How To Plot Your Novel And Bring Your Characters To Life

Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending a writing workshop and blogging conference. Thank God one was online or I would have missed a wealth of information.

For the next few days I will be sharing what I learned from both.

I want to start off by saying if you have local events, attend them. This is an excellent way to network. If you can’t attend a local or travel to an event, check online to see what is being offered. You might be missing out on some wonderful information.

Both events kicked off on Thursday, but I’ll start with the writing workshop because it began in the morning.

I will be honest and say I didn’t have a clue what to expect when I signed up for this workshop. How To Plot Your Novel And Bring Your Characters To Life. I knew the hostess (Miranda Parker and Shelia Goss) so I knew I was in for some good stuff. I didn’t realized it would be a hands on workshop. I’m glad I didn’t because I would be attending the blogging conference and I would have talked myself out of attending, because I knew it would be too much. I say again don’t miss out on opportunities because you think it will be too much.

This was a private workshop so we had to register and didn’t have to worry about sharing our info. Both instructors posted their lecture and assigned homework. Homework WHAT? This is what I meant about not being prepared. Instead of backing out, I jumped right in. I informed my critquie partner of my booked weekend, but promised to do my part. So after each day at the conference, I came home to homework.

I decided to work on Miranda’s homework first because that would be my hardest. She was teaching on Plotting, my weakness. I wanted to learn as much as I could about this process.

For the first time I understood what plotting meant. I’m so thankful for Miranda sharing her knowledge with us. She took us step by step, and then broke us down until we got it right.

I learned that my story was finished, I just needed to put it in order. Miranda showed me what I needed to do. I even learned that this book would be a series of at least three book. How exciting is that.

This book is my first effort in writing a young adult book, so I really needed to know I had more than one book inside me.

Sheila’s workshop was about characters. She gave us a character sheet and we had to learn about our character. I liked her character sheet. I’ve worked with different ones, but I like that she had hers on a spread sheet and you can add others as you go.

She worked on dialogue, another weakness and offered a lot of feedback on how to improve it.

I will say that I’m slowly getting over my FEAR. I posted my plotting assignment and looked forward to the feedback. I wanted to know how to improve my story more than I worried about them not liking it. I welcomed their opinions and was pleasantly surprised that they all wanted to hear more about the story.

After the workshop Miranda and Shelia created a group so we all could continue to work together on our stories. I think this group will be very helpful each other. One of the first things we all agreed on was signing up for the NABO. To write 50,000 in a month. I know it’s a big challenge for us all, but don’t you love a challenge. I want to see if I can complete this book before the end of the year.

I highly recommend taking this workshop if they offer again.

Bed Sharing

I know the title made you think some things, but remember I’m a good Christian lady.  LOL

I honestly did not attend to share my bed with my children when I decided to have kids.  It sort of just happened.  I was nursing and it was a lot easier in the middle of the night to have the baby with me in bed than get my lazy butt up and get them out of their crib.

All three of my children have shared our bed.  For the most part it’s a wonderful way to bond with your children.  Who doesn’t like to snuggle with their babies?  However getting them out of your bed is the pain.

With the oldest, we painted her room blue, she was a Blue’s Clues kid and she and her brother loved the bunk beds.  They went nicely.  Every now and then, they’d creep back, but for the most part they stayed in their bed.

Now this final kid, he refuses to go and it driving me and the hubby mad.  He is a clinger which means he’s wrapped around you while he sleeps.  Did I mention that the parents aren’t sleeping because of this little one?

We tried to bribe him with his own room, with matching comforters. NOT

He even has his own t.v.  NOT

He's fallen asleep in his room and in the morning he's in our bed.

He won’t leave, claims the room is his room, we need to move.

Can I tell you I’m so tempted to take his room and turn it into mine?  Yes I would miss the hubby but he can come for visits.  J

How many out there share their beds with a little one?  Tell the truth.  I’m finding more and more families are, they just don’t want to admit it.

I will admit, I share my bed, do you?

Going to Show Me The Blog Social Media and Blogging Conference

I will be attending this conference today.  I’m so ready to meet some local bloggers and network with them.  I’m hoping to learn more about taking my blogs to the next level.

I’ll let you know more about the conference.

Plotting Workshop

Today I’m attending a plotting workshop online hosted by Miranda Parker and Shelia Goss.

It’s a hands-on workshop and I’m looking forward to learning more on plotting.

I will keep you posted on what happens.

Commitment To Write

Randy Ingermanson says to be classified as a Junior writer you need to be writing 10 hours or more a week. At the most I write five hours a week.  I’m working on stepping that up.

I’m currently working with a freelance editor and my goal is to have the editing of my manuscript completed by December 16^th, which means I need to work on my writing time in order to do that.

I have 368 pages to edit.  I decided to break the editing up by a daily count.

I have 50 days to edit which will break the pages down to 8 pages a day.   I write five days a week which will be 40 pages a week.

That’s not too bad.  I started on Monday and I edited 38 pages.  Not bad.

It takes a commitment to write.  I’ve made a commitment to my editor and posting this blog today, I’m making a commitment to myself.

I’ll keep you posted on how the goal is going.

What are your writing goals for the rest of the year?

In Memory Of Steve Jobs

"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.  Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.  Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.”
Steve Jobs – All Things D Conference in 2010

Steve Jobs: 1955-2011