Author D.A. Bartley

Earlier in the summer, I was honored to talk to the New York chapter of Sisters in Crime as part

of SinC’s Speaker’s Bureau. I did a short workshop on editing and revision, then joined a group of these wonderful women for dinner at a nearby Indian restaurant, where D.A. (Alison) Bartley and I had a lively conversation about what it means to have suspense and tension in a novel. Alison is the author of Blessed be the Wicked and Death in the Covenant. Both are set in Utah and feature Detective Abish (Abbie) Taylor, returning to her small town, Mormon roots after living for years in New York City.

Donald Maass

As a long-time admirer of agent/author/writing guru Donald Maass, I’m a big believer in his mantra, “Tension on every page. Every time I go to a Maass workshop or read one of his books, I I feel myself growing as a writer. But the conversation made me think long and hard about what “tension on every page” means and how we can achieve it in our writing. (Tip from Don: Print out your manuscript. Throw it in the air and then shuffle all the pages. Pick out one random page at a time and find a way to increase the tension in it. Yes, it takes a long time. Yes, it really works!) 

A few days after our talk, Alison asked me if I would discuss the subject for the Miss Demeanors crime blog. The result is this interview on the craft of writing and creating tension in the reader.

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Trust me, we’ve all been there.

Feels kind of like this, doesn’t it?

It Doesn’t Have to Be That Way

Believe it or not, there are a few simple strategies that can help you get–and keep–the words flowing.

The first is simply to change the way you think about those first few minutes when you seem to be spinning your wheels.

When I was in my teens and twenties, I did a lot of theatre. Every time i went onstage, I’d feel butterflies. “I’m so nervous,” I would think. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

Then I read an interview with a famous stage actress. When the interviewer asked if she ever got nervous before a performance, she said something like this: “I always get butterflies before I go onstage. But I don’t think of it as being nervous. I think of it as being excited.” She said that surge of adrenaline, which most people would think of as anxiety or nerves, gave a heightened energy to her performance.

Science bears her out. The words we use to describe our feelings strongly influence how we experience them. This article in The Atlantic explains how it works.

So if you find yourself struggling to get the words rolling, the first step is to re-frame the experience. You aren’t stuck. You aren’t suffering from writer’s block. You simply haven’t warmed up yet.

Your Brain is Like a Muscle

Imagine running a marathon without warming up or stretching beforehand. Not only are you unlikely to win the race, there’s a good chance you won’t even finish. You could end up on the sidelines for days or even weeks, nursing an injury that could have been prevented if you’d just taken the time to prepare your body first.

While writing a chapter of your novel may not land you on the sofa with an ice pack and a bottle of ibuprofen, that doesn’t mean your creative brain can go from zero to sixty in under seven seconds.

Your brain, like your body, needs a warm-up.

The Boys in the Basement

The next thing you need to do is put your subconscious to work for you. Stephen King refers to his subconscious as “the boys in the basement.”

There is a muse, he says in On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, but “he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement kind of guy.” (Here’s the full quote, if you’re interested.)

You have to put in the work, King says, but it’s worth it, because “the guy with the cigar and the little wings has got a bag of magic. That’s stuff in there that can change your life.”

But how do you get the boys in the basement to cough up their magic?

Easy. You keep your WIP (work in progress) at the front of your mind. When you’re taking a shower or working out at the gym, noodle with your plot and characters. What if this? What if that? Play out scenes and dialogue like little movies in your mind.

Fall in love with your story, and your muse will fall in love with it too.

But thinking about writing still isn’t writing, so let’s move on to the next step.

Bell, Book, and Candle: Your Writing Ritual

Like many top athletes, Cristiano Ronaldo, the world’s second-highest paid soccer player, has a game-day routine that helps him get into a winning mindset. He spends an hour before each match focusing on the game, stretching, warming up, and listening to music. Then, before the team heads out to warm up, after he puts on his boots, he turns to his reflection and stares into it, psyching himself up for the match.

Some writers also find it helpful to have a writing ritual.

