Lana Krumwiede's Blog

My brain lights up when it meets a word game. It’s like a puzzle that’s begging to be solved. So, on those inevitable occasions when I sit down to write and my brain just doesn’t want to cooperate, playing a game is a good solution. It helps me relax and get my head in the game–literally!

With this in mind, I devised a word game that is meant to trick my brain to putting words down on the page. The words might not connect into a smooth narrative yet, but I can do that later. The point is to get some forward momentum and get some actual written material that I can work with. Here’s how it works:

I started with some blank index cards, twenty-four to be exact. I wrote each of the following words on its own index card:

Action5 SensesThoughtsEmotionsDialogueDetailWildDraw Two

Then I did it again. I now had sixteen cards, two for each word. With me so far?

Next, I took a minute to think about the kind of story I was writing. Is there a lot of action? Or do I want to spend more time on thoughts and emotions? Am I going to need a lot of dialogue? I made eight more cards using the above words, repeating any extra that I thought I might need more of. Your choice might be different than mine. Maybe you’ll make three more Thoughts cards, three more Emotions cards, an extra Dialogue card and an extra Detail card. Maybe you’ll make four more Action cards and four more Dialogue cards. Whatever you think is good for your story. Now we have twenty-four cards.

The cards are finished. Once I shuffle them and place them face down, I’m ready to start the game. Here comes the fun part. Yay!

To begin, I draw the card on top and write a sentence from my scene that communicates that aspect of the narrative.

If I draw…
then I write…Action
a sentence that shows something happening.5 Sensesa sentence in which the character is seeing, hearing,
tasting, touching, or smelling something.Detaila sentence that describes a small detail from the setting that
character zeroes in on.Thoughta sentence that shows what the character is thinking.Emotiona sentence that shows what the character is feeling.Dialoguea sentence that shows what someone is saying.Wildany of the above. Writer’s choice.Draw TwoDraw the next two cards and write one sentence
that includes both.

I don’t necessarily have to write sentences that follow the sequence of the scene. I just try to write anything that I can visualize with this particular scene. I continue drawing cards and writing sentences to help me get in the flow of writing. If I get to the end of the deck, I can shuffle the cards, turn them face down again, and start over. When my brain kicks in and wants to make its own choices, I know I don’t need the cards anymore. It’s time to forget the cards and just write!

Later, when I’m ready to edit, I can go back and move those sentences around to make they flow nicely. Some of them won’t fit at all anymore and will need to be cut. The sole purpose of the game is to get myself into the writing groove. Try it and see if it works for you!

More ideas:

Instead of having generic “5 Senses” cards, you could make one card for each of the five senses.Stack the deck by making more wild cards and adding them at the bottom. This will get you weaned off the cards gradually as you get closer to the end of the deck.Play a round-robin storytelling game with your friends where each person in turn has to draw a card and add that kind of sentence to the story. Use this game in a writing workshop to teach narrative weave.Make additional cards that are more difficult or more subtle, such as Mood, Tone, Theme, Foreshadowing, or anything else that fits with your writing style.

Writing is often a solitary pursuit. Many times there is no one waiting for your manuscript. If you don’t finish, you won’t be disappointing anyone but yourself. No one will be mad if you miss your self-imposed deadline, so it doesn’t really feel like a deadline.

There’s an easy way to give your not-a-real-deadline some bite.

Buy a reward for yourself in the form of a gift certificate for your favorite bookstore, for a massage, for a movie, or something similar. Seal it in an envelope. On the outside of the envelope, write your goal and the the date you want to achieve it.

What feels like a treat to you?
Buy a gift card and use it to motivate yourself.

Give it to a trusted someone with the understanding that you can only get it back when you achieve your goal. You agree that if you don’t achieve your goal, this other someone gets to keep the gift card.

We did this in my writing group last year. Everyone brought a gift card to their favorite “Treat Yo Self” restaurant or store. Each of us chose the amount of our own gift card. The only guideline was that it had to be enough to motivate you.

We all set our own writing goals and our own deadlines. Some people really pushed themselves, which is terrific. But sometimes you just need to feel successful, to feel like you’re progressing. In that case, it helps to choose something you know you can accomplish.

