5 Ways to Hook Your Reader In Every Scene

March 28, 2018March 28, 2018 ~ Kristina Stanley ~ 17 Comments

Many writing books talk about the importance of the first line, first paragraph and first page of a novel.

If you don’t grab the reader early in your novel, you might lose them for good. Taking that thought and applying it to each scene means evaluating the entry hook for each scene.

There’s a lot of pressure on a writer to produce an extraordinary first line for a novel.

But as with most things, practice will make you better. So start practicing now with the first line of every scene in your novel. By the time you’ve evaluated every scene looking for the entry hook, and maybe rewriting the scene opening for a few, you’ll be ready to go back and rework the first line of your novel.

What Is A Scene Entry Hook?

How many times have you read a book, were a little tired, and not sure if you wanted to start the next scene or chapter? You might read the first few lines of the next scene and then decide to keep reading.

Whatever you read at the beginning of the scene that kept you reading was the scene entry hook.

5 Ways To Hook Your Reader

When creating an entry hook, consider:

Starting in media res
Foreshadowing trouble
Using a strong line of dialogue
Raising a question
Not wasting words on extraneous description.

Alternate Your Technique

Alternate your technique so the reader doesn’t get bored. If you don’t know what the hook is or why the reader would keep reading the scene, think about rewriting the scene opening.

Sometimes you might find you’ve started the scene too early. Look at cuttingthe beginning of the scene until something exciting happens.

If there is description you need, move it to later in the scene if you can. You might just need a little reorganizing of the scene to make the opening sizzle.

How Fictionary Can Help You

Fictionary is a new interactive web app for self-editing fiction that helps writers turn a first draft into a story readers love.

Below is the opening scene from Look The Other Way (by Kristina Stanley).

The “Entry Hook” key element makes me evaluate each scene and think about whether I’ve used a good entry hook. If I haven’t, then I need to rewrite the opening.

The entry hook is the first line of dialogue. “We’re letting you go.” leaves the reading wondering who is being fired and why.

In Fictionary, you can use the Story Map so evaluate key elements of fiction throughout your story.

Here, I’ve chosen just the point of view character and the entry hook to be shown in the Story Map. This way I can evaluate how I’m drawing a reader into each scene.

Your challenge is to ask yourself if every scene in your novel is has an entry hook.

Post written by Kristina Stanley, author of Look The Other Way (Imajin Books, Aug 2017).

Crime Writers of Canada nominated DESCENT (Imajin Books, July 2015) for the Unhanged Arthur award. The Crime Writers’ Association nominated BLAZE (Imajin Books, Oct 2015) for the Debut Dagger. Imajin Books published her third novel in the series, AVALANCHE, in June 2016.

Luzifer-Verlag published Abwaerts (Descent) in Germany in the fall of 2017.

Her short stories have been published in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and The Voices From the Valleys anthology. She is the author of THE AUTHOR’S GUIDE TO SELLING BOOKS TO NON-BOOKSTORES.

Her short story, WHEN A FRIENDSHIP FAILS, won the 2014 Audrey Jessup with Capital Crime Writers.

Kristina is the CEO of Fictionary, and all of her books were edited using Fictionary.

Why not check out Fictionary’s free 14-day trial and turn your draft into a story readers love?

Mystery Mondays: Haris Orkin on Finding Ideas

March 26, 2018March 25, 2018 ~ Kristina Stanley ~ 6 Comments

Today we welcome Haris Orkin. His novel You Only Live Once, was published by Imajin Books on March 21st. So it’s hot off the press, as they say. In addition to being an author, Haris is and playwright.

Over to Haris…

James Bond is Barking Mad

by Haris Orkin

Aspiring writers often ask me where I get my ideas. I don’t always have an answer for them on the spot. I’ll be glib or I’ll deflect, but in fact, it’s a very good question. Even though “You Only Live Once” is my first novel, I’ve been making a living as a writer for thirty years.

I’ve written radio and TV commercials for some of the largest companies in the world. I’m a produced playwright and screenwriter and for the last ten years I’ve been writing and designing video games. So I’m always generating ideas. Always. Sometimes I hesitate to delve too deeply into my process. I worry that if I pull it apart I may not be able to put it back together. I like the fact that my process seems mysterious and I trust that ideas will come to me, but the truth is the way I work is not all that complicated or mystical.

