Image via Flickr Creative Commons, courtesy of Frederik Andreasson

I love helping writers and one service I offer that’s been particularly valuable is plot consult. Writers who are struggling to finish or who start off with one idea after another only for that great idea to fall flat? They call me. Querying and getting nowhere? Again, contact me.

I’ve busted apart and repaired hundreds of plots. Thus far I’ve yet to meet a plot I couldn’t repair.

But, in my many years of doing this, I’ve seen enough troubled plots to note some common denominators for a failed story. One ingredient for plot disaster stands apart.

Little darlings.

As writers, we are at risk of falling in love with our own cleverness. The “cool” idea, the super amazing mind-blowing twist at the end. We get so caught up in how smart we are that we fail to see that we are our own worst enemy.

Yesterday, I spent three hours talking to a new writer who was simply stuck. No matter how he reworked his novel, it was just going nowhere. This is one of the reasons I like to get authors to be able to state what their book is about in ONE sentence. Paring away all the pretty prose makes little darlings easier to spot…so you can then terminate with extreme prejudice.

But, since this writer was 60, 000 words deep into his own woods? He needed my eyes.

Hey, sometimes it takes a Viking to raze a village…of little darlings

At first, I wanted him to explain his story to me…

Ten minutes later…

Huh?

After listening to his idea, I pointed out the problem fairly quickly. He’d created what he believed was the world’s most interesting virus. Problem was, the only thing his virus killed was all the conflict in his story.

Because he was SO married to this clever virus, he’d built everything around it. The virus was a little darling and needed to go. Once we repaired THAT? The plot fell together effortlessly…and is pretty fantastic, btw. OUCH! I got a cramp patting myself on the back!

Seriously, once he got out of his own way? He had the story. It was there. I just helped him see it.

In fact, my biggest job consulting on plot is to pull the distraught writer off the body of the little darling and offer grief counseling and the assurance it was for the best.

What’s a Little Darling?

Image via Flikr Creative Commons, courtesy of Niki Sublime

Almost any of us who decided one day to get serious about our writing, read Stephen King’s On Writing. Great book, if you haven’t read it. But one thing King tells us we writers must be willing to do, is that we must be willing to, “Kill the little darlings.”

Now, King was not the first to give this advice. He actually got the idea from Faulkner, but I guess we just took it more seriously when King said it…because now the darlings would die by a hatchet, be buried in a cursed Indian flash drive where they would come back as really bad novels.

…oops, I digress.

Little darlings are those favorite bits of prose, description, dialogue or even characters that really add nothing to the forward momentum or development of the plot. They can also look like “never before thought of ideas” and “wicked twist endings that put Shyamalan to shame.”

To be great writers, we must learn to look honestly at all little darlings. Why? Because they are usually masking critical flaws in the overall plot. Why are little darlings so dangerous?

Because th-they come back….but *shivers* they are…different.

Let me explain why it is important to let go. Here are three BIG reasons your little darlings need to die.

#1 We Risk Mistaking Melodrama for Drama

Drama is created when a writer has good characterization that meets with good conflict. The characters’ agendas, secrets and insecurities collide.

As my awesome friend and talented author/writing teacher Les Edgerton mentioned a while back in his lesson about dialogue, subtext is vital. It’s more than what’s said. This can only happen when 3-D characters meet with real baggage that gets in the way of solving a CORE STORY PROBLEM.

In the new book I’m working on, my bike officer Landri had a father who wanted a son. She never quite lived up to his expectations. The need for his approval, in part, propelled her to become a cop. When she is reckless and legitimately criticized by a fellow officer that she should have waited for help, she takes it personally. Why?

She doesn’t hear that another cop is genuinely concerned for her. She hears the old recording from her father that she isn’t enough.

Fiction is a lot like life (only way more interesting). In life, we sometimes strike out at others not because of what they did or didn’t do, rather we are punishing them for unhealed wounds from our past often inflicted by other people. If my protagonist is pushing away the one person there to help her, she is five steps back from solving the core plot problem that’s upended her life.

