YA – Page 8 – Destiny Cole

December 20, 2014December 30, 2014

Favorite YA Reads of 2014

The year of 2014 brought a lot of change in my life and so I didn’t read as much as I normally do (don’t worry, I plan on making up for this in 2015). But I still read at least a book a week, so out of those, here are the top two out of several categories!

Sci-fi books:

These Broken Stars by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

Fantasy books:

Infernal Devices series by Cassandra Clare

Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo

Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian

This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers

In the After by Demitria Lunetta

Thrillers:

All Our Yesterdays by Cristin Terrell

Jasper Dent series by Barry Lyga

Contemporary:

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell (oh and Fangirl! Okay basically all Rainbow Rowell)

Side Effects May Vary by Julie Murphy

Not really sure how to categorize:

I also read Veronica Rossi’s Under the Never Sky trilogy this year and loved it! It’s sort of sci-fi/dystopian/thriller

If you Find Me by Emily Murdoch – It’s hard to consider this contemporary because it’s so dark, but it’s so good!

December 17, 2014December 30, 2014

Tips For Writing a Dual POV

Okay, so I’m not an expert by any means, but before my massive revision I had one resounding note from people who read my book.

“The dual narrative voices were too similar”

Ugh.

How disheartening because they were SO incredibly distinct in my mind. Writers can attest that you know your characters and of course know their “voice” so when that is not portrayed on the page, it’s difficult to know where to start.

Yet when I went back and started revising… you can guess it… the further into the book it got, the more similar they sounded.

Here are three tips I picked up while revising:

1. At the beginning, exaggerate their voice. I went back through and revised my male character and probably went overboard on everything from curse words to slang and whatever to differentiate. I needed to get in a rhythm of his voice and figure out how he would say the things he was already responding too. He’s not going to say “what was that?” he’s going to say, “What the hell?” He’s not going to wax on poetically in his internal monologue, he’ll be more dry, but also intense. In my effort to differentiate and set his tone, I accidentally made him wildly misogynistic. Oops! Had to rein that one back in 🙂 After I went overboard, I revised all his chapters back down to make him more realistic and relatable, but overall it really helped to establish his voice.

2. Revise one POV at a time. In my novel it was basically an every other chapter kind of split (though it did vary) and so I would ONLY revise one character POV at a time. So that would be revising chapters 1,3,5… and go all the way to the end. Then I would start back over at 2,4,6… This helped me SO much in keeping in the “head” of my character.

3. Read your chapters out loud. This is particularly useful when you are having voice issues. You just may realize that they are sounding more similar. Also, while reading out loud, tweak as you go rather than go back.

Extra:

If you’re writing YA, pretty much make sure you only use contractions (aka: it’s rather than it is). This helps establish voice in YA characters and can be used to differentiate voice as well.

So these are a few things I picked up while trying to differentiate my dual POV! Hope these help!

November 7, 2014

Go Time!

Today is the alternate round of Pitch Wars!

Thanks a bazillion to my mentor Trisha Leigh whose insights, encouragement and brilliant suggestions made my manuscript a whole new shiny object! Thanks to my fellow mentee Anna Patel for all the encouragement and behind the scene freak outs! And finally special thanks to Brenda Drake and Dee Romito for hosting and putting this whole contest on!

This was such a fun experience and I met so many amazing writer friends! I am so happy I was asked to be involved!

#TeamLeighgit #forever

October 20, 2014November 4, 2014

Revision Update

My OH my!!!

What began as a simple revision has really evolved into almost a totally new book. I have learned so much from Trisha that I will forever be grateful to her for all her writerly wisdom she has bestowed upon me!

If nothing else comes from this Pitch Wars contest, I will have at least learned how to be a better writer. I learned a lot about plot structuring and character arcs and unnecessary dialogue tags! 🙂

I’m still not done revising and the deadline is creeping up on me.

Oh and did I mention that we are moving the weekend before the contest goes live and all my revisions are due?

How I’m going to balance work, parenting, volunteer stuff, writing, revisions, school, family, friends AND moving… actually just thinking about all that makes me sleepy. Night y’all!

September 17, 2014December 21, 2014

Pitch Wars Contestant Alert!

So as you might be wondering… I am STILL working on my directed revision from the end of June and have not sent another query letter or anything. In fact, I contacted the agents who still had my MS and asked if they would hold off on reading it until I got them a newer draft. They were all absolutely gracious and agreed. That’s how much I believed that I needed a huge overhaul on my book.

You might guess that due to the lack of progress, I was what you might call – STUCK! I was overwhelmed and not really sure how to get where I wanted my book to be.

I’ve been watching Brenda Drake’s Pitch Wars contest for the last few years, but never was at a place where I could enter. This year, when submission time came around, I decided to give it a shot. Getting a chance to have my novel edited by a professional YA writer would be a dream come true. So I entered and lo and behold, Trisha Leigh picked me as an alternate!

I’m so ridiculously excited to begin working on my SIX PAGE edit letter and a MS full of line edits! Eeks! I have such a renewed vision for this book and it felt soooo good to get picked out of so many people (over 1200 submissions) and have someone who loved my book! yay!