Guest Post: Emma, on Writing Communities

     My lovely friend, Emma, (who has been featured on here before) graciously agreed to do a guest post. Behold, here it lies.

Six Reasons You Should Find a Writing Community (and where to find one)

     The writing communities I have been fortunate enough to grow up with have so greatly impacted my writing, and (despite fear of sounding cheesy) my life. When I was 13, I joined the OYAN community. It’s fair to say that this is the most impactful thing to happen to my adolescent author self in the area of my work. Later that year, I also participated in NaNoWriMo for the first time. I started being invited to and attending more writing local writing camps. This past year, I participated in a women’s writing and critique group, hosted by the lovely Cinelle Barnes (http://www.cinellebarnes.com.) Through all my writing experiences, these have been the most memorable to me, due to the consistency, friendship, experience, and feedback that they all uniquely provided. This has just been my experience, but talking to my friends from these experiences, I know I am not alone in thinking that writing communities are so crucial for budding authors. Without further ado, here are some reasons why.



      1. Accountability

This is essential. It may not be this way for everyone, but when I have a group of people that know about my plans and goals for my latest writing project, I’m much more likely to stick to it than if I were solely accountable to myself.


      2. Connections

Connections in the writing world can be very helpful. When everyone around you has similar interests and pursuits, you all bring something, someone, some company, to the table that you’d have a harder time finding on your own. That can go anywhere from editors and agents, to the opportunity to guest blog. As seen here, hehehe.

     3. Publicity

You need a writing platform, and simply put, this is a way to get a following and your name out there. This goes along the lines of connections.

      4. Advice and Discussion

Older writers can share their mistakes and triumphs with younger writers. This helps everyone collect knowledge and wisdom and experience that would take much longer to collect alone. You also can discuss your ideas and work out writing related issues. 

     5. Feeling Less Crazy

Okay, hear me out on this one. Writers are weird folks. Okay? Okay. Define weird as you may, debate normalcy all you want. Nevertheless, if you are a writer, chance has it that if you try chatting to parents about your novel idea of shadow demons, or to your youth leader about the newest spat your charries are talking about in your head at night, you’ll get some weird looks. So join a world where this is not only accepted, but helpfully talked through. To be around people like this is pretty encouraging for a vulnerable young writer.

      6. Critiques

Getting informed feedback on your writing on a semi regular basis is extremely helpful. This is essential for improving your work. Without an outside view, you can easily have disproportionate responses to your work. With an outside view, you may find plot holes you missed, or character inconsistency you overlooked. You also can get positive feedback, which is encouraging.


      Now that we’ve established why writing communities are important, where can you find a writing community? My favorite places to get involved in a writing community are local critique groups, and online forums. I’d recommend the OYAN forum (https://oneyearnovel.com) It’s exclusive to students of its curriculum, which is very worth the time and money. Then as for free forums, Neverland (neverlandauthors.invisionzone.com) and Kingdom Pen (kingdompen.org) are both good choices. Kingdom Pen is a selectively Christian forum and ezine, while the other two are both leaning in that direction, but not as explicitly so. Then there is the notable National Novel Writing Month forum (https://nanowrimo.org) This organizes its own meetups and local groups as well.

      Now, you also can get connected via blogs, web series, and online classes. And of course, there’s the writer’s conference, a hotspot for making like-minded friends. There are so many amazing writing conferences full of experienced speakers, agents and editors, and fellow writers. The downside of conferences is that it’s not as consistent of a community as forums or weekly critique groups, but they are nonetheless valuable experiences.


     Overall, the friends you can make in tight-knit, like minded communities like this can be incredible. “Friendship begins at the moment when one man says to another, you too? I thought I was the only one.” -C.S Lewis

Spectacular Book Tag

     Jonathan over at Fishing for Ideas tagged me in the 'Spectacular Book Tag', so here I am. 

     The Rules

1. Tag three to five people.

2. Answer the questions.

     1. What are your favorite book covers?

Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick (Also the illustrations inside are amazing.)

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

Lunch Money by Andrew Clements

 

The Lightening Thief by Rick Riordan

     2. What are your favorite book titles?

The Ranger’s Apprentice by John Flanagan

The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom

The Secret Garden by Francis Hodgeson Burnett

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster

     3. Have you read a book and didn't know why they named it that and what was the title?

Lord of the Flies by William Golding, I don’t think the title ever made sense to me. (There's probably some connection that it has to the story, left there for the really clever people to figure out.)

     4. Have you read a book with a character that made you mad?

Orpheus from Cornelia Funke's Inkheart series and Lavinia in Francis Hodgeson Burnett's A Little Princess were by far the worst, and Amy in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women ignited my vexation a few times in that book.

