Engaging Your Target Audience

For businesses, 'the customer is always right' is a well-known saying, but a Facebook troll believed to represent Target may have given complaining customers pause.

When Target announced last Friday that it was phasing out gender divisions for toys and bedding, it followed in the footsteps of other forward-thinking brands that have made similar overtures toward lessening or erasing the gender binary in stores. In 2011 and 2012 respectively and in response to claims of sexist labelling, London-based toy shops Hamleys and Harrods removed gendered store sections, opting to organise toys by category. Agender, Selfridges' gender-neutral campaign that ran online and in their flagship Oxford Street branch from the 12th March to the end of April this year, capitalised on this growing trend and drew international media coverage from fashion and left-wing bloggers. In Target's case, whether it was due to its location in the United States or because this will be a permanent change to stores nationwide and a possible harbinger of things to come, some people were not impressed and were happy to voice their concern on Target's Facebook page. But one man took to Facebook and the questionable role of defending Target's reputation. Facebook and Twitter users spread screencaps of the man believed to be a Target customer service representative, their iconic red and white bullseye used as his profile picture, as he responded to complaints over the proposed dismantling of gender segregated aisles.

One of the tamer comments from Mike Melgaard.

It's safe to say that those Facebook users targetted by the troll, Mike Melgaard, are unlikely to have been swayed by the response to their complaint, even after the truth became clear. But for those customers who aren't as dedicated to upholding a strict gender divide in people or shopping aisles, a willingness to engage and a sense of humour can humanise a company and endear it to people who would not have had a strong opinion either way. In the case of Target's unasked-for defender, throwing their toys out of the pram may have lost them customers they were arguably already going to lose, but the additional media attention from the screencaps which spread as indiscriminately over political lines as other memes may help to make up for the loss.

Target has distanced itself from the prank, issuing a statement that “this individual was not speaking on behalf of Target.” From the content of some of the responses, it was the wisest move, but there's also another old saying: all publicity is good publicity, especially if you can also take the high road.


While no social media guru would advise being patronising or rude, have you ever used humour to engage your customers or do you think it's best to remain professional at all times?

I Can Haz Settings?

I mentioned way back when that I rediscovered notes I made at some point on a political fantasy idea. It has the potential to contain all the elements I love to read and want to write: powerful and cunning politicians, grey characters, interpersonal conflict, unique family dynamics. The one thing it would be missing is interesting settings.

As it turns out, fantasy and historical fiction don't hold a lot of interesting (to me) micro-settings. Sure, fantasy can do grand, sweeping landscapes and epic battles between sorcerors like nobody's business, but due to being, essentially, set in the past, the day-to-day places where people can have a conversation are limited.

In ye olden days, people went to work and then they came home and they slept. Then they did it again the next day and the next, on and on, forever amen. Work and home and church on Sundays. Every so often they might have to visit the maker or procurer of a certain product, but mostly the baker was in the bakery. Maybe they would go to the pub or a joust, but when you compare that to the sheer amount of places to set a scene nowadays, it just doesn't hold up.

In a contemporary novel you could come up with a different setting for each letter of the alphabet then go round and do it again without repeating yourself. We have so many different ways to distract and entertain ourselves and so many different places to go to do them: arcades, banks, casinos, dry-cleaners, elevators, fun-fairs, grocery stores, hairdressers-- it's endless. With fantasy and historical fiction, you have places where people lived and places where people worked. The few extras that come to mind are seen so often they have become staples cliches: the upper class party at the tea-house/dance/garden, the mismatched travellers at the inn/tournament/carnival.

The thing is, I love the plots that arise from the low-tech, feudal societies in fantasy and historical fiction, just not so much the limited setting options. I don't want to struggle to make another castle seem new and interesting, to show another carnival unlike all the others, but would the nobleman's daughter really wander through town stopping in at every workplace just so I could satisfy my desire for interesting settings? A blacksmith's might be fascinating to write (seriously, I really want to set a scene in a smithy) with sparks flying and the sweat dripping down MC's back from the blasting heat of the forge, but would MC really be there-- or at the bakery, the carpenter's, the apothecary, or the brothel? And would the blacksmith really go to all those places either? Everyone is confined by the times to their own little world of work and home.

Despite my naysayings, there's obviously nothing else for me to do but to try to make a castle that stands on its own (Hogwarts, anyone?), maybe avoid making the landscape a better-weather version of England, and let some of the freer characters (hello, prostitutes) go to some interesting places. Such is the writer's life to reinvent the wheel-- with spikes!


Have you ever had to reconcile yourself to any of the 'shortcomings' of your genre?

Book Buying Habits or Traditional vs. Digital

Lovely lady Margo recently posted an example of an awesome analysis technique where you highlight sentences depending on their function and/or content. She used this technique to study a published book, but I've also seen it used as a revision tool by Janice Hardy. On a seemingly unrelated note, I also watched youtuber Alex Day's video where he shows the full extent of his possessions (71 items) and then read the blog post where he explains his lifestyle choice. The two sources merged and got me thinking (isn't the internet great?).

Basically, Alex doesn't own books or DVDs etc. because once he's enjoyed them, he passes them on to others to be enjoyed. Similarly, I rarely reread books -- which is why it's one of my goals this year -- so it seems stupid to buy a copy only to read it once then take up space. Hence I'm a huge fan of my local library. But I do still like to look at books, because, unlike Alex, I just like having beautiful things around me. (Sidebar: in my Friday Favourites post two weeks ago, I asked whether people preferred a beautiful, sterile magazine house or a cluttered but loved/lived in home. I lean very hard toward the beautiful, sterile end of the spectrum. End sidebar.) So I like having pretty books in my bookcase. Still, I'm not going to buy 100+ books a year only to read them once. At a conservative estimate of £5 each, lowballing the recent releases and hardbacks, that would be £500. Yeah, no, that's not cool.

My system is to borrow books that I haven't read before from the library (a lot, and I frequently request titles, so I like to think I'm supporting authors and my library that way). Books I can't get from the library I buy then resell or give away if I know that I won't reread them, and books that I've read and know I'll want to reread, I buy.

But despite being a studious nerd, I'm also lazy. ("I am large. I contain multitudes.") I'd love to borrow Margo's method of analysis, but I have enough trouble making myself type out passages I adore without going to the trouble of photocopying 20 pages in order to highlight and study them. Which makes me think getting an e-reader might not be a bad idea. I don't know if it's possible to highlight in different colours on any of the models out there, but it would mean those books I'd like to reread to study but don't love the story or cover enough to want to buy it for its own sake I could buy as a slightly cheaper e-book.


So that's my random attitude toward the traditional vs. digital book debate. What about you guys, do you prefer aesthetically pleasing books made from trees or the ease of instant gratification on an e-reader?

