How To Tell The Difference Between a Reader and an Author

This is going to be a short post, just a little advice/an observance that I’ve had.

It’s something that I’ve noticed particularly keenly in the past year or so after I’ve actually completely my first draft manuscript. Whenever people find out that I’ve written a book there are two to three questions they ask. 1. What’s it called? I’ll respond that I don’t have a title yet. I hate picking out titles. And character names. Sooooooooo much. Question #2. What’s it about? I usually try to be as vague as I can and say “revenge”. And if that doesn’t get them to back off, they’ll usually ask me how long it is. My usual answer is that the first draft is about 65,000 words, but I’m hoping to add another 5-15 thousand.

Then I get the blank look and they ask me to tell them how many pages that is.

Authors measure length in words, readers measure length in pages.

Can’t really blame either party though. Books don’t come with a word count at the bottom of a page. They come with a page number. If there’s anywhere in a book that says how many words the book is, I have yet to find it in all my years of reading books. Pages are quick and easy to reference to. It makes sense for a reader to think about the length of a book in terms of pages.

Authors however have to think of it a little differently especially when they’re writing. Because of things like font, font size, margin size, dialogue vs action, counting in terms of pages isn’t the smarted way to go. A good example I can think of is when I tried to write a really long book when I was seven or eight. It wasn’t coming out long enough so I made the font bigger and the spaces between the lines bigger. True, since we’re all mature (…) teenagers here or older we know that changing the font and the spaces isn’t really going to make our novels longer, but the point still remains (I typed ‘still remains’ at the same time it was said in my song :D).

Pages numbers are easily manipulated. Words counts tell all. Publishers don’t want to know your pages count they want to know your word count, they’ll make your page count what they will with margins fonts sizes page size ect.

That’s how you can tell the difference between an author and reader. Authors measure length in words, readers measure length in pages.

Short post terminated.

So You Have An Idea...

"I tend to daydream quite often, and those tend to be a combination of the more recent shows or concepts that have got stuck in my head. I've tried to write them down a couple times before, but I only manage to finish a couple of paragraphs or pages before I become restless and do something else. Do you have any advice for getting it down? Do I just need to stick through it?

Also, I don't how some people can write/keep a concept on one subject for so long. I frequently want to through more characters or ideas into my head when I do get an idea or plot. I don't know how authors just stick with certain stuff for a while."

This, ladies and gentlemen, is our first comment! So, we decided that these questions (okay so the second one wasn’t exactly a QUESTION, but it was still a subject to address) were important enough questions to actually address in a post.

Part of this is sort of going to be follow up to the last post because this was a comment on that post. I am writing this post a) because it was a comment on a post I made and b) because Margaret would be completely unhelpful in this situation. She had troubles getting her characters OUT of her head. They’re honest to goodness like a jealous girlfriend that won’t even let her look at other characters. Now, getting her to focus on writing the book itself about them is another story but… okay, so maybe she could write something about sticking through things past a few paragraphs/pages XD

My first word of advice in response to your first question is to really think through what your idea is and make sure that it actually IS something you would want to dedicate possible years of your life to. Some ideas are like people in that regard. You may love them and love hanging out with them, but if you had to be their roommate you would want to smother them with a pillow in the night. I can think of at least ten people off the top of my head that that would end up happening to me with. Before you try to dedicate any serious time to it, make sure that you would be able to stand having this idea and set of characters as a roommates in your head.

The second thing to do would be to think through the whole idea and come down with an actual plot you can work with. That’s the reason my brother’s never written a novel. He has a *brilliant* concept and main character, but he had no idea what to do with him (he has specifically requested that I not explain this character or concept). He’s started to try to write about him at least three times to my knowledge but he’s never gotten past a first chapter. Before you sit down and try to hammer out the first 1000 words that come to you, figure out exactly where you’re going with it. My suggestion would be to go full blown chapter outline if you’re really serious. If you’re protesting that you don’t need to write a chapter outline visit this post here: How To Lasso Your Story and Avoid The Brick Wall From Hell

From that point on, I’m sorry, but to my knowledge at least, all there is to it is to just stick through it like you said. If it really is a keeper idea and you’re sure this one’s for reals, you should have the passion *winkwinkhinthintnudgenudge* to continue with it, even when you want to throw your computer against the wall in frustration. Something that I try to do that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t, is to try to set a schedule for yourself. For example, writing a chapter every week or every day if you’re more ambitious. Try to give it some teeth though. Tell someone that that’s your goal so that they can keep you honest. When you only make goals with yourself unless you have great self-discipline, they usually fall through.

As for your second problem… that’s something that varies person to person. Some people like Margaret, who get so attached to their character’s it’s like they themselves are standing over her mind glaring down any other characters who try to attach themselves to her brain. She doesn’t have much problem coming back to the same characters.