At one of our meetings, we each wrote the goal down and put it into an envelope along with the gift card. The deadline date was written on the outside of the envelope. If someone met their goal, they got their own gift card back. If they didn’t meet their goal, the gift card went to another member in the group (a name drawn at random). It was really fun . . . and motivating!

I don’t know about you, but I have all kinds of stories in my head that I want to write, to the point that I feel sad when I realize that it’s physically impossible to write them all. This why it’s a BIG decision for me to choose the next one to focus on. Every choice I make to write something is also a choice not to write something else. Making these decisions is part of the writing process as much as anything else is, and it’s a place where some people get stuck.

In the past, I’ve followed a shiny new idea without stopping to evaluate it. If I spend too much time chasing it too soon, I might feel discouraged and frustrated when I finally realize that for one reason or another, the idea is not going to pan out. No writing is wasted, and I know those experiences have taught me important lessons. However, I’d just as soon make the best choice about which projects to work on BEFORE I spend a lot of time on it.

Sometimes evaluating a story’s potential requires getting into the story a little bit. I might have to take it for a test ride. Spend some time with it. Play around with voice, character, and setting. Try some discovery writing, or even a full-fledged scene. That’s fine. The idea is that before investing HUGE amounts of time on a project,I try to discover whether that the story can give back what I need from it. To make a good choice, I have to ask myself some tough questions and really think it through. The questions and exercises below have become my standard operating procedure, and hopefully they will help guide you in the right (or should I say “write”) direction.

Questions to evaluate the story’s dramatic potential:

Does it have a great premise?Is there a place for a strong protagonist?Is there a bigger story under the surface?Does it need to be combined with something else?Where will the story’s energy come from?Can I envision a compelling climax of some sort (even if I don’t know exactly what it will be)?

Action Item: Watch blockbuster movies and work backward to determine where the story potential comes from. What is the premise and why is it so appealing? Who likes these kinds of movies and why? This is good practice for evaluating dramatic potential.

Action Item: Envision yourself pitching the published book to an agent, an editor, or even a reader. How will you make the story sound compelling? What will convince them to read it? What makes you so excited to share it with them?

Questions to envision what kind of story it will be:

7. What part of the bookstore would it be located?

8. Is there a seasonal aspect to the story?

9. Who is the audience for the story?

Ward Tefft is the owner of Chop Suey Books in Richmond, Virginia.

Action Item: Spend time in bookstores. Notice what kinds of books are out there, where they are placed, and how they’re promoted. Read book jackets. Look at best-sellers lists. These are online of course, but you can usually find them at bookstores too. Chat with the people who work at the bookstore. Ask them questions about frequently requested books. Go often and make friends with them. (This works better in independent bookstores.)

Action Item: Read! And read a lot. Read what’s getting published now, especially in the genres you’re interested in. Pay attention to which books are getting the most buzz and seek out at least some that are in your genre. Read with a writer’s eye. What makes that story work? Or not work?

Questions to determine how marketable the story will be:

10. Will it speak to the sensitivities and interests of my audience?

11. Is it unique enough to distinguish itself from other books?

12. Does it fall into a broad marketable category? Or is it a “niche” book?

Action Item: Get feedback on story potential and marketability from trusted writer-friends. Sometimes it’s hard to look at your own ideas objectively.

Action Item: Go to writers’ conferences and events and ask questions. If you can talk to a published author, ask them about their latest book and why they chose that idea to write about over all the other ideas flying around in their head. How do they make those decisions? If you have a chance to talk to an editor or agent, give them an idea you’re thinking about and ask them how marketable it strikes them. (This only works if you can ask this question in about 30 seconds or less. Don’t drone on about an idea or you’ll lose them.) If you’re not ready to talk about your own work, ask an agent or editor about one of their upcoming releases. What made them want to read that book? What about that book do they think will draw readers in?

A word of caution: Take care not to put too much stock in marketing trends when evaluating an idea. Trends change too quickly for that. Marketability is certainly one of the considerations, but it doesn’t trump everything else. It does, however, make sense to determine which story ideas have the most marketing potential when you have more than one that you feel passionate enough to write.

Questions to discover how much you love the story:

13. Do I love it enough to spend every day with it for many months to come?

14. Is this a book that I would want to read?

15. Do I feel drawn this story? Why am I the person to write it?

16. Can I write this story with joy?  You might substitute another word for joy, depending on where your motivation for writing comes from. Maybe the right question is, Can I write this story with truth? Or, can I write this story with authenticity?