Strong Female Characters =/= Masculine Characters

YA Highway had a great post on strong female characters in their series on sex in YA and of course it set me off on my own thoughts. The post raised the question whether girls have to act like boys to be seen as strong, which then led to what it means for boys who don't act like boys.

Masculine traits generally tend to be viewed in a better light than feminine ones. The male is active, assertive, strong, brave, protective, a fighter etc. while the female is passive, nurturing, and selfless. So it seems like when YA FMCs are turned into heroines they are essentially turned into boys with breasts. They hunt, they fight, they kill, they don't have time to protect your feelings because they are on a mission to kick butt and take names. Don't get me wrong, I loved Katniss as much as the next person, but even she had her edges softened/blunted by her sacrificial sister-love for Prim and her caring of Peeta during the games. So obviously you can be strong and not be, you know, a boy stand-in.

But can a female character be strong without possessing *any* of those masculine traits? I mean, would we call Prim, the quiet, calm, intelligent nursing assistant, strong? I mean, all she does is care for an ugly cat that no-one else would give two seconds thought about. And look suffering and death in the face when she helps her mother nurse injured people. And forgive her mother for not handling her father's death well, for not mothering her. Those are all pretty strong characteristics, but she doesn't own or use a weapon, or put food on the table, or break the law by hunting. She's not the story's hero, but is she still, in her own way, a hero?

And what does it say for male characters when most of the strong female characters are deemed strong because they possess traditionally masculine traits and attitudes? Where are the strong male characters who play traditionally female roles? There's Peeta, the nurturing baker's son who needs to be rescued, but he's heavily outweighed on the other side by the Edwards and Jacobs of YA. And heaven help you if you're not even an attractive pacifist. It seems like once you get outside the realm of contemporary fiction and John Green's MCs, if your MMC isn't good looking and/or doesn't brood or fight, you're pretty much out of the running for the role of hero.

It could be a genre thing, something left over from all the girls dressing up as boys to be knights. I'm sure in contemporary YA there are plenty of strong female characters who don't get into fights. So I guess the main issue is whether a girl in a fantasy/sci-fi subcategory can be strong without being a fighter.

What do you guys think? Are there kickass fantasy/sci-fi females who don't actually kick ass? Are there hoardes of nice boys getting the girl that I don't know about?


P.S. Following up on last week, and the discussion in the comments about whether the casual attitude toward female sexuality is empowerment or a different manifestation of the same peer pressure that called sexual women sluts, I give you this article. Long story short:  "Empowerment isn’t about controlling other people or getting them to do what you want. Instead, it’s the ability to respond to their actions in whatever way you choose. For example, if you’ve been told that [having sex] is not acceptable, then choosing to do that can be the result of your empowerment. On the other hand, if you’ve internalized the idea that you have to give your partner [sex], then empowerment could mean that you choose to not do it."

Things You Don't Need to Write Well

Coffee. If you're awake enough to find yourself on this blog, you're awake enough to open a word processor or a notebook and make the words come out good. And you'll find as you continue to make the words, the words start coming faster and easier and eventually you'll realise that maybe 'make the words come out good' could stand a teeny bit of editing, but by that point you'll be hundreds of words and several pages away from that sentence. And your cup of coffee will be cold while the words burn hot.

Post-its. They are so pretty, and so good for organisation and place keeping and note-taking. You know what they aren't good for? Writing a scene. How would a scene fit on that itty bitty post-it? You know where a scene *would* fit? In a word document or a piece of paper. Look at all that space just itching to have your words scrawled over them! Fill it up with whatever junk flows from your fingertips; it doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be there.

Whiteboards. Try sending your manuscript to an agent on that! You'd get high from the marker fumes and go cross-eyed trying to write small enough to get a scene down, let alone your whole novel.
 
Inspiration boards. Photos of setting and your characters and a mock-up of the cover. . . Look, you're writing a book, not making a poster. Finding the perfect respresentation of the pictures in your head is great and all, but if you want anyone else to see how gorgeous your setting is, you're going to have to write about it, because claiming the photo is yours is copyright infringement. Sorry.

Character sheets. So your MC's favourite colour is purple and her favourite food is Indian. Does that really help you get to know her any more than, y'know, writing her story would?

Outlines. Don't know what you're writing? Don't worry, you'll find out once you've written it. You can plan the story to death, but you're not going to know if character X would realistically take action Y if you haven't met the guy on the page.

This is totally tongue-in-cheek, because, come on, all of these things are awesome. I, for one, will never again write without an outline, holy crap. Some of them (post-its!) are more universally useful than others (coffee), but we should be aware that it's all just filler, styrofoam peanuts, if we aren't really writing. Sometimes not really writing is okay, because there are times when you'll be gathering ideas or editing an existing draft, but when it's your time to write, write.

And How Are You Improving Your Writing Today?

You know those strengths and weaknesses things? How are you improving on your weaknesses?
My biggest weakness is plotting. I may love to read Byzantine political plots in fantasy and historical fiction, but when it comes time for me to write or to play with ideas, I'm all character character character. Interesting backstory and fun quirks and family dynamics and relationships, whee! And then I remember: oh right, something has to happen to this character and she has to do things, right.

To improve on this, I actually plotted my WIP before I started writing. I know, crazy. Thanks to Save the Cat, I had an outline/storyboard of the first two acts (with Act II split into two parts), and some ideas for possible scenes in Act III. I have a beat sheet and index cards! Madness. Through the magic of Genre of the Month I read some mysteries and thrillers, books of the 'plot is important' line, so I'm pretty sure I absorbed by diffusion some of the plotting thing-- although, to show that I'm taking a more active role in my self-improvement as a writer, I did consciously study how the authors escalated the stakes, had the character seeking out/discovering new information, upped the pace and tension etc. Having said that, the book I took the most notes on for conflict and tension was actually a YA dystopian, Scott Westerfeld's Uglies, which everyone should read. Plus I plan to reread The Hunger Games and make notes on the pacing and tension, because that book was insane for having cliffhanger chapter endings. There was no good place to stop reading!

So that's me, and how I hope to overcome my plotting weakness (also by reading Janice Hardy's blog; love that woman). And, honestly, it's going well so far. Now that I've written over half of a novel with the scenes just there, waiting to be written, I can't imagine ever trying to fumble my way through without a thorough outline.

To come full circle back to my post's title, how are you improving your writing? And if you don't have a plan, the new year might be a great time to start forming one!

YA Favourites

This was the year I jumped back into the wonderful world of YA after not really reading much of it since I was a teen myself (and then it was mostly British stuff I doubt any of you would have heard of...), so I wanted to share all the books I read and loved that you didn't get to hear about. I'm trying to stick to one book per genre, but if I end up with three just assume that means the books were THAT awesome.