I’m a watcher, a reader and a listener. I’m endlessly curious and love eavesdropping on people’s conversations. (Okay, that sounded a little creepy.) I’m always reading newspapers and magazines and watching documentaries. I love movies and TV shows and my taste is incredibly eclectic.

It’s all grist for the mill. Those influences then collide with whatever internal conflict going on at the moment. (And I always have some internal conflict going on.) Writing is a way for me to work out those conflicts: a way to have a conversation with myself and the world.

Here’s an example.

When I found out I was going to be a father 28 years ago, I was happy and excited and terrified. My wife and I knew we were going to have a son and the prospect of impending fatherhood raised all kinds of questions and fears. What kind of example would I be? What would I teach my son? What kind of man was I? What kind of man would I like him to become?

It brought to mind my own childhood and the relationship I had with my own father. (And the relationship he had with his father.) With all those concerns and thoughts swirling around in my head, I started writing things down. It was a way to process my thoughts and feelings. Those thoughts and feelings eventually became a play that was performed in New York and at the La Jolla Playhouse in Southern California.

The play was called “Dada” and there was a scene in it that eventually became the spark that inspired “You Only Live Once.” The main character in the play, David, is an insecure father to be. He remembers a meeting he had with his guidance counselor when he was a junior in high school and it’s dramatized in the play.

The guidance counselor asks David what he wants to do when he graduates and he says doesn’t know. She pushes him, telling him, “Your grades are good. You’re clearly college material. You’ve always done well in math. Have you considered accounting?”

“My dad’s an accountant.”

“You want to follow in your father’s footsteps?”

“Definitely not.”

“Have you thought about actuarial science of the insurance industry?” Dave shakes his head, a painful look on his face. The counselor continues, “Well, there must be something that seems interesting to you. Isn’t there anyone you’ve read about or have heard of who has a career that seems the slightest bit intriguing?”

“Well, there’s one I guess, but it’s kind of dumb.”

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that. You’re bright, you’re personable and if you apply yourself you probably could do most anything you want.”

“I want to do what James Bond does.”

“What?”

“James Bond. He gets to travel all over the world and drive really cools cars and he never has to sit in some dumb office and shuffle papers.”

“Very funny David,” she says as she sternly shuffles some papers. “But this is a serious question. What do you want to do with the rest of your life?”

Later in the play, grown up David has an imaginary conversation with James Bond and Bond confronts him on his choices, saying, “You settled. You gave up. You wanted to be me. How do you know you couldn’t have?”

“You’re not even real.”

“When you were fifteen I was more real to you than your own father. I embodied all your dreams. All your desires. You wanted to be suave and masterful and seductive and dangerous. You wanted men to fear you and women to fall all over you. Is that no longer true? Or do you know longer know what you want anymore.”

David stands up to him and says. “You kill people. You force people to have sex with you.”

“I have a license to kill and because I do I will brook no insolence from anyone. I take what I want and I do what I want and no one tells me how to live or what I can or cannot do.”

“But no one cares about you. And you don’t care about anyone else. What kind of life is that?”

“A life free of sticky and unnecessary encumbrances. To love is to allow someone inside so deeply the can cause you…unmentionable pain.” Bond’s eyes fill with tears. “Why give someone that power?”

David puts his arm around Bond and comforts him and, in that moment, finally puts the fantasy of James Bond to rest.

“You Only Live Once” examines the mythos of a Bond-like character in today’s world. It seemed to me that you’d have to be barking mad to actually do what James Bond does. And that brought to mind one of my favorite novels ever. Don Quixote. I could see the connections and from those connections “You Only Live Once” was born.

“You Only Live Once” Synopsis

James Flynn is an expert shot, a black belt in karate, fluent in four languages and irresistible to women. He’s also a heavily medicated patient in a Los Angeles psychiatric hospital. Flynn believes his locked ward is the headquarters of Her Majesty’s Secret Service and that he is a secret agent with a license to kill.

When the hospital is acquired by a new HMO, Flynn is convinced that the Secret Service has been infiltrated by the enemy. He escapes to save the day, and in the process, kidnaps a young Hispanic orderly named Sancho.

This crazy day trip turns into a very real adventure when Flynn is mistaken for an actual secret agent. Paranoid delusions have suddenly become reality, and now it’s up to a mental patient and a terrified orderly to bring down an insecure, evil genius bent on world domination.

http://getbook.at/YouOnlyLiveOnce

You Only Live One

You Only Live Once Front Cover Official resized for website James Flynn is an expert shot, a black belt in karate, fluent in four languages and irresistible to women. He’s also a long-term mental patient in a Los Angeles psychiatric hospital. Flynn believes his locked ward is the headquarters of Her Majesty’s Secret Service and that he is a secret agent with a license to kill.

When the hospital is acquired by a new HMO, Flynn is convinced that the Secret Service has been infiltrated by the enemy. He escapes to save the day, and in the process, Flynn kidnaps a young Hispanic orderly named Sancho.

Reviews for “You Only Live Once”

“A brilliant homage to everyone’s favorite super-spy, and a hilarious, action-packed, made-for-the-movies thriller about a man suavely dancing along both sides of the thin line between heroism and madness.” —Matt Forbeck, New York Times bestselling author of Halo: New Blood

“Pacey and unrepentant fun, Haris Orkin’s You Only Live Once takes the James Bond mythos, gives it a swift kick in the backside and steals its wallet.” —James Swallow, New York Times bestselling author of Nomad

“Fill shaker with ice. Add equal parts Ian Fleming and Quentin Tarantino. Shake (do not stir). Garnish with Douglas Adams, and you get You Only Live Once, a delicious martini as dry as the dusty California desert.” —Dan Jolley, USA Today bestselling author of the Gray Widow Trilogy

“If you’re looking—and who isn’t?—for a sexy, slapstick, razzle-dazzle, rock’em-sock’em re-imagining of Don Quixote as James Bond emerging from deep cover in a mental hospital to save the world, Haris Orkin’s hilarious yet touching You Only Live Once is the book for you.” —Charles Harper Webb, award-winning author of Brain Candy

WHO IS Haris Orkin?

Haris_1-25-18_120 Final Haris Orkin is a playwright, screenwriter, game writer, and novelist. His play, Dada was produced at The American Stage and the La Jolla Playhouse. Sex, Impotence, and International Terrorism was chosen as a critic’s choice by the L.A. Weekly and sold as a film script to MGM/UA. Save the Dog was produced as a Disney Sunday Night movie. His original screenplay, A Saintly Switch, was directed by Peter Bogdanovich and starred David Alan Grier and Viveca Fox. He is a WGA Award and BAFTA Award nominated game writer and narrative designer known for Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3, Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, Tom Clancy’s The Division, Mafia 3, and Dying Light, which to date has sold over 7.5 million copies.

Haris has contributed chapters to two books put out by the International Game Developers Association; Writing for Video Game Genres and Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing.

www.harisorkin.com

https://twitter.com/HarisOrkin

Find Haris on Social Media

Website: https://www.harisorkin.com/you-only-live-once

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorHarisOrkin/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17753529.Haris_Orkin

Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Haris-Orkin/e/B07B2L75HH/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1

Camp Nanowrimo: Who is going to join me?

June 27, 2017June 26, 2017 ~ Kristina Stanley ~ 13 Comments

Last summer I wrote 50,000 words of my WIP progress, EVOLUTION, as part of CAMP NANOWRIMO 2016. Since then, I’ve added another 10,000 words.

I’d like this novel to be around 80,000 words, meaning I need to write another 20,000 words.

Doesn’t sound like much, except when I think about launching Feedback (A New Online Tool That Guides Fiction Writers Through A Big-Picture Story Edit), releasing my latest novel, LOOK THE OTHER WAY, published by Imajin Books, and the rest of life that keeps interfering with my writing.

Screen Shot 2017-06-25 at 1.02.08 PM

I decided I would join Camp Nanowrimo with the modest goal 20,000 words, so I can finish this book. Then, maybe I can join NANOWRIMO in December and write 50,000 of another book.

So who else is doing Nanwrimo? I’d love to connect and encourage each other. Let me know in the comments below.

Here’s an excerpt from my WIP.

I shut the refrigerator door for the fifth time. Why did I keep looking inside the box for answers? Food wouldn’t solve my problems.

Fatigue wrapped its heavy blanket around my shoulders, muting my strength. The sound of the grandfather clock intermixed with sleet hitting the windows in the early morning hours made me want to lie down on the kitchen floor and never get up.

The clock chimed past the time of day I now hated. A family heirloom that had belonged to my parents and before that my grandparents. Somehow I’d inherited it. My guess was my dad didn’t want the noisy contraption in his house, so when Nick and I had moved into our home on Loughborough Lake, my dad had “gifted” it to me, Jaz Cooper. Some gift.

Two weeks ago I was happy. Today, well, today was different. My stomach tightened. I wasn’t sure I could move away from the fridge. I didn’t know how to spend my time. And who would care about what I did, anyway?

I’ve never been one to feel sorry for myself. That’s not who I was, and it’s not who I would become. I bit the inside of my lip, mostly to refocus the pain in my gut. It was too early to go to work, but coffee might help.

I plodded across the empty kitchen, the floor creaking underneath me with each step, and hit the power button on the coffee maker. The timer wouldn’t go off for another two long hours.

Coffee was my new habit. Nick and I used to drink tea together. But no more. I was slowly getting used the strong aroma that wafted from the beans and to the acidy taste. It was the caffeine I needed, not a feel good drink.

Out of habit, I opened the bottom cupboard door and reached for the dog food, then my mind caught up to reality. An overwhelming sense of loss ripped at my heart. That horrible knife of pain.

I slammed the cupboard door, walked to the living room, and lowered myself into the dog bed. I curled into a ball and inhaled Bandit’s smell, like that would bring him back. At night, he used to sleep in my bed, tucked behind my knees, soothing me with his deep breathing. During the day, he’d slept here. Most of my waking hours were filled with the company of dogs. I only had Bandit as a pet, but I ran a dog training school, so I could have many dogs in my life.

Unable to bear the real reason from my grief, I focussed on the dog. I’d always known I would grow old without Bandit. Dogs owners all know that awful truth. They don’t like it, but they live with the knowledge.The dog’s loss I could handle. The other would break me.

Through the tapping of the sleet on the living room window, I heard a howl. I held my breath and listened. The wind rattled the trees beside the house and drowned out any other sound.

I waited.

Another howl followed by slapping water. I shuffled to the window but couldn’t see anything. I stepped onto my porch, a mere thirty feet from the lake, and concentrated on the sound.

A bark. More slapping water.

The moon broke through the clouds, streaming light onto the lake.

A dog had gone through the ice. Without thinking, I bolted outside and ran toward the lake. My slippers stuck in the snow and were ripped from my feet. The sting of cold hurt my bare skin, but that didn’t matter. I reached the icy surface and kept running.

Daisy, the neighbor’s Great Dane, battled the edge of the ice. Her rump was underwater. Her front claws strained against the snow. Her nostrils were flared.

My heel slid across black ice, and I tumbled backward. My tail bone slammed onto the hard surface, and my elbow cracked. I rolled onto my side, then onto my stomach. I slithered forward, closer but not close enough to grab Daisy’s paws.

Daisy slipped backward and into the water. Her head dropped below the surface.

I froze.

She burst through the surface, snorted water, and scraped her paws over the edge of the ice. She barked. Her nails clawed at the ice but couldn’t grip the surface. Terror in her eyes? Pleading? Whatever it was, the message was clear. Get her out of the water.

I crawled forward on my stomach, ignoring my throbbing elbow. I should have grabbed a rope. A hundred-pound, panicking dog was not going to be easy to get out of the water. Sleet soaked my back and neck. My pajama bottoms clung to my legs.

I grabbed one paw. Daisy’s nails dug into my arm, and I let go. The dog had power in her limbs. I knew I shouldn’t, but I had to get closer. I’d have to leverage her out of the water.

Her rump remained below the surface, but her head stayed above water. For now.

Another howl. Anyone listening would think I was torturing the dog. I slithered closer. I could join her. Slide past her into the water. Moments would pass, and the pain would end. But then Daisy would drown, too. Selfish.

I could pull her from the water, then drop in. The darkness below welcomed me.

Crack.

The sound sliced through me. There wasn’t much time to save Daisy. One big shove with my feet, and my arms slid underneath her pits and around her shoulders. She dug her claws into the back of my neck. A warm liquid trickled across my skin. She’d cut me, but I didn’t let go.

I was living the nightmare of anyone who walked on a lake at the end of the winter season. Adrenaline pounded at my temples. My skin prickled. I felt her terror. The emotion was so strong, I gasped.

Daisy dug her claws deep into my neck and shoulders, gaining traction. She hefted herself out of the water. Her rear paws grabbed at the edge of the ice. She tumbled over my head, across my back, and away from the hole in the ice.

I knew I should get off the ice, but I couldn’t move. I lay on my back, panting. The black water called me. All I had to do was roll over and slide in.

Time is running out…on Book Sale

December 31, 2015December 31, 2015 ~ Kristina Stanley ~ Leave a comment

2015 is coming to close today, and I want to thank everyone who has interacted with me during the year. Connecting with other writers, readers and dog lovers has been fun.

Farley had a blast sharing his stories and reading my books.

Farley reading DESCENT

DESCENT and BLAZE are on sale for a few more days and then life gets back to normal.

eBook Sale 1

Thanks for reading…

Happy New Year.

Mystery Mondays: C.S. Lakin on Showing Through Your Characters’ Senses

November 9, 2015November 9, 2015 ~ Kristina Stanley ~ 3 Comments

This week I have the pleasure of hosting C.S. Lakin.

C. S. Lakin is a novelist and writing coach who spends her time divided between developing new book ideas and helping writers polish theirs. She is the author of fourteen novels – six contemporary novels, seven in the fantasy/sci-fi genre, and one in historical Western romance. Whether she is exploring the depths of the human psyche and pushing her characters to the edge of desperation, or embellishing an imaginary world replete with talking pigs and ancient magical curses, she is doing what she loves best – using her creativity and skills to inspire and affect her readers.

I was first introduced to C.S. Lakin through her novel Time Sniffers and have been a fan ever since.

Today’s she’s sharing an excerpt from her latest non-fiction book. Just another indication of her willingness to help other authors.

Excerpt from the newest release in the Writer’s Toolbox Series: 5 Editors Tackle the 12 Fatal Flaws of Fiction Writing.

Showing through Your Characters’ Senses

One of the reasons readers willingly immerse themselves in a story is to be transported. Whether it’s to another planet, another era—past or future—or just into a character’s daily life, readers want to be swept away from their world and into another—the world of the writer’s imagination.

It’s challenging for writers to know how much detail to put in scenes to effectively transport a reader. Too much can dump info, drag the pacing of the story, and bore or overwhelm. Conversely, too little detail can create confusion or fail to evoke a place enough to rivet the reader.

In addition to knowing how much detail to show, writers have to decide what kind of details to use. I often read scenes in the manuscripts I critique, for example, that have characters engaging in lots of gestures, such as rubbing a neck, bringing a hand to a cheek, pushing fingertips together, turning or moving toward something—all for no clear reason.

Showing body movement, gestures, and expressions can be an effective way to indicate a character’s emotional state, but this needs thoughtful consideration so that the gesture or expression packs the punch desired.

It also important to show setting—and not just show it any old way. What is key to creating a powerful setting is to show it through your character’s POV and in a way that feels significant.

Showing Significant Settings

When is setting significant to the reader? When it’s significant to the character.

That’s not to say every place you put your character has to evoke some strong emotion. A character who goes around gushing, crying, or jumping in excitement over every locale will appear to be missing some marbles.

But just as in real life, places affect us—some more than others. Each of us can think of numerous places in our past that bring a flood of emotionally charged memories. Showing setting colored by a character’s emotions is not only effective and powerful, it also captures real life.

But let’s talk about those other settings. The ones that aren’t emotionally charged. The many places in which you set your characters to play out your scenes. Some of those places are merely backdrops, places your character traverses daily or on occasion. They’re not important, right?

Let me just pose this possibility: even though you’ve thought a bit about the locales for your scenes, it may be that you aren’t truly tapping into the power of setting. In the rest of this chapter, we’ll look at ways to fix that.

Bring the Setting to Life

You may need to write a scene that shows a tense discussion between two characters. So you stick them in the coffee shop, since it doesn’t matter where you put them. And, hey, a coffee shop makes sense. Everyone goes to them. It shows the characters doing ordinary things.

Sure, put your characters there (but please not twenty times in a novel). Or do something more interesting. I encourage writers to try to think up original, unique settings that bring a character’s bigger world—town, city, region—alive. But even if a writer thinks up fresh and creative locales in which to place her characters, those settings might still come across in a boring, ineffectual way.

But it’s the conversation that matters, the writer argues. That’s what I want readers to pay attention to. The setting is just a backdrop.

In many scenes, that may be true. But if a writer wants to transport her reader, she’ll think about bringing the setting to life via sensory details—which are observed by the POV character.

Go through your scenes and look for these indications of flawed” telling” instead of showing:

Summarizing important moments instead of playing them out in real time
Lack of sensory details to bring the scene alive: sights, smells, sounds, and textures, brought out through the POV character’s senses
Detailing insignificant actions that aren’t important to the plot or don’t reveal anything helpful about the characters (showing too much)
Not starting in the middle of something happening in real time; instead, setting up a scene by explaining and filling in with information
Showing characters moving (driving, walking, etc.) from one location to another when those actions are not useful to the story
Numerous paragraphs of narrative that summarize interaction between characters and lack actual dialogue, gestures, and/or body language
Excessive use of gestures, body language, and “body feelings” to show emotion instead of alternating or replacing with internal thoughts that imply the emotion
Showing setting not presented through the POV character and void of sensory detail

Setting is so often overlooked, but it can be a powerful element in your story, so don’t neglect it.

S. Lakin is a multipublished novelist and writing coach. She works full-time as a copyeditor and critiques about two hundred manuscripts a year. She teaches writing workshops and gives instruction on her award-winning blog Live Write Thrive.

The latest book in The Writer’s Toolbox Series is now available for sale on Amazon: 5 Editors Tackle the 12 Fatal Flaws of Fiction Writing. Get yours here.

***

Next week on Mystery Mondays we welcome Gloria Ferris, Winner of the 2012 Bony Blithe Award for“Cheat the Hangman” and Winner of the 2010 Unhanged Arthur for “Corpse Flower“

The Dark Side of Alpine Skiing: Guest Blog with Donna Galanti

October 7, 2015 ~ Kristina Stanley ~ Leave a comment

Reblogged from The Element Trilogy…

The Dark Side of Arson  by Kristina Stanley

October 6, 2015 by Donna Galanti

I’m excited to have Kristina Stanley guest posting again! She’s on a hot topic today with the dark side of arson, featured in her newest book, BLAZE, the second book in the Stone Mountain Mystery Series with Imajin Books.

Check out Kristina’s earlier post on the dark side of alpine skiing and check out BLAZE, releasing October 25th!

Please welcome Kristina….

See The Element Trilogy for full blog post…

Who are My Readers: Poll Results

September 17, 2015September 16, 2015 ~ Kristina Stanley ~ 14 Comments

Thank you to everyone who participated in this poll.

I’ve summarized the results here and added my thoughts of what they mean to me.

I’m happy to see I have a cross-section of readers even though I focus on mystery writing. The “Other” section included non-fiction (2), women’s contemporary, children’s (2), historical fiction (3), young adult (2), flash fiction, saga, memoir, sci-fi, paranormal and blogging. This tells me my blog has enough variety to interest many types of writers, so how could that not make me smile.

The data above tells me not to focus writing advice on a series just because I write a series. It’s probably a good idea to keep tips focussed on all categories.

So this one surprised me. I write on a MAC and thought most writers do. Guess I was mistaken her. I don’t think I’ll blog about writing on a MAC much.

Here again, I thought more writers would use Scrivener. It’s my writing software of choice, and I can’t imaging not using it. I do use MS Word when I submit my work to others.

Most people filled in the other category here. Using “nothing” was a popular answer, followed by Excel. I use Excel for every novel I write to keep track of details, ask my self pertinent questions about each scene, and to make notes. I wish there was a better way to do this, but I didn’t see any in the survey results.

This one is nicely balanced. I think many authors, regardless of how they are published, struggle to get the word out about their novels. Mystery Mondays is my way of helping other writers network their art.

Thank you for participating in the poll and giving me lots to think about when it comes to future blogging.

Thanks for reading…

BLAZE Available for Pre-order (Stone Mountain Mystery #2)

September 16, 2015September 15, 2015 ~ Kristina Stanley ~ 7 Comments

Working with a modern publisher such as Imajin Books has advantages.