Conflict.

Since little darlings are often birthed from a flimsy plot, the writer is left to manufacture conflict (melodrama). This weakness often manifests in pointless fight scenes, chase scenes, flashbacks or hospital/funeral scenes.

Zzzzzzzzzz.

We are creating bad situations, not authentic dramatic tension.

#2 We Mistake Complexity for Conflict

Complexity is easily mistaken for conflict. I witness this pitfall in most new novels. I teach at a lot of conferences, and in between my sessions, I like to talk new and hopeful writers. I often ask them what their books are about and the conversation generally sounds a bit like this:

Me: What’s your book about?

Writer: Well, it is about a girl and she doesn’t know she has powers and she’s half fairy and she has to find out who she is. And there’s a guy and he’s a vampire and he’s actually the son of an arch-mage who slept with a sorceress who put a curse on their world. But she is in high school and there is this boy who she thinks she loves and…

Me: Huh? Okay. Who is the antagonist?

Writer: *blank stare*

Me: What is her goal?

Writer: Um. To find out who she is?

Me: *looks for closest bar*

Most new novels don’t have a singular core story problem. It is my opinion that new writers, deep down, know they’re missing the backbone to their story—A CORE STORY PROBLEM IN NEED OF RESOLUTION. Without a core story problem, conflict is impossible to generate, and the close counterfeit “melodrama” will slither in and take its place.

I believe when we are new writers, we sense our mistake on a subconscious level, and that is why our plots grow more and more and more complicated.

When we fail to have a core story problem, often we resort to trying to fix the structural issue with Bond-o putty and duct tape and then hoping no one will notice. How do I know this?

I used to own stock in Plot Bond-o :D.

“Complicated” is Not Conflict

We can create an interstellar conspiracy, birth an entirely new underground spy network, resurrect a dead sibling who in reality was sold off at birth, or even start the Second Civil War to cover up the space alien invasion…but it ain’t conflict. Interstellar war, guerilla attacks, or evil twins coming back to life can be the BACKDROP for conflict, but alone are not conflict.

And, yes, I learned this lesson the hard way. Most of us do. This is all part of the author learning curve, so don’t fret and just keep writing and learning.

Little darlings are often birthed from us getting too complicated. We frequently get too complicated when we are trying to BS our way through something we don’t understand and hope works itself out.

Um, it won’t.

Tried it. Just painted myself into a corner. But we add more players trying to hide our errors and then we risk falling so in love with our own cleverness—the subplots, the twist endings, the evil twin—that we can sabotage our entire story.

“Complicated” is the child of confusion, whereas “complexity” is the offspring of simplicity.

#3 We Fail to Spot/Correct Weaknesses

We fall so in love with our fun characters, our witty dialogue, our amazing inter-stellar conspiracy that we never finish. We can’t finish.

Since we aren’t being honest about why the book isn’t working, we aren’t doing the hard work that would make the story publishable and we end up playing Literary Barbies.

In the end, be truthful. Are your “flowers” part of a garden or covering a grave? We put our craftiest work into buttressing our errors, so I would highly recommend taking a critical look at the favorite parts of your manuscript and then get real honest about why they’re there. Make the hard decisions, then kill them dead and bury your pets little darlings for real.

You’ve rewritten me 14 times. You think I’m going to leave without a fight? Hssssssss.

So what do you do with your little darlings? What’s been your experience? Do you have any tips, tools or tactics to help us dispose of the bodies? I really recommend taking my log-line class that’s coming up. I help you pare your story to ONE sentence and this is invaluable for spotting little darlings, honing your plot and you’ll need it for pitching later anyway. Or if you need a Viking to raze your village? E-mail me at kristen at wanaintl dot com.

I LOVE hearing from you guys!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of MARCH, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly. I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel.