Action Item: Cast your mind into the future and imagine yourself three months from now as you sit down to write. You’re in the middle of writing this book. Are you still enthusiastic? Are you into it more than ever? Or has it become drudgery? Any regrets about choosing this story idea?

Action Item: Pick your top three ideas for books (or stories, or whatever) and write them on index cards. Take the first one and think about how you feel about writing that book. Using post-it notes, write down the emotions and attach them to the index card. Do the same for the other two. Look at the emotions associated with each book and compare them. Where are the strongest emotions? Which emotions do you think will render the best writing? Fear is not a bad thing when it comes to writing. Some of the best writing comes from fear. It all depends on if you’re prepared to go on that journey.

Choosing the next project to work on is always an act of faith. There’s no telling what the future holds. The most important thing is to keep writing, keep producing new material, and do your very best to finish at least some of them.

Good writing wishes to all and many happy returns!

Voice is a mystical thing. Every editor and agent is on the lookout for a manuscript with a strong, unique voice. Most can give examples of great voices, but when it comes down to the nuts and bolts of how an author actually pulls that off . . . well, let’s just say you’re on your own.

Probably the only way to teach yourself how to find the right voice for a story is simply by writing. A lot. And experimenting. Hanging out with your character and getting to know them. Digging down deep and trying out different flavors, rhythms, and textures of voice. Keep digging until it really rings true.

But that’s not to say that there aren’t some concrete things you can do to help you build your voice muscles. I’m sharing a behind-the-scenes look at one very non-mystical, very do-able task for finding a voice: Create your very own style guide for this particular voice.

When companies want to be certain that multiple people working on a website or a document all write with one consistent voice or with the same conventions, they use a collection of guidelines called a style guide. The purpose of a style guide is to steer the writer as they make deliberate choices about words and conventions to elicit the targeted tone, mood, or perception.

You can use the same concept when creating a voice for a character or a narrator. Once you find the voice you want, try to describe the voice so well that another writer could copy it.

That other writer is you, of course—the tomorrow you and the next-week you and so on. I often struggle with my own consistency from day to day, especially in the early stages of a novel. Sometimes I feel like a different writer from one writing day to the next, and sometimes my characters feels a little squishy–sloshing around, switching names, changing backstories. Poor things. Life is tough when you’re a fictional character.

It’s not unusual for me to be halfway through the first draft of a novel before the voice really starts to sing. That’s when you I like to start thinking about the voice I’ve discovered and what makes it unique. But I don’t go back just yet and rewrite the previous scenes.

When you feel that voice coming into focus, start writing down a collection of words that describe it. Those words might be adjectives, emotions, even nouns that elicit a certain mood or tone. This is the beginning of your style guide.

Are you writing a novel from more than one point of view? Are you working on two different projects at the same time? Style guides are fantastic because you can create a different style guide for each voice. That will help you be sure they sound distinguishable and irresistibly unique.

Maybe you have to take a break from a certain project and come back to it weeks or even months later. Read over the style guide as well as the pages you’ve already written. That’s bound to help you slip into that voice again and continue writing.

To create a voice style guide, start by checking out these examples for ideas about how they work and what they look like. These are the more business or academic examples, so think about how that translates into the creative application we’re talking about.

When I started writing a dual-POV novel, I knew I needed the two voices to be distinct, but I struggled with that. That’s when I decided to write a style guide for each. Here’s what I included:

Voice and Tone: How would you describe this character’s dominant expression? How does she present herself to the world? Try pairing a strong adjective with a noun that describes what kind of person she is. Example: Non-nonsense organizer. You can also write a list of ” _________ but not _________” statements. Examples: Witty, but not sarcastic. Straightforward, but not simplistic. Feisty, but not abrasive.

Body Language: What kinds of body language does she favor? How does her backstory reflect in the way she carries herself? What kinds of triggers might alter her body language? When you’re writing dialogue and you need the perfect beat for a certain line, you can take a peek at your body language style guide for some help. Examples: Because her mother constantly corrected her posture, when she feels threatened or insecure, she sits or stands a little straighter without even realizing it.

Speech Patterns: Does she have any quirky phrasing or syntax idiosyncrasies? How does her background affect her speech? Make a list of her personality traits and how each one could manifest in her speech patterns. Example: She is a rule-follower and she is well educated, so she takes great pains to use grammatically correct language.