Keep in mind these were books I read in 2011, not necessarily books released this year. Sadly, I won't be taking part in the YA Superlatives Blogfest because I only read a handful of 2011 releases. The upside is, I now have a(nother) reading goal for 2012: more recent releases!

Onwards!

Contemporary Issue

Light Contemporary

Fantasy (part of a series)

Fantasy (standalone)

Paranormal

Urban Fantasy

Dystopian

Sci-fi

And extra bonus books shamelessly ripped from the YA Superlatives Blogfest:

Most Envy-Inducing Plot (Or, the plot you wish you’d thought of yourself.): The Body Finder, Kimberly Derting, with the addendum that I wish the focus had remained on the awesome premise and not the romance.
Most Wonderful World-Building: The Pain Merchants, Janice Hardy.
Most Formidable World (Or, the setting you most definitely would NOT want to travel to.): Apart from Panem, the hike-through-the-desert part of (Girl of) Fire and Thorns, Rae Carson. Because I would have struggled just as much, but I'm pretty sure my weight loss would have been more of the dying and wasting away variety.
Wanderlust-Inducing (Or, the setting you’d happily travel to.): Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Laini Taylor
Loveliest Prose: Shiver, Maggie Stieffvater; Lips Touch Three Times, Laini Taylor
Best First Line: Delirium, Lauren Oliver.
Most Dynamic Main Character: Katniss Everdeen, 'The Hunger Games' trilogy, Suzanne Collins. Chloe Saunders, 'The Darkest Powers' trilogy, Kelley Armstrong.
Most Jaw-Dropping Finale: The Summoning, Kelley Armstrong.

And because I couldn't let this crazy, quirky character miss out:
Most Awesome Manic Pixie Dream Girl: Stargirl, of Stargirl, Jerry Spinelli.

Genre of the Month Overview #4

Book-shaped presents, that is.

Finally we come to Horror and Writing Craft books.

Horror wasn't my favourite, but I did love thinking about the different ways of scaring a reader: there's the fear of monsters and death, sure (Salem's Lot and I Am Not a Serial Killer), but the stories that really engaged me were when you saw a human reduced to something 'other', aka kind of a sociopath (see I Am Not a Serial Killer and The Reapers Are the Angels). When you have two people -- interestingly both teens, which makes it worse since there's the whole loss of innocence theme -- who seem to be completely emotionally unattached, it's frankly disturbing. While I loved that the MC of Reapers asserted herself sexually without going through a moral sermon (more girls in control of their sexuality/body, please, Young Adult genre), the fact that emotions played no part was also a little sad, because it was the same way she approached *everything*. And of course the teen sociopath in Serial Killer was scary because he could accidentally dehumanise someone. Other people, especially ones we don't understand, will always be scarier than vampires and demons, because we know how to deal with those monsters: we either don't believe in them and call ourselves childish, or we cling to our stakes and holy water. What do you do when you're faced with people who don't have the emotions necessary to empathise with you, or to allow you to empathise with them?

And Writing Craft was basically a fun summary of all the books I've read and loved that have helped me become a better writer, and will hopefully do the same for you. Truth time, I got a bunch of books for Christmas -- Hooked, Fire in Fiction, Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook, The Elements of Style (illustrated by Maira Kalman, yes!) -- so that list might be up for review in a month or two. But some are such staples (Writing Down the Bones and Save the Cat) that I doubt I'd remove them completely. My top five would just become a top ten, that's all!

So I hope you enjoyed reading my Genre of the Month series. On Wednesday I'll be posting a round-up of Young Adult books I read and loved this year, with some help from the YA Superlatives Blogfest questions. No pressure, but you guys have to read them all.

Genre of the Month Overview #3

Plot twist AND a loveable antagonist. Spelled books wrong, though.

Months 7-9 were Mystery, Thriller, and Classics. The first two were good for plot and characterisation, the third for prose. I'd read some thrillers before this year since my mum is a big fan of dead people (movies and TV shows, but books especially), so reading mysteries and thrillers weren't a huge leap like romances. I liked all the mysteries (Cadfael, Poirot, and Sherlock Holmes books, and a historical mystory, The Silver Pigs), because I didn't figure out the murderer and so when the reveal came I was all slapping my forehead and being amazed, but also because I liked how different each of the investigators were. They were all observant, but some valued witnesses/people (Cadfael) over evidence (Holmes), Poirot used more of a combination of the two, and the investigator in The Silver Pigs actually did some undercover work, which impressed me-- especially when you consider the undercover work was being a slave in a mine. Yeah, he was kind of dedicated.

The thrillers were so good for pacing, tension, and characterisation. I learned a lot about characterisation from disliking characters I was supposed to like (the stoic but weepy victim in The Surgeon) and from creepily loving the antagonists (Along Came a Spider), and a particular scene in Red Dragon had me taking notes on micro-tension like a maniac. Weirdly, it was so good it pulled me out of the story a little, because my writerly self popped up and said 'I see what you did there, how cool!'. And then there was the thriller (Killer Takes All) that taught me that you can take the adage about needing to kill the monster twice too far, by making the monster need killing about five times. It took what could have been a neat twist (the 'surprise! that wasn't the killer!' element and the reveal of the actual killer) and just obliterated it.

The classics... Some I loved (The Bell Jar and Revolutionary Road), one I liked quite a bit (The Picture of Dorian Gray), and one I had higher hopes for but adored one element of (Jane Eyre and crotchety Mr. Rochester). This was a good month for gorgeous prose -- I'm looking at you, Bell Jar -- although following two months of plot-heavy books there were times, particularly when reading Jane Eyre, when I wanted something more to happen than a walk through the countryside.

Genre of the Month Overview #2

This will make sense when you read the end of the post, promise.

It was good getting back to fantasy in April. I say it's my favourite genre (tied with YA currently), but I hadn't read much since about 2008. I know. I used this time to brush up on some of the classics of the genre (Pawn of Prophecy) and to try something new (The Anvil of the World). Probably I won't continue the David Eddings -- it was so classic that it's become cliched -- but I do still want to read the sequel to The Drowning City, although only now that I'm thinking about it.
But the best fantasy I read this year (that isn't a subset of YA, anyway) was Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man's Fear. The man makes 1000 pages feel like light reading. My only worry is that he's two books into a proposed trilogy and there's still so many dangling threads. We know the highlights of Kvothe's history from the back cover of the first book, and we've seen almost none of it so far. It'll be interesting to see whether Rothfuss can write a fast-paced final book without making it feel rushed, or if he'll have to do the unthinkable and admit there's still too much story to tell, even for a 1000 page book.* He's earned my trust though, so I'll be with him whatever he decides to do. And I'm sure George R. R. Martin's Dance with Dragons would be on the list too if I'd read it yet. More on that to come later in the month/in early January.

