Julie Wright - Editor & Author Extraordinaire

A few weekends ago I attended the LDS Storymakers conference in Provo. One of the classes I took was from Julie Wright (a fabulous woman who happens to have read my book The Nedaran Prophecy as an editor and has provided me with some wonderful and incredibly helpful feedback). OK, so I think she is marvelous. Can you tell?

Anyway, the following are my personal notes from Julie's class:

It's Alive
Dialogue -
Dialogue is imperative in a good story. As such, the dialogue should be impressive, sets the mood, and foreshadows what is to come. Things to keep in mind while writing dialogue:
- We reveal a lot about ourselves by what we don't say.
- Don't have characters whose whole purpose is to tell back story.
- You can tell some back story through dialogue, but you have to be VERY careful.
Point of View
Point of View (a.k.a. POV) is who is telling the story. Here are some POV strategies:
- If your going to be in a single person's mind, then you must tell the story from only that persons POV.
- If you as the writer are writing from the main character's POV than don't describe you character as a passerby (i.e. don't say that you has the main character has small hands, black hair, brown eyes. How do you in reality describe yourself?...I hate my hair, maybe I should dye it because....yadayadayada...or I wish I didn't look like I was constantly in a hair state of electric shock.)
- It is better to use he said, she said with dialogue than overkilling dialogue tags with things like "he was enraged."
- To get a good idea on how to write dialogue, it is vital that you read everything (especially outside of your genre). By reading you are getting a subconscious education on how to write.
- Write - write everything. Nothing you write is wasted. Even if no one ever reads it, it is something that has come alive in you and has helped you become a better writer.

Voice
Don't lose your voice in pandering to the public. Make sure that you are writing for yourself and no one else.
- Resonate - Write things that resonates to you. Stay passionate about your topic.
- Use plain language that resonates to the reader. Flowery language or description (even written well) can lose a reader's focus, causing them to skip ahead to dialogue.

Redundancy
Simplify your descriptions to get rid of redundancy.
- It's BAD
- Keep your stuff fresh and unique
- Turn the story on its head
- Don't make all your heros the same
- Challenge yourself & your characters
- Keep it new and different (i.e. try not to write about elves and orcs, but about something no one but you has ever imagined)

Setting
Write as if the setting where its own character.
- The setting should be a living, tactile, breathing thing that shows up in your writing.
- Be aware where your character is standing and where they are going. Know (visualize) where they are.
- Be aware of surroundings - i.e. empty room vs. coffee ship - which is more interesting?
- Include smells, sounds, etc, even if it is only seen as character's are talking while walking.

You
Don't give up (You have no right!)
- Just because you get rejected doesn't mean you should give up.
- You have something in you that needs to be written and needs to be read by someone else.
- You do not have the right to deny your own future. Who knows if the next letter you decided not to send out would have been the one to get you an agent or publisher?

I would like to personally thank Julie Write for her thoughts, and again for her fabulous feedback and suggestions on my book.

For all the other writer's out there I would like to echo Julie's thoughts and say to you Please, Don't Give Up. You have a great story within you and the rest of us our eagerly waiting to read it. Keep up the good work.