     5. Is there someone or something from a book you would never want to come across?

A book character who I most likely wouldn't get along with at all in real life is chase from The Unlikely Debut of Ellie Sweet by Stephanie Morrill. The flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum are pretty creepy. Also the werewolf and the hag from Prince Caspian by C. S. Lewis. Actually there are evil things in almost every book that I would probably rather not cross paths with. 

      6. If you could meet a character in person from a book who would it be?

That is like not a broad question at all… Perhaps Jo from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott; as she was my very favorite book character for quite a long time, or maybe Michal from Claervont Captive by Bryce Roberts, because the dude just really needs a hug and a pat on the back.

     7. What book are you currently reading?

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Emma by Jane Austen, various works of Shakespeare, and I’m rereading several books.

     8. Have you read a book that made you cry?

Yes and no. I've never actually had tears rolling down my cheeks while reading, but my eyes have definitely misted over before. The closest I've come to actually crying was probably in a book that isn't published yet.

     9. What is the weirdest book you’ve read?

The Marvelous Land of Oz by Frank L. Baum, and also Frankenstein by Mary Shelley was pretty weird.

     10. What is the worst book/series you ever read?

I probably either didn’t finish it or forgot about it. I try not to dwell on negative things. But there's also a difference between least favorite and worst, the latter being harder to judge.

     11. If you could only read one more book the entire year what would it be?

Oh gracious. Perhaps The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis or a very long book like War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy or Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.

     I'm tagging:

Emma at Lilac Ampersand

Avrie at Musings and Stories

Caleb at Being INFP and Thoughts A Lot

Also, feel free to do the Spectacular Book Tag even if I didn't tag you, and leave a comment with the link!

Outlining

     Outlines are important things. My first novel suffered immensely because I didn't plan it out at all. I respect the people who are the 'write-as-you-go' type.

     For me, planning is crucial, as is organization. (It's almost pathetic how dependent I am on being organized.[I may or may not do a rough outline on blog posts before writing them.]) So I thought I'd share the novel-outlining system I devised a while back.

     It starts with a story idea. (whoa, surprise surprise) If it's one I'm excited about and that I particularly like, I make a new document for it. I decide whether it should be a full-length novel, a short story, or something else. (For this post though, we're going to assume it's a novel.) The first thing I type into that document is a quick summary of my idea, a couple sentences long. For lack of a better word, I call it the log line, but it won't be used in pitching your story. These sentences are just for you, so that when you forget what you're writing about you can look back at the beginning of the doc and refresh your memory.

     These next steps don't have to be carried out in any particular order, but I'm listing them in the order I have them in the document. So, second step I take is writing a synopsis. As opposed to the log line, the synopsis is what I'll send people when they want to know about the new story idea I'm working on.
In the synopsis, I try to give a preview of:

• The main character and other important characters
• Setting
• What they're up against
• What makes the story exciting

      After the synopsis, I choose a setting and then a theme, which can be as little as one word. It's the point you want to make in the story. After that comes a section for characters. What I do in that section varies. Often I'll put the names of the major characters, perhaps write a short description of each, and include notes on their backstories and motivation. I usually come back to this section throughout the writing process to add little pieces of information. An optional section that I put on an outline is a list of possible scenes that don't really have a place yet, random dialog, and just extra things that may or may not happen in the story.

     Now comes the more technical part of the outline. I always decide on a number of chapters and how many words I want in each chapter, on average. (For my current WIP, I'm going to have 12 chapters of around 2200 words each.) Then I decide how many main action points there should be within a chapter, depending on the number of words. I've found 4-5 is the amount of points that suits me. Ultimately, the number of action points actually in each chapter will change unless you're crazy strict about it, but it helps when outlining. An action point is a scene(or sometimes several scenes) that furthers the plot of the story along.

     Once the novel is basically all plotted out chapter by chapter, I look over it and make a list of potential plot holes and things I'll need to work on more. And last but not least, I make a brainstorming list for title ideas.

     So there you have it. A (hopefully helpful) method of outlining a novel. For a short story, I do things in a similar way, but less in-depth. I just sort of make a list of things that happen in the order that they will happen, and I obviously don't bother about chapters.

     I was going to be all fancy and have a PDF for you to download with my outline framework, but that totally failed because I can't figure out things. But for your benefit, I have pasted it below.

Log line:  
Synopsis:  
Setting(time, place, genre)
Theme: 
Character profiles, motivation, and backstories
List of extra scenes, setting ideas, random things you want to happen, etc. 
Number of chapters: 
Average word count for each chapter: 
Number of action points within chapter: 
~Actual Outline~
Chapter 1:
-First scene
-Action point
-Action point
-Action point
(continue this way for each chapter with the desired number of action points.)
Potential plot holes: 
Title ideas: