amithaknight

I love Project Runway. Drama + high fashion + catty fighting = Awesome. But probably the most fun part about this show is watching creative minds at work. But what lessons can a writer take away from this show?
#1) Be original and true to yourself.

Sounds corny, but every season, someone learns this lesson the hard way. What happens is, the designers are often given a challenge to make something for a particular brand or for a specific famous designer's line. And there is at least one person who takes their instructions too literally and their designs end up looking like cheap knock-offs rather than inspired creations.

Don't let this happen to you. Yes, you should read lots and lots of books to study your craft, but there is a fine line between learning from a good author and trying too hard to be just like them. Try to create your own voice and style, don't try too hard to be your favorite author.

#2) Even if you sketched out a plan before hand, don't be afraid to make big changes as you go along. In Tim Gunn's words: Make it work.

On Project Runway, the designers are given time to sketch, then time to buy fabric, and then time to sew. Sometimes a designer will start off making what they thought would be a masterpiece based on their sketch, but in practice actually looks like a "hot mess" (catchphrase from a past contestant on the show). Loser always try too hard to stick with the design they have when they know it's not good and end up making excuses to the judges about why their design sucks. Winners aren't afraid to revise their plans completely--even if it wasn't what they originally envisioned.



#3) When receiving feedback, know when to listen to and when not to.

This is hard to do. When Tim Gunn or Nina Garcia tells you that there's a problem with your design you should listen. But what about feedback from fellow designers? Everyone has seen the catty remarks where one contestant will tell the cameras that so-and-so has no talent and has made a terrible dress--which of course ends up winning at the end of the day. On the flipside, we have also seen designers get told several times that they "aren't taking their vision far enough" or that "those shorts shouldn't be large enough to fit two people" and then end up being sent home by the judges because they didn't listen to their fellow contestants' advice.

But how do you know the difference between good advice and bad? This is tricky and I have trouble with this in my critique group. I'm sure I've given people bad advice and I'm sure people have given me bad advice, but ultimately, it's up to the author to decide what changes to make based on feedback. My critique group buddy Peta offers some advice on this in her blog and I think what she says is really useful: if it's one person's advice don't change it unless you agree with it. If it's two people- -think harder about your choices as you keep going. If it's three people--you know something's wrong.

#4) When working as a team, be a team.

They often have group projects where designers have to work in groups of 2-3. They generally have their own designs to make, but have to make them work together as a whole. Losing designers don't collaborate and end up with 2-3 pieces that don't fit together at all. Winning designers do put their own spin on their own dress to make it their own, but they also make sure they end up with a cohesive line of clothes.

When working as a co-author, you need to do the same thing--cooperate with your partner. Incorporate both of your individual ideas into one cohesive final product. (Interested in more tips about writing with a co-author? Check out my "Tips for Writing With a Co-Author" blog series.)


#5) Stand behind your final work

When it's time to face the judges, contestants on Project Runway who are confident about their work are often able to convince the judges of the merit in their often imperfect creations. The judges come away thinking something along the lines of: "This person had a great concept for their design. With a few revisions, here and there, this person's work could be genius." Likewise, when it comes time to submitting your work to agents and editors, don't sell yourself short by sounding too coy or self-deprecating in your query letter. You are the only one who knows the merit in your work and if you don't stand behind it, no one else will.

Have you learned any tips from Project Runway?

Note: Writer Dorothy Crane Imm actually wrote a really great article about this in a past SCBWI Bulletin (July/August '09 issue for those who are members), but I thought I would give my own spin on the subject since I love this show so much. If you can't read her article, check out her recently published story Ghost Walk in Gatlinburg at Story Station.

Leanne Marshall Runway photo from Maddsmadds / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Tim Gunn photo from Photophonic / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
Hershey dress (designers were asked to make a dress from materials sent by Hershey's) photo from mkmabus / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

So now you have a co-author and you've figured out how you're going to write together, but chances are, you won't get very far without some sort of disagreement. But how can you prevent these disagreements from escalating?

1) Give constructive NOT destructive feedback

As you're revising each other's work you will find that your co-author will make mistakes in word choice, sentence structure, grammar, spelling, etc. and sometimes, their writing will seem just plain wrong (i.e. wrong direction for the character, the tone isn't right for how you envisioned it, voice issues, etc.). When you are informing your co-author of these mistake, be kind. Don't make fun of what they wrote, or say things in a harsh or negative way. Just point out the mistakes and discuss.