Sci-fi had mixed results. I loved Fahrenheit 451. I'll say it again-- the writing was so good. Dune didn't grab me the way I thought/hoped it would. (Sidebar: (Girl of) Fire and Thorns reminded me slightly of Dune because both had the prophet coming to the desert people and turning them into an army.) Hitchhiker's was good, but since I'd already seen the movie I tend to remember that instead of the book. And Fat still has one of my favourite beginnings, along with Fahrenheit 451. Like, paragraphs of awesome I typed up and wrote comments about to figure out what it was I loved so much.

Reading romance pretty much confirmed what I already knew-- I love romantic subplots in stories, I don't like romances. The emphasis on the relationship isn't enough to keep me entertained, especially when you know they're going to end up together. Especially especially if you think the hero is an abusive jerk the heroine should run quickly away from. To be fair, the hero of one of the romances (more like romantic comedy) inspired the creation of a character I love but have no story for-- yet. I still think I Married a Pirate is a great example of how to do a dysfunctional relationship right, not to mention making what should be an abusive hero into a loveable guy. Probably because unlike all the other heroes he never actually physically harms the heroine-- seriously, what is with all the viselike grips on arms and the shoving?

Of course, I realised that I don't like how lacking in plot romances are after finishing writing a YA contemporary romance. Turns out I like writing character-driven stories, but  not reading them, and that maybe I should have been learning how to plot instead of indulging myself. So hey, that was a learning experience. Yay...

*In a striking coincidence, Fantasy Faction just posted an interview with Patrick Rothfuss where he says he doesn't regret pinning himself down to a trilogy, so I think it's safe to assume he'll be sticking to three books.

The End

There's still one month left in the year, but considering I was debating between nonfiction or short-stories this month and neither are actually genres, it felt appropriate to conclude my Genre of the Month series. Last week I ended Writing Craft month by saying that the best book to teach you how to write is all the books, and that pretty much sums up this past year's experience. So for the last month of the year and this series, I'm doing a roundup of the books I read in 2011.

And I have a confession to make.

I've been holding out on you. The books I reviewed this year weren't the only books I read! I know, it's shocking. So some of the books I'm going to recommend won't be linked to reviews, but if they make my top ten out of the 110 (and counting) books I've read, you can safely assume they have merit.

Onwards! As I'm sure you remember, the first quarter of the year was spent reading Young Adult (also technically not a genre, but shh), contemporary fiction, and historical fiction. I've read a lot more Young Adult books since January, and I'll go into way more detail about the YA books I've read outside of Genre of the Month later this month, but The Hunger Games (the book and the trilogy) still ranks highly in its category and in the books I've read from all genres.

In contempary fiction, The Time Traveler's Wife still sticks with me as a gorgeously written and plotted book, and I still want to write an artist character in the vein of Clare. Since reading My Sister's Keeper I've also read and enjoyed another Jodi Picoult book (Nineteen Minutes), and I plan to read more as she is ridiculously good at using current events to come up with awesome premises. Another contemporary fiction book I liked reading offscreen was One Day, by David Nicholls. I loved the structure -- showing the developing relationship of a man and woman by seeing them on the anniversary of the day they met for almost two decades -- and despite the time jumps the story flowed and their progressing feelings toward one another never felt stilted.

Of the historical fiction, surprisingly I haven't thought too much about the books I read, but I do still want to read the sequel to The Last Kingdom. Considering I'd read more historical fiction before this year and would have called it a favourite after fantasy, I think out of the first three months this was the month I enjoyed least, but only because I had such good experiences diving into YA and with most of my contemporary choices (not Jonathan Franzen).

Genre of the Month Overview #2
Genre of the Month Overview #3
Genre of the Month Overview #4

Insert Book Here

The last book recommendation for improving the craft is all of the books.

I'll let that sink in for a moment. . .

All good? Excellent. Because while craft books are admittedly awesome, one of the best ways to improve your craft is simply by reading other books. If they were good enough to get published, you can usually bet they did something right. Even the ones that make you so angry you want to throw them against the wall must have some merit, or they wouldn't have gotten published. Someone out there liked that hateful book, and it's your job as a writer to figure out why. Sure, the plot may be so full of cliches you want to scream, but maybe the author did an exceptional job at building the sexual tension between the hero and love interest.

Reading recently published books can also clue you in to the market. You don't necessarily want to write towards the market, but if you're trying to decide between two ideas you genuinely want to write and you've noticed there seems to be a growing interest in one genre over the other, that might give you the added boost you need to make your choice. Or you might decide that the market is so saturated with X that you don't want your novel, which features X, to get swamped, or declared derivative before you've even had the opportunity to show how original it is. Knowing what's out and seeing how other authors handle similar subjects can direct you not only about what to write, but how to make your idea the best, and most original, it can be.

So your homework is to read books. Books in your genre, books outside your genre, nonfiction, whatever you can get your hands on. Books outside your genre can teach you how to make a truly twisty mystery or develop believable romances, although they may only show up as subplots in your own work. Nonfiction can give you rich settings and high concept situations or show you how to develop characters with depth. Even advertisements can teach you how to write persuasively, a handy trick for when your villain tries to win the hero to his side.

There's more to learning the craft than being told how to do X or Y: you need to see how authors do it. And the only way to do that is by reading. A lot.

Isn't that great?

Friday Favourites

I bring you a food themed Friday Favourites for my US readers who celebrated Thanksgiving yesterday.

Source

Source

This Is Just To Say
by William Carlos Williams
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold


The Orange
by Wendy Cope
At lunchtime I bought a huge orange-
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave-
They got quarters and I got a half.

And that orange, it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park.
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all the jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.

Save the Cat

You need to read Save the Cat because you need the Blake Snyder beat sheet. You may not *know* that you need it, but trust me, you do. In 15 plot points, Snyder shows you how to structure your novel so that you have the necessary highs and lows to make your three acts soar. Is your middle sagging? Could be because you don't have an effective Midpoint (Reversal). Does your protagonist win too easily, seeming to take everything in his or her stride? You're missing the All is Lost Moment. Does your protagonist just waltz right into the initial drama without considering whether he/she has other options? Throw in some Debate.

And then there's a whole chapter on fixing common plot problems: the inactive hero, the villain who could be more villainous, the dialogue that sounds like real people talking (absurd!). And there's the storyboard. And the 10 genres (not genre as in fantasy vs. sci-fi) that every story ever can be slotted into, basic story structures that'll set you up for life. And the ideas for scenes you need -- such as the Save the Cat scene, see the title -- that make the character sympathetic, or adds humour to the book, or sets up foreshadowing for later.

