Head Hop Hopping Along


Head hopping.  What a wonderfully descriptive term.    Head hopping is when the point of view (POV) jumps between multiple characters within the same scene. I am clearly revealing my newbie status when I tell you that I had never heard the term until I learned that I was quite guilty of it in a contest entry.


If you Google “head hopping,” you’ll find quite a few informative articles and blog posts on the subject, as well as some fine examples.  Here are just a few:

“Headhopping,Authorial Intrusion, and Shocked Expressions,” by Anne M. Marble
“Headhopping Gives Readers Whiplash,” by Beth Hill
SirenPublishing’s Submission Guidelines on Head Hopping  (wonderful examples)
A variety of views from Flogging the Quill

As you can see from these entries, there is a debate about head hopping.  Some say head hopping is absolutely forbidden, and that you must never, ever switch POV until the next chapter.  You may be able to get away with changing POV after a recognizable scene break, but that’s it.  Others say that head-hopping to some degree is okay, as long as the switch is intentional and clear to the reader.   

There are some published authors who take the prohibition against head hopping very seriously indeed, as evidenced by the fact that they begin each chapter by overtly telling you whose POV is being used.  Then there are others who manage to head hop so skillfully that the reader barely notices.   Still others jump around so much that I sometimes have to backtrack in the book to figure out whose head I’m in. And everything in between.

What is a New Kid to do with this?  After giving it a fair amount of thought, I am somewhere in the middle.   I think that switching POV mid-scene is fine, as long as it’s apparent to the reader what you are doing, but I don't think you can go back and forth.  Perhaps that means it's not really head hopping, but whatever you call it, sometimes it is important to the narrative to change the POV more frequently than every chapter, or every scene.  This may be particularly true in romance.

I confess that I find head hopping a bit difficult to avoid.  Of course, I wrote 50,000 words without realizing that it existed, so I fear the habit may be ingrained.  Nevertheless, I am currently editing my MS with an eagle eye on head hopping, among other things.  In some cases it is very easy to fix, and doing so makes the scene flow much better.  On the other hand, sometimes I re-read a scene and it works really well, even with the head hopping, and when I try to rewrite it seems contrived.  There has to be a happy medium. 

Which brings me to my questions for you, faithful reader:  If you’re a writer, what is your take on head hopping?  If you’re a reader, do you notice it, and do you find it confusing?  I would love to hear what you think.

Until next time,

Marin

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All Those Books on Craft: They’re Not Meant for Leveling Out Your Coffee Table

One of my biggest mistakes that lasted a very long time was my absolute refusal to actually read creative writing books. Now, that’s not to say that I didn’t own Creative Writing books because I did. I owned a metric ton of creative writing  books – I just never read them. Okay, I read the Chicago Manual of Style while I was doing edits to check out a bit on comma usage. If you count reading five pages of an enormous book that can be used as a weapon during a mugging as reading then yeah I read it.

See the thing is I was sort of afraid of the craft books. Because the one thing you learn when you read a craft book, or take a good class about craft, is that you really don’t know all that much when you first start out. In fact if you’re like me you know how to string together the basics of a plot and that’s about it and most the time you’re guessing.

But you know what happens when you don’t learn what your craft is? You find yourself behind the 8 ball, rewriting drafts over and over again before you send them to your editor. Then, after all those rewrites your editor sends the story back and you do another two rounds of rewrites so that the story you send no longer resembles the story you sent in and it has nothing to do with the first rough draft you wrote. One year later the stories look nothing alike and  you wonder how much more you could have gotten done if you wouldn’t  have written sixteen drafts of the same novel. And if you’d no longer hate your characters. Because let me tell you, after 9 drafts of Luck of the Devil I couldn’t even think about writing the sequel, Devil May Care. I just couldn’t face it. For three months not only did I not face it, every time I sat down at the computer to write and try to face it I froze.

You don’t want to waste all that time rewriting the same story over and over. You’re a career writer not a one hit wonder. You have a career to build and that’s by having a backlist not by putting out one measly book. And you don’t want to face crippling writer’s block. Not this way at least.

So let go of your fear of learning the craft. Let go of that feeling of inferiority because you don’t know what you’re doing. Accept it. Embrace it. And learn as much as you can now, in the early stages of your career, so you can amaze the world with not just your story but your grasp of techniques as well.

If you don’t have an MFA in Creative Writing. Join me over here in the “went to college to get a degree that paid the bills” bench. Comfortable? Are you sure? Because we have snacks if you need one. Now, pick up one of those craft books and get to work. It’s time to catch up and learn the craft. Because while reading a dozen craft books won’t turn a crappy story idea into gold or get you a publishing contract it definitely can’t hurt.

If you’re looking for some books to start your craft book collection here are some I recommend from my recent spate of craft reading:

Story Engineering by Larry Brooks (This is available on the Kindle Lending Library if you’re cheap like me).
Save The Cat by Blake Snyder
The Chicago Manual of Style
Plot, Scene, and Structure by James Scott Bell

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Getting Back on the Horse.

Lately I haven't been holding up my end on the New Kids Blog. The holidays, my family and life in general has conspired against me, and I stopped blogging. Well, it's time for me to get back into the blogging saddle again. It's time for me to get back into the writing saddle again too. In the last month or two, my writing time has suffered. As a result I couldn't think of anything pertinent to say about writing on this blog. But recently a couple of my outside responsibilities ended and I'm ready to get back to it. And today, with the predictions of freezing drizzle, seems a good day to stay at home and get some writing done.

My first item on my to-do list is to get a handle on the flow of one of my historical romances. I have a couple people read it, and they like my hero, a lot. Not so much my heroine. They also tell me that my first chapter is more backstory, so I have to decide whether it stays or goes. And if it goes how and where can I weave in tidbits of pertinent information. Then I have to look at all the scenes to decide if there are any unnecessary one hanging about. Writing it down here makes the task seem overwhelming, but at the same time it gives me a clearer plan for what I'm doing. So here I go. Wish me luck.

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The Life-Cycle of a Novel

Coming soon from Ellora's Cave!

Some of you will know that I recently sold my Steampunk Paranormal Erotic novel to Ellora’s Cave. Unlike most of the work I’ve been doing lately, I’d been working on that novel for almost two years when I submitted it. I initially started writing the book now known as Airship Seduction in February of 2009. Granted, it didn’t take me two years to write it, over the two-year time, I kept working on it.
Still. More than three years from conception to birth. Seems like a bit of a toxic pregnancy to me. People told me over and over again when I was first getting into RWA that this would happen. You get an idea, you write a novel, you submit, it takes time. But I never really got what that would mean.
I meant that between the time I started the book and the time it is published, this is what happened:
* I quit one job, found another.
* I went through three relationships.
* I moved from Calgary to the U.S.
* I lost a grandparent.
* I sold six novellas.
* I lost 38 pounds.
* I gained 42.
* I ran three sets of summer camps.
* I ran three sets of fall camps.
* I ran three sets of spring camps.
* Two Christmases.
* Three birthdays.
* Two trips to Disneyland and one to Disneyworld.
* Two trips to RWA National conventions.
* Three Super Bowls.
* Three NCAA National Championships (one of which Duke one–WOOHOOO!)
* Watched the entirety of Buffy. Twice.
* Watched the entirety of Corner Gas. Twice.
* Read 692 books.
* Served a term on an RWA chapter board.
* Started a term on a different RWA chapter board.
* Became a different officer on that same board.
* Saw all my critique partners sell books.
* The Iraq war ended.
* Wrote two more novels.
I could go on and on. But the thing that really got me was when I realized how I would have looked at that time from the other side. If I’d been standing in February of ’09 looking backwards, the three previous years would have seemed millions of miles away. To think about starting something that wouldn’t see the light of day until there was a new President… it would have been unthinkable.
But that’s the way this industry works. Sure, sometimes you get fast contracts. I’ve had those. My last novella was submitted and contracted literally overnight. I know the industry can also work fast. But you’ve got to be prepared for it to be slow.
When I first joined RWA, I moved in with my parents so I could concentrate on writing. I told my Mom it would be a couple of years until I could move out on my own. I wasn’t a narcissist. I’ve always known I was a good writer. I knew if I could finish a book, I could sell it somewhere. But I had no idea how long it would take until I could really do just that. Now, I wonder if I’ll ever be able to really do only that. To be a full-time writer as a single-wage-earner is extremely rare. Plenty of people can afford to write full-time if they have a wife/husband to also bring home the bacon. But I don’t have that. And I eat a lot of bacon.
Now, I have a much better concept of what it’ll take. And it won’t just take time. It takes good connections, good editors, good marketing, good ideas, good execution. It takes a lot more than me sitting at my roll-top desk plunking out words. But that’s where it has to start. And now, to get back to that. Cuz I’ve gotta work in the morning. I told you about my bacon issue…

