Five Ways To Beat WB--By J.S. Wayne

Odds are, with a few seconds' thought, you can work out what WB is. No, it's NOT Warner Brothers! (Please don't sue me, mmm-kay? Thanks , , ,) It's the bane of every author out there, and statements I've made in the past to the contrary, in recent months I've actually had a couple of fairly nasty but mercifully brief interludes with it. But this whole Lesbians Vs. Zombies project got me to thinking about ways to take WB and make it work for you. After all, without the thoroughly outrageous premise and conditions our own Ruby Green attached to this project, "Dead Means Dead" wouldn't even exist . . . and it certainly wouldn't have been the sexy, scary romp it turned into! So, with that in mind, here are five ways to kick WB to the curb!

5) The jumble

When you're really stuck for something to write about, take a bunch of concepts and throw them into a hat or a bowl. Write down a list of possible twosomes, threesomes, or moresomes. Then do another list of occupations or mythical creatures. (Or do one list for each. Hey, go for broke!) Then do a list of times or places you'd like to visit. (Again, you can do this for each if you like.) If you want to get really deep into this (and completely surrender to the hand of Fate to create your plotline) you can also add lists of body characteristics, hair and length, eye color and shape, favorite kinds of clothing, and so on.

An example: I just did this for myself. I came up with an FFM pairing concerning a firefighter in Dublin, Ireland, who's fallen in love with a Siren marine biologist from Ancient Greece and now based out of Columbia University. The complication is her girlfriend, who's a mermaid stripper from Brooklyn. They all wind up going back in time to the Civil War and having to survive traveling the Underground Railroad to Canada. If they make it to Canada, there's a shaman waiting for them to send them back, with (moral lesson here) learned.

Would I actually attempt to write this story? Well . . . at some point, maybe. Right now, the idea of the sheer volume of research involved in learning everything I would need to about Dublin, the Civil War, the Underground Railroad, and marine biology is far too daunting for me to even consider. But, hey, one night I might get bored and find myself with a couple hours to kill, right?

4) Ask a friend

There's nothing saying you can't ask somebody to give you something to write about. In the writing world, we call that a "prompt." You may use any, all, or none of the ideas given, or their ideas may spark some of your own. "What if" followed by "what then?" at its finest. But if you do this, make sure they're not planning to use it in the future, and DO be sure to give them a nod in the acknowledgements! ;)

3) Go to the mall.

Yeah. A card-carrying member of the straight male persuasion just told you to go to the mall. Or the park. Or a busy downtown street. Anywhere you can sit with a pad of paper and a cold beer or a hot cup of coffee and watch the people go by. See that geeky, slightly balding businessman in the two-thousand-dollar suit and the wingtips that cost more than your last car payment? Watch his eyes and his face. What kind of woman does he react to? Or what kind of guy? How does he react? Or how about the woman who walks by him with an upturned nose and a look of disgust. Maybe she knows him. Maybe they had an affair at one point and she still loves him, but doesn't know how to try to get him back.
People-watching is a great way to get ideas, folks! If you're really, truly stuck, getting out of your comfort zone and finding an environment that serves your story while not putting you at personal risk is a good way to shake some of those words loose.

2) Just do it.

A lot of people use programs like "Write Or Die." The entire point of these programs is, you've got to be thinking ten to fifteen words ahead of the cursor. Especially if you use the sprint mode, which prevents you from going back and editing unless you want to watch a half page or more of fresh writing vanish into the Blue Nowhere because you realized you used "lippenschnitzen" fifteen times in three paragraphs and tried to fix it. Your first draft with Write or Die and its clones is likely to look like utter crap, no matter how polished you think you are. But if you can mine out the good stuff and fix the bad, you're going to find you've got a lot more usable material than you think!

1) The Internet

Of course, the Internet! Where else would you look for the entire sum of human knowledge? Find something that's trending on Twitter or blowing up Facebook and write about that!
When doing this, choose your topic carefully. I would suggest, if you're going to attempt something like this, you take your overarching inspiration story and mash up the elements as in #5. This will help you create a story that's uniquely your own, and offers an almost unlimited source of fresh material.

Because we all know truth is always stranger than fiction, right?

Until next time,

Best,

J.S. Wayne

Arguing with Myself

by Sarah Ballance

Ah, writer's block. Writers loathe it, but a few venture to joke about it now and then. Sometimes we even get feisty and blame the muse (as if that never backfires … accusations don't exactly foster cooperation, at least not within a typing radius of my keyboard). I've battled the beast with the best of them—sometimes I even win—but it was only after a recent bought of wordlessness that I realized who the true culprit is in my little word-o-sphere: It's me. I am the problem.

Let's back up, shall we?

Two characters in my WIP were involved in a life-and-death situation—one to be considered "serious" by any standard … any standard, it seems, but mine. I tried for DAYS to write the scene with my characters grim-faced. As it turned out, my attempts were the ONLY thing by which they were left unamused. Those of you who have so much as passed me in the hall know I seldom do anything straight-faced, but c'mon, ya'll. There's a dead guy on the floor and my hero just took a bullet. It's not exactly an appropriate to crack jokes, is it? Turns out the characters beg to differ. Or, in theory they begged. In reality they just planted their feet and stared at me until I backed down.

So … *sigh* … it took a week of convincing, but I finally let them have the scene. Now my hero is coping with his angst with dry humor—a bit on the dark side at times—and the break in the tension gives my reluctant heroine the confidence in him I need for the story to move forward. Considering their recent acquaintance began with him holding her at gunpoint, it wasn't an easy task. 'Twas not the kind of greeting most folks will quickly forgive and forget, but a little bit of wit—not to mention a steamy past—can move mountains (or at least form words).

Happy ending? Not so fast. At this point all would seem well if not for the blatant fact that all this bickering was actually me arguing with … well, me. I know a well-dimensioned character tends to take over and make his or her own way, but my characters actually ganged up and fashioned a stand-off. Against me. Only I am them, or they are me, or … GAH. Whatever you want to call it, I'm stuck fielding complaints from my inner self (selves?) and it leaves me in a kind of predicament.

I'm arguing with myself … and I'm not even sure who won.

Sarah lives suspiciously near the setting of her latest book, RUN TO YOU, with her husband and their six homeschooled children, all of whom are perfectly adorable when they're asleep. She writes fiction in order to surround herself with people who will actually listen to her, but clearly the plan is not without flaws. As for why she pens romantic suspense, you'll just have to trust it has nothing to do with a deep-seeded desire to kill anyone. Really.