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Welcome to my blog

As a writer, my first area of interest is obviously my books, but for my blog I will try to address different writing issues or provide my own tips when it comes to writing or self-publishing.

My blog also includes shout-outs to and recommendations for other blogs or websites, book reviews or recommendation, and a few posts sparked by nothing but an area of interest at the moment or occasionally a complaint or five. 

-J.R. McGinnity
P.s. This blog contains affiliate links, usually to Amazon.

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The importance of tension in your novel

2/11/2016

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There are probably thousands of blog posts on this topic, and whole chapters devoted to it in countless writing craft books, but I am writing my own post about it all the same.

I write about it not because I am the master about to impart some wisdom, but because it is something that I struggle with as well. How do you add enough tension to your novel to make it interesting?

First off, a writer needs to accept the fact that tension is essential. Necessary, even. There's a reason why romance novels don't continue once we reach the "Happily Ever After" part. There's a reason that, after Harry Potter defeats Voldemort in the 7th book, there aren't another 7 books following Harry on his happy journey through life (although as a huge Harry Potter fan, I would love another 7 books about Harry). The reason is because just like conflict is necessary, books need tension to move from conflict to conflict without losing the reader's interest.

Think about your life. Think about when you meet up with your friends at the bar/coffee shop after work on Fridays. What do you talk about? The highlights of your week, sure, but also the low points. The triumphs and conflicts. And the events or feeling that occurs between those moments. That feeling that carries between and surrounds conflicts is tension.

You don't tell your friend all about how you went to work with no troubles, went about your day with no troubles, talked to your boss with no troubles, and went home to watch some unexceptional TV with--you guessed it--no troubles.

You would tell your friend that you had a good day, or an average day, or a boring day, and then skip ahead to something more exciting.

And when we write, that "more exciting" means conflict. Trouble. Danger. And the tension that comes with that.

But if you're a writer you know that stories need conflict. Anyone who has taken a high school (maybe even middle school) English class knows that stories consist of beginnings, conflicts, and resolutions (often shown by that triangle/mountain graphic. And the journey from conflict to conflict is full of tension.

I'm feeling my own tension now, with my book release tomorrow, and the poor people in my life who have to hear about the worry mixed with excitement surrounding that release ad nauseam probably wish that I would focus on the boring parts of life. But that isn't how story telling works, even in "real life." Conflict and tension. They drive the story just as much as your characters.

Which brings me to the role of characters in creating tension. Throw problems at your characters. Make life hard for them. And then, for the sake of all that is good in the world, make sure they feel the tension. In my serial novel The Bodyguard, Lakshmi lives a sort of double life. This creates problems. Conflicts. But she doesn't move seamlessly from conflict to conflict without a care in the world. She worries. She feels stress. Her emotions are on edge due to her secrets and feelings. She doesn't just face her conflicts and move on, she carries tension from one to the other.

And as a reader, we hope that Lakshmi finds some release from the tension.

As a writer who loves Lakshmi, I don't like turning her life into a tangled mess. I don't want bad things to happen to her. I want her to live in Happily Ever After world. But I don't let her, because that would be boring. So I throw in conflict, and I make sure she knows it. And that causes tension.

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For the Love of 1st Person...

2/8/2016

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Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good 1st person narrative now and then. I am currently reading When My Name Was Keoko by Linda Sue Park, told from two different 1st person perspectives (Sun-hee and her older brother Tae-yul), and I'm loving the story. First person in this case gives it an intimacy that wouldn't have been possible had that book been written in 3rd person (my own personal favorite), so I totally understand the draw of a good 1st person narrative.

The key word there is "good."

Has anyone else noticed that the market is currently saturated with 1st person narratives? Almost all YA novels are 1st person now. A ton of romance (at least indie romance) is, too. Did it start with Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey? Is that where authors are getting their writing and style inspiration now?

I teach high school English, and I have a student who can't connect with any writing that isn't done in the 1st person. If a book or story isn't written in the 1st person, she isn't interested. When did that happen?