Examples:

Don't say: "Don't you know anything about subject-verb agreement? Jeez! Where did you go to kindergarten?"
Say: "I think you mean 'the apples were green' not 'the apples was green'. You did the same thing again here. Here is a website you can look at to see why this doesn't make sense."

Don't say: "Why did you make this character such a whiny dork?"
Say: "I don't think this dialogue sounds like something the character would say, because he is usually very strong-willed. I like what you did in this section better."

Keep in mind you'll probably make plenty of mistakes yourself (it's much easier to see mistakes in other peoples' writing than your own) and often you will find yourself in the wrong.

2) Pick your battles

This relates to #1 above. Simple things like grammar issues and spelling are easily resolved and should be hashed out sooner rather than later. But when it comes to tone and writing style, it can become hard to resolve your differences. My advice? Keep going and worry about it later. Get to know your characters. You may find that a few months later you really like the sentence your co-author wrote that sounded really lame the first time around or your co-author will realize that it doesn't quite "go" with the rest of what has been written and delete it him/herself. Don't force your co-author to change things if they don't want to. It may be that they just aren't ready to hear criticism since they are still too close to their writing and in a few months time, they may be more amenable to changes (and you'll find that this applies to you, too). And just like when you're writing solo -- don't be afraid to make some major revisions later down the line. Unfortunately (as everyone knows) you're never done after just one draft.

3) Set goals and assign deadlines

Set goals and deadlines to keep things moving at a reasonable pace and thus avoid conflict. For example, I'll tell my sister that I'll give her, say, two weeks to start chapter three. If she finishes, fine, I'll do the next chapter, but if not, I'll take a week and do it myself, and then she has to do chapter four. This way, there's no arguing about why things didn't get done, or why someone didn't get to write a specific chapter. Likewise, we'll set goals for ourselves like "we should finish this section by the end of the month" and if we haven't accomplished it, we'll discuss why not and make changes to our plans accordingly.

And there you have it! Writing with a co-author can be fun and rewarding as well as being quite a time-saver when it comes to the revision process.

Have you ever written with a co-author? Do you have any tips of your own to share?

image credits:

Now that you've picked a co-author (see previous post), how exactly do you get the work done?

Step 1) Create an outline

What is your story about? Who are your characters? What's going to happen to them? When you are writing by yourself, it easy to make things up as you go along, but when you are writing with a co-author, it's hard to cooperate when you're both going off on different tangents. You should draft an outline together to get you started. You don't have to get too far; a few chapter should be good enough. You can always discuss changing the outline as you get to know your characters (and your co-author) a little better.

Step 2) Assign roles

Will you be alternating chapters? If you find that you have very different writing styles that don't mesh (not the case for my sister and me), you may want you might want to consider assigning work by character. That way your separate writing voices can turn into separate character voices. The problem becomes when you go to revise and need to kind of integrate your two characters into one story. But, that being said, this is probably the easier way to write. My sister and I basically write and outline together and then whenever someone has time to write, they write a chapter. The other person revised that chapter and then writes a new one. The first person then revises the revisions and the next chapter and then continues writing, and so on until the story is done.

Step 3) Figure out how to share files

To prevent yourselves from ending up with two different files on different computers using different word processing softwares, you should discuss how exactly you are going to share/save your work. Even if you are going to be writing separate chapters, you will eventually need to compile everything and revise so it's better to come up with ideas sooner rather than later.

There are tons of strategies for doing this (storing your files on your own server, emailing each other back and forth, etc. etc.), so I'll just share what my sister and I do. Currently we use Windows Office Live because it allows you to create Word documents (or plain text), upload them, and save your edits/revisions online as well without pressing a ton of buttons. We have a special text file that we update to let the other person know when one of us is working on a file, so we don't try to edit it at the same time. I like using Word because it does have the "track changes" option where we can write each other notes about why we deleted a section, etc. Office Live isn't perfect, but it works well enough for our purposes.

Before Office Live, we used to use Google Documents which does you both to edit the same document at the same time. The problem with this was that it was awkward to find the other person's revisions to your work (we used to physically highlight changed text). The other issue we encountered was that Google Docs isn't a great word processor, so when it came time to submit to publishers and agents. we had trouble formatting everything consistently. But unlike Office Live, it doesn't require integration with Microsoft Office products.

Whatever you choose, I would just be sure not to choose to physically mail hardcopies back and forth. Bad idea. Bad idea. Bad idea.