I counted on the Imajin Books website, and the company currently has 26 authors including me. This means each author gets individual attention and a fast track to publication.

So let me define fast. DESCENT was released July 25th, 2015.

BLAZE is now available for pre-order on Amazon and will be released October 25th, 2015.

Does this mean I wrote two books in one year?

No. I wrote four novels during the five years I lived on a sailboat. I’m currently working on the 5th. I think I needed to write four books to learn how to write a book. When I finished the fourth, I went back to the beginning of the series and rewrote all four novels. Only then, did I feel ready to submit to the first two.

It takes time to create fiction, but now that The Stone Mountain Mystery series is underway, I’m glad to be with Imajin Books and get the novels published quickly and professionally.

Forest fires are a hot topic this year in North America, and I’ve brought it close to home for Kalin Thompson…

Instead of exchanging vows, Kalin Thompson spends her wedding day running from a forest fire near Stone Mountain Resort, and the pregnant friend trapped with her has just gone into labor. Meanwhile, Kalin’s fiancé, Ben Timlin, hangs from the rafters of a burning building, fighting for his life. Can the situation get any hotter?

When the fire is declared as arson, finding the firebug responsible becomes Kalin’s personal mission. In the course of her investigation as Director of Security, she discovers that some people will go to extreme measures to keep her from exposing their secrets.

If you haven’t read DESCENT yet, now is your chance before BLAZE comes out. Find it at: myBook.to/Descent

And if you have read DESCENT, I’d be very excited if you pre-ordered BLAZE.

Thanks for reading…

#1 Question to Ask Yourself After A First Draft

September 12, 2015September 12, 2015 ~ Kristina Stanley ~ 8 Comments

You’ve completed a first draft, you look at the mound of papers on your desk, and wonder what next.

How do you look at your draft with new eyes. There is a lot of advice about putting your novel in a drawer for a few weeks before looking at it again, sending it to others for a beta read, reading it aloud etc.

But what if you want to do something more practical and immediate?

For each scene ask yourself: WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS SCENE?

Try not to answer in a generic way.

An easy answer is: Moves the story forward.

To me, that’s too general. How does the scene move the story forward? Be as specific as you can.

Ask yourself: Does the scene

have an important revelation, clue or red herring?
develop a character? To me this means, does the reader learn something new about a character that is important to a story?
introduce a new character?
show character motivation?
give the reader a break after a high action scene?
give the reader action after a break scene (sometimes called a sequel scene)?
foreshadow, give backstory or contain an important flashback?
develop setting that is important to the story and not just setting for the sake of describing something?
close off loose ends?
solve the crime?

If you can’t articulate the point of a scene, think about removing the scene.

If the point of the scene is weak, see if you can take what is important in a scene and move it to another scene. Then delete the weak scene.

I use a spreadsheet to keep track of each scene. One column is dedicated to the point of the scene. If a cell remains empty when I’ve reviewed the entire novel then the scene must go.

Please share any tips you can add in the comments below.

I used this technique while writing DESCENT, BLAZE and AVALANCHE.

Thanks for reading…

If you’re interested, you can buy or download a sample of DESCENT at: myBook.to/Descent

My Two Cents Worth (Before Inflation)

August 19, 2015August 19, 2015 ~ Kristina Stanley ~ 2 Comments

Reblogged from http://blog.jamesmjackson.com Author of the Seamus McCree Mystery Series.

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Please welcome Kristina Stanley, a Canadian author who has the screenshot to prove that her novel Descsent had the number one ranking on Amazon’s Canada list of “Hot New Releases of Women Sleuth Mysteries.” (In second place was Sue Grafton’s X !) She describes herself as happy, hard-working, loyal, athletic, and an animal-lover. The five words she uses to describe her writing are adventurous, action-oriented, mystery, wilderness, and multi point of view. Here are her answers to the eight questions she chose…

Click here to read more:

What Is A Scene Entry Hook?

5 Ways To Hook Your Reader

Alternate Your Technique

How Fictionary Can Help You

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You Only Live One

WHO IS Haris Orkin?

Find Haris on Social Media

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Here’s an excerpt from my WIP.

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Excerpt from the newest release in the Writer’s Toolbox Series: 5 Editors Tackle the 12 Fatal Flaws of Fiction Writing.

Showing through Your Characters’ Senses

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