Happy Birthday to me!

Yes, I know, I know. I should have posted on Monday ’cause i swore to myself I’d have a regular blog schedule. BUT… this week is special because today is my birthday. YAY me! I’m 25 now on the 25th of January and my blog is 25 days old. So I hope this year will be 25 times better than all the past 24 years of my life. No, I know it will be better 😀

Outlining for lazy pantsers – my way

Lately, I’ve been having problems with my WIPs. I’m currently working on six works and I hope I can turn at least one of them into a novel. But that requires a lot of imagination and a tad bit of planning, which is something I really hate doing.
I found myself literally stuck for weeks, not knowing where to go from here and how to make my ideas grow. So I started playing a game that helped me out a few times. I call it ‘Go with the flow’ (:P) and it’s surprisingly fun, the last thing you’d expect from a session of outlining.

Here’s how it goes.

Say you have this little idea, but don’t know how to develop it further than two chapters. Let’s pretend main character’s name is John and his love interest is Alex (who’s a guy, ’cause if you play with me, you gotta be naughty) .  Say you want to write a story about John and Alex breaking up and the whole story has to focus on how John, the one who’s been dumped, tries to win Alex back.
You’re thinking for days what crazy things should happen so that John and Alex can get back together and have their magnificent HEA, but you can’t find anything original? Don’t worry. Coming up with a plan is easier than you’d think.
Just set the mood for your writing. When I need fresh ideas I always take out my notebook and my favorite fountain pen and I immediately enter into ‘writing mode’. Obviously having a nice cup of coffee or tea close by is a must (♥_♥)
Now write what you know about your story. Outliners can write dozens of pages about settings, characters and possible story arches, but you know we’re not capable of that. it’s tiring and annoying and it takes time that you’d otherwise spend on actually writing. And I know your fingers are itching to write now. But just have a little patience and play this game with me.
So write what you know. A paragraph is more than enough.
What’s the story so far? Who’s John? Who’s Alex? Why are they breaking up? How do they fee about this? If you want you can go farther and talk about their issues, family background and occupation. I never go that far, but, hey, it’s your game.
Now that this paragraph’s done, you move on to actual game – the ‘what if’ stage. You’ve been thinking for a week what does John need to do in order to get Alex back, but you’ve obviously haven’t reached any results, otherwise you wouldn’t be playing this game, right? So that can only mean one thing. You’re looking at the story from the wrong perspective. Now, what if we change John’s motivations. Say John realized he doesn’t care anymore whether Alex dumped him or not. Say he realized it was high time they both looked for happiness somewhere else. AHA! Now that’s a new world of possibilities, right?
What if Alex realizes he’d committed the biggest mistake of his life in letting John go? Now the situation reverses and he is the one who wants John back, this time for good.
But what if John already found another boyfriend? And what if that boyfriend is everything Alex isn’t?
See how simple it is to come up with a conflict with just a few ‘what if’ questions? You just went with the flow.
You can ask as many ‘what ifs’ as you want and come up with numerous subplots and conflicts in the process.
Now we move on to the final stage. say you’ve decided to stop with the ‘what ifs’ and you want to find the ending. What do we have so far? John and Alex have broken up. John makes a half-assed attempt to win Alex back (or not, it may be just a short internal conflict), but then realizes maybe he’s tired of all the drama and wants a bit time apart. Sure, he loves Alex (or Alex wouldn’t have been in the picture until now), but … maybe they just aren’t meant for each other. Maybe Alex needs someone who’s more like him (insert all the things awesome about Alex) and maybe John, too, needs someone who resembles him more (insert things that make John different from Alex). Enter new guy in the picture. Now John is single. He’s not really sure he wants a relationship, but then he meets … Alan.
This is pretty much where our ‘what if’ game took us.
Now we play the ‘maybe that’s what happens next’ part. It’s kind of a mix between ‘what if?’ and ‘what now?’ and lots of ‘maybes’.
What happens when Alan and John meet? Sparks fly? Or maybe not? Maybe John is still thinking about Alex and he’s unconsciously comparing the two? But Alan is not an idiot. He knows the who story with Alex (maybe an old friend of John’s told him) and he’s determined to win John’s affection. What happens when Alex finds out? Will he fight back or resign to loosing John?
But what if (see? I’m still using it) little by little, John discovers things about Alan that he doesn’t like. What happens when Alan is not the guy he thought he was? What happens when Alex suddenly changes battle plans and gets close to John pretending he’s over him and just wants to stay friends? Now what if John is particularly shocked one day because of something Alan did and what if he stumbles upon Alex one drunken night and confesses his worries?  What happens next? Maybe they have one wild passionate night and John realizes all he wants is Alex and that’s all he wanted all along. Not a satisfying ending? yeah I thought so too. the awesome part about this game is that you can go on forever until you discover the plot you like.
For example, i can go back to my story so far and dig up a subplot.
Say John has an old friend who had the hots for Alan, but Alan likes John. so when John and Alex break up, that guy let’s Alan know so that Alan can have his chance. what a nice guy, right?
So say John has drunken sex with Alex and they confess they’ve both been stupid and want to get back together. So John goes to Alan and breaks up with him. Alan is hurt and cries on John’s ‘friend’ shoulder and that guy is so pissed that he decides to take revenge on John by hurting Alex (some up with some major life-endangering drama).
Now we’ve come up with a new conflict and a subplot. Isn’t this fun? At this point you can envision the ending so easily that you don’t even need questions anymore.
Of course everyone needs a happy ending. So Alan saves the day by telling John that Alex is in danger. John plays hero a bit (now maybe this was the whole problem of their relationship all along. Alex just wasn’t sure John loved him enough). Then the bad guy confesses to Alan that he did this for him, ’cause he loves him and Alan forgives him (maybe they need a story of their own to get together so let’s make bad guy simmer in his own juices a little longer). Alex forgives John’s  bad friend an John gives in at his lover’s plea. And now they all live happily ever after. More or less 😛
The only problem that’s left is actually writing the story LOL