So that's it for this time. Next time I'll give you some pointers for avoiding conflicts.

image credits:

After racking my brain for blog ideas this week, I've decided to answer a question that I get asked all the time by fellow writers as well as non-writer friends: How do you write with a co-author?

As you may or may not know, I have an identical twin sister named Yamini. We have been very close all our lives, and so when I was having trouble finishing my first book attempt, Yamini was intrigued and offered to help. Together we basically re-wrote my story and turned it into Orya and the Book of Songs. More recently, we've been working on another novel together called Cloudreader.

What do you do if you don't have a twin? Who do you choose as your co-author?

Here are some must-have characteristics for a good co-author:

#1) Your co-author should be easy to track down and should be able to conference with you frequently

If you are trying to get something written in a timely fashion (i.e. less than 10 years to write a novel) it's a good idea for your co-author to live within your general vicinity. Talking in person over paper is a lot more effective I've found than phone conferences. Not that you can't write a book while living on opposite coasts, but if you do go this route, make sure your co-author is someone who you won't lose touch with. It's important that you keep in touch and answer each other's phone calls or you'll never get done.

#2) Your co-author should write well enough to your liking and should like your writing too

This is kind of a no-brainer, but you may find that the person you want to write with (your neighbor, your spouse, your grandma) may not be as good at writing as you initially thought. Or they might think that you don't write as well as they thought. This can lead to a lot of bad blood between the two of you as you go along, so be careful who you choose. This relates to #3...

#3) Your co-author should handle criticism well and give good feedback

If you don't respect each other's opinions, you will never get be able to write even a rough draft together. My sister and I are able to yell at each other about specific sentences or directions a character is taking without taking it too personally. Sometimes she is right, and sometimes I'm right. Usually it takes time and several rounds of revision to figure out who had the right idea all along.

#4) Your co-author should share your writing goals

Remember group projects in school? In high school we frequently had to do group projects...and we didn't get to choose who to work with. I was always the annoying kid who took everything too seriously and put in too much effort, while most people wanted to have at least some fun while getting the work done. But we were all annoyed by the one kid who didn't seem to care at all and never showed up to group meetings. It would have been a lot more fun for everyone if we had all had the same goals and priorities for our project. Similarly while writing, it is important to establish whether you are trying to write just for fun or if you are both in it for the long haul of getting published (or both!).

That's it for now. Stay tuned for next time where I'll talk about the logistics of writing with someone else.

image credits:

Via The New Yorker's Book Bench:

Apparently the world's largest book is Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Himalayan Kingdom by MIT's Michael Hawley available from Amazon.com by Friendly Planet for $30,000.

Wow. I am definitely putting this one on my Xmas wish list :)

Have you seen V on ABC (see above preview)? Basically it's about what happens when an alien race makes first contact with earth. I think the show is meant to appeal to Battlestar Galactica (aka BSG) fans as well as fans of Lost and the 4400.

Writer/Blogger Anna Staniszewski was impressed by this show and it's writing, but it has actually had the opposite effect on me. I find the shows twists and turn to be…well..boring.

Why is that? I've come up with 3 main reasons V doesn't work for me(spoiler alert! If you haven't seen the show I might ruin something for you!) and how you can avoid them in your own writing --

1) Reintroducing ideas from recent popular shows: One of the more intriguing ideas from BSG is that the cylons (who are basically complex robots) "look like us". Thus, figuring out the colons among us is difficult because they look and act the same. In V, guess what? The aliens (called "V's" look like us. Except under their skin they have reptile skin. And figuring out which characters are V's is going to be a major part of the show. How…original? Also, the female main character is an FBI agent investigating the V's who finds out that her partner of 7 years is actually a V. Which means--you guessed it--now she can't trust anyone! Giant eye roll. This has been done in every spy movie ever (as well as BSG and Lost) and I don't feel like this is done in a new way here.

Writing Tip: Be original. If it occurs to you that your book is the next Harry Potter/Twilight/Da Vinci Code, make sure that you have put enough of your own spin on it that you won't bore your readers.

2) Too much action, not enough character development: We've seen two episodes of this show so far and there has been plot twist after twist and action scene after action scene, but for some reason, we still don't know very much about our characters. Unlike Lost and BSG where we see flashbacks or conversation referring to pre-first episode happenings, we have almost no idea who our characters are at this point. I know the main female character has a son who is mad at her for some reason having to do with her husband having left them and the main "V" character used to be involved more with the "V" resistance, but that's about it. Yes, it's only the second episode, but I feel like I need a little bit more to keep caring about what happens to them.