But even if none of that interests you, you still need the book for the beat sheet. Just ask Laura Pauling, or Laura Pauling, or hey, check out this one blog post by Laura Pauling. Commercial or literary, fantasy or contemporary, the beat sheet works, for movies and books.

Fourth Friday Check-In

You guys, it's the last 30 Pitches in 30 Days Friday post! The finish line is Right. There. High-fives and brofists to my amazing participants Margo and Katherine Owens!

I think the most important thing this whole exercise has taught me is that you have to make the time. My last minute pitches look just that: last minute. Sure, last night's ditch attempt to come up with anything at all, holy crap I am so tired, actually led to something kind of interesting, but that was the clear exception to the rule. The thing about this blogfest is that when you compare the pitches, or even just the snippets of ideas, I've come up with in the past four weeks to, say, the past six months, there's a definite imbalance in idea production.

I'll say it again, nice and loud: make idea production a priority. A fun priority, sure, but a priority nonetheless. It shouldn't be something you squeeze into your week when you're in bed on Sunday night; it should be a part of your schedule. Maybe not weekly, but for the sake of your idea muscle, set aside time to just play.

I'm pretty sure it wasn't a passion for building a platform and finding your market that made you want to be a writer. It was probably reading a book that made an impression on you and wanting to tell a story that would excite other people as much. So get excited! Read Margo's post about including your passion in your pitches and throw all your loves in the blender, and see what happens. Follow KO's suggestion to think way outside the box to stretch the idea muscle and get beyond your comfort zone. In the words of Nike, just do it. Sit down with your laptop or notebook and actively chase down ideas. Don't let 'the muse' take credit for your imagination!

My pitch for the week: After her neighbour dies and no-one notices for days, a single thirty-something starts a blog about her weekly dates intending to be in a relationship within six months or admit defeat.

30 Pitches Pitstop #4

Finally, for those times when you really can't summon up an idea out of thin air, Holly Lisle shows you how to legally and ethically steal ideas. Basically you think of stories -- and not just those in novel format -- that get you really excited, and you figure out what it was about them that stirred up those feelings. And you keep whittling it down until you get to the core, the character type or theme that you can use as the bare foundation for your own take on the subject. You may not be able to rewrite Twilight, but you can write your own story of forbidden and/or dangerous love, with different characters and a new setting, and play with it until no-one would know you took inspiration from something that had already been done. Easy.

This week's three (condensed) tips from James Scott Bells's top twenty ways to get plot ideas in Plot & Structure:

1. What I Really Want to Write About Is. . . First thing in the morning, when you've just shaken off sleep, freewrite on the things you'd like to write about. By doing it early your subconscious should still be switched on, and you'll find yourself tuning out your critic and reaching for ideas that you're genuinely passionate about.
2. Obsession. "Create a character. Give her an obsession. Watch where she runs." Think Ahab and Moby Dick, Dorian Gray and youth. People will do crazy things for their obsessions.
3. Mindmap. Start with a word (a chosen concept or theme or something completely random) and let your mind go where it will. You can come up with all kinds of weird associations as one thing leads to another.

Third Friday Check-In

"Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Voltaire.

I am so guilty of this. You'd think when trying to come up with 30 pitches in 30 days I'd be taking anything I could get, but I still find myself dismissing ideas as bad without giving them a chance. Really, there are no bad ideas, only ones that have been overused or undercooked. The orphan prophesied to defeat evil who we watch as he struggles through the training that will prepare him for the final epic battle? Sure, if you want to leave your idea at that, you're in cliche territory. Give the boy a lightsabre or a wand and now we're talking about completely different worlds and stories. It's what you do with the raw material that decides whether the idea is 'good' or 'bad'. Ever heard that saying only boring people get bored? Well only lazy thinkers have bad ideas. Everyone else just has ideas that haven't been played with enough.

I haven't been doing enough playing. I want brilliant, high concept ideas, and I want them without having to look at lame ideas from a million different angles. Lazy thinking, Self. One of Laura Pauling's suggestions in her blog post about how to choose the best idea includes the tip to look for ways to make the idea bigger. Like I mentioned on Wednesday, Across the Universe is a small town mystery set in space. Just by changing the setting, making it bigger and more unusual, we're getting away from cliche territory.

Of course, you can always 'cheat' like me. I keep coming back to paranormal/fantasy ideas, people with unusual abilities, and then think about how that would f*ck up their lives. What would be good about this power, what would be bad, who wouldn't want it, who would do anything to have it? Even when you start out from a high concept idea -- say, a girl who can see death -- you still have to brainstorm the pants off of it to get the idea off the ground. If her ability doesn't come into play in the story at all, what's the point of having it there? And if it only ever helps her, well, who wants to read about that?

And just because it was a weird and awesome coincidence, check out Janice Hardy's post on pitches where she uses the Wizard of Oz as an example and also hits on my point from last week that your pitch should give you ideas about what will happen, aka you should be able to visualise the book from one sentence.

My pitch for the week: Sent to a boarding school that promises to make her a lady, rebellious Noelle doesn't expect to become another girl entirely, but when a spirit possesses her body she must delve into the school's dark history or remain a permanent host.

Don't forget to check out how Margo and KO are doing this week, too!

30 Pitches Pitstop #3

Source

Janice Hardy's Tips on Plotting Your Novel gives a list of questions to ask yourself depending on whether your starting point, the seed from which you'll grow a plot, is a setting, an event or situation, a personal journey, a premise or idea, or a character. Because asking questions -- what if, and why, and who -- is how you'll build from something small and possibly unoriginal to an actual story. I think I may have mentioned that before. Remember my strikingly original alcoholic cop haunted by a past case? Following a chain of answers to whatever questions arose, I ended up with a protagonist, an objective, and an opponent-- a potential story. Maybe not the best story ever, but the point is that's a story idea I have now that I didn't have before I went looking for one. Janice's post starts you off with questions for each fledgling idea, and from there you can brainstorm your heart out.

This week's three (condensed) tips from James Scott Bells's top twenty ways to get plot ideas in Plot & Structure:

1. Flip a Genre. Star Wars has Western themes in space (the bar-fight scene, anyone?) and, more recently, Across the Universe takes a small town mystery and similarly sets it in space.
2. Predict a Trend. Not trends in the publishing world but those in the real world. Check out specialty magazines and see what's happening with new technology, new scientific discoveries, then find the story in it. Just look at the way the origin stories of comic book superheroes evolved with technology: radioactive spills, then mutated DNA, now it's all high-tech gadgets and robotic bodysuits (robosuits? If that's not a thing, dibs).
3. Noodling the Newspaper: Read all the sections of a variety of tabloids -- global news, local, sports, celebrity scandal, obituaries, want ads -- and ask what-if.