Before we go, I want to give you a heads up especially if you are thinking on attending a conference.

I’m holding my ever-popular Your Story in a Sentence class. Can you tell what your book is about in ONE sentence? If you can’t? There might be a huge plot problem. This also helps if you are ever going to query or pitch an agent. The first ten signups get their log-line shredded by MOI for FREE.

Also speaking of FREE, I’d like to mention again the new class I am offering!

How and WHY are we using FREE!?

Making Money with FREE! As a bonus for this class, my friend Jack Patterson who’s so far sold over 150,000 books to come and teach us how to ROCK the newsletter. This is in excess of two hours of training and the recording (as always) comes with purchase.

For those who need help building a platform and keeping it SIMPLE, pick up a copy of my latest social media/branding book Rise of the Machines—Human Authors in a Digital World on AMAZON, iBooks, or Nook. 

The post Trouble With Your Plot? Three Reasons to Kill Your Little Darlings appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

But you LOVE me….

Almost any of us who decided one day to get serious about our writing, read Stephen King’s On Writing. Great book, if you haven’t read it. But one thing King tells us we writers must be willing to do, is that we must be willing to, “Kill the little darlings.” Now, King was not the first to give this advice. He actually got the idea from Faulkner, but I guess we just took it more seriously when King said it…because now the darlings would die by a hatchet, be buried in a cursed Indian filing cabinet where they would come back as really bad novels. …oops, I digress.

Little darlings are those favorite bits of prose, description, dialogue or even characters that really add nothing to the forward momentum or development of the plot. To be great writers, we must learn to look honestly at all little darlings. Why? Because they are usually masking critical flaws in the overall plot.

Today we will address two especially nefarious writing hazards that like to lurk below the wittiest dialogue and most breathtaking description:

Hazard #1—Mistaking Melodrama for Drama

Hazard #2—Mistaking Complexity for Conflict

These two related booby-traps are often hidden beneath our little darlings (clever dialogue, beautiful description, etc).

That is probably why Stephen King recommended we kill them. Yes, kill them dead. No burying them in the Pet Semetary, also known as “revision.” Killing means killing….as in delete forever. Or at least cut them cleanly from the story and hide in a Word folder to give yourself time to grieve and move on with the real novel. Yet, too many times we hang on to those favorite characters or bits of dialogue, reworking them and hoping we can make them fit…at the expense of the rest of the story.

Th-they come back….but *shivers* they are…different.

Let me explain why it is important to let go.

Hazard #1—Mistaking Melodrama for Drama

Drama is created when a writer has good characterization that meets with good conflict. Good characterization is what breathes life into black letters on a white page, creating “people” who are sometimes more real to us than their flesh and blood counterparts. The problem is that characterization is a skill that has to be learned, usually from a lot of mistakes. Yet, time and time again, I see writers—as NY Times Best-Selling Author Bob Mayer would say—moving deck chairs around on the Titanic.

In a last ditch attempt to spare a darling, a writer describes the character more, or gives more info dump or more internal thought, or more back story, yet never manages to accomplish true characterization. So, when something really bad happens, we the reader just don’t care. Les Edgerton, in his book Hooked explores this problem in detail if you would like to read more, but to keep it short and sweet I’m going to explain it this way.

Most of us have driven down a highway at around rush hour, so picture this scenario.

We notice emergency lights ahead. The oncoming traffic lane is shut down and looks like a debris field. Four mangled cars lay in ruins, surrounded by somber EMTs. Do you feel badly? Unless you’re a sociopath, of course you do.

Now, you look into that same oncoming lane and two of the cars you recognize. They belong to friends you were supposed to meet for dinner.

Before you cared…now you are connected.

That is how good characterization makes the difference. If we open our story with this gut-wrenching scene in a hospital where someone is dying, we are taking a risk. Readers will certainly care on a human level, but not on the visceral level that makes them have to close the book and get tissue.