Writing Tip: Don't skimp on character development. Yes, it is good for exciting things to happen to your characters. But dive deeper. Show us how things affect them emotionally. Show us why they react the way they do. Character development is essential for reader interest.

3) (connected to #2) Pacing is all wrong: As I said before, the two episodes I've seen so far consist of one action scene after another. There are a few quiet moments here and there, but they don't last longer than a few seconds (ex: waking up in bed scene with two characters who are in love--they smile and then immediately start looking at the main "V" character's nasty wound which he has to lie about). Instead, the characters are always so stressed out about something all the time to the point where the urgency being created in the show just feels forced.

In contrast, remember when I mentioned the BSG shaving scenes? An example from Lost--usually they center their episodes around two or three of their characters, and one of the story lines is a usually a bit slower or funnier than other other ones (unless it is a season finale or something). They don't have a comparable device going for this show. Every POV character has major drama all the time. I'm pretty sure I haven't laughed or felt a tug of my heart strings or anything like that for the characters because there just hasn't been time.

Writing Tip: Pacing is all about balance and timing. Even books that are action-packed page turners (like the ever-popular and ever-maligned Da Vinci Code) give us a few minutes here and there to catch our breath. It may turn out later that plot-wise we were lulled into a false sense of security with the slow pacing, but that just makes the next few scenes even that much more exciting. And there is a reason the climax of a story is called the climax. If your book is heart-pumping exciting the whole way through, how can you build up to anything? (Don't snicker, i heard that.)

But all things aside, I've only seen 2 episodes so far. Who knows, maybe the show will improve? Maybe in the next episode we'll get to take a breather? I sure hope so. If not I won't be watching this show much longer.

Check out my other blog posts about writing tips from TV shows:
3 Writing Lessons from Battlestar Galactica
Writing Lessons from Gossip Girl (Guest Posted to my friend Livia's awesome blog)

Hannah by Kathryn Lasky

A fantasy/historical fiction novel about a poor orphan girl in late 19th century New England who discovers within herself a strange longing and need for the ocean. The novel was inspired by a painting at the Boston MFA (see below) and contains a fictionalized version of how this painting came into being.

The story is heartfelt, with sprinkles of sensual descriptions of the water, but often the historical details like types of clothing or cleaning supplies aren't as artfully woven into the text as they could be.

Overall though, it is an interesting read and I'm considering reading the rest of the novels when they come out. I wonder if the rest of them will have a fine arts tie-in too?


The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, 1882

Oil on canvas; 87 3/8 x 87 5/8 in. (221.9 x 222.6 cm)

Galerie Georges Petit, 1882; Salon, 1883;

Exposition Universelle, 1889

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Gift of Mary Louisa Boit, Julia Overing Boit, Jane Hubbard Boit, and Florence D. Boit in memory of their father, Edward Darley Boit

Image from http://www.metmuseum.org

Hooray! I successfully figured out how to completely screw up my manuscript!

I hit command-k thinking it would bring up keywords on Scrivener and accidentally split two of my cards. Not a big deal, (and I should probably change the shortcuts) but then I highlighted both cards on the text part of the screen (not realizing on that I had all of my cards selected on the left side of the screen) and accidentally merged ALL of my scenes. A dialogue box popped up that said basically "are you sure since you can't undo this" and of course, thinking I only had 2 cards selected, I said I was. Lame. All of my side notes and blank scenes with only outline info on them were gone in the two clicks.

Luckily I had backed up on time machine only about 10 minutes before, so I just copied and pasted whatever I had revised. Lame. I'll have to be more careful of what I'm doing in the future and think twice before I say yes to dialogue boxes that tell you you can't undo.

**Very important writing tip. Back up your files regularly!!! I learned this the hard way when my laptop was stolen once. If you don't know how, figure it out soon because you're asking for trouble.

(yes, it's been a while since i sat down to work on this project)

I implemented some of the suggestions posted by someone at Scrivener to the blogger version of my blog. So far so good. I basically renamed "Labels" to be "Draft" and renamed "Status" to be Labels (which I still haven't found a use for). I also changed it so that in full screen mode, I don't have weird colored sections, which is nice (though I thought this feature was fairly hidden by calling the option "aternate scrivenings" which was pretty indecipherable. Apparently they are changing this with the next version).