In my own experiences, I find that it really does help to take small breaks sometimes. When I’m really frustrated or bored I find that it does help to take a short break and play around with another set of characters or plot. That’s one of the reasons a lot of authors suggest having more than one project going at a time. When you’re going to rip your hair out over one of them, you can go to the others. That being said, you have to be very careful not to take ‘break’ into ‘abandonment’. That can easily happen. Once again, it kind of comes down to just pulling through.

I hope this was helpful!

Passion and Why You Need It

So I spent a good two or three hours this morning trying to come up with something insightful, useful, and or valuable about playlists and the type of music you listen to while you’re writing, the benefits of it and so on and so forth. That is actually not what this post is about at all though. Because no matter how hard I tried, I simply could not write about it. It was like there was some cosmic force that was preventing me from being able to write about it and now I think I know why.

After our delicious dinner of waffles tonight, my mom was talking about how on Tuesday, when everyone was out of the house, she was watching Extreme Weight Loss. It was a really amazing story about a guy who started off over 400 pounds or something like that and managed to lose more weight faster than anyone else Chris Powell has ever seen. And as she was sharing this with me tonight as well as well as some clips from the show to show me exactly how much he has changed (lemme tell you, Wow), she also shared the insight that I needed to write this post.

To do something like that (ie. Lose over 200 lbs in a year) you have to have a passion for something. In this case, he was doing it for his girlfriend.

Perhaps I’m going to end up twisting what she said in the first place, but I’d like you to hear me out.

It takes passion to do something like that. Despite the fact that my mom was referring to extreme weight loss, I would like to extend that to anything, really.

It takes passion to do anything extreme. And yes, writing a novel, editing a novel, and going through the entire process of getting it published is something extreme. I don’t know where you are in your novel writing process, whether it’s still writing or editing or maybe even just being dreamed about, but it is not an easy process. There are moments when you would rather scrub your shower tiles with a tooth brush than have to write another word of your manuscript (trust me. I know. I’ve done it. And man those shower tiles sparkled). And even when you’re done with writing your 70,000 word novel and you think you’re done YOU’RE NOT. You still have to do revising and revising and revising and then submitting it to agents and then more revising and getting your friends and family to read it to see if they like and then more revising and then submitting it again...

Most people don’t get past thinking of an idea or the first three chapters. Even managing to finish a first draft is a feat better than the majority. Why? Because it’s hard. It’s hard to dedicate that much to one set of characters and one plot and one story line and trying to make it all come together and entertaining enough that people would actually want to buy it and make it so that the world don’t want to roll their eyes and laugh you out of the publishing business forever.

It takes passion.

That’s what people always say about music and art don’t they? It is my heartfelt belief that story telling is just as much of an art form as either of those. Anyone can blend colors together on a canvas and anyone can plunk out a bunch of notes on a piano. With enough lessons and or practice, anyone can really learn how to play songs or draw a person. But it takes a real passion and desire to a) be able to go through with all of those lessons and b) be able to make it good. If you don’t really care about writing, you’re writing’s not going to be good.

You see it all the time with English essays. The kids who are just turning it in because they want a grade in the class just write it and turn it in. Sometimes there will be a good writer among them that can still scrape up a good grade with a half effort. Then there are the kids who do care about turning in quality work. In a typical case, who gets the higher grade?

Exactly. Effort matters. And while I’m not going to deny there is a natural talent and affinity for writing factor involved, you have to be able to make that effort to be able to do something with that natural talent. Natural talent isn’t good enough alone. You have to be willing to dedicate the work to developing talent into skill.

If you don’t have a passion for writing… you’re not going to make the effort. You’re not going to spend hours sitting at a computer rewriting your prologue a dozen times (That’s Margaret for you folks.) You’re not going to agonize over your characters’ traits and flaws and reactions. You’re not going to try to think through all of the different ways you can carry out your plot, try to figure out the best option, and then have to switch to another one half way through three times.

You’re not.

It doesn’t matter if the passion is angled more towards a pure desire have finished a book, desire to see your name on a book cover, or maybe you’re one of the lucky few who got a Nester (what I like to call character or a plot that literally seems to know exactly who/what they are and simply decided to choose you to introduce them to the world) and it simply will not allow you to not do it the justice of being shown to the world.

Any one of these is passion. And you will NEED it to be able to get through this. It is INCREDIBLY hard to write a novel without any passion for the plot, characters, or world… all you’re going to be wanting to do is anything but writing. And unless you have incredible self-control and discipline, it’s probably just not going to get written.

I’m not saying if you don’t have passion for a certain project you have to give up! Oh nonononononono. If you did that you would also never get a novel done. I wrote half my novel before I really started wanting to write it. That was kinda more bull-headed stubbornness than anything. And sometimes, it really just comes down to that.

