provocations

AUTHOR IN PROGRESS is here to help you Prepare, Write, Improve, Rewrite & Persevere

By Writer Unboxed / November 1, 2016 /

AUTHOR IN PROGRESS is officially releasing TODAY, and we’re so excited for you to meet our book — filled with NEW essays on the journey every writer takes to produce a novel. That’s not just the journey of the not-yet-published author either; it’s also the journey of the published author. The end of one book is never the end of the journey for an author in progress.

AUTHOR IN PROGRESS is divided into 7 sections, with drill-it-down tips to help you move through all the phases of story creation.

1. We’ll help you to PREPARE for writing a book, with:

  • Why Write? Understanding Your Deepest Motivations, by Barbara O’Neal
  • Setting Realistic Goals: Gain Power by Sidestepping the One-Size-Fits-All Mindset, by Erika Liodice
  • Stocking Up on Literary Gatorade: How an Early Dose of Reality Can Help You Succeed, by Margaret Dilloway
  • Your Unique Story: Become Your Novel’s Secret Ingredient, by Robin LaFevers
  • Being Unboxed: How Faithful, Confident, Boundary-Pushing Writers Rise Above the Noise, by Donald Maass
  • Put a Ring on It: How to Know if Your Story Is “The One,” by Erika Robuck
  • DEBATABLE pro and con articles on Do You Need an MFA by Jael McHenry and Catherine McKenzie
  • Mining for Diamonds: Strike it Rich with Research–Without Getting Buried Alive, by David Corbett
  • Go Public: Why Creating the Story Behind the Story Begins Now, by Dan Blank

    • 2. We’ll help you get into the right headspace to WRITE, and keep writing, with:

  • This is a Test: Why You Should Allow Yourself to Explore in the First Draft, by Greer Macallister
  • Story First, Plot Second: Develop Your Protagonist’s Story-Specific Past, by Lisa Cron
  • DEBATABLE writing process articles by Anne Greenwood Brown (Plot It), Ray Rhamey (Pants It) and Anna Elliott (Write ‘Fat’ or ‘Lean’)
  • Write Like You Mean It: How to Maximize Your Minutes, by Barbara O’Neal
  • Find the Muse Within the Story: How to Recognize and Search Beyond Ordinary Inspirations, by Dave King
  • Composing Humans on the Page: How to Mine, Visualize, and Empathize Your Way to Authentic Characters, by Julianna Baggott
  • Write True: Bring Authenticity to Your Work with Details from the Natural World, by Juliet Marillier
  • Writer’s Block: How to UnClog the Well, by Kim Bullock
  • Light It Up–Don’t Burn It Down: What to Do When You Think You Can’t Write Another Word, by Gwen Hernandez
  • Say My Name: How to Empower Yourself with One Simple Word (Writer), by Jo Eberhardt

    • 3. We’ll help you INVITE criticism of your work in the best possible way, and understand why it’s crucial, with:

  • The Psychology of Critique: Resist the Natural Impulse to Shut Down, by Therese Walsh
  • The Art of the Invitation: How Asking the Right Questions Can Better Shape Your Critique Experience, by Annie Neugebauer
  • Reading the Tea Leaves of Critique: How to Draw Meaning from Murky Feedback, by Jael McHenry
  • Creating Conversations with Story Evolutionists: How Beta Readers of All Kinds Can Help Your Story Evolve, by Brunonia Barry
  • Illuminations of Theme: How Critique Can Teach Us What Our Work Is Trying to Say, by Jeanne Kisacky
  • Skin Like an Elephant: How Critiques Affect the Stories of Professional Writers, by Sarah McCoy
  • Giving Back: How Helping Someone Else Write a Better Book Turns into a Win-Win-Win, by Keith Cronin

    • 4. We’ll help you to IMPROVE your work–and your mindset–as you write, with:

  • How Much Craft Do You Need? When to Learn and When to Just Write, by […]
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    • Dehumanization in Fiction

    By Therese Walsh / October 4, 2016 /

    My favorite film is Shawshank Redemption, an adaptation by Frank Darabont of a novelette by Stephen King. The story perfectly hits my trigger spot, injustice, and my sweet spot, hope, and its resolution feels more satisfying to me than any other movie on the planet. So even though you can find it on television frequently – I’m often convinced it runs there on a 24-hour loop – we recently donated our standard DVD (which was an upgrade from an original VHS tape) and purchased the updated DVD to have access to extra features.

    As always, the story of the story creates insights for writers. But what caught me up, made me hit pause and ponder, was an interview clip with actor Clancy Brown, who played Captain Hadley. For anyone has hasn’t seen the movie, Hadley is a horrible human being, ready to beat the hell out of anyone, at any time, for any infraction. In the extra features, actor Brown talked about an offer that had been made to him early on to interview former prison guards in order to get into character. He declined. His character was simply so bad that he didn’t want to pin inspiration for him on any living human. It was something he struggled with initially as an actor: Who was this Hadley, and why was he so evil? How could he connect with that to play the character authentically?

    Here’s what got me. Bob Gunton, who played fellow horror-show human, Warden Norton, told him… Well, why not listen for yourself? My video clip of the video is just below, which I’m hoping is legal as this is being shared for the sake of education.

    Interesting thoughts, no? Narrative as memory play, skewed purposefully to one side because the point-of-view character thinks about another character in black-and-white terms, therefore that character can be portrayed as black and white, and/or that character is simply the personification of something that lacks dimension in the rendering of a story–like a corrupt prison system. It’s a flip on the more usual (for me) translation of place coming across as character in a story.

    Can books get away with these tricks–the dehumanization of a person so that person can stand for a no-shades-of-gray-here concept like corruption, exploitation and barbarism?

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