I like the corkboard even more now and have copied down a few of my random ideas that i get in the middle of the night into "idea"-colored cards.

Now that I've transferred everything to Scrivener, I'm realizing what a pain in the butt it will be if I decide not to buy the software since I'll have to transfer everything back to Word. Sneaky!

Remember when I said that Spring Design's new e-reader was similar to Barnes and Noble's Nook? Turns out it might just be the other way around. Apparently Spring Design is suing B&N for ripping off their ideas. Spring Designs says they worked with B&N closely while developing their Alex e-reader. Obviously these two aren't exactly the same, (and personally, I think that Alex's LCD screen is way cooler than the Nook's, but that the Nook has a better name, and just plain looks a bit nicer) but the similarities are undeniable.
So what do you think? Did B&N rip off Spring Design?

So I've been thinking about trying out Scrivener for a while now, but I've only just gotten around to doing it (spurred by Anna Staniszewski's blog post about structuring a manuscript). After discussing the pros and cons with my writer friend Peta (who has a lot of experience using Scrivener, though she's now switched to using Mac's Pages program) I downloaded the program yesterday.

What I was doing before was using Word and saving my manuscript in one file, my outline/to do notes in another word file (in notebook mode), and all of my research in yet another file (also in notebook mode). I wanted to see if having everything in one file might help things a bit more (and I like playing with new software). I had also hoped Scrivener would help with my outlining, which I like to do as I go along. My husband pointed out that I *could* use Word's outline view but I don't find their outline view to be aesthetically pleasing (which is important to me).

Since you can do a 30-day trial with Scrivener, I'm going to do a day-by-day update on how this program is helping/not helping to help other writers decide whether this program is useful for them or not.

Day One:

Spent several hours reading the tutorial and then uploading/reformatting everything from my current project (at least I haven't gotten very far yet). Then I spent a few hours revising some scenes in my current project. So far so good. Not quite sure what to do with the "Labels" feature yet. I added a Sketch "Status", but wish I could do colored index cards by Status rather than Labels in corkboard mode. Have added some characters as keywords (as suggested by the tutorial).

Day Two:

Still getting used to using separate text files for each scene. I usually just keep everything in one long file. It's easier organization-wise for them to be separate, but not sure it's easier for me visually. Some people feel less pressure if they only see one chapter at a time, but that's not the case for me. It does have a function to see them all at once though, but each scene has a different color. A little annoying, but might be able to work through this.

Love full screen mode and anticipating using the split-screen function for things.

-------------
PS: Scrivener has posted a special trial version for NaNoWriMo that has a longer trial time than their usual 30 days (I didn't notice this until today). They're also offering a 20% discount for the next two months.

I'm far from having to worry about this yet, but The Millions has posted an article about funny author photos. Here is the gallery that the writer refers to by Marion Ettlinger: http://www.marionettlinger.com/gallery1.php

Some of the photos look fine to me, but others are quite hilarious. Why do most of them look so upset? Did their books not turn out the way they had hoped? Did they just realize they stepped in dog poo?

I wonder how the authors feel about their photos? Or maybe after going through so many revisions and heartaches to get their book published, they couldn't give a crap about how their photo looks.

(via bookninja)

Lately I've been attending a bunch of author talks at bookstores. Here's what I've gleaned from seeing these authors:

Handling Rejection from Newbery Award winning author Shannon Hale (seen at Porter Square Books in Cambridge promoting her new book Forest Born):

Shannon Hale received a lot of rejection letters before getting her first book (Goose Girl) published. She actually laminated them all end-to-end (note: not all of them are for Goose Girl, some were for her short stories) and brought the whole roll of rejection letters to her visit (see my friend Peta's blog for more discussion about this)! The length of that roll was really impressive!

I haven't blogged about this yet because for some reason I though Barnes and Noble's e-reader had already been announced (probably due to all the speculation online about it). Anyway, from the website, B&N's Nook features many snazzy things that Amazon's Kindle doesn't: a color touch screen LCD, "library view" for scrolling through your books, Wifi, memory expansion capabilities, a PDF viewer...and it costs about the same. But for me the biggest thing is: the ability to lend your books to your friends. Woah. Of course, it probably helps if they have a Nook too, and you *can* do this if you hack your kindle files, but let's just assume most people wouldn't want to do this. I think it's interesting though that B&N's product comparison page on their website only compares the Nook to the Kindle. I guess they don't think Sony is much of a competitor.