And it wouldn't be so bad, really, if the people writing in 1st person were doing it well, but 1st person is tricky. I've tried it. There's a fine line between

"It's only a rumor," Abuji said as I cleared the table. "They'll never carry it out." My father wasn't talking to me, of course. He was talking to Uncle and my brother, Tae-yul, as they sat around the low table after dinner, drinking tea." (Park 1)

and someone writing along the lines of

​I shuffled across the room in my beat up bunny slippers with one of the ears barely hanging on and reluctantly went to open the door. I could hear my mother's voice telling me that I should never answer the door in my pajamas, but she wasn't here to see, so I figured it wouldn't matter this once. My straight brown hair was up in a ponytail, not hanging limply around my face, and I'm lucky enough to have the kind of skin that doesn't require much makeup to look good, so aside from the clothes, I probably looked the way I always do. Average. Not particularly good looking, but not bad enough to scare guys away. When I opened the door and saw the tall, unbelievably hot guy who had knocked, my jaw hung open. I might have been drooling. The sound I made was more of a grunt than a greeting.

The first example is by Linda Sue Park, and does a great job of introducing Sun-hee and her family as well as introducing some tension. The second I made up, but based it loosely off of some of the 1st person I've read recently.

Now I'm not saying that the writing would necessarily be better if the second example that I came up with was written in 3rd person. I deliberately made it bad, and I'm owning up to that now. But if I wasn't writing in the first person, I wouldn't have had my main character awkwardly examine her own appearance while going to answer the door (that awkward self-examination happens often in 1st person books, especially romances), and that is one of the biggest problems I'm having with the overly-saturated 1st person market.

If I'm going to be reading "I, I, I," it doesn't need to be a character that I actually want to be like or even relate to that much, but awkward passages just seem so much more awkward when I'm the one supposedly going through that.

Does anyone else agree that the 1st person market is over-saturated and authors need to start considering what is best for the story, not just what is popular at the moment, or is this rant just a reflection of an anti-1st-person prejudice of mine and 1st person is not really a problem in the industry?

I genuinely want to know.
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The Difficulties of Story Continuity in Episodic Works

6/30/2014

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Writing presents a lot of difficulties. Character development, a balance of action, dialogue, and narrative, pacing, and the one element that either breezes in or has to be dragged like a horse to water that you really, really hope will drink--plot!

Plot. It's magical. Mysterious. Necessary. And occasionally elusive.

Last Thursday, I went though a list of all of my works, past and present. One of my current WIP is From the Sky, and I truly believe that the possibilities are endless. I plan for it to be a serial novel, although I want to get the first few episodes--maybe even most of the first season--written before I start releasing it.

But I'm having problems with story continuity.

I know my characters, and I'm good at character development. The balance of action, dialogue, and narrative can be tricky, but I can usually patch it together in the rewrites and editing if not the first time around. But it's plot that is giving me the problems.

I have the first episode--it's rough and needs a serious rewrite, but it's there. And I have ideas for future episodes that I think will be exciting and move the plot forward. But I have no idea what to put between those episodes. I don't know how to continue the story when it is purposely being written as separate episodes, and I don't know how to pace it.

Releasing The Bodyguard as a serialized novel is easy. I just cut it at one of the break points, release it, and voila! But writing an actual serial novel is tying me up in knots.

How do I take the story from that first episode to the episode with the party? What episodes go between the guy meeting the girl and the climactic camping trip? What should the overarching plot of the first season be?

I try to think of TV shows--what happens in each episode there? But even that is making me panic. How much excitement does each episode need? Can this truly be episodic, with the episodes somewhat loosely connected but working toward the overarching plot of the season, or do the episodes need to be more closely entwined than that, more like a book?

And how fast should it all move? How do you pace a story that is meant to be released week by week rather than as a whole?