Thought Process: Get out that list of personality traits again. This time think about how each one of these traits might affect her thought process. Thought process is something that becomes more important when you are writing from a very deep POV. Example: She tends to go about tasks in methodical, systematic ways. That tells me that her thoughts will generally move logically from one idea to the next. Rarely does she have thoughts that come out of nowhere.

Word Bank: Make lists of words or phrases that your character tends to use. Think about exclamations, verbs, nouns, modifiers, expressions of emotion. Examples: “My stars!” is very different from “What the hell?” And there are all kinds of words for a bathroom, depending on one’s background and on the context. Would your character say toilet, john, powder room, little girls’ room, the commode, the crapper or would they make up their own funny name for it? Whatever it is, write it down so you can be consistent. Remember to go easy on repeated words or phrases. If you’re too heavy handed with it, you’ll annoy readers.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that a style guide is not the only element involved in creating a strong voice. But if you’re struggling to find the right voice for your character, a style guide can get you on the right path. Or, if you feel like you know the voice but it’s not coming through strong enough, see if a style guide will help you bring it out more.

I’m a big proponent of writing groups. A good writing group is wonderful for building a support system and for getting feedback on your writing. But writing groups can get stuck in a rut sometimes. If your meetings are starting to feel a little stale, a game can liven them up. Playing boosts creativity and builds trust. Try one of these games with your writing friends and let loose the goofiness!

Elevator Pitch

As a group, brainstorm a list of iconic movie titles. Continue until you have twenty-four movie titles that everyone is pretty well familiar with. Once you agree on the list, you’re ready to start the game.

One person goes first. On their turn, they choose two movie titles from the list and pairing them up in the classic elevator pitch format: _____________ meets ______________. (If you want random pairings, you can figure out a way to generate a random number on the list. The title next to that number is the movie in the first blank. Then do it again to fill the second blank.) For example, you might end up withThe Firm meets Willie Wonka. Or Ferris Bueller meets The Matrix. Or Diary of a Wimpy Kid meets The Ten Commandments. Now take a few minutes and have everybody write a super short plot summary for that novel or movie. Two or three sentences should do it.

Keep going until every player has had at least one turn to choose the two titles. This silly game will flex your creative muscles and generate ridiculous story ideas. And who knows? One of those goofy ideas might spark something worthwhile!

2. Character Icebreaker

To help each other explore characters, you can play an icebreaker game with everyone playing on behalf of one of their characters. Here’s an easy way to do it.

You’ll need a pack of blank index cards and this list of icebreaker questions (or something similar). From the beginning, each player chooses a character from their current work-in-progress, and throughout the game, they will answer as their character would.

Players take turns being the moderator. The moderator chooses a question from the list and asks the same question to all the players. Each player thinks about how their character would respond to the question and writes their answer on a card. The moderator then collects the cards. Setting a timer is optional.

Once the moderator has all the answer cards, he reads them aloud and the other players try to guess which person wrote that answer. If you want to take this concept further, you could play a commercial conversation game with everyone answering as their characters would. Games like Table Topics, Loaded Questions, or Say Anything, would work nicely.

3. Brainwriting

For this game, I adapted a technique known as 6-3-5 Brainwriting, which was originally developed for nurturing innovation in business and marketing.

The number of rounds in the game will be equal to the number of people in the group. We did this with six people, so there were six rounds. Each round is five minutes, which meant the whole thing took thirty minutes.

In the first round, each person writes a problem or challenge at the top of their paper. It might be something to do with their story, their writing life, book promotion, or anything writing-related. You could probably do this on a blank piece of paper, but if you like, you can have a look at the simple grid I used.

For Round Two, everyone passes their paper to the person on the left. Each person writes three ideas for dealing with the problem written at the top of the paper they have. Five minutes should be enough time to do that. Brainstorming is supposed to be fast and not all ideas are going to be great. That’s perfectly fine because a less-than-great idea can lead to the perfect solution. There was a bit of groaning and begging for more time in the early rounds, but then everyone eventually caught on to the fact that they had to spit out ideas quickly.

