AUTHOR SKYPE WITH THE AMAZING CHRISTINE HAYES!!!!(the takeaway!!! DUN! DUN! DUN!)

Todayness we were able to skype with the awesome face of Christine Hayes, author of Mothman's Curse, which, if you haven't, please read it.

YOU WILL READ THIS AWESOME BOOK!!!!

Any of the ways (Ways of the any?) here is the awesome (very summarized) answers that she gave to our questions! 

• On Writers Block: Take a walk, do writing prompts, or just sit down and force yourself to write. 
• On Fan Fiction: Fan Fiction is good practise.
• On Writing a Story Idea, Writing the Beginning, Getting Stuck in the Middle, then Getting Another Shiny Story Thing But Actually Finishing the First One: If you love it enough you will go back to it until it is done. Also, set goals, like, "I'll do two pages of this story today". 

We humbly thank with humbleness with all humbility in the most humbleded way possible Christine Hayes for taking the time to talk to our small group of crazy writing people! 

Many stuff,

Chrys!!! 

Author Skype with MarcyKate Connolly

We had a really fun author skype visit with MarcyKate Connolly, author of the middle-grade fantasy books, Monstrous and Ravenous.

 She gave us the following writing tips:

• If you want to publish, you should get a literary agent.
• It takes time and lots of trial and error before you can publish a book.
• Plotting and pacing are very important, and it takes trial and error and listening to critique partners to get it right.
• Writing is rewriting. Many people don't like to revise and rewrite, but that's what most of writing is.
• When giving critiques, it helps if you say something good first, then make a suggestion, then say something good again. This is called the sandwich method.
• To help with pacing, you can use a plotting tool like Blake Snyder's Beat Sheet
• There are lots of places to find critique partners online, like AgentQueryConnect or AbsoluteWrite.

Thank you so much, MarcyKate, for taking time to talk to us!

Author Skype with Tui Sutherland

We had a great visit today with Tui Sutherland, author of the Wings of Fire series, which are some of the Laie Young Writers' favorite books.

Tui gets to write stories about dragons all day. We wanted to know how she got such a great job! She told us she started out working for a publishing company, and eventually got to help edit the Warriors series. She wrote some of the Seekers books under the Erin Hunter name, and now she has her very own series, Wings of Fire. Book six is about to come out, and she gave us a sneak peek at the new cover. It's spectacular!

We asked Tui what it's like writing animal characters. She said she has a set of dragon models on her desk and she used them to help remind her of the sort of things dragons can do, like flick their tails or flap their wings. With the Seekers series she had to keep in mind that bears can't describe things by comparing them to things that humans have. For instance, a bear can't say something is "as big as a dinner plate." Even though her characters have animal bodies, she always writes them with very human emotions.

For others writers who want to write animal fantasy, Tui suggested spending time with whatever kind of animal they're writing about. Once when she was writing about dogs she got a job as a dog walker so that she'd get more experience with different kinds of dogs. We enjoyed meeting the two dogs at her house who joined her for the skype visit.

Tui said that the most stressful parts of being an author were deadlines and the thought of doing book signings and school visits. Deadlines we can understand, but we all had so much fun with her skype visit we hope she's now feeling great about her upcoming book signing tour.

We were excited to hear she's got another Wings of Fire series planned, and we tried to get all sorts of details out of her, but she was very careful not to give us any spoilers.

Thanks so much, Tui, for your visit! We can't wait for Wings of Fire Book 6!

Author Skype with Matthew J. Kirby

Thanks to everyone who came out for our final Laie Young Writers Club meeting for the year, including author Matthew J. Kirby, who joined us by skype. Mr. Kirby is the author of The Clockwork Three and Icefall, plus several upcoming titles like The Lost Kingdom, Infinity Ring Book 5: Cave of Wonders, and a new series called Quantum League. He wins the LYW Author Medal of Honor for pulling over and finding an internet cafe when he realized that we'd made a mistake about what time zone he was in! We are eternally grateful.

Here are some of the thoughts Matt Kirby shared with us:

• His favorite part of being a writer is the writing process, but his favorite part of being an author is traveling.
• Plot is very important, but you don't need to use a formulaic plot structure. A story needs form, not formula.
• The beginning of a story creates a contract with the reader. If you promise the reader something, you have to deliver.
• The way to get emotional power into a story is to get yourself into a place where you can feel what the characters are feeling. If you can't feel it, how can you write it?
• The most important thing you can do to be a successful writer is to write. So many people would like to be writers, but they're not really working on anything. Get in the habit of writing something every day.  

After a fun and motivational visit with Mr. Kirby, we had chocolate cake and said good-bye to one of our founding members, Amber Carlson, who will be leaving for college next fall.

The Laie Young Writers Club will be signing off for the summer, but we'll be back again next fall. Until then...

Keep writing!

Author Skype with Tim Wynne-Jones

Today we had a video chat with Tim Wynne-Jones, a Canadian author who is just completing his thirty-sixth book. He's written picture books, novels for children, novels for adults, radio plays, and we even found out he wrote songs for the television show, "Fraggle Rock." With all of that writing experience comes great wisdom. He was able, for instance, when asked what the main difference between a novel and a short story is, to say that a short story is short.

When asked if it was better to write in first person or second person (or third person), he said that first person can be fun to write and to read because you're pretending to be someone else, but it can also feel claustrophobic because you're trapped inside one person's head. Third person point of view gives the reader a little more distance and a little more space to watch a character from the outside. Second person point of view, which Tim Wynne-Jones used in his book "Blink and Caution," isn't very common, but in that case the second person point of view took on the role of someone watching the character over his shoulder and talking to him, trying to help him but not being able to.

