Goal Setting: Tips and Resources #Writing tips for the #Writerslife #AmWriting

Last week I talked about the importance of setting goals and occasionally reviewing them. Here are some resources to help you identify the specific steps you need to take to reach your overall goals.

Susan Uhlig, author of dozens of magazine stories and articles and a writing teacher, reviewed her annual goals on her website and explored what worked or didn't, and why, with advice for other goal setters. Here's an excerpt:

Some writers have word or page count goals per day. Others have a goal of finishing a chapter in a certain amount of time. Illustrators might have a number of paintings or sketches to accomplish in a certain time. What matters is to have what in the business world of project management is called a S.M.A.R.T. goal. Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. A goal such as "get an agent" isn't really under your control. A goal of "submit so many queries to agents by this date" is under your control and measurable.

Read her entire post on her website.

Amy Houts shared tips on goals lists. Here’s one tip I really like: Be specific—don’t just write, for example, “Complete assignment.” Break the assignment down into specific steps. For any of the writing courses, these steps would include: reading the course manual, working through the exercises, scanning the related reading, and studying your textbooks. Once that’s completed, you can begin writing the first draft, editing, revising, and proofreading. 

Learn about writing for kids

I like this because it helps you stay realistic. If your goal is “I’m going to write that sci-fi story this weekend!”, you may be disappointed and frustrated when you work really hard at it but still fail. But if you break it down into steps, you may realize that by the time you research, brainstorm, and outline, you’ll have filled up your available free time. Then you can set a more realistic goal for this weekend and the next one.

Improve your plots

EXERCISE: Goal Setting 

•    What is my primary writing goal?
•    What are my secondary writing goals?
•    How can these goals work together? Do they contradict each other at all? Do they interfere with other career, family or personal goals?
•    What steps do I need to take? Do I need to work on specific craft techniques, time management, market research, or submissions?
•    Which steps come first? How can I schedule the steps to reach my goals?

Click on the “goal setting” link in the right-hand column for more on this topic.

Have certain goals setting exercises work for you? Do you have any advice to share?

Kris writes for children under the name Chris Eboch. Her novels for ages nine and up include The Eyes of Pharaoh, a mystery that brings ancient Egypt to life; and The Well of Sacrifice, an action-packed drama set in ninth-century Mayan Guatemala. Her book Advanced Plotting helps writers fine-tune their plots, while You Can Write for Children: How to Write Great Stories, Articles, and Books for Kids and Teenagers offers great insight to beginning and intermediate writers. Learn more at https://chriseboch.com/ or her Amazon page.

Chris also writes for adults under the name Kris Bock. Her Furrever Friends Sweet Romance series features the employees and customers at a cat café. Watch as they fall in love with each other and shelter cats. Get a free 10,000-word story set in the world of the Furrever Friends cat café when you sign up for the Kris Bock newsletter.

Kris Bock also writes romantic suspense novels. Fans of Mary Stewart, Barbara Michaels, and Nora Roberts will want to check out Kris Bock’s romantic adventures. “Counterfeits is the kind of romantic suspense novel I have enjoyed since I first read Mary Stewart’s Moonspinners.” 5 Stars – Roberta at Sensuous Reviews blog

Learn more at www.krisbock.com or visit Kris Bock’s Amazon US page or Amazon UK page. (For other countries click here.) Sign up for the Kris Bock newsletter  for announcements of new books, sales, and more.

Resources for Revision

To follow up on my series on novel revision, here are a few other great resources.

Doug Eboch, Sweet Home Alabama writer, has lots of great posts on his screenwriting blog and many of the techniques he covers apply to novels as well. Spend some time exploring and you’ll find lots of gems. In terms of revision, I especially like this one on how to make romantic scenes (or any quiet scene where characters are getting along) tense. Check out his posts on structure as well. (You can view every post by clicking on the first link here, and then scrolling through the list of topics down in the right-hand column.)