I guess I'm getting cold feet about the serial, but I like the plot too much to give the story up, and I don't think that it would make a good book. I think that it needs to be episodic, even if I am having trouble writing that way.

If anyone has any advice on how to pace this darn story, I would love to hear it. If anyone else has had similar problems, I would love to commiserate.
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TBT--Works in Progress past and present

6/26/2014

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It's Throwback Thursday once again, as evidenced by all of the profile picture updates on Facebook, and I thought that I would do a version of TBT here on my blog by looking at my past and present works, most of which are still in, or permanently at, the WIP status.
  1. Children of the Stars- Written in middle school, it had a passable plot but was severely limited by the fact that my writing abilities were that of a middle schooler. Craft is something that is learned over time, and there is only so much "time" you can put in before the age of 12. I finished this one, although it is lost approximately four computers ago.
  2. Children of the Starts 2- This was basically the fanfic sequel of the original story, following the children of the original stories main characters. It was never finished, and had no real plot or conflict.
  3. Callum (No real title)-Written my freshman year of college, this was a big mess of awful. No real plot, with secondary characters who wanted to take over, it was basically a rip-off of the Wheel of Time series. I like to pretend that this one never happened.
  4. The Dark Time pre-The Talented- This is a conglomeration of several different works, most of which didn't get past the 5 page mark. It was a time of discovery, and eventually lead up to The Talented.
  5. The Talented-My first real finished work, this is the project that I funded with Kickstarter and will be publishing later this year. It goes off to editors in just over three weeks, and I am giving it the final once-over now. It's a thing of beauty (imo) which a solid plot, great characters, and writing skills much improved since the days of Children of the Stars.
  6. The Talented 2 (real name forthcoming)- Still solidly in the WIP category, I plan on this being another great book and following The Talented into the published market in the fall of 2015.
  7. The Bodyguard- A strange mix of finished and WIP, I am releasing this as a serialized novel with a new part going out every Monday. You can read the first two parts on my site under Book List or over on Wattpad. It has a great FMC, an intriguing plot, and goes through a careful crit process and edit before each addition is released. It was born out of the 2012 NaNoWriMo.
  8. "Kingdom of the Light"- My one and only short story. I really do like it, but it sort of confirms for me that I am not cut out for short stories. Anything more in depth than "Kingdom" would make me want to follow the characters more, which goes against the entire idea of the short story.
  9. Children of the Sky- A WIP that is an attempt at something more in the paranormal, space-alien, fantasy in the real world game. It is still highly debatable whether I will be able to make this work or if this is just a long writing exercise and diversion from all of the editing I am otherwise doing this summer.

Looking at this, I am a little impressed with myself for how much writing I have done in a relatively short time and the fact that, on reflection, I do have more variety in my stories than I feared. Looking at this, I know that Callum is a dead loss, but if I wanted to try my hand at High Fantasy I might revisit some of the elements of Children of the Stars. It would need some significant changes, but there are real problems to explore there.

At the same time, maybe it is better to enjoy my TBT but continue moving forward. After all, isn't that what the Facebook pictures symbolize?

So what are your TBT works? Anything that brings back great memories or reminds you of great ideas/characters? Anything that you wish you could erase from your writing past the way you want to erase that one horrible and embarrassing boyfriend or girlfriend?

I would love to hear more of the author's version of TBT.

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My new sci-fi love: The Lost Fleet by Jack Campbell

5/15/2014

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I posted a review relatively recently about The Wandering Engineer series by Chris Hechtl, and it was less than glowing. Now it's time for a positive review.

The Lost Fleet is also a sci-fi series, but the author of this book is Jack Campbell, and it is a book that shines. I firmly believe that indie and self-pubbed authors can produce work just as great as authors that are traditionally published, but one of the shining points (to me) about Campbell's work is that it is professionally edited and has professional cover art. His books were traditionally published, and that doubtless contributes to their presentation.