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Serendipity


So I find myself sitting at the computer this evening, wondering what to write for this blog - which is posting tomorrow. (Yes, mom, I left my homework until the last minute - again.)


As my mind wanders through my writing experiences these last three years, I realize that the best decisions I've made as a writer had one thing in common.

They took me out of my comfort zone.

I met a new writing friend because I took a chance and accepted a lunch invite. The friendship and knowledge this woman has shared has made a huge difference in my writing as well as my life.

I squelched my initial reaction to turn around and drive the hour home without getting out of the car at my first RWA chapter meeting. Getting out of that car and going into the bookstore should have been easy. It wasn't. But I've learned so much from my membership in MORWA.

I talked myself off the ledge and mailed first one query, then another, and then submissions, partials and fulls. Each time I mailed or emailed my work out to the world, I questioned my sanity. But I pushed the send button knowing I'd done the work.

And with each action, each step I took, I became stronger. I became a better writer (we can make him stronger - faster - just give us 6 million...)

I don't know where this year will take me. But with my hat pulled down tight and my hands gripping the roller coaster bar, I know it will be a wild ride.

The world just requires one thing of me. To take the risk.

What have you done lately that made you question your sanity - or pulled you out of your comfort zone?

Lynn

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New to the Block

Hey ya'll!  I'm excited to be a part of the NKotWB and this is my first post, so I thought I would just introduce myself by interviewing me (much like interviewing our characters except I do exist in the physical plane - sort of).

What's your name:  Clancy Metzger, although Clancy is a nickname given to me when I was only a few weeks old and I've never gone by anything else.  Funny story - I was so nicknamed because an Irish vacuum cleaner salesman told my parents I had a temper like 'Clancy the Cop' of old Ireland (a boogieman type of character who had a terrible temper and got red in the face).  I've since mellowed with age :)

Favorite hobbies: I love to watch movies and TV, at home, at the theater, on DVD - I don't care - just love it.  Mostly I like to watch romantic comedies and action flicks, but almost anything goes. Favs are Hunt For Red October, Don't Tell Her It's Me, Bent, anything Monty Python, anything by Joss Whedon, RomComs featuring Sandra Bullock or Hugh Grant, musicals, old movies, NCIS, NCIS:LA, Justified, Leverage, NFL.... the list is seriously too long to go on, but you get the idea.  I also love reading and the list of books and or authors is also too extensive to list here although some of my new favorite authors include Grace Burrows and Victoria Dahl.

Pets, Food and Tattoos:  I have two small dogs and a few cats.  I'm a really picky eater, so I get a lot of flack about that.  I'm a meat and potatoes kind of gal and not much for veggies.  But, I have a lot of peccadillo's when it comes to food, so it's not just what it is but often how it's prepared and well.... it's a long list and more than can be explained here.  But, if you are in a Chinese restaurant and someone orders Broccoli Beef without the broccoli - it's probably me.  Just saying...  As for tattoos - love them, have about eleven of them and want more.  Instead of getting charms or spoons when I travel, I get a tattoo that represents the place I've been.  A little weird but they are really small and I can't lose them.