Writers Digest has an online article on 4 Techniques to Fire Up Your Fiction. It includes prompts from literary agent Donald Maass on how to dig deeper into your scenes and pump up the intensity.

Cheryl B. Klein, senior editor at the Arthur A. Levine imprint of Scholastic, is known for giving great writing workshops. She's now collected many of her talks together in Second Sight: An Editor’s Talks on Writing, Revising, and Publishing Books for Children and Young Adults. She discusses both picture books and novels, with in-depth analyses of the Harry Potter series, The Hunger Games, and a couple of humorous novels by Lisa Yee. It's like looking over her shoulder while she works! Along with advice on everything from opening lines to finding the emotional heart of your story, she addresses the business side of publishing by sharing an example of The Annotated Query Letter from Hell and an Annotated Query Letter That Does It Right.

Because these essays started with different talks Klein gave, the material is sometimes repetitive. That becomes interesting in itself, however, showing how ideas can develop and become refined over time, an example of editing. It's worth taking your time over each essay, letting it sink in and trying some of her techniques. This is one of the few writing books that seems to target intermediate and advanced writers far more than beginners. You'll return to this one again and again.

I've also combined many of my own articles on writing, plus expanded workshop notes, plus essays from other professional writers, into a 106 page book called Advanced Plotting, available as a $9.99 paperback or a $4.99 e-book. If you like the writing advice you get here, please check it out.

Happy editing.
Chris

The Drama of a Place

I've been discussing ways to add tension to your stories, by making better use of elements such as the villain or secondary characters. You can also look to your setting for more drama. Sometimes the possibilities are obvious. In my Mayan historical adventure, The Well of Sacrifice, I opened with the heroine gathering medicinal plants in the jungle, and running into a tribe of savages. In later chapters, she gets trapped inside the dead king’s sealed tomb, and then thrown into a sacrificial well. How's that for a dramatic use of setting!

But not every book has to have tombs or cliffs. Even everyday settings such as school or a suburban neighborhood can provide elements for adding drama, humor, or other interest.

In the Haunted books, the "setting" is a traveling ghost hunter TV show, with different specific settings for each book. In my first version of The Ghost on the Stairs, the kids watched some of the filming, but I didn’t use the TV show much. While expanding the novel, I added a chapter where they try out the ghost hunter gadgets, and another where their stepfather interviews people who have claimed to see the ghost. Both these offered opportunities for humor, as only the kids knew whether the gadgets were really working, and whether the interview subjects were telling the truth.

I used the individual settings specific to each book as well. The Riverboat Phantom takes place on a Mississippi steamboat, where action scenes include a fight in the boiler room and a ghost-induced hurricane on the top deck. The Knight in the Shadows starts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and involves a subway journey to The Cloisters. The MET and The Cloisters are full of interesting elements. A subway is even more intriguing to a kid who's never been on one, but add a ghost to the mix, and you get action and humor.

Tip: Look for ways to use your setting to add complications. What if the weather changed? What if they went somewhere without cell phone reception? What if they had to pass through a bad neighborhood—or sneak through a rich gated community with a guard? If your setting could be Anywhere, USA, charge it up for dramatic value.

Example: Look at the movie Sweet Home Alabama. Would it be the same if the main character only had to go home to New Jersey?

More on Cliffhangers

As noted last week, cliffhanger chapter endings drive the story forward. But they can also inspire new dramatic events. If you have to find a way to add a scary or exciting twist at the end of the chapter, the scene automatically becomes more dramatic.

In the Haunted series, I try to keep my chapters to about 1500 words. If I can't find a cliffhanger moment within 1600 words, maybe there isn't as much action as I want. If a chapter goes longer, I split it in two—which forces me to add a new cliffhanger halfway through the chapter.