Repeat Round Two until everyone at the table has had a turn to add ideas to each paper. If you want to keep going, you could have the papers travel around the table twice, each time adding more ideas. We agreed that we weren’t allowed to repeat someone else’s idea, but we could add a different variation of a previous idea. We also agreed that we could draw a little star or a smiley face on a previous idea that we agreed with.

At the end of all the rounds, each paper should reach its original owner. After that, we took a few minutes to look them over, discuss, and circle our favorite ideas. In just half an hour of our meeting time, everyone went home with at least fifteen new ideas to help solve a problem. The game lended a fantastic feeling of encouragement and support to our group.

I suppose this last one might not fall into solidly into the game category, but we treated it like one. And that’s the point–don’t take any of these activities too seriously. Encourage everyone to be silly and insist on no judging of ideas. You’ll be surprised at how much it improves the atmosphere in the group.

When my daughter was about nine years old, she went through a whining phase. Oh my goodness. Nothing pushes all my parental buttons like a whiny kid. Give me nails on a chalkboard over whiny kid any day of the week.

Rather than constantly losing my cool and making things worse, she and I developed a strategy. Whenever she started with one of those cranky-whiney comments, I’d say something like, “Yay! A whining contest! Let me try.” Summoning an exaggerated complain-y voice, I’d uncork a really great whine. “Your turn,” I’d say, then she would try to beat my whine. We’d keep going until we were both laughing like lunatics. Ninety percent of the time, she forgot what she was complaining about in the first place.

Self-doubt comes with creativity like a side of loaded curly fries.

Recently I went through a stretch in my writing life where I was struggling with negative feelings. Now, my intellectual brain understands that this is absolutely normal. Every writer has had to deal with self-doubt at some point, and many face it every day. Writing is one of those creative pursuits that just seems to automatically come with a big old side of self-doubt. Like a combo-meal. Or a BOGOGroupon. Something like that.

But when I’m in the middle of it, it feels like the worst case ever. My irrational brain is convinced my situation is unique, and no one else could ever be such a loser of a writer!

Usually I just try to wait it out until it passes. This time, however, I was thinking about how my self-doubt often sounds like a cranky, whiny kid–I wonder if that’s why whiny talk triggers me so–and that made me think of the whining contest. What would happen if I actually acknowledged all that self-doubt I was feeling? When I stopped and listened to what the negative voices were saying, I was amazed how incredibly inaccurate they were.

Now, I can’t say if that whining contest thing is a legitimate parenting strategy–I only know it worked for me and my daughter. I did read up a little on what the Internet parenting consortium has to say about dealing with kids when they have a meltdown, and some of it is pretty on-the-nose when it comes to dealing with self doubt.

To begin with, do a little detective work and figure out the source of the meltdown. According to one parenting site, cranky kids are usually feeling overwhelmed. They might be

tiredhungry or thirstyboredangry or frustratedfeeling powerless or weakfeeling unsafe or threatenedfeeling unloved, disconnected, and invisiblefeeling that no one cares.

Is your writer-self feeling any of these? If you can identify the root of the problem, you can start brainstorming ideas to deal with the problem. For example, maybe I’m feeling disconnected, which means I can call one of my writer friends for a chat. If it’s a chronic disconnect, organize some kind of writers support group. The point is, translating the self-doubt into action items makes me feel much more equipped to deal with it.

If self doubts are continually creeping in and crippling your productivity, try making them part of your process. When you sit down to write, give yourself a finite time to wallow in despair. (This is temporary. Permanent wallowing is not helpful, in my experience.) Here’s what I recommend:

Facing down self-doubt can be part of your creative process.



Set the timer for three minutes and give yourself full wallowing privileges. Listen to the negative voices; say them out loud if that helps. Write them down. Make a list of all the bad things that could happen or all the ways you could fail. Do whatever you need to do to get those voices out of your head and into the daylight where you can get a good look at them. After the timer goes off, switch the brain to rational-thinking mode. Using your analytical brain, label those thoughts for exactly what they are: Untrue. Unkind. Unlikely. Irrelevant. Irrational. Some of the things on that list will be downright ridiculous.Now that the voices are silenced for the next little while, get to writing!

And you know what? If one of those things on the bad list does happen, so be it. At least you tried. You won’t know if you don’t try. Your job is to prove the pessimist inside you wrong. Choosing not to try means choosing not to live true, and that’s never a good choice.