Writing:  I am pre-published but working on getting there.  I have written throughout my life in various forms but only spent the last few years writing romance novels (my favorite genre).  What I've tried my hand at so far includes historical western, paranormal, erotic and my current WIP is a contemporary.  The current is about a pilot and a reporter.  Love it!

Funny anecdote: I grew up in Fairbanks, Alaska.  One winter, when I was around fifteen, it was about 40 degrees below zero and I was running late to catch my school bus.  We lived way out in the country at the end of a very long driveway; I had just gotten out of the shower and my hair was dripping wet but I had to pull on clothes and run for the bus. Halfway down the drive, my hair which was long then, froze and I accidentally hit it with my hand breaking off a chunk.  I picked up what looked like a hair Popsicle and caught my bus.  Then had to spend the entire day explaining why I had an eight inch chunk of hair missing from about ear height down on my right front side.  An awful shag haircut followed.  Not one of my finer moments.

So, that's me in a nutshell.  See ya'll next month with a post on something other than just me :)

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Another New Kid

Hello everyone! I am delighted to be a part of this group of wonderful New Kids. Special thanks to Rebecca Lynn, who inexplicably said yes when I responded to her call for new bloggers.

I’ll start with a bit of introduction. I’m a married hockey mom, not a kid by any stretch of the imagination. I was born and raised in northern Ohio, and majored in English lit in college. I do have a day job, which you will probably hear me complain about at some point, and a number of volunteer roles. Other than those basic facts, these things are true about me: I am a passionate reader, mostly of historical romance, but I love a good mystery too. I am obsessed with Ancestry.com. I like to cook, I love to eat, and I am utterly devoted to cheese. I am a bit lazy. I would rather read than socialize, most of the time, and this has been true since I was a kid. Somewhere in my mother’s house there is a picture of me, circa age 9, sitting on the floor of the coat closet at church, reading Black Beauty. 

The other thing that is true about me is that I am very new to the world of writing. Until a few years ago it had never occurred to me to write a book at all. At some point, though, an idea lodged itself in my head and insisted on being written. I played with it for a couple of years, not really trusting that I was the best one to tell the story, but it was persistent.

In 2010, I decided to try NaNoWriMo, and I restarted my tale, a Victorian era romance, from scratch. I did succeed in reaching 50,000 words, but the result was-ahem-such crap that it was hard to know where to go from there. Nevertheless, I did some polishing and entered my first five pages in The Great Beginnings contest sponsored by the Utah chapter of RWA.  I didn’t come even close to finaling (which is good, as I have since learned it's not a good idea to enter a contest until your MS is finished), but I did learn a few valuable lessons from the experience:

1) It is not as painful as I expected to let someone else read my writing;

2) I discovered I did not, in fact, suck; and

3) I realized that I had a lot to learn about writing fiction.

As a result, I have spent most of the last year taking writing workshops, doing research about my time period, and trying to figure out how to balance all the aspects of my busy life so that I have time to write. Of all of these, the last is the hardest.

At this point, I am still working on that first manuscript, and have been dabbling with a second. A third waits in the wings, a complete departure from the other two, and directly related to my obsession with Ancestry.com. I would dearly love to get the first MS completed in 2012, which does not seem an unrealistic goal at the beginning of January. Maybe now that someone is looking over my shoulder I will get it done. Thanks for joining me on the journey.

-Marin McGinnis

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The New Freak on the Block


Hi Everyone,
I’m Patricia Eimer, paranormal romantic comedy writer with Entangled Publishing and new kid here on this particular writer’s block. From now on I’ll be your host for the craziness that is life as a new, full-time author/stay at home mom every 2nd and 4th Thursday of the month.

