I'm spending a great deal of time this semester at VCFA pondering the beginnings of stories. So many story elements to include: characters, desire lines, settings, inciting incidents... And deep within that, why am I as an author writing this story?

For my semester project, I've decided to take on Kurt, an antagonist from The Boy Next Door. I won't give spoilers for TBND, I promise, but those who've read the early drafts know that Kurt has done some not-so-easily-forgiven things. Why write about him, then?

Two reasons. First, I love this character. He's a bad guy in TBND, but Robert McKee, author of Story, says writers should love all their characters and I believe this is good advice. When you care about a character, you add depth and interest that you might not otherwise do. Second, who among us has really NEVER done something we later wish we hadn't?

Randy Ingermanson's popular Snowflake Method for novel writing has a lot of suggestions that I find useful, including the idea of starting your work with a single sentence of what your novel is going to be about. I also find it helpful to consider a question that I'll be exploring. I think that for this novel, my question is this: Can you ever put back the pieces if you shatter somebody else's life?

The answer? It'll take a whole novel. :-)

Comparisons are a writing staple; they're a great way to get across a lot of information in a single sentence. Here's a example from a craft book that's a fave of my fellow Swoon author Jenny Elliott, Noah Lukeman's The First Five Pages. You could write: "The man had a long, drawn-out face. He was very pale. His forehead ran straight across. He had large dark circles below his eyes..." Lukeman carries the example much farther, but the basic point? This man "looks like Frankenstein." (Lukeman 61). This comparison gives a strong mental picture and saves a lot of the reader's time.

Now there are some cautions to this technique. You must be sure your audience understands the comparison. If your reader doesn't know who Frankenstein is, now he or she is only confused. A good comparison will be original without needing explaining. That being said, I'm about to break all the rules.

If I say VCFA (Vermont College of Fine Arts) is like Hogwarts, I hope you get the picture that VCFA is an intriguing and beautiful place where magical things happen. In the interest of fun, though, photos and explanations below.

Move over sci-fi and fantasy, the highlight from today was a great lecture by author Coe Booth on world building in contemporary novels - six pages of notes! As a teen, I embraced my inner geek in many ways, one of which was in mapping out imaginary towns and imagining the lives of the people who lived there. I had no idea that what I was doing was an integral part of creating story, but think about how many ways your life has been shaped by the neighborhoods you grew up in.

Coe created an imaginary New York neighborhood called Bronxwood for her Tyrell novels and she provided us with various levels and questions to help us go about the process ourselves. I'm excited that I gleaned a couple character memories from the exercises that will improve my draft of Kiss and Cry.

If you're in the mood for your own writing challenge, I've posted a slide show of pictures below that you might use to imagine character memories as connected to a place. The pictures are from downtown Montpelier, but don't limit yourself to that. What kind of characters do you think live in a place like this? How do they feel about living here? How do they interact with each other? You can also take a walk through your own neighborhood and think of some of your own connections to place as well.

 P.S. I love almost everything about Vermont but the internet connection in the dorms leaves a lot to be desired. As a result, these posts are drafts and I apologize in advance for typos or the occasional nonsense post gone live...

I belong to several writing groups. There's my online writing friends, a fantastic and brilliant mix of people from SCBWI, RWA, and Swoon Reads, who also all write YA. There's my SCBWI critique group, where we write everything from picture books to YA. I've also found a group of writers at my local library who write everything, from sonnets to graphic novels and memoir to editorials.

I find all these groups helpful and inspiring for different reasons. The benefits of critique partners who write for the genre are probably obvious. These people are well-read and experienced in my favorite field. My SCBWI group, with its talents at all levels of kid lit, help me make sure my work is appropriate for my target age group in addition to their other feedback. But sometimes I want or need to expand my writing beyond writing for children or young adults. Enter a drop-in visit to the library group.

Tonight, I owe this post to a fellow library writer. I was looking for suggestions as to where I could cut parts of a magazine article I'm working on. (800 words over count in a novel? No biggie. In a magazine article? Wince. Grimace. Moan.) Deborah pushed me to think about it in a different way. "Get a highlighter," she suggested, "and highlight all the parts you really want to keep."

Advice I'd heard before? For sure. Advice I needed to hear again, right then? Yes. And behind those words of advice, much needed subtext. The answer is there when you're willing to look at things a different way. Thank you, Deborah!