But let me reiterate, unless someone made a bet with you and you’re the type of person that’ll never let one of those go, you need passion to fuel the stubbornness. That might sound weird, but it’s true and it makes sense in my head.

Hmm. Perhaps my next post should be about trying to take what’s in your head onto the paper/keyboard/screen. If it is to be my next one, I probably shouldn’t talk much about conveying ideas like that. Might not be the best person to talk in that regard XD

I really do try hard though. I talk out these post in the shower to myself some times. Or just when I’m alone in the bathroom or my room or the kitchen or… I like to talk outloud to myself. It helps me think. Anyways…

Passion.

Writing is an art form as much as anything else. And you don’t hear of an award prize winning artist that didn’t have passion for their projects, do you?

People Watching- How To Make Your Characters More Realistic

Let me share a deep physiological observance straight from the mind of Amanda Vinshire. There are a lot of problems that arise for people of our age group trying to write books. These cover a wide range depending on who you are and where you’re from. But…

The real problem is a lack of experience.

I don’t care if you’re the smartest kid in your class or in your state or providence or territory or country, if you’re under the age of 20, you’re not going to have as much experience as someone who is over 20, unless said person over 20 lived under a rock their whole life. Don’t try to argue the point with me. You may have more experience in some areas. By the time I’m 20, I will have been lucky to have been outside my country once. I know people younger than me who have already traveled halfway around the globe. They have more travel experience than me. But I have more experience in things like high school than this middle school traveler. Age brings experience and that’s something that’s very hard to fake.

You have probably never been to college. You have probably never really been in love. I’m not talking about a crush or a seven month relationship, I mean you honestly want to spend the rest of your life with this person. You’ve probably never been married and you probably have never had kids. You’ve probably only ever made friends with the people put in your path, like kids from school or church or your soccer team, unless you’ve made some besties online.

As I said before, experience is one of the hardest things to fake. That why when you read books by young authors, they’re usually about teenagers and a good portion of the time they take place in a world that doesn’t exist. You don’t have to have a ton of experience to come up with a fake world, simple as that. Just a clever mind and plenty of imagination. Teenagers are easy to write because they’re familiar. We are teenagers. We know how we think.

I guess this brings me to my actual point of this post. Because of this lack of experience, as good as we might be at taking our angsty teenager thoughts and sticking them on paper, we are at a disadvantage.

A disadvantage I tell you.

Particularly as we, as a authors in general, tend to be solitary, introverted people.

What is a character?

A character is a person that an author created and stuck in a fictional situation. Said character will have to travel through the plot to create entertainment for the reader.

Above all, when we write a character, we’re trying to write a person.

I want to really try to impress that upon you. A well written character should be a person. I won’t say a human being, because it might be a vampire or an elf or something else, but it is a person. Someone who is talking and breathing (except in the case of the vampire) and should be real enough that someone wouldn't be surprised to see them in real life (once again, with the exception of the elves or werewolves or whatnot).

And the only way to really create a Person (from now on referred to with a proper noun in replacement of the word character) is to be familiar with people. Straight up. There. I said it.

You have to know people to write about them. The way real people think and act and talk.

It may seem pretty obvious, but sometimes when you’re trying to write a character, it doesn’t seem very obvious. I’m going to quote Margaret in her post about How to Make a Non-Cliché Protagonist

“Anyway, because everyone is different, then that means for the most part, everyone has a slightly different combination of traits.

In other words - for the most part, People aren't Cliche.  So it's a safe bet to model a character off a person or two. Choose the traits that give you pause and make you say "really?"

Challenge: Choose a trait or two that drives you up the wall. Chances are, it'll make a pretty good character trait.”

Basically I’m telling you to “People Watch”.

It sounds creepy, I know, but it doesn’t have to be! All the time. Sometimes it will be creepy, yes. But when you’re a best-selling author and you tell the person you were creeping out that Richard was based off of them and that everyone was heartbroken when Richard died by being stabbed repeatedly in the chest (you don’t like the person you were creeping out and writing this scene was very fun for you), everything thing will be fine!

In all honesty though, “People Watching” does not have to be creepy at all. It could be as simple as going to watch a movie at a friend’s house instead of spending three hours at home on the computer. And while you’re watching the movie, especially if your friend invited other people that you might not associate very much, it’s a good idea to watch (not creepily) them. See what kinds of things they do, listen to the way they talk. I find it fascinating whenever I hang out with my girly friends to just sit around and listen to the things they talk about and the way they think about things. My best friend has four swords, a crossbow, likes shooting guns and torturing fictional characters in her free time. That’s not exactly “normal”. And while I think it’s awesome and just sit back and laugh while she coos over crossbow parts, it’s not normal. If she was the only person I associated with normally, what type of characters would I write all the time?