So the important question you should all be asking yourself right now is – why aren’t we pelting her with stones? No, no that is not the question you should be asking yourself please put down the stones. No, you in the back, you can’t hide it behind your back for later. Put down the stones. Thank you.

No, the important question you should ask yourself is why do I give a flying penguin what this random person on the internet has to say? Well there’s the obvious – this is a writing blog for new writers and I’m a new writer. But that’s pretty simple. I have a slightly better answer for you. This is a blog for new writers and I am a new writer who fell into a publishing contract on accident. No seriously. Totally on accident.

Let’s start at the beginning. I was born in the middle of a balmy night…. Wait, that’s too far back. Let’s go back 14 months or so. Halloween 2010. Before that I’d been writing short stories and fanfiction anonymously on the internet and putting it out on various sites but I’d never done anything with it because come on authors are real writers and I wasn’t one of them. They were the cool kids and me? Well I’m a mathematical economist by trade. No really. I have a nice shiny looking degree hanging on the wall and everything. Three of them in fact. They even have signatures.

That’s not important though. What’s important is I was not one of the cool writer kids. I was a poser who liked to scribble behind a pen name. Until someone from the internets, a friend through the screen you could say, signed me up for RWA. Paid the fee and everything. And then I met another friend through RWA who wanted to do Editpalooza on Savvy Authors but didn’t want to do it alone. So I chipped in some cash and signed up. Because you know I had this manuscript I’d been playing with that maybe one day I would send to an agent. If the stars aligned and my attempt at the Krispy Kreme diet left me looking like Heidi Klum. Yeah, I’m what you call ambitious.

And that’s where it took off. Because six weeks after Editpalooza Liz Pelletier called and asked me to submit Luck of the Devil to her new publishing house—Entangled Publishing—and uttered the magical word every writer loves to hear: series.
Then came publicists and blog tours and all sorts of craziness. Meanwhile I just nodded my head and smiled, hoping against hope that no one would realize that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Because if no one knew that I was a total fraud who got lucky then they wouldn’t kick me out of the cool kids clique

Which has been a blessing and a curse. The curse is that because I refused to speak up and get my nose to the grindstone early I’m playing catch up now. The blessing is that my cool kids? Well they really are cool and not in that teenage clique sort of way. They’re cool in the way that they understand you have no idea what you’re doing and they’re there to help and not once have they snickered or pointed at the math geek in their cool writer midst.

So that’s why you should read what I have to say. Because I’m going to make the mistakes all the cool kids already know to avoid. And if you’re out here, with the new publishing kids or the prepubbed kids you can see my mistakes, have a good laugh at them (trust me I do), and then learn from my mistakes so you can make even better mistakes as we all chug along on our quests to one day rule the publishing world in an iron fist while cackling maniacally from our comfy laz-e-boy thrones while well oiled, buff young men in loin cloths hand feed us grapes and rub our feet.

Not at the same time of course. One guy with grapes, one guy on the left foot, one guy on the right foot, and another with a palm frond. Or maybe two palm fronds? You know what? I’m going to go work out a formula on the correct ratio of nubile young serving men to world dominating authors. Then I’ll go work on my latest novel. So have a good two weeks. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have serving studs and a calculator to get back to. 

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Write It Right the First Time?

I'm so happy to be one of the “New Kids” on the Writer's Block. I learned about the blog from chapter mate (and terrific writer) Lynn and I really look forward to being here. I write historical--that is to say, medieval--romance. No, not the ones with the hot Highland heroes. The ones with the hot English knights.(Brief pause for big sighs.)

During the day I’m a mild-manned teacher of English at a local college. But on nights--and weekends when I don’t have my granddaughters--I’m filled with derring-do. Sword fights, word duels, kidnapping, tournaments. And happily every afters. Well, for my characters, at least.