Second Friday Check-In

My second epiphany came when I realised that it's all well and good for me to write a pitch with a protagonist, an objective, and an opponent, but if the pitch doesn't inspire ideas of what my protagonist could actively do to achieve their objective, I probably have a fairly lacklustre plot on my hands.

Take for instance Pan's Labyrinth. That could be pitched as 'what if the god of the underworld's daughter strayed to the surface and was lost there?' There's a protagonist (the god of the underworld's daughter), an objective (she's lost on the surface and probably wants to go back), and opposition (an external malevolent world). But that doesn't suggest how she's actually going to get back. So we give our girl an active role in the story:

"A daydreamer in civil-war era Spain must pass three tests set by a malevolent faun to prove she is the god of the underworld's lost daughter and reclaim her rightful place."

Now you can picture at least three scenes because we know she has to take three tests. There should probably be a scene to show the world she lives in trying to crush her spirit as well as one revealing the danger around her so that we know why she'd want to believe there was a better life just waiting for her to claim it-- no matter the risk. Then raise the stakes, give her something to tie her to the world and give her second thoughts: give her an adoring mother who fosters her imagination and shelters her from the big bad world. Give her a baby brother who she can adore and shelter herself. So now we need scenes demonstrating the internal struggle, happy family scenes that she'd have to leave behind. And then an ultimatum scene where we force her to choose.

That's like ten scenes right there. We've got internal problems (she wants to escape but she loves her family), interpersonal problems (someone has to be doing the dream smashing), and external problems (hello, civil war). We've got a story. And all those scenes came from the information we get from the extended edition pitch. The original pitch has a cool premise, but it's not going to help you get a story written because we don't get any hints how our girl is going to get home. Is she going to buy a map and find the X marking the entrance to the underworld? Is she going to wait around for her daddy to come get her and fall in love with a boy on the surface and then have to decide whether to go or stay?

That second idea is a test. It sounds like a story, there's all that cool extra information about the boy, but see how she still isn't actually doing anything? Dad comes to find her, she likes a boy, she makes a decision. Those aren't things you can show your character doing. You couldn't write a stage direction for an actor where 'you make a decision'. Maybe daddy does find her, but the story starts when our girl, who likes a boy from the surface, which is great but a static position, tries to convince her boy to come with her. Now she has something to physically do. You can show her trying to talk him into it-- you love me don't you, you'll live forever, no more homework. Show her trying and failing to distance herself from him and then recommitting to the idea that she can't leave him. Show her pushing away loved ones, the family she'd have to leave, and her guilt when they keep coming back. Does she start getting sneaky, pointing out how bad the boy's life is, how much better off he'll be in the underworld? Does she start to convince herself he'd be better off there and take matters into her own hands, start planning to send him to the underworld the old fashioned way and hope he forgives her when they're together again? And then of course there has to be a cute scene where they're blissfully happy and unaware that shit's about to get real, before the I'm-your-father revelation, plus the revelation scene itself, and a later acceptance scene.

So that's a problem I keep bumping against: neat backstory or neat premise, but essentially my protagonist doesn't have much to do to achieve his/her objective. Take last week's pitch:

"After a failed suicide attempt, a social outcast sees the oncoming death of the boy who pushed her over the edge, and who she loves, and must choose whether to risk the nuthouse to warn and possibly save him."

I state right there in the pitch that basically all she has to do is decide whether to warn the boy he's about to die, and then either warn him or not. If we skip the decision part and decide for her that she's going to warn him, at least now she has to, y'know, warn him. And then convince him she's not crazy, which shouldn't be too easy. But then we get into territory where we (well, I) have to think about whether she can actually do anything to stop him dying, in which case that would need to be in the pitch. If she has to make a deal with a devil to save him then that should be in the pitch instead of her sitting around thinking about maybe warning this guy. And then we're back to having stuff to write on index cards: she meets researches and summons a devil (not THE devil, more like a lower tier demon who can be summoned up by lovestruck girls), she makes a deal that gives her some horrible task and puts her on the hook if she fails, she attempts to do said task, she dishes out some straight talk to the boy she saved who is so not grateful enough about her saving his ass. They probably kiss, because I'm nice. Point is, now we're getting the semblance of an actual plot because the pitch sparks ideas of what may come.

Okay, I gotta go brainstorm, you guys, don't steal my death-seeing demon-summoning story; for all I know, it might actually be something worth writing. Go check out Margo's awesome post about creating a pitch with passion instead and offer props for her progress, and check out how fantastically our new teammate KO is doing.

My pitch for the week: A widowed, expectant queen must secure her place in court before the birth and before her untested brother-in-law casts her out (and runs the country she helped build into the ground).

30 Pitches Pitstop #2

Source

Laini Taylor's Not for Robots writing blog is generally fantastic (big surprise, no?), but for our purposes I'm sending you straight to the ideas & brainstorming post. Laini's a big believer in the power of brainstorming -- not just at this early stage when the world is your oyster, but also when figuring out where a scene should go, when you get stuck in your writing etc. --, and in this post she offers some ways to get ideas: making lists of favourite things, freewriting, and writing prompts in particular. But she puts it so much better than I could here, so don't take my word for it! You even get a bonus insight into the origins of her book Lips Touch Three Times. Tried and tested methods, these.

This week's three (condensed) tips from James Scott Bells's top twenty ways to get plot ideas in Plot & Structure:

1. Issues. What issues push your buttons? Pick an issue that gets you all hot and bothered (not in *that* way), divy up sides, and come up with reasons why people would support either side. Who has the most to gain, to lose, from this issue? Jodi Picoult is crazy good at this.
2. Character First. Come up with a character (visualise the first person you 'see', recreate someone you know IRL, read the obituaries). Write his or her story.
3. Steal from the Best. A modern retelling of Shakespeare or a fairy tale, for example. As Bell says, "plot is nothing more than a story's pattern". Don't plagiarize, but feel free to borrow and rework plots.

First Friday Check-In

I don't know about you (and by you I guess I mean Margo, hi Margo!), but I'm already learning a lot about the way I get ideas and why the surprising ease with which I can come up with a pitch doesn't equate with a great book idea.

I don't want to spill all my epiphanies in the first week, so for now I'll focus on the fact that, despite being a character-driven writer, I can't start a pitch by thinking about a character I've already worked on. I have this one character whose look and personality I love, but when I tried to fashion a story for him I found myself fixating on how I could show the traits I love, trying to shoehorn in possible settings when I didn't even have an idea of the world he lived in. To use a cliche, I was putting the cart before the horse. It wasn't until I had an unusual career idea the day after that a story he could be a part of came to me, and the story itself wouldn't be his. That kind of killed me, the idea that this awesome character would just be a minor character in someone else's story, but he actually fits there.