I have had to pry many, many darlings like these away from desperate writers “parents” unwilling to take the scenes off of life support. They wrote opening scenes of car accidents and hospitals and death and child abduction so vivid they couldn’t read their own work without tearing up. I did the same thing early in my writing journey. The problem, however, was this…

No one but us cared.

We hadn’t done enough development of the story to make the readers just as vested as we were. And, because we were so determined to keep these gut-wrenching scenes, we never dug in and did the real work that would have made the audience cry too.

Hazard #2—Mistaking Complexity for Conflict

Complexity is easily mistaken for conflict. I witness this pitfall in most new novels. I teach at a lot of conferences, and, in between my sessions, I like to talk new and hopeful writers. I often ask them what their books are about and the conversation generally sounds a bit like this:

Me: What’s your book about?

Writer: Well, it is about a girl and she doesn’t know she has powers and she’s half fairy and she has to find out who she is. And there’s a guy and he’s a vampire and he’s actually the son of an arch-mage who slept with a sorceress who put a curse on their world. But she is in high school and there is this boy who she thinks she loves and…

Me: Huh? Okay. Who is the antagonist?

Writer: *blank stare*

Me: What is her goal?

Writer: Um. To find out who she is?

These conversations actually make me chuckle because now I know what Bob Mayer felt like the day he met me :D. My first novel was so complex, I don’t even think I fully understood it. Most writers want to land an agent, yet, out of everyone I talk to, I can guarantee that only two or three will be able to state what their novel is about in three sentences or less.

Most new novels don’t have a singular core story problem. It is my opinion that baby writers, deep down, know they’re missing the backbone to their story—CONFLICT. I believe they sense it on a sub-conscious level, and that is why their plots grow more and more and more complicated.

They are trying to fix a structural issue with Bond-o putty and duct tape and then hoping no one will notice. How do I know this?

I used to own stock in Plot Bond-o.

The problem is, complexity is not conflict. We can create an interstellar conspiracy, birth an entirely new underground spy network, resurrect a dead sibling who in reality was sold off at birth, or even start the Second Civil War to cover up the space alien invasion…but it ain’t conflict. Interstellar war, guerilla attacks, or evil twins coming back to life can be the BACKDROP for conflict, but alone are not conflict.

And, yes, I learned this lesson the hard way. Most of us do. This is all part of the author learning curve, so don’t fret and just keep writing and learning.

Little darlings are often birthed from us getting too complex. We frequently get too complex when we are trying to b.s. our way through something we don’t understand and hope works itself out. Um, it won’t. Tried it. Just painted myself into a corner. But we get complex to hide our errors and then we risk falling so in love with our own cleverness—the subplots, the twist endings, the evil twin—that we can sabotage our entire story.

I sincerely believe these little darlings are like fluffy beds of leaves covering punji pits of writing death.

Be truthful. Are your “flowers” part of a garden or covering a grave? We put our craftiest work into buttressing our errors, so I would highly recommend taking a critical look at the favorite parts of your manuscript and then get real honest about why they’re there. And then kill them dead and bury your pets for real.

You have rewritten me 14 times. You think I’m going to leave without a fight? Hssssssss.

So what do you do with your little darlings? What’s been your experience? Do you have any tips, tools or tactics to help us dispose of the bodies?

I LOVE hearing from you guys!

To prove it and show my love, for the month of September, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. If you leave a comment, and link back to my blog, and mention my book We Are Not Alone in your blog…you get your name in the hat THREE times. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly.

I will pick a winner once a month and it will be a critique of the first 20 pages of your novel, or your query letter, or your synopsis (5 pages or less).

And also, winners have a limited time to claim the prize, because what’s happening is there are actually quite a few people who never claim the critique, so I never know if the spam folder ate it or to look for it and then people miss out. I will also give my corporate e-mail to insure we connect and I will only have a week to return the 20 page edit.

At the end of September I will pick a winner for the monthly prize. Good luck!