Maybe they always work in the same place, or they light candles and meditate for a few minutes before they start. Maybe they take the time to brew the perfect cup of coffee or prepare a favorite treat. Some listen to a particular piece of music. Some set up a little toy mascot, like Superman or Baby Groot.

Those are all good, but I recommend creating a short routine you can do without props so you can do it any time, anywhere. Like six long, deep breaths, or a few minutes of meditation.

Your ritual should be something you enjoy that is quick and easy to do. By doing the same little action every time, you’re training your brain to think, “Whenever this thing happens, we write.”

Your Writing Warm-up

There’s one final part of your warm-up. It can even be part of (or all of) your writing ritual.

Does this sound familiar? It’s from a question I received a few days ago. “I’ve had a difficult time clearing my thoughts in getting my ideas out,” the aspiring writer said. “I truly do take pleasure in writing but it just seems like the first 10 to 15 minutes are usually lost just trying to figure out how to begin. Any recommendations or tips?”

The truth is, spending 10-15 minutes getting yourself ready to write isn’t unreasonable. In fact, a few minutes of preparation can make the difference between a slog and a slide down a water chute.

It helps to go into it with an idea of what you want to write about. If I don’t have a clear vision of the scene I’m working on before I start, I’ll spend some time writing longhand, just playing with ideas until the scene becomes clear. It might be something like this:

Jared is riding his horse when he hears Frank’s car. There’s some small talk that isn’t small talk–“Are you working?” “Skip traces, etc.” “You’re wasted on that. What happened to Josh wasn’t your fault.” Lots of subtext. Frank tells Jared they need him to come down to his office and identify the body of an Asian woman found in the dumpster. Jared says he doesn’t know any Asian women and can’t help. Frank pulls out a photo and says, “This was found in her hand,” and it’s a photo of Jared’s dad from the Vietnam war. Dad is in front of a shack, along with a smiling Vietnamese woman and two small children. A family Jared never knew existed.

This is very free-form. I just throw in whatever comes to mind, but when I’m done, I’m ready to write the scene. If the scene is already planned but I’m still having trouble focusing, that’s another issue. Sometimes it really does take a while to get immersed in the scene–and sometimes it’s a struggle all the way through–but I just keep putting down words. You can always make it better later.

How about you? What are your favorite tips and tricks for getting the creative juices flowing?

The post Get Those Words Rolling first appeared on Jaden Terrell.

On Monday, Jan. 7, 2019, I started doing Facebook Live sessions on my Facebook Jaden Terrell author page.

I’ve received quite a few questions from both readers and writers, and I’ve been hearing a lot about how much people love videos, so I thought it might be fun to do a weekly video and answer one of those questions each week.

So far we’ve discussed three questions:

• How do you get started with creating a character?
• How do I keep my characters from seeming flat?
• How can write better dialogue, and how do I handle speech tags?

(When I say “discussed,” I mean I talk on the video, and participants leave questions and insights in the comments.)

Upcoming questions are about the craft, book marketing and promotion, and the writing life. Next week, January 28, we’ll talk about how to weave in clues if you’re writing a mystery.

If you have any questions about writing or the writing life you’d like me to answer, please let me know. You can leave them in the comments, leave me a message on Facebook, or email me at [email protected].

I have a few reader questions to answer as well, but I’ve been asked to address those at a different time. It will probably be Thursdays around 8 PM. If you have a preferred time, let me know.

I’ll post here when we start those. And I’d love to have your reader questions, too!

The post Live Q&As first appeared on Jaden Terrell.

This is a workshop for people who want to write a novel but don’t know where to start, people who have started one and don’t know how to finish, and people who have written one or more novels that feel flat and lacking in depth. It takes you from the very seed of an idea to the completed first draft in a way that makes you feel confident and excited about your book.

If your dream has always been to write a novel, wouldn’t this be a great time time to start?

You can find more information here. Or contact me at [email protected] if you think you might like to host a workshop. No pressure, no obligation. I’d love to hear from you.

The post “How to Write a Novel” Workshop first appeared on Jaden Terrell.