Break the ice and start meaningful conversations with your characters.

I’m a plot person.

Most writers I know either start with a character and work to find the plot from there or they start with a situation and then find the right character to put into it. For me, the situation is usually how the story idea first appears in my head. Which means that I have to work hard to find the character. I’ve learned a few different techniques to help me tune into my character and I’m always on the lookout for interesting and helpful tools.

Let me introduce you to my new favorite: “Nice to Meet,” a game from Feeloty. (Don’t worry; I don’t work for Feeloty or have any kind of relationship with them. I’m just sharing a nifty product and how I like to use it.) This is a deck of cards meant for parents, teachers, and therapists to talk to children and get to know them better. It works really well for writers, too, since we need to find out what makes our characters tick.

The cards come packaged in a nice box that makes it easy to retrieve them. The idea is pretty simple: Each card has images of two different, but related places, objects, or ideas. The people playing the game discuss which one of the two images they feel more connected to and why. I should also add that the cards are meant for kids, but most of them apply to adults as well. I write middle-grade novels, so most of my characters are the perfect age for this.

You’ll notice right away that the cards come in three colors: green, blue, and purple. The green cards are straightforward and a little easier to open up about. Blue gets a little more abstract, and purple gets deeper still. But none of them are awkward or weird.

Instructions come with the cards, and the purpose and suggested gameplay is explained. I’ll explain how I use the cards, but you’ll probably have your own ideas about how they can be helpful.

First, I try to imagine my character sitting down with me to play. I try to think about what they look like, what they’re wearing and whether they brought anything with them and why. Then I pull out a card that I want to discuss.

Next I imagine myself responding to the card as genuinely as I can. I do this because I find that it’s easier to get someone to talk to you if you share your own feelings as well. It feels balanced that way. (True for real people and fictional people alike.) Second, it helps me separate my own feelings from my characters feelings, which can get jumbled up sometimes.

After I give my answer, I try to imagine what my character would say as their response. In addition, I also imagine what their body language is. Do they seem confident? Shy? Annoyed? Uncomfortable? And where is that emotion coming from? What’s the subtext hiding under the surface?

Take this card, for example. My character is drawn to camping because she has happy memories of camping with her dad, and that leads me to explore that relationship. The camping connection also gives me a great idea for a scene in the book where she goes camping with her dad. I can think of a lot of great ways that a camping scene can work into my plot.

I don’t have to put everything I know about her into the book–in fact I won’t have room for that. But as the author, I need to know her well enough to understand what’s going on in her head. I need to get the hows and whys of her reactions to events that are unfolding.

After the character’s initial answer, I think about if I would ask a follow-up question or not. Some characters get downright chatty and sometimes you get the feeling that you can’t really push them any further until you spend more time with them and get to know them better. I suppose the trick to getting a realistic response is to treat them as if they were a real person.

If you feel awkward about doing this exercise in isolation, try it with writing friends or a writing group. In the instruction booklet, find the gameplay instructions listed under “Group or Family.” Each writer should choose one of their characters and answer as that character would. This is great fun (for writers, anyway) and a helpful character exercise.

Check out “Nice to Meet” and see if it helps you with your characters. You might uncover some surprising things!

 So, this came in the mail today: the fourth printing of Freakling in paperback.

Happy Fourth!

(Now I need fireworks and hot dogs.)

Many thanks to all the wonderful people at Candlewick and to all the readers who have enjoyed Taemon’s story.

A warm welcome at Bettie Weaver Elementary.

Here’s what I learned today: Breakfasting with readers at Bettie Weaver Elementary School is the best way to start the day! We had muffins, fruit, and water and talked about Freakling. We also ran a few highly scientific tests to see if anyone had any latent psi. Good potential there!

Testing for psi.

The best part was that I had spend the previous month exchanging short video responses with the kids on Flipgrid. What a fabulous way to connect! Highly recommend. Many thanks to amazing librarian Lara Ivey and her colleagues. Also highly recommend.     

Freakling fans at Bettie Weaver!

School visits are my kind of fun! I had a great time at Bailey Bridge Middle School last week. They wowed me with great questions about Freakling. I could tell they put a lot of thought into their reading. Many thanks to the awesome librarians, Kim Kuhn, Linda Meeker, Erin Walker, and equally awesome students, teachers, and administration for such a wonderful visit!