I also hope you pick up copies of my best-selling books We Are Not Alone–The Writer’s Guide to Social Media and Are You There, Blog? It’s Me, Writer . And both are recommended by the hottest agents and biggest authors in the biz. My methods teach you how to make building your author platform FUN. Build a platform and still have time left to write great books.

The post Little Darlings & Why They Must Die…for REAL appeared first on Kristen Lamb.

Have you ever heard of the Kubler-Ross 5 Stages of Death and Dying? Well, as an editor for many years, I’ve seen a similar phenomenon happen with first-time novelists, especially when I was called upon to stage an intervention. Not pretty. I call this process of extracting a writer from her first bad novel, The 5 stages of Edits & Crying, which looks eerily similar to what Kubler-Ross observed:

Denial–My novel is perfect. Agent ready. You just need to keep reading. You haven’t gotten to the good parts yet. Those 67 flashbacks will all make sense on page 282.

Anger–How dare you say anything is wrong with my novel? What have YOU had published??? Huh? You don’t know everything. I haven’t seen your name on the NY Times best-seller list.

Bargaining–Okay, granted, I might not need all 139 characters, but at least 111 are essential, or the ten-book series I have plotted in my head will fall apart.

Depression–Can we talk later? I kind of need to go drink some Listerine right now.

Acceptance–Do what you must *hands me the red pen*

Science has proven (okay well, not proven, but kind of suggested, and all right all of this is made up and LOOK SQUIRREL!!!).

Where was I?

Oh, yes. Science has proven that Little Darlings are highly addictive and, if left untreated, can lead to manuscript paralysis, coma or even death. This addiction is real and real books are hurting.

Little Darling addiction is a serious problem in the writing world, and is estimated to kill at least 900,000 novels a year. Most novels never make it throught the entire gestational process. Little Darlings cause horrific mutations in the manuscript. The birth defects are often so severe that the novel fails to thrive. It is always tragic having to console a writer parent during these times.

So, how does the addiction work? Glad you asked. Apparently, when a writer weaves in friends, loved ones, exes, witty pieces of banter from real life, a Little Darling often forms, much like a tumor. The Little Darling once embedded into the prose, then stimulates the Dopamine response centers in the brain, giving the writer a high not unlike chocolate, winning scratch-offs, or finding a forgotten five dollar bill in the laundry. The writer then likes this high and wants to repeat the feeling.

This is a dangerous cycle that can lead to a metastatic explosion of Little Darlings in a manuscript. The Little Darlings aggressively seek out and then take over actual healthy narrative points and, in the end, the original story is so corrupted with Little Darlings that the story develops Terminal Little Darling Syndrome and death is the most likely prognosis.

There actually are life-saving surgeries available, but it involves so much cutting, bleeding and extraction, usually most writers cannot endure the process. Also, not all surgeons editors have the skill to help the writer remove the Little Darlings without killing the underlying healthy story.

There is generally only one alternative. Writers who are unwilling or unable to obtain WIP surgery are then forced to take the WIP off life support or place their WIP in a home near the computer Recycle Bin.

WIPs then spend their days drooling and eating Jell-O in some forgotten Word folder that the writer never visits. She can’t bear to. She feels too helpless and guilty. So, the WIP with Terminal Little Darling Syndrome spends the rest of its life playing Bingo with partially drafted short-stories and bad break-up poetry.

Little Darling addiction works rapidly and can affect more than just the WIPs. The addiction hurts the writer as well. The writer keeps inserting more and more little precious pieces of prose, OR often will just keep rereading the same pages seeking that first-time high. This behavior then paralyzes the writer and keeps him from moving foreward and finishing the work in progress.

It is a terrible addiction and the only way to fight this is to educate people. TLDS is deadly, but it CAN be prevented. This is why I blog. It’s why I’m here and today, I want you to meet a friend of mine.