Tim Wynne-Jones said he usually doesn't outline a story, but instead writes several drafts. For instance, the book he's finishing now took twelve drafts, and at one point it was six hundred pages long. Now it is only three hundred pages, and at his very favorite stage of the writing process. The story is all there at last, and everything is about polishing, making every word be the right word in the right place.

To the question of how do you get emotion into a story, Tim Wynne-Jones suggested that a writer needs to understand what every character wants. The most interesting stories come about when two characters aren't necessarily good or bad, but have different, conflicting things that they want. Even more interesting is when a character gets what he wants, but then discovers that he didn't want it after all!

After studying architecture for three years of college, Tim Wynne-Jones joined a rock band and started writing songs. He found he enjoyed this so much that he wrote more and more, and eventually began publishing books. We'd like to thank him for giving the world so many great books to read, and for taking some time out to visit with us today! Mahalo!

Author Skype with Beth Revis

Earlier this month we were honored with a skype visit from Beth Revis, author of the Across the Universe series. She happened to be at a convention in New York at the time, but was kind enough to give us a good Q&A session. Here's what we learned:

Q: How do you create tension?
A: Always make the worst possible thing happen.

Q: How do you write a good first kiss?
A: Be aware that not all kisses are perfect. A first kiss should have some awkwardness in it.

Q: How do you start a book?
A: Just start writing. Then cut the first fifty pages. You want to make sure you start on the day that everything changes.

Q: How do you invent new technology for science fiction?
A: Take a look at your story and think about what kind of technology you want to have. Then do your research and find out why we don't have that yet. For example, in Across the Universe, people needed to be frozen for space travel. When I looked it up, I found out that we can't freeze people yet because their cell walls would break. So I invented the "blue goo" to solve that problem.

Q: How do you kill your first character?
A: I've killed so many characters in books it just comes naturally now.

Q: Do you have any advice on writing endings?
A: Endings take a lot of re-writing. Bring something from the beginning and make it part of the end. Come full circle.

Q: How do you get ideas for stories?
A: The ideas are the easy part. Once you get an idea, then you have to figure out what happens next, especially what's the worst possible thing that could happen next.

Q: How do you come up with titles?
A: Make a list of about fifty, and then pick the best one. Have other people help you decide.

Q: What's the hardest part about being a full-time author?
A: Discipline! I have to make my own schedule for turning out a book every year, so that usually ends up with me not writing at all for a few months, then as the deadline approaches, I panic and stay up all night writing.

Q: How do you write a romantic scene without making it too cheesy?
A: Bring in the emotional reactions. There should be some doubt or mistrust. Make it emotionally complex.

Q: How do you do foreshadowing?
A: This is one of the most fun things about writing. I don't outline, but as I write I make sure I include lots of details. As the story goes on, I find ways to make those details relevant later.

Thanks for the visit, Beth!

Skype with Brandon Sanderson

Aloha Young Writers!

Today we had a great time hanging with one of our favorite authors, Brandon Sanderson, who has written several extremely large fantasy novels like Elantris, the Mistborn Trilogy, Warbreaker, Way of Kings, and of course the last three books of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. He's also the author of the hilarious Alcatraz books, one of which we read in preparation for his visit.

For those of you who couldn't be there, Brandon Sanderson started out by giving us the secret of how to become a writer. You want to know what it is? Write. That's it. Practice. Writing is just like playing a sport or a musical instrument. Want to be awesome at it? Then work really hard. Do it every day. Those who keep going are the people who become published authors.

Here's a summary of some of the questions that club members asked, and of our visiting author's wise answers:

Q: Is someone making a movie out of the Mistborn books?
A: Mistborn has been optioned. An option is when someone pays an author NOT sell the movie rights to anyone else while the people who want to make the movie try to get a script, some actors, a movie studio, a heap of money, and all that other stuff put together. It's a pretty good deal for the author, getting paid to do nothing.

Q: How do you come up with good endings?
A: Do this before you start writing. Take your characters, your setting, and your story ideas on a long walk. Put on some epic music and think. Eventually, an amazing idea of how to bring everything together will come into your head. Once you start writing, if some better idea comes to you, go ahead and change your plan.

Q: What do you do about writer's block?
A: Have ninjas attack.

Q: I tend to give my characters terrible problems that they can't solve.
A: Take the most awesome way you can think of for them to solve the problem, then go back and revise your story so they have the tools and the skills to do it.

Q: Are you going to write the fifth Alcatraz book?
A: Yes.

Q: When are you going to write the next Stormlight Archive book?
A: Wrote the first chapter today.

For more brilliant writing advice from Brandon Sanderson, be sure and listen to his award-winning podcast, Writing Excuses.

See you next week!

Author Visit with Dene Low

Aloha young writers!

Here's your writing prompt from our visit with author Dene Low:

He stumbled as he stepped up on the curb and looked down to see what had made him trip. Nothing was there but a white glove stained with blood.

Forward your stories to me by e-mail, and I'll send them on to Dene.

Author Skype with Heather Dixon

We had a delightful skype visit today with Heather Dixon, author of Entwined, which made the ALA's Best Fiction for Young Adults list and was in the top ten for romance in 2011.

Heather talked about writing romance, especially about the importance of keeping the romantic relationship in suspense. She also shared some of her writing process with us, which includes ripping out and rewriting entire portions of her books. As a storyboard artist, she says she's used to this sort of thing.

To get to know more about Heather, read her charming and hilarious blog, Story Monster, where you'll see her storyboarding skills in action.