My previous post about Spring Design's e-reader (which hasn't been released yet, so no idea about the price) talked about the fact that both of these devices have color LCD screens, but it looks like the Nook isn't meant for browsing the web, but more for browsing your device. I'm torn as to whether this is cool or not. The e-ink b&w pictures do look pretty darn good, so if the Kindle had an option to "browse by book cover" I think this would be just fine. But of course, if they both cost the same, why get the Amazon version? It's a tough call.

One thing I just realized though: the Nook (oh wait, nook is *supposed* to be lowercase? lame)--pardon me, the nook--doesn't have a keyboard! You can still take notes so I guess it pulls up a keyboard for you somehow? Oh, according to Wired the color touch screen turns into a keyboard. I see. Hmm. Not sure how I feel about that one since I actually like Kindle's keyboard (and I don't like Apple's touch keyboard so much).

Anyway. This post is getting longer than I meant it to. So I'll leave you with one last link from TheBigMoney.com which asks the following: How will this new product will affect B&N's physical stores? An interesting question since B&N isn't as big of an on-line retailer as Amazon.

(photo from barnesandnoble.com's blog)

I've just submitted to my first Blog Carnival! I'm hoping it'll help generate some more traffic to my blog. Here's the link: http://www.missyfrye.net/Blog/?p=2042

My friend Livia is the one who told me about blog carnivals (you can check out one of her posts at the above link too). Check out BlogCarnival.com to find out more about them.

So second order of business: I've changed the title of my blog to "Writer/Reader". Not incredibly creative, I know. I've been having a bit of trouble coming up with a good one. I was getting tired of "Monkey Poop" though and decided to go for something a little more serious. Let me know if you think I should switch it back :)

So you have an idea for a story, but you can't seem to get more than a few pages into it. How do you turn a few pages of an idea into a full-length novel?

Strategy #1 -- No planning ahead (this is how I wrote my first book)

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

This novel is strange and thought-provoking--but in a good way. It starts off quietly, and reads as an episodic kind of a story (which usually bores me to death) but as soon as the overall story begins to form, it becomes clear that everything in the previous "boring" chapters were actually clues to the greater puzzle in the story. Awesome.

Basically, the story is about a young girl who is obsessed with A Wrinkle in Time (previously reviewed) who begins finding cryptic messages in hidden places. The phrase "masterfully woven" is over-used in book reviews, but I think it actually fits really well for this story. Usually, I'm pretty good at figuring out what's going to happen at the end of a story, but in this case I only half-way figured out the mystery before it was revealed. The half I didn't figure out was quite the surprise. The end will leave you wanting to re-read the entire book to see if you can piece it together the second time around!

(Inspired by Peta Andersen's blog post "5 Things I Learned From 'The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh'". We had a bit of an online conversation on the commentary section of her blog about learning from TV shows, and I didn't realize how much I had to say about this topic!)

So my husband and I loved Battlestar Galactica, and listed to many of the writer/developer/producer Ronald D. Moore's commentary on the early season DVDs (originally distributed as podcasts which you can still download from SyFy).

Some of the more useful lessons I gleaned from listening to the commentary:

1) Be economical with your writing. TV shows have a limited amount of time with which to tell a story. If your show runs longer than it's time slot, you have no choice--you have to trim scenes or delete them altogether.

You do have more room when writing a novel but no one (especially not kids and teens) wants to read a book they can't even carry (and unless you are a famous author, you probably won't get published that way). But how do you decide what's important and what isn't? Questions to ask yourself when deciding whether to delete a scene:

a) Does this scene add to the plot? (i.e. Will your readers be able to understand what's going on if you delete it?)

b) If it doesn't add to the plot, does help with character development? (i.e. Will this help your readers understand your character better?)

Take a hard look at scenes that don't do either a) or b). Here's an example of a scene that contributes to b): One of the scenes in episode one or two is of Admiral Adama shaving. The producers got into arguments about whether to leave this scene in or not because it definitely didn't contribute to the plot of the episode. However, in the end they kept this quiet moment in because it does do a lot for character development. Even as the going gets tough Adama shaves and you the viewer wonder what's going on in his head. Later on in the series, this becomes a recurring scene for Adama and helps us learn more about how he is feeling. In one episode, when he sees himself in his bathroom mirror he breaks down and cries.
 And in several episodes in Season 3 he actually (gasp) has a mustache!

