The Saturday Slash

Don't be afraid to ask for help with the most critical first step of your writing journey - the query.

I’ve been blogging since 2011 and have critiqued over 200 queries here on the blog using my Hatchet of Death. This is how I edit myself, it is how I edit others. If you think you want to play with me and my hatchet, shoot me an email.

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Spencer is a shape shifter of Clan Kitsune and student of language and history in the Age of the Clans. After being attacked at Kitsune Academy by a fellow student, Spencer searches for a way out of Haniel. Right away you have a problem that can be really common to high fantasy queries - name soup. I don't know what Age of the Clans means, or if it's even relevant. or what Haniel is or means. So, the Praetor sends her to Sachi Prison in secret to find The Red Book, a text that has been lost for centuries and could shift the power in Lantea from Paladin to Praetor. How could a book do this? This drags Spencer into a decades old political battle between three parties: The Paladin, the Praetor, and the Archon, who is a leader of rebels on the Sachi Plateau. Rebelling against what? In her search, she learns the stories of three people who fought for their freedom and the freedom of generations in the Age of the Temples. Kahdea, Braid, and Owin. So do those stories take place in a different time period? The Age of Temples? How long is an age? These other characters aren't contempoaries of Spencer's?

Kahdea defied laws preventing her education in the Age of the Temples. After her twin brother, the Prefect of Fianna, is arrested by The Paladin Council, Again, so many world-building words that are just contributing to confusion. she takes his place in the building Famorian movement. With other shifter leaders who are demonized by the Temples, Kahdea helps set up the defense of their way of life. And this matters why? How is this relevant to Spencer's story?

Braid had little more than her air ship and her crew. Coming across a Famorian shifter on a trade route on the Kruvale, more names! she is able to see the danger of ignorance. She ends up going to The Hall for as an Oblate of Fianna. no idea what this means She's hoping to find more information on The Red Book to help catalyze the Famorian movement. Your tense is in past at the beginning of this para and shifts to present. Again, I don't know if these timeline are concurrent with Spencer's or not.

Owin overheard a friend of his and a strange woman from another territory talking about Famorians. He followed and fell into the Famorian movement after discovering his shifting ability. He was often thrown to a front and soon stepped into a leadership role. He and his small militia take action on Sachi Plateau following Kahdea and the other Prefects after an assault on a refugee camp in Werewood. Again, unsure how these tie together.

Fear is the great motivator. It was fear of extermination that brought shifters together against the Temples. And it was fear of the monstrous Famorian form that banished them to Sachi. What I'm not seeing is any type of continuity of these three storylines. What's the actual point and goal of the story? Right now I have three disparate tales and no idea of how everything relates to Spencer, or even if Spencer is the unifying character. I don't understand what Spencer's goal is, or why it matters or connects to these others. You've got too many names and world building elements in here at the moment, it's coming off as disjointed and reading more like a synopsis than a query. Boil down, eliminate names, and connect these storylines so that we understand what the main goal and story is here.

5 Common Mistakes to Avoid When Writing Characters

by Molly Crockett

Whatever kind of story you are writing, creating good characters is essential. Try to avoid these common mistakes writers make when it comes to character creation:

2-Dimensional Characters

The first mistake writers make is creating cardboard cut-out characters – to avoid this, try to give them life and make them seem like a real person. Humanize them and surround them with evidence of their lives, personality, and past to create believable characters with which readers can identify.

You also need to build strong and meaningful relationships for these characters – the relationships, whether romantic or not, do not have to be a major plot point but they should contribute to the characters. This could be in building a better sense of who they are and how the interact with the world, or by showing their humanity through their connections to other people.

Characters Without Roles

Perhaps a character is very well developed, fully rounded-out, and 3-dimensional – but if they have no role in the story, they really aren’t necessary or worth the time and space they take up.

This also means that each character needs their own arc of development – just as you build a full story arc for your main character, consider each side character as if they are on a journey of their own. When developing their story arcs, treat them like they are the main character of their own story. And don’t forget to include them – even in the background – when the story is focusing on the main character or plot. Don’t make the mistake of not mentioning a side character for a few chapters simply because they aren’t necessary for the plot at that time: you still need to include them in the periphery or at the very least explain or justify their absence.

Overcrowding

Kendra Brandon, a novelist at Revieweal and Bestbritishessays, explains: “Don’t waste prime time/space on minor characters – overcrowding the story will become confusing and distracting for the reader. Instead, focus on making your core group of characters memorable and distinct.”

It can be tempting to create as many fun, interesting, clever characters as your imagination can dream up, but at the end of the day it really is about quality over quantity. This may mean you have to combine a few people into one character, but ultimately this will help you create more in-depth personalities and make it much easier for your readers to follow your writing.