The Wandering Engineer was interesting because the main character had been in stasis for several hundred years and woke up to a world changed almost beyond recognition. The Lost Fleet (which came before Hechtl's series) also has a main character who was in a survival pod for an extended length of time (though only 100 years this time) and wakes up to find that the Alliance has changed from a century of war.

And unlike Fleet Admiral John Henry Irons in The Wandering Engineer, the internal struggles of Campbell's John Geary seem genuine and balanced by what is going on around him as well as what happened years ago.

Another thing that I love about Campbell's series is the science in this science fiction. There is a war going on, and there are space battles, but the battles are seconds of fighting interspersed with the hours that it takes to travel in space. Ships don't turn on a dime in Campbell's books, and the speed of a particular kind of space craft can't be changed through elbow grease and the well-wishes of her crew.

The Lost Fleet has all of the excitement expected of a good science fiction novel, but the attention to detail (and the lack of deus ex machina found in Hechtl's novels) make it a joy to read rather than a book that you have to work to suspend your disbelief on while turning pages.

If you like sci-fi, space battles, and main characters facing genuine and realistic internal conflicts, pick up The Lost Fleet: Dauntless and dive into this great series. 

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The importance of momentum

5/12/2014

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mo·men·tum  [moh-men-tuhm] noun
1. force or speed of movement; impetus, as 
of a physical object or course of events:

When we think of writing, we think of characters, plot, climax, and cliff-hangers. We think of world building. We think of editing and beta readers. We might even think of age group, genre, and publishing.

Momentum is a word most often used in physics.

Newton's first law of motion is that "An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force." Most people stop after the second "stays in motion" part, and for this post I am going to do the same.

An object in motion stays in motion.

It's a natural law. It's natural for something in motion to stay in motion--and since "natural" is a current buzzword, this must mean it's good!

I typically avoid all things physics. Physics has an unfortunate friendship with math, and I don't like hanging out with bad crowds. But this is one thing that I can get behind. 

Because building up momentum is a good thing.

Think back to the last time you were writing and you reached that perfect place where inspiration and creativity meet work and you can hardly get the words out fast enough. And it stays like that for a long time.

You built momentum.

It's like when you are on a run and you hit that sweet spot where it feels like you can run for hours. You're not fighting the exercise, and that helps you build momentum.

My Kickstarter campaign is now 37% funded after only a week. It has momentum.

The more you write, the more you write; the more you run, the more you run. (And apparently, the more people donate, the more other people donate.)







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I almost wrote a bad review

4/21/2014

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Last week, I wrote a blog post on The Wandering Engineer series by Chris Hechtl and saved it in my drafts to be posted today. I like the series, starting with New Dawn and going from there, but the review I was going to post was as close to scathing as I am likely to ever get. 


Now the series has a great premise, starting with a unique main character, and that is what drew me in, because who has ever heard of an engineering fleet admiral? The MC, Admiral John Irons, is an engineer and after waking up from stasis some 700 years later, he finds that the war he was fighting is over, but that civilization across all worlds has backslid dramatically.


Maybe that part is a little far-fetched, but I liked it anyway. And I continued to like the series for a few books.


But after reading Plague Planet, I was ready to throw in the towel and write a review on here that, while not intended to keep people from reading the series, probably WOULD have kept people from reading the series.


But I waited, and I'm glad I did. Plague Planet might be a plague on the series, but Pirate's Bane (the next book in the series) is fantastic. Finally, after 6 books, Hechtl is delivering on the promises he made in New Dawn.


Even better, Pirate's Bane has been edited--not to a high degree, but better than New Dawn, which is a lesson in patience when it comes to typos, grammar, and commonly confused words. It has action and great characters, and I'm very glad that I gave Hechtl's series one last chance.


For anyone else reading The Wandering Engineer or wondering whether to continue on when it seems that the series is spiraling down...stick with it. If I could, I would unread Plague Planet and deal with the few things in Pirate's Bane that wouldn't make sense without reading the previous book rather than slogging through page after digital page of poor writing, poor plot execution, and characters ripped straight from comic books and popular movies with no attempt at changing names or behaviors (Lewis and Clark report for the Daily Planet...).