Well, I hope I can help many newbies like me by sharing my method and hope I explained it well enough. I really couldn’t have done it without an example.
Know any easy methods to outline? Feel free to share, I’m all ears (*_*)

My Bookish – New Year’s Challenge

So this is a another New Year’s resolutions related post. My online friend, Livia Olteano, hosts this challenge on her blog Butterfly-o-Meter Books

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I decided to start off with small steps. My book-related goals for 2013 are:

– to read at least 40 books (I know, really small step, but I’d rather concentrate on writing
– to publish at least one book (not taking into account the one I already have contract for)
-to write something outside of my comfort zone (contemporary angst-free MM)
– to reedit and self-publish my old short stories

 Wish me luck, guys!

New Year’s Resolutions

So, just a couple of days before the New Year I happened to find – by pure coincidence, I swear – my last year’s list of New Year’s resolutions ( which sounded more like wishes, actually 😛 ), and I gasped in surprise when I realized I’d actually managed to accomplish four out of five (Can you guess what the unaccomplished item was? Gettinga  boyfriend! Kudos to me T_T ). Still, that’s pretty awesome, right?

This year I made a new list, also with five items, and I hope they’ll come true again.
Did you accomplish your resolutions?

My fist post aka 3 reasons to have a blog before getting published

Hello. My name’s Shayla Mist and I’m an M/M romance writer. I myself don’t know why I feel so connected tothis genre. I wrote from a very young age, mainly poetry and essays, and I’ve always been inclined towards romance, but there’s just something fascinating about two men in love. I find myself daydreaming, more often than not, about ways to get men together.
Like any wanna-be writer, I’ve struggled with many unfinished stories because of lack of  experience in weaving plots, but, eventually, I’ve reached a wise conclusion: you can accomplish anything if you have enough will.
Thus, I’ve become determined to consider myself a writer, no matter whether I deserve to be one or not. Someone once said that if you keep on telling yourself something, one day you’ll end up believing it. And I trust that’s true.
Plus, there’s also Einstein’s famous quote – “Genius is 1% talent and 99% hard work…”. Yeah, well, if you take out the first word and replace it with “writing”, you’ll have my mantra.
But I digress. The whole point of this blog is sharing my writing experience with fellow writers and, hopefully one day, with readers too. Why I decided to make this , even if I have no books out?

1. To allow people to know me. 
Both readers and publishers are more and more interested in authors’ on-line presence. This is something I’ve noticed first-hand as a reader and avid follower of dozens of author blogs. I enjoy getting to know the people behind the books, commenting on blog hops and reading author interviews. On-line presence is extremely important for authors and wanna-be writers if they plan on making their writing accessible.

2. To get motivated
Creating a blog is a great way to get out of your shell (lol) and make yourself known, but more importantly, for those who suffer of chronicle procrastination, like myself, it is a great way to commit yourself to a goal. Once you gain readership, you will feel guilty if you don’t write and you’ll force yourself to do it. Isn’t that great?

3. To make friends
Last, but not least, I enjoy chatting with people who share my interests and I hope to gain lots of precious friends.

Well, so here it is, my first post. I know most people say stuff like “I’m here!” in their first posts. I hope I got that message across 😛 So, what about you guys? Why do you think having a blog is essential, or, at least, important? Feel free to send me links to your own blogs.

Hugs,
Shyla