Overwriting

It can be easy to get swept up when you are describing a character’s actions, thoughts, dialogue, or motivations. Good creative writing is not about being overly descriptive and figurative and using as many words and ways to describe things as possible. Good creative writing is about conveying such rich descriptions in as few words as possible – being precise, effective, and clear. Less is more.

Thoughts Over Actions

Try not to spend too much time in your characters’ heads. Get away from describing their every thought and find ways to show these feelings and motivations through action. This is part of humanizing them and making them seem like real people readers can identify with. This doesn’t just mean following through from a character’s thoughts with actions, as this will seem repetitive and suggests you are not confident and competent enough to simply do what needs to be done. Readers will quickly lose interest if you describe what a character is feeling, what they think they should do about it, reviewing this course of action, and then finally doing it, and maybe even thinking about it afterwards. Get straight to the point. If the character is well-written enough, their feelings will show through their actions.

No Setting

Finally, you need to provide context for your characters and your plot. This means big picture settings like general surroundings and locations, which help provide a canvas for your plot, but more importantly when it comes to characters is the small-scale setting details. Put your characters in real life situations, vary their surroundings and circumstances, give them a chance to develop life and individuality through how they act in these situations. Francie Holt, a lifestyle writer at Uktopwriters and Bestaustralianwriters, says: “Use their senses to describe the setting and let their responses/reactions give more dimension to their character.”

Molly Crockett is a successful lifestyle writer for Bigassignments and Eliteassignmenthelp, where shares her inspiration and lifestyle tips with her audience. In her spare time, Molly enjoys teaching arts and writing skills for Stateofwriting.

Wendy Swore On Keeping Hands Busy & Your Mind Free

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. Always including in the WHAT is one random question to really dig down into the interviewees mind, and probably supply some illumination into my own as well.

Today’s guest for the WHAT is Wendy Swore, who lives on a farm with a corn maze and pumpkin patch that is home to her five kids, two dogs, two geese, seven peacocks, eleven ducks, nineteen cats, and two hundred thirty seven chickens. She farms in the summers, writes in the winters, and would rather chew her leg off than eat something spicy. 

Wendy is the author of A Monster Like Me (2019) and The Wish And The Peacock (2020).

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

My first novel, A Monster Like Me, grew from personal experience with bullying. Once when my mom and I were at the grocery store, a lady with kids pointed at the blood tumor on my face and said, “Hey, look kids, that kid doesn’t need a costume for Halloween—she’s already got one!” Then they laughed and walked off. That, and other cruelties led me to wonder: what if I believed them when they called me a monster?

My new story, The Wish and The Peacock, sparks from my life as a farmer. My spouse and children have grown up with peacocks, farm animals, high work ethics, and a love of the land. When we bought the farm, we were one of many farm families in the area, but now, over twenty years later, we are one of the last ones left. Each time another farm family sold out, another piece of this story settled into my heart. When our uncle who farmed with us passed away suddenly, everything changed, and we had to build a new vision of how our farm could continue in the future. All this grew into a story of a capable and smart farm girl who could face hard things with heart, humor, and hope.

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

For us, the farm is all about family, so the story began with the characters. One of our boys sees the world differently than the average kid. For him, routines are etched in stone, loud noises require ear-plugs, and books must be carried everywhere. My Scotty character is heavily based on him. We are fortunate to have dear friends and neighbors from many diverse backgrounds on the reservation where we live, and it was important to me to include characters that reflected that. From there, I plotted Paige’s journey as she uses every trick up her sleeve, be it a jar of spiders or good ‘ol farm smarts, to run the real estate agent off and keep her farm intact. Sometimes, you just gotta work hard, and wish big.

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

Absolutely. While my first novel had very few changes, this one was more tricky for me. I think that’s because I chose a topic that was so immediate and real for my family. I couldn’t really step away since farming is my whole world. Luckily, my awesome editor, Lisa Mangum, helped me trim a few things and rearrange a bit to hone in on the heart of the story.

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by? 

Because I do a lot of manual labor on the farm, my imagination has time to wander and spark new ideas. If it’s a good story idea, I stop what I’m doing, be it driving a tractor or picking corn, and make a note or voice recording on my phone with enough details to come back to it later when I’m done farming. I’ve learned that if I don’t write it down immediately, some of the details that made the idea special get lost. 

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

My favorite way to start a new story is to free-write the first chapter and see what happens. Often I’ll write first chapters of several totally different stories that have been bouncing around inside my head, then I sit back and look at them with a critical eye. If one of the stories resonates enough with me to finish it, I’ll stop and outline the rest of the story, make character notes, and research so I have a good foundation for the story. The other chapters go to a folder of story ideas that I might use a different day—or not. That’s a pretty full folder.