So despite having a file full of character ideas and quirks, I find myself unable to use them at this stage. A what-if premise, a setting with inhererent questions, a character career, these can all kickstart the process for me. Weirdly enough, words I came upon by chance while going through my blog reader ended up leading to two pitches this week, and I also found myself consciously and un- using first- and second-hand experiences from my past to shape pitches in two cases.

My pitch for the week: After a failed suicide attempt, a social outcast sees the oncoming death of the boy who pushed her over the edge, and who she loves, and must choose whether to risk the nuthouse to warn and possibly save him.


Check out partner-in-pitching-crime Margo to see how she's getting on, and don't miss the chance to win signed copies of 2 Jay Asher books from Carolina.

30 Pitches Pitstop #1

Remember how I said pitches are all about throwing a protagonist, a goal, and an opponent together and trying to come up with something new? Well Lindsey Duncan's post inspired an easy way to begin. Simply mix and match a character archetype or career and one of 37 plots/dramatic situations, and see what you come up with. The dramatic situations already have a built-in plot, so it's just up to you to plug in the archetypes with actual people, your quirky protagonist with a background and their opponent, similarly attired with a personality. The goal takes care of itself!

Say you choose (or wind up with through a random number generator) #3 Crime Punished by Vengeance: what is the objective? Revenge. Who is the opponent? The person MC intends to revenge himself upon. All you have to do is figure out who the people are beyond their roles in the plot. A YA contemporary writer might see this as a perfect story for a teen prankster, giving her free reign to wreak havoc on her cheating ex-boyfriend, while a fantasy writer might instead have a greenwoman turning to the dark side to blight the life of the lover who obeyed his father when told to marry a more appropriate bride. Notice I'm being very free with what constitutes a crime: to the girl and woman scorned, betraying their love was a crime. Don't let yourself get tied down; the point is to have a place to begin from, but then let your questions and answers take you where they will.

This week's three (condensed) tips from James Scott Bells's top twenty ways to get plot ideas* in Plot & Structure:

1. The What-If Game. Play what if while reading the newspaper or watching TV (and the commercials), or simply let your mind wander.
2. Titles. Make up a title and then write a pitch to go with it. Titles can come from quotes, lyrics, or overheard dialogue, or make a list of words from the dictionary and combine them.
3. The List. Start a list of nouns, one- or two-word reminders of mental pictures from your past. From these you can brainstorm story ideas that should resonate with you.

*Why three tips a week when there are twenty in all? Some of the other tips don't lend themselves to coming up with a pitch or get covered in other ways, but all twenty are good.

I Am Not a Serial Killer

Back cover: John works in his family’s mortuary and has an obsession with serial killers. He wants to be a good person, but fears he is a sociopath, and for years he has suppressed his dark side through a strict system of rules designed to mimic 'normal' behavior.
Then a demon begins stalking his small town and killing people one by one, and John is forced to give in to his darker nature in order to save them. As he struggles to understand the demon and find a way to kill it, his own mind begins to unravel until he fears he may never regain control. Faced with the reality that he is, perhaps, more monstrous than the monster he is fighting, John must make a final stand against the horrors of both the demon and himself.

"Mrs Anderson was dead."

So this month is horror (two guesses why) and we're starting with this YA horror thriller hybrid genre-crossing thing. I wouldn't classify this as YA. Young adult is about more than the protagonist's age, it's also about their perspective, and around the time the MC thinks of the kids at his school as children I decided that this was definitely more horror than YA. Me, when I was a teen, I thought of the people I went to school with as 'the other kids'. Children has a patronising tone to it that kids lacks, and the fact that the MC doesn't include himself among them -- he doesn't say 'the other children' just 'the children' -- makes me think this kid is older than his years. Of course, being a sociopath who lacks the normal teenage emotion-driven responses and has rules to keep himself in line, it makes sense that he would have a more adult perspective. He's capable of assessing and, more importantly, controlling his emotions in a way most teens can't. Ergo, not young adult.

Maybe surprising, but probably not, the horror came more from riding around in the mind of a teen sociopath than it did from the serial killing demon he was hunting. It's not exactly the rules he has to keep himself from becoming a serial killer-- if he starts paying too much attention to one person he has to go a week without looking at them, no interaction with animals, hang out with another outcast so he's not quite as socially marooned. It's not his obsession with serial killers and his interest in the corpses at his mother's mortuary. It's the 'small' things, like accidentally calling a girl it, the same way he does with corpses and the demon. It's the fact that he can accidentally dehumanise someone and make stalking sound completely rational and almost romantic. You know, creepy stuff like that.

And this book doesn't hold back. There's obviously the gore of seeing the embalming process and a demon killing people, but Wells also shows us that this kid really is messed up. We learn that John went through the serial killer phase of animal abuse until he realised that other people thought that was wrong and made himself stop. It was perfectly rational to him. He wets the bed, another common factor among serial killers, and when he witnesses a murder he pees himself. Only in one of the six or so thrillers I read, where people were actually about to be killed, did anyone wet themselves, despite this happening in real life. It might be realistic, but I guess it's not very sexy for your terrified heroine to be found by her handsome cop with a big wet patch down her front. We get a very unadulterated view into a sociopath's mind and life and, strangely enough, it's scary. Maybe not something that's going to give you nightmares, but it's a lot easier to shrug off a vampire or a demon than a sociopath who just sees you as a thing and wonders what your insides look like.

'Salem's Lot
The Reapers are the Angels
The Dunwich Horror and Other Stories

This Is How I Do It

I was thinking about how to make our alcoholic cop haunted by an unsolved case into something original. I started by thinking of all the cliched, jump right to the front of your mind, seen a million times before ideas: a murder case, rape, serial killer, gruesome bloody scene, a kidnapping or child murder, a high profile case, a ticking clock and a case that went cold after 24hrs. And then I flipped them on their heads, and because I saw the 'baby murderer' as the most emotive and not uncommon, I went to the other end of the age spectrum: an old man. Not high profile, so a credit card scam. And now I'm thinking this cop was raised by his grandma (what happened to his parents, dead or in jail?; is that why he became a cop, to get justice or to distance himself from criminal relatives?), and she's in an old folks' home because she has Alzheimer's, but he feels guilty as hell about it, although this case -- an elderly person getting taking advantage of -- is exactly why he's put her there. The case keeps him up at night because it could have been her getting scammed, because that guy (and, really, he was kind of an asshole) was someone's pop, and he'd had to move back in with his grown daughter because he lost the house.