Exactly.

Now, I will admit that some of this people watching can be done from reading other books, usually books written by older authors who do have more experience in the world and with other people than you. Since we are just teenagers and most of the friends we’re going to make are at the whims of our parents and where we live, trying to learn from these other people and authors is a good idea. It’s also a great benefit for your writing skills and can help you with your plot and world building as well.

But remember what I said about it’s hard to fake experience?

Yeeaaaahhhhh. There’s no real substitute for having to sit there for an hour in a classroom listening to someone make themselves sound like an idiot and really wondering what on earth are they doing in an honors class for crying out loud? Or try to give comfort to someone who HONESTLY thinks the world is over because she’s 16 and a half and have only been on one date. Or, here’s one of my favorites, hear a girl complain about her boyfriend spending too much time with his best friend and then three days later hear the best friend complain about the boyfriend spending too much time with her.

People.

There aren’t dozens of types of people. There aren’t hundreds. There aren’t thousands. There are MILLIONS of types of people. We’re all people with individual traits and individual mixes of these traits and there is NO WAY for you to be able to capture that without actually going out and looking at, listening to, and being with these real people.

Watch them. It can be pretty funny. And it really is a big help for your ability to create characters. The more familiar you are with actual flesh and blood people, the easier it is for you to make it seem like your jumble of words is a flesh and blood Person.

Warning/Disclaimer: This all being said, don’t base a character directly off someone else. Steal some of their traits, sure! But don’t write them into your book. That’s tacky and a bad idea, as much as it will get you a pretty authentic character. It could also get you into trouble with the person later.

(P.S. Got two fours on my AP tests!!!! WHOOOO!)

Umm... Hi?

*coughs*

So, um... hi.

In case you don't remember in the... oh my goodness... 8 months since I or Margret remembered this blog existed (Actually no! We talked about coming back to it as a New Years Resolution... see how well that went), I'm Amanda Vinshire. Not actually my last name and I'm not actually sisters with Margaret Vinshire. We're just best friends that decided to do a blog together for young writers, cause hey, we're young writers and all the good writer's blogs you find today talk about being married and having your day job and I'm not even old enough to be employed without a work permit from my school. Plus, we felt it was our solemn duty to share our brilliant wit with the world! (and try to make that elusive "platform" thing, which I think exists about as much as this thing they call the "sun")

Update On What's Been Happening With Us

AP Bio and Euro devoured my soul. I will not get it back until July 8 when I receive my AP scores. Fingers crossed for the best! School is now over though and with summer came the start of me actually making the plunge into editing my book. That is in process. I've already done some stuff to it, and there's an ever growing list of further edits I'm going to be making. I think they're all pretty good ones though. I may not want to do them, but I know they're going to help. I actually did write, edit, and publish a book in that time! Margaret's birthday present, and only published two copies, but I made both of them completely myself. And it's hard cover. And it has a book jacket! (thanks to my mom who works at a printing company) AND IT WAS PRETTY DANG IMPRESSIVE.

Just, ya'know, not actually a book I'm going to make any profit on. Unless ya'll would like to know the secrets of becoming her best friend.

Note: The book comes with a clear warning. Those attempting to replace Amanda as Margaret's best friend will meet a nasty end.

Margaret turned 16. She's old now. She attempted to submit her book to agents a few more times, got rejected, and has since decided that she is going to be rewriting her entire book. Yes, that is right. No, it's not just because of the rejects, that would be a very extreme response that I do not suggest for you all. That calls for some editing. Not an overhaul. She just got to the point where there were so many edits she wanted to make she felt like she would probably end up having to rewrite most of it anyways and just decided to start from scratch.

What Does The Fact That We're Back Mean?

Well, this time we're actually planning on being serious about it, we hope. Okay, let me rephrase that. WE'RE SERIOUS THIS TIME. AND IF WE FALTER ON THAT, SEND US ANGRY EMAILS AND MESSAGES AND YELL AS US. TELL US THAT WE FAILED. No, seriously, do.

Margaret has it on her schedule to write a post every Monday. I'm probably more going to update when something strikes me or if I haven't in a while. We're planning on coming up with a couple different topics and saving them so that if we ever need a topic to rant about we can pick one. Also, I am thinking about the possibilities of actually uploading an actual legit story up here. People say it's good to have a couple different projects going at once so that when you get bored or uninspired with one you can go to another. So, something else to put my mind to if I'm feeling like exploding into FLAMES OF RAGE over my manuscript.

Margaret here, making a minor footnote. I'm debating writing a story myself, *legasp* and posting it here as well. Let's see what happens, shall we?

That's pretty much what we're doing. Seeing what happens. Hope you're all on board for the ride!