But finally, in Pirate's Bane, Irons grows a pair, takes charge, fights back, and basically does everything we wanted him to do since halfway through New Dawn. So if Irons being such a baby is weighing you down, and the lack of forward movement is giving you the urge to write the series yourself, I suggest that you skip Plague Planet and jump right to Pirate's Bane. You'll thank me.


This whole near-miss on the review thing has also taught me a good lesson--don't blog until you are sure your opinion won't change. I'd much rather be writing THIS post now than eating crow in the near future.




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Writing in the cold

4/14/2014

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The cold is back. My lawn might be snow-free, but there was ice on my windshield this morning. This is great news for people who tap maple trees to make syrup, but bad news for me. As I expressed last week, I love sun and warmth and am more productive on a nice warm day than on a cold one, even if my productive activities are indoor ones.


But I'm not going to give in and go back into hibernation mode. I am going to push through and keep working, because I live in the Midwest, and if I let every weather fluctuation stop me from working, I would literally get nothing done.


So last night I worked on fleshing the characters in my paranormal story out. I don't do a full-blown summary or plot map or anything when I am writing, I'm more of a pantser, but I do keep a writer's bible, so now I have down hair color, height, age, salient background details, etc. on the main players in my new WIP. They are in no way complete bios, and are subject to change at a moment's notice, but it is a start.


And I did it in the cold, so I see it as a real accomplishment.
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What makes a novel YA?

4/9/2014

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Lately, I've been wondering what makes a YA book YA.


I'm not sure why I've been wondering this...I avoid writing YA, and since I'm not a young adult and don't have any young adult children, the genre of the books I read doesn't really matter.


But maybe it's the fact that I'm a high school teacher, or the fact that I just like to know things, but I'm really curious...what makes a novel YA?


It's a tricky genre. One could say that it is nearly impossible to nail down. There can be YA romance, YA fantasy, YA general fiction, sci-fi, even horror (Goosebumps, anyone?), but what I want to know is where the line is actually drawn.


Or maybe just where you think the line is drawn, because I have a feeling that people will agree on this matter about as easily as they will agree on who is the best political candidate for the next election.


I've participated in discussion boards (some of which turned into virtual fights) about this very topic. Most participants seem to feel that YA is best determined by the protagonist's age. If the protagonist is 13-17 (or maybe 18), it is YA. Basically, if the protagonist is a young adult, the story is a young adult novel.


End of story.


On one hand, I get it. It makes sense. If the protagonist is a teen, it's a teen book, right?


That's what most of the people on those boards seemed to think. But then I suggested that content should play a part in that discussion, and I got a couple of lukewarm "maybes" but mostly a bunch of "absolutely nots!" and then a descent into fights about censorship and fascism (I wasn't a participant in that part of the argument, although I found it amusing, enlightening, and alarming in turns).


So for a couple dozen posts it looked like either you categorized a book as being YA by the age of the protagonist or you were a fascist trying to censor today's youth by limiting them to books with "appropriate" content.


Not the turn I had expected the conversation to take.


So I thought I would bring the conversation to a different setting--a blog. What do you think makes a novel YA? Is it the age of the protagonist, or does content play a part?


And remember, YA is not synonymous with books teens enjoy, it is a category written (or at least marketed), with the idea that teens will be the primary audience.

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A Limerick in Honor of St. Paddy's Day

3/17/2014

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A limerick about my FMC:


There was a young woman in camp 

With skills that made her a champ 

She fought with her sword

And never got bored

Save when her leathers got damp 



Please join the fun and write your own limerick (characters not required).

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    My name is J.R. McGinnity, I am a former English teacher with a passion for writing fantasy novels with strong female leads.

    My time is spent immersed in books (reading or writing), hiking when the Midwest weather allows, and watching seasons of old TV shows.

    Follow her on Twitter @JRMcGinnity

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