A year and a half ago, I met a young promising writer, Piper Bayard. She was one of the most tragic cases I’d ever seen. She was so addicted to Little Darlings that she’d pushed away close friends and family, because they cut into time playing with her imaginary friends. It was an ugly scene and we had to dose Piper regularly with caffeine and let her stroke a shiny bookmark so the DTs didn’t kill her will to write.

She is here today to share her story and how she beat her life-threatening addiction to little Darlings. She canonized the process and created Little Darlings Anonymous for those struggling to let go of this terrible addiction.

Thank you Piper for being here….

Thank you, Kristen. I would like to start today’s meeting with the 12 Steps of LDA:

12 Steps of Little Darlings Anonymous

1. We admit we were powerless over our imaginary friends, and that our Works Progress had become unmanageable.
2. We came to believe that an Editor greater than ourselves could restore our prose to sanity.
3. We made the decision to turn our will and our manuscripts over to our Editors, whoever we understand them to be.
4. We made a searching and fearless critical inventory of all of our Little Darlings that were wholly irrelevant to our stories.
5. We admitted to our Editors, to ourselves, and to our beta readers the exact nature of our self-indulgences.
6. We became entirely ready to have our Editors remove all the Little Darlings from our Works In Progress.
7. We humbly asked our Editors to mercilessly slaughter all of our Little Darlings when we had not the strength.
8. We made a list of all persons we had subjected to our original manuscripts and became willing to make amends to all of them who had not killed themselves with sporks by page fifty.
9. We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would cause them to injure themselves or others at the mere memory of our manuscripts.
10. We continued to undergo edits, and, when our Editors sniff out Little Darlings, promptly submitted them for termination.
11. We sought through study and daily word count to improve our conscious contact with our plots, as we understood them, seeking only the knowledge to distinguish between Little Darlings and actual elements of our stories.
12. Having had a literary awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to other Little Darling Addicts, and to practice these principles in all of our written endeavors.

Hello, My name is Piper Bayard, and I’m a Little Darling Addict.

Hi, Piper.

Welcome.

Thank you. I’d like to say I’m happy to be here today, but that wouldn’t be true, and I know that, if we aren’t honest with ourselves and others, we’ll never recover from our addictions.

The fact is, I really didn’t want to come. I made up a hundred excuses as to why I didn’t need this meeting. Why I didn’t need to share my story. Why I really didn’t need recovery at all. I was fine. Sure, I knew I had one or two Little Darlings, but I could get rid of them any time.

And then the little voice inside me. . . . You know the one. . . . That little voice that calls us on our crap and keeps us from enjoying the denial we wallowed in before we first logged on to Kristen’s blog and saw the light of Novel Structure. . . . That little voice told me that if I was fighting this meeting so hard, it was because this was where I needed to be. So I’m here.

*Polite clapping.*

Thank you. So this week, I want to share my Step 7 with you. I humbly asked my Editor, Kristen Lamb, to perform Radical Little Darling Surgery on my WIP and extract all of my Little Darlings. *shudder*

I was so proud of my manuscript when I first sent it away. I had colorful characters, exquisite action, and details about everything from trimming pottery to the nocturnal habits of pet mice. Every clever joke I had ever laughed about while partying with my friends was deftly woven in and disguised as meaningful dialogue. And the best part? All of my favorite people I had ever known were right there in one place. Of course, none of that had anything to do with a huntress who must befriend her worst enemy to overthrow a theocratic dictator before he exterminates her people. But it was all so sparkly and shiny.

I didn’t understand at first why Kristen took one look at it and broke out her surgical instruments. But when she placed her scalpel at the throat of one of my favorite-but-forced jokes right on page one, I jumped in front of her, falling to my knees and pleading, “No. Not that one.” I could see she was considering extracting me from the room along with my ill-timed humor, but instead, she mercifully lowered her blade and guided me through a process I now use to help others in Little Darlings Anonymous.