Most of the time. Sometimes they are recalcitrant. They refuse to conform to the outlines I have for them. Refuse to mouth the words they ought. Refuse to move the story in the direction I really want them to.

Consequently, I’ve learned to leave a lot of bracketed blank space I’ll eventually go back and ‘fill.’ Just as soon as I know what goes there.

And that was a hard lesson to learn. I've been writing fiction for five and a half years. When I began, I honestly thought I had to get it right the first time. Not that other writers didn't warn me, they did. But I 'felt' the story couldn't unfold properly unless every plot point was perfect, every piece of dialogue precise, and all the characters fully developed from the start.

My first manuscript was written that way. Page by revised/re-edited/re-polished page. And it took for-ever. But I really thought it was finished when I wrote ‘The End.’

When I actually went back to re-read it, I found lots of places to 'fix' again. Lots of revisions. Lots of sections that could be said much better the second, third, even fourth time through.

Hummmm. A lesson. Since I was changing a good deal of that finished product, perhaps the first version didn’t have to be exactly right. Perhaps I could write a ‘rough draft’ kind of chapter (especially when the story proceeded slowly) then go back and fix it later.

It’s a little easier to skip around now. I still have trouble not re-reading and editing and revising what I wrote the day before. But at least I know it doesn’t have to be perfect the first time through.

I don’t know why that was such a tough lesson to learn.

Do any of you have similar problems with wanting to revise and polish instead of forging ahead?

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My New Cover

This is not my new cover,
although it's a newer
cover, and so pretty...
I've had something of a blogging fury this week. With the best-laid plans, I had all my blog posts ready and set to put up, and then I got my cover.

For those of you who didn't know, I've sold my first novel to Ellora's Cave. A bit of a fangirl crush I've had on them, and for many years. But I finally got up the courage to submit my Steampunk novel, and they accepted it. So I've been going through the new author motions, getting myself ready to edit and edit and edit.

And then I got my cover. Of course, I'm sure every author waits for the day when they get the cover of their first novel, and while I've published several novellas, I just can't say enough about the moment I got the cover for Airship Seduction.

Also not my new cover...
Perhaps it's because it was my Steampunk novel. One I'd worked on for well over a year. Perhaps it's because the cover itself is so beautiful. But I think it's the realization that I finally get to tell this story. It's one that's been brewing for years, and a world that I've spent hundreds of hours in. I can't wait for everyone to get a chance to read it.

For now, at least you can see it.

Without further ado, the cover for my first Steampunk novel. Airship Seduction.

Now, this is my new cover. **pets** Isn't it beautimous?

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New Year, New Me


Well, kind of...


How about less of me?

I lost 25 pounds last year. Which sounds like a lot. But if you think about it, it's just about 1/2 pound a week. Or 250 calories less a day.

So what's this got to do with writing, our loyal New Kids on the Writer's Block followers ask?

Everything.

Losing weight is about making one good choice after another. Falling down, eating the bag of chips at one setting, ignoring the treadmill or the dogs who want you to walk them. Bad days happen. It's what you do after the bad choice, or string of choices that makes a difference.

Its the same with an unpublished writer. If I write, edit, submit, revise, resubmit, and repeat; each try, each action takes me closer to the one real goal - to be a full time, published author.

One word, one page, one chapter at time.

Right now I'd take part time - one book wonder. It's a bad day. And I'm feeling the weight of still being an unpublished author.

That feeling, like my cravings for potato chips, will soon pass. And if I did the work today (wrote my words or edited for a set number of minutes), I'll be one step closer when this black cloud moves on.

One choice at a time.

So the question is - How do you pull yourself out of the doldrums?



Lynn

PS - I hear rumors we're getting a new NEW kid. And I can't wait for you all to meet her. Stay tuned...

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About NKotWB

New Kids on the Writer's Block is a group blog. We are ten writers who banded together to go through the process of publication as a community. We're pre-published (for the time being), and are open with our process. Please feel free to ask questions. Thanks for stopping by, and welcome!

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