Okay, this is all backstory, but at least now our alcoholic cop is a character and not cardboard. Now we just take something we've learned about him -- grandma in an old folks' home -- and screw with it. There's a bomb at the old folks' home. Someone's putting the sick and elderly out of their misery and he can't afford to move grandma so he has to figure out who it is before there's a knock on her door. Already that's kind of interesting. Maybe grandma is the one who brings it to him, but she's hardly a reliable source, is she? Something is going to have to convince our guy that someone really is offing the old folks. Maybe the real culprit strikes and it looks like the cop did it, so not only does he have to save grandma, he also has to save himself. That's a big coincidence, but I definitely haven't heard that story.

An alcoholic cop raised by his grandma has to stop the angel of mercy operating at the old folks' home where she lives. But grandma's the only witness, and her Alzheimer's makes him doubt the killer's existence until he's almost too late to save her.

So now apparently the killer comes after grandma and he only just saves her (the timing is a coincidence again, but I'll allow it for now), and we have high personal stakes: the killer came after grandma once for blabbing; he has to come back to finish her now that her cop grandson knows she was telling the truth. Of course, the nurses won't believe him -- a woman with Alzheimer's and an alcoholic, very reliable -- so no keeping an eye out for grandma when he's not there, and he has a job with killer hours which means he can't bring her to live with him, so she's a sitting duck in the hospital until he can solve the case. Plus the guilt that he didn't listen to her the first time? That's gonna hurt. The final logline would look something like this:

When an alcoholic cop's grandma begs him to stop the angel of mercy operating at her old folks' home, he worries her Alzheimer's is getting worse; after he's almost too late to save her, he must catch the killer before he returns to finish the job.

So that's how I come up with a logline when I don't already have a story; as you can see, it's a much more random process than doing the same for a story you know. But it still has all the elements of a good logline (a protagonist, an objective, an opponent). (Oh God, the acronym would be POO, come on.) It's a little wordy, but I have a logline I can edit, with a core focus to direct the editing, so it's okay. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good; this month is all about quantity over quality.

And don't forget, today's the last day (but not really) to sign up on the 30 Pitches in 30 Days post. Tomorrow it begins! The suspense is killing me.

What's in a Pitch?

What makes a good pitch? I'm not talking about sympathetic characters, or a great premise, I'm talking about a pitch that makes the story easy to understand. And I answer myself: a good pitch needs (A) a protagonist, (B) an objective, and (C) something keeping (A) and (B) apart. See if you can recognise this well-known story from this pared down pitch:

A young girl (A) is transported to a fantastic new world where she must fight a witch (C) to make her way to the one man who can send her home (B).

Did you get it? (It's The Wizard of Oz.) The opposition, or antagonist, isn't named here because it would kind of ruin the game, but neither is Dorothy. Naming characters in your pitch wastes prime word space. Insert edited pitch number one:

A young dreamer is transported to a fantastic new world where she must fight a witch to make her way to the Wizard of Oz, the one man who can send her home.

Instead of throwing a name at us, identify your protagonist through roles or personality traits. 'Dorothy' doesn't tell us anything about the character unless you happen to be an expert on the historical usage of names. However, a 'young dreamer' gives us an approximate age (we'll go with less than twenty-five) and her disposition, and the use of the pronouns she and her fill us in on her sex. In your pitch, you may decide that it isn't important that she's a dreamer; it's more important that she's an optimist, or that she's an adventurer stuck on a farm. In that case, you'd mention that as your character identifier, or instead of having her going home, evoking a sense of family and love, you have her returning to the family farm, a place of stability and belonging. When you get down to it, you don't have to state the theme outright for it to come through in your pitch.

Say you wanted to show the character arc -- and this is advanced stuff, so don't worry if you're not thinking about it this hard at first -- as Dorothy going from being an adventurer to someone who appreciates the stability of home:

A young adventurer is transported in a twister to a fantastic new world where she must battle a witch and make her way to the Wizard of Oz, the one man who can send her back to her Kansas family farm.

She's choosing a Kansas farm over a fantastic new world where you battle witches and seek out wizards? Some adventurer! Just by changing what the farm symbolises, we've implied a character arc. We also hint at a genre here since twisters don't usually transport people to fantastic new worlds, plus there's a witch and a wizard. Now for a different angle:

A young runaway from a small Kansas farm finds herself snatched away to a fantastic new world where she must fight her way to the Wizard of Oz, the one man who can send her home to her sick aunt.

Now we have a girl running away from a farm of her own free will, then being snatched away, before she has to fight to get back. The wording -- the small Kansas farm becomes home -- and the change from her desire to get away from and get back to her home again implies a character arc. What made Dorothy realise there's no place like home? (I suspect it might be the sick aunt.)

And none of this even got into the subject of the Wicked Witch of the West. Again, the use of the word 'fight' in the pitch above implies there's *something* trying to stop Dorothy from getting home, but that something is left vague. If we wanted to stress the opposition -- which you should -- you would end up with something like this:

A young runaway from a Kansas farm is dropped into a fantastic new world where she must survive the Wicked Witch of the West to reach the Wizard of Oz, the one man who can send her home to her sick aunt.

Now we have an antagonist, and because her name so helpfully includes identifiers -- she's wicked, and a witch, and she comes from the west -- we don't need to add anything else. For antagonists who have normal names like Bob you might want to do what we did with the protagonist and skip the name and use an identifier like the bitter mother-in-law or the alcoholic cop tortured by an unsolved case (we're going with original ideas here). In this version I also pay attention to wording. I noticed the repetition of her being a runaway and being snatched away from home (and on her way, sheesh) and changed the sentence to read 'dropped into', which still implies it was against her will and feels appropriate for those of us in the know about her literally dropping onto the witch. I conserved words by getting rid of the 'small' Kansas farm -- it's probably not the exception -- and Dorothy 'finding herself' in Oz, and 'fight her way to' the Wizard of Oz became 'reach': fight is a more active verb, but considering she first has to survive the witch, she's already keeping busy.

The above shows my process and a condensed (would you believe it?) version of what I've picked up from blogs around the web, but the essential thing to remember was what I said way back at the start: a good pitch needs (A) a protagonist, (B) an objective, and (C) something keeping (A) and (B) apart. Your novel itself can be as simple or as complex as you like, but you should be able to pare the main plot down to these three elements: (A) wants (B) but (C) stands in the way. (B) doesn't have to be a concrete noun, it can be a feeling -- a sense of security, the ability to trust --, and (C) doesn't have to be a person, it can be an establishment or a dogma or tradition, but it's a good idea to have the abstraction represented by a real thing e.g. the community (C) is opposed to (A) getting (B), but character X becomes the voice of the community. Then writing your novel is as easy as making your character fight long and hard to get what they want.

Piece of cake.

Don't forget to sign up on the 30 Pitches in 30 Days Blogfest post.