I worked the first six steps for months, fruitlessly attempting to justify inappropriate violence, psychotic character behavior, and excessive verbiage that rivaled the unedited version of The Count of Monte Cristo. But it was no good. The truth is the truth. One Little Darling is too many, and a thousand are never enough. I had to “Let Go, and Let Editor.”

It got bloody fast. . . . *sob*

A tissue box appears and arms embrace me.

It’s ok. . . . I’m ok, now. *deep breath*

Just as I had humbly asked, Kristen showed no mercy. She sliced and diced my cool “reminiscing over every book we own as we’re hurriedly packing them into hiding” scene. She obliterated my two whole stunning chapters on “finding the fugitive in the hidden cave.” She even vaporized my detailed recitation of Mexican border laws in a post-apocalyptic world, just because none of the action takes place at the Mexican border. Can you believe it?

But that wasn’t the most difficult part, and I know this is going to be hard for some of you to hear. . . . Believe me. It’s even harder for me to tell you. . . . She removed then biopsied 74 of my 87 main characters. Even after I named them all and gave each of their backgrounds and habits in depth!

At first, I was stunned. I thought I was ready for that 7^th Step, but when she started cutting, I didn’t know if I was going to be strong enough to bear it. I’m ashamed to admit this, but I even thought about running home to my writing group that met every Saturday for fifteen years with no one ever getting published, so I could hear them tell me just one more time how one day, those 587 agents and publishers who turned me down were going to be sorry.

But then, as Little Darling parts flew around me and the scent of blood and burning flesh filled my nostrils, a strange transformation took place. Deep down in my gut, I realized something. . . . This felt goooooood!

Before I knew it, I was right there by Kristen’s side with a laser scalpel of my own, popping off monologues, sniping at adverbs, and hunting down three more of those 87 characters who’d hidden in some redundant metaphors. It wasn’t easy, and I had quite the mess to stitch up by the time we were finished, but now, I have a real plot with relevant characters in place of “tea time with my imaginary friends.”

After a lot of bleeding and pain, my story was saved. My WIP went through six months of WWBC rehabilitation to build strong narrative points and she’s now on the road to full recovery.

I’m living proof, folks. The program works when you work it.

Thank you for listening today.

Grant me the
serenity to accept that things have got to change.

The courage to
change the things I can.

And a good
Editor to help me know the difference.

Thank you, Piper!

What Little Darlings are hiding in your work? Are you ready to have them removed to save your WIP? All the best to all of you for letting go. Do you want to share your own struggles with Little Darling Addiction? Do you have friends or loved ones who need help? This is a safe place to share. Also, feel free to ask Piper any questions about her journey to recovery.

What are your thoughts? Opinions?  I love hearing from you! And to prove it and show my love, for the month of August, everyone who leaves a comment I will put your name in a hat. If you comment and link back to my blog on your blog, you get your name in the hat twice. If you leave a comment, and link back to my blog, and mention my book We Are Not Alone in your blog…you get your name in the hat THREE times. What do you win? The unvarnished truth from yours truly.

I will pick a winner every week for a critique of your first five pages. At the end of August I will pick a winner for the grand prize. A free critique from me on the first 15 pages of your novel. Good luck!

Note: I am keeping all the names for a final GRAND, GRAND PRIZE of 30 Pages (To be announced) OR a blog diagnostic. I look at your blog and give feedback to improve it. For now, I will draw weekly for 5 page edit, monthly for 15 page edit.

In the meantime, I hope you pick up copies of my best-selling books We Are Not Alone–The Writer’s Guide to Social Media and Are You There, Blog? It’s Me, Writer . Both books are ON SALE for $4.99!!!! And both are recommended by the hottest agents and biggest authors in th biz. My methods teach you how to make building your author platform FUN. Build a platform and still have time left over to write more great books! I am here to change your approach, not your personality.

The post Guinea Pig Diaries: Little Darlings Anonymous appeared first on Kristen Lamb.