preferably involving the main character. Move quickly to the inciting incident (within at least the first 50 pages if not the first few pages). From the inciting incident, you need to move toward turning point 1. After the action of turning point 1, a brief respite is needed. Then build to your next turning point followed again by a release from the action. Continue this pattern with each turning point making the stakes higher and higher until you reach the climax of the story. There is generally a short release or denouement after the climax, which some authors may prefer to to be quite brief while others like it longer (several pages or a chapter).

Lisa Gardner also gave a wonderful presentation on how to edit your first draft. She recommends a note card method of laying out scenes on note cards to visualize what happens in your novel. This facilitates seeing what needs to be cut or changed.

Another bonus, I now have a nice sized stack of books from ThrillerFest to add to my “to read” pile so I can see I’ll be kept busy this summer!

Happy writing and reading!

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on pitches recently. You need to pitch to sell your novel. What makes the perfect pitch? Having an attention grabbing hook is key. The hook is a short (1  sentence) summary of the essence of your novel. After the hook, you want to give your audience (either agent or editor) a feel for your characters- who are they and why would they do what they do in the novel. Additionally, you want to summarize the essential plot of your story from beginning to end in paragraph or two of content. The pitch lasts three to eight minutes generally.

Three to eight minutes might seem like a long time if you hate public speaking. (Regardless of whether you pitch one or five people or more, I consider a pitch public speaking. It differs substantially from an everyday conversation where there is a lot of back and forth and generally lower stakes like locating the nearest highway ramp or finding out if a seat in a theatre is taken).

On the other hand, you may feel three to eight minutes will be a breeze. A few minutes- how hard can it be? My advisor once told me, “I can give an hour talk, but I don’t have time for a ten minute talk.” As I began giving presentations myself, I understood how accurate he was. The shorter the presentation, the more critical each word is. Distilling ones thoughts down to a concentrated nectar and then presenting this nectar intact and with style is tough.

The only thing that works for me is the brute force slog. Get the words on paper and rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. After a long time, the words seem to flow naturally. They carry passion and elegance. When a presentation is perfect, it seems to take no effort at all. The words just flow out as though the speaker just stopped in for coffee and just had to put his/her two cents in. But we who present know differently.  We know the secret. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.