 Carrie Ryan
read all posts by Carrie RyanI spent last week in the company of other writers at a workshop/retreat in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina. It’s the first time I’ve done a writing retreat like this: months before we all turned in 50 pages of a WIP and not too long after a full manuscript (or however much we had written). During the first half of the retreat week we workshopped the fifty pages and in the second half we broke up into small groups to discuss the fulls. During the in between times we ate, threw around story ideas, helped worldbuild and generally discussed the industry and the writing life.
It was amazing. I walked away with my head spinning, one book fixed, another polished and the world of a third idea fleshed out. I’m still reeling from how much I learned! I’d forgotten just how much you can learn from reading and [...]
Continue reading The difference between faux and real tension
Carrie Ryan
read all posts by Carrie RyanThere’s a difference between the premise of a book and the plot and it’s important to be aware of the distinctions between the two. The premise is the general idea — the one line summary you give to someone who asks, “Oh, you’re writing a book? What’s it about?” Plot is the series of events that create the arc of the book — the actual steps the characters take to reach their goal, etc.
So, for example, the premise of the Hunger Games might be summarized as “In a future totalitarian society a group of teens representing various districts must fight to the death in a televised event where the outcome determines the fate of their districts.” The plot would be how Katniss’s sister is chosen to be one of these tributes sent to fight and Katniss takes her place which leads to her to the Capital where she [...]
Continue reading Distinguishing between Plot and Premise
Carrie Ryan
read all posts by Carrie RyanI loved David’s recent post on the five things about the business that surprised him and I agree on all fronts. Then I got to thinking about whether there was anything in particular about writing YA that surprised me (since I try to bring the YA perspective to the table whenever I can). While there’s a lot of overlap, I thought I might piggy-back off of David’s post and add my own thoughts about what surprised me in publishing YA. Most of these are just my observations and, like any other thoughts about this industry, there are always exceptions to the rule.
1. The time — there is a lot of it between selling and book release and in casual conversations with adult authors I’ve found that YA seems to (more often) have a longer lag time between sale and release [for an overview of this process, click here]. [...]
Continue reading On Publishing: 6 aspects of writing YA that surprised me
Carrie Ryan
read all posts by Carrie RyanI’m a little late to the game this year (what else is new!) but I still wanted to take the time to talk about goals and resolutions. I totally understand those people who think making New Year’s Resolutions is a waste of time — after all, why not just keep focused on your goals all year long? I do somewhat agree with that but the same time, I really love the start of a new year because I enjoy stepping back from the bustle of life and really thinking about where I’ve been, where I am, and where I want to be.
The 2011 Recap:
As I mentioned in my goals post last year, several years ago I felt like I wasn’t taking enough steps to go after my dreams of getting published. I didn’t have any finished projects, I hadn’t submitted anything, and I worried that I was [...]
Continue reading The Recap/Resolution Post
Carrie Ryan
read all posts by Carrie RyanI may have mentioned this before, but when I began writing The Forest of Hands and Teeth (which ended up being my first published book) I was convinced it wouldn’t sell. But I was okay with that because I loved the story and I became obsessed with writing it. So, for much of the initial drafting the story existed only in my own head (and whatever I’d read aloud to my husband) and that was it. Beyond that, I had few expectations and for that reason all I could really focus on was writing the story.
That all changed once I hit 30,000 words. I’d recently become friends with a published author who I admired greatly and we’d both begun new fantasy projects that were outside of what we’d traditionally written. We decided to trade stories and so I sent her what I’d written. I’m pretty sure that the moment [...]
Continue reading Ignoring everything but the writing
Carrie Ryan
read all posts by Carrie RyanEveryone’s faced that point writing when you stare at the blinking cursor and think, “Okay, what’s next?” Some people call it writer’s block, some people call it being stuck, and some just call it a day that ends in y. There are times when you have the luxury to step back, take a walk or a shower or a nap and let the story sink in with the hope that the threads sort themselves out but there are other times, like when you’re under deadline, that you have to keep writing and forge ahead. So what do you do?
Sometimes getting stuck in a book is your subconscious telling you that you’ve taken a wrong turn and need to go back and re-route. I know one author who puts her finger on the delete key and holds it down until she’s sure of the story again — whether that’s a [...]
Continue reading Facing the Blinking Cursor
Carrie Ryan
read all posts by Carrie RyanRecently I hosted a panel at the SCBWI-Carolinas annual conference that was basically just an open forum for unpublished authors to ask the published members of the chapter anything at all about the business, the writing life, craft — anything! At the end I made a comment about exceptions that I think I mangled so I wanted to take the chance to clarify what I meant.
I think there are two sides to the “exceptions” coin. On the one hand there are a lot of people who talk about the “rules” of writing such as never use adverbs, never start with a dream, don’t use fragments, beware the verb “to be” in its many forms, etc etc. There are tons of these “rules.”
But what I’ve found is that the only true rule in writing is that there are no rules. There are hugely successful authors who use fragments, who [...]
Continue reading Re: Exceptions
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