2) When ending scenes and chapters, leave you reader wanting more. The equivalent of this on TV is going to commercial break/ending an episode. Invariably, things end with a cliffhanger. Some of the cliffhangers aren't as dramatic as others ("How is my favorite character going to react to that reveal" versus "Is my favorite character going to die or turn out to be a cylon?"). Less exciting cliffhangers are fine for scene endings, but for chapter endings, you want to pull out the big stuff. But be careful--don't overuse this or your viewers/readers will get very annoyed with you and your writing will come off as hokey and soap opera like. Sometimes it's okay to end a chapter with a resolution as long as the overall story arc hasn't been resolved.

3) Plan out your story as ahead of time as possible and keep things consistent. When writing for TV, you can't go back and change what you wrote for season 1 (back when you weren't sure you'd even get picked up for a second season). With novels, you do have the luxury of going back and changing things in early chapters if you change your mind about things, but the earlier you plot out your story, the easier editing will be later on. An easy example from Battlestar--one small detail that turned out to be really annoying later on was that in the Battlestar world, paper isn’t rectangular, instead all the corners are cut off. This ended up being a nightmare for them as the series went along since it affected every single book or diagram and even their TV screens. In writing this is easily fixed, but it does speak a lot towards being aware of the ramifications of world building rules.

A big picture example--early on in the series we see Gaius Baltar (my fav character!!) having strange visions of Six (a cylon). And later on in the series (spoiler alert) they end up complicating things further by making it so that the "real" Six has visions of Gaius Baltar.From the commentary, it sound like they didn't plan on doing this initially and they hadn't figured out a real explanation for this, so when it came time to end the series and they had to resolve the question of what these visions were, they had to scrabble together a lame non-scifi explanation (they were angels?!!? WHAT??!?!) which didn't make complete sense and left viewers annoyed.

So what do you think? Have you ever learned writing tips from a TV show? Have you ever been inspired to write because of one? (And wasn't Battlestar an awesome show until the end?)

E-reader alert! Spring Design has announced their new e-reader Alex. Like Barnes and Noble's new e-reader, Alex will have both a black and white e-ink screen and a smaller color LCD screen and run on Google's Android software. It will also have internet access via wi-fi or mobile networks. (No word on how much it will cost.)

Does better internet access defeat the purpose of an e-reader or does it enhance it? I wonder if I would get completely distracted by a good internet connection (Kindle's web browsing isn't that great). I think the idea is it's supposed to help with social networking stuff which I think might make people more excited about reading e-books. I look forward to seeing this one (and B&N's) in person. It's hard to get a sense of how big it is from the website. Another thing...if you start adding too many features, are people going to wonder why it doesn't do everything (like a speakerphone, word processing software, or video games)?

(as seen on PW.com)

The National Book Award finalists have been posted! Now I have even more books to add to my to-read list...

From Publishers Weekly and Nationalbook.org:

Young People’s Literature: (judges were: Kathi Appelt, Coe Booth, Carolyn Coman, Nancy Werlin, and Gene Luen Yang)

Deborah Heiligman, Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith (Henry Holt)
Phillip Hoose, Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
David Small, Stitches (W.W. Norton & Co.)
Laini Taylor, Lips Touch: Three Times (Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic)
Rita Williams-Garcia, Jumped (HarperTeen/HarperCollins)

Fiction: (judges were: Alan Cheuse, Junot Díaz, Jennifer Egan, Charles Johnson, and Lydia Millet)

Bonnie Jo Campbell American Salvage (Wayne State University Press)
Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin (Random House)
Daniyal Mueenuddin, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (W.W. Norton & Co.)
Jayne Anne Phillips, Lark and Termite (Alfred A. Knopf)
Marcel Theroux, Far North (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Nonfiction: (judges were: David Blight, Amanda Foreman, Steve Olson, Camille Paglia, and John Phillip Santos)

David M. Carroll, Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Sean B. Carroll, Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt)
Adrienne Mayor, The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy (Princeton University Press)
T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (Alfred A. Knopf)

Poetry: (judges were: Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, A. Van Jordan, Cole Swensen, and Kevin Young)

Rae Armantrout, Versed (Wesleyan University Press)
Ann Lauterbach, Or to Begin Again (Viking Penguin)
Carl Phillips, Speak Low (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Open Interval (University of Pittsburgh Press)
Keith Waldrop, Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy (University of California Press)