For example, in Haunted book 4: The Ghost Miner's Treasure (not yet published), I had a chapter that was going on too long. I looked back through it, especially at the 1200 to 1600 word point, to see if I had a moment I could turn into a strong chapter ending. I found this:

          There was another guy in the room. He had shaggy dark hair and skin that looked like he spent every day in the sun. He stared at us a moment, with black eyes that kind of gave me a shiver, then looked down at the map spread across his table.
          The old guy bustled around, pulling out books and boxes and stacking them on an empty table. I sighed. This looked like it might take awhile. Tania sat down, and I moved up next to her. I jumped back when my elbow seem to hit a wall of cold. I must've gotten too close to the ghost. There really wasn't room for all of us.
          "Hey, why don't I go find Mom, while you get started," I said. "She'll worry if she doesn't know where we are."

There's something potentially dramatic there -- a physical encounter with the ghost. But they've already gotten to know the ghost, and it's just a slight brush of the elbow, so it passes in a moment. To build that into a cliffhanger chapter ending, I changed it to this:

          When I glanced up, I saw the dark-haired guy staring at us, with black eyes that kind of gave me a shiver. For some reason, he reminded me of the fortune teller, and her words "Bad luck" seemed to echo in my brain.
          I guess I took a step back without realizing it. I let out a yelp as I stepped into a wall of cold.

I took a small moment and made it bigger. Because the reader already knows the freezing effects of ghosts, they'll wonder what happened when Jon backed into one. This also allowed me some humor at the start of the next chapter, as Jon knocks into the museum curator. Books go flying, Jon has to somehow explain what happened, and he draws even more attention from the spooky guy.

Tip: To keep the plot action-packed, check your pacing by noting your chapter lengths. If some chapters go on much longer than others (proper length varies by genre and age range), look for places to add action.

Cliffhangers!

Cliffhanger chapter endings have the obvious advantage of driving the story forward. Not every chapter has to end in a cliffhanger (I personally get annoyed when there's never a good place to put down the book. Sometimes I have to do other things!) But using cliffhanger chapter endings regularly throughout your manuscript can help build drama and keep the reader turning the pages.

If you want a cliffhanger, it's not enough to just suddenly throw something at your character. I ghost wrote a book for a series known for its cliffhanger endings. After I turned in my manuscript, I got this comment from the editor: “I would like to see more of a slow build-up toward the intense action. In horror movies, it’s always the ominous music and the main character slowly opening the closet door that scares us the most, not the moment right after she opens the door.”

She's talking about the difference between suspense and surprise. Surprise is startling, because it's not set up. However, there's no tension leading up to it. It's slow until something smacks you in the face, and can feel more random and baffling than dramatic. (A car that rear-ends you out of nowhere is a surprise. Losing your brakes at the top of a steep hill is suspenseful.) For suspense, give clues that something is about to happen. Often this means expanding the scene a bit, using more sensory details and more emotional thoughts, expressions or actions.

As an example, here's an early version of a chapter ending in The Ghost on the Stairs. Jon is starting to believe that Tania really sees ghosts, and they are trying to find out if they can communicate with one.

            “All right,” I said. “Let’s go back in now. We can just stand near the bottom of the stairs, and pretend that we’re talking to each other and watching the filming.”
            Tania nodded. She took a deep breath and led the way inside.

Here's my revised version, as published, with more detail to hopefully build suspense.

            “All right,” I said. “Let’s go back in now. We can just stand near the bottom of the stairs, and pretend that we’re talking to each other and watching the filming.”
            Tania nodded. She looked down, then back up, and spoke softly. “Do you think she could be dangerous?”
            I shrugged. I wasn’t sure she was anything. But that got me wondering. Could a ghost do anything to you? Did it matter if you could see it or not?
            I watched Tania as she stepped toward the door. Maybe we were going to find out.

 Now you try it -- look back at some of your chapter endings. Can you make them more dramatic, by sloooowly opening the closet door?

    * Focus on suspense, not just surprise.
    * Use more detail -- you actually slow the pace for a cliffhanger. Use sensory details with an emotional impact.
    * Use shorter sentences and short paragraphs to keep the reader's eyes speeding down the page.