Each week, a new author will serve as your Camp Counselor, answering your writing questions. Marivi Soliven, our second counselor, has taught writing workshops at the University of California, San Diego and at the University of the Philippines. Her most recent novel, The Mango Bride, is about two Filipina women, and the unexpected collision that reveals a life changing secret:

How can you be sure that your plot is actually compelling, and not just a pile of stuff that happens? — The Freelancer Society

Novelist Drusilla Campbell answers this question by comparing a novel and its parts to weaving cloth on a loom. Imagine your plot is a red weft—the thread that runs crosswise through that cloth. The events are all the vertical threads, called the warp, that your weft runs across. A compelling plot is a weft that intersects all the warps from one end of that cloth to the other: from the inciting incident that gets your novel on its way, to the many detours and adventures your protagonists take, all the way to the very last scene.  

If you build your plot correctly so that characters are reacting to events, even surprising scenes become logical.

At the end of the novel, you should be able to tug on that red thread and see each of the preceding scenes “pull” along with it. If that happens, chances are you’ve composed a compelling plot. If you pull and nothing happens, you’ll probably need to tighten or delete the irrelevant scenes. 

Additionally, I like to construct an “internal logic” which defines the way your imagined world functions. Your characters move according to the  rules you create so that their actions become logical or plausible to someone reading your story. When your story’s internal logic is strong, it enables readers to suspend their belief and go along for the ride, because what happens makes sense. Thus Bram Stoker’s vampire perishes in the sunlight, because that’s how his novel’s internal logic works. On the other hand, according to Stephanie Meyer’s internal logic, it makes it possible for her Twilight vampires to survive in the watery sunlight of the Pacific Northwest.

Next week’s Camp Counselor will be Patricia C. Wrede, author of fantasy novels such as the The Enchanted Forest Chronicles.

Ask her your questions here!

Each week, a new author will serve as your Camp Counselor, answering your writing questions. Marivi Soliven, our second counselor, has taught writing workshops at the University of California, San Diego and at the University of the Philippines. Her most recent novel, The Mango Bride, is about two Filipina women, and the unexpected collision that reveals a life changing secret.

How do you create realistic-feeling characters? — Jennifer M.

I watch people all the time for odd mannerisms and unique gestures. I file those away in memory until a likely character comes along who can use it. Following the same logic, I sometimes imagine an actor playing the characters in my novel. Many of the female protagonists were drawn from images of my mother and her sisters in the ‘60s, with their Jackie Kennedy bouffants, shift dresses and chain-smoking, hard-drinking ways.

Anytime I couldn’t move forward in a scene I would ask, “Well, what would the actor do? How would my mom respond to that argument?”

Revealing physical details via physical gestures or through the eyes of another character also helps make a character more three-dimensional. In one scene, my character Lydell scratches his hairy nape; when he grins at Beverly she notices that his teeth are the color of weak tea.

Use all your senses in the description of your characters, too. Señora Concha is a chain smoker who loves exported perfume so she’s described as smelling like a smokestack in the Garden of Eden. When Beverly first touches Josiah’s forearm, she marvels at the amount of hair covering his freckled skin. 

Finally, add some softness or vulnerability to your villains because that makes them more like folks you come across in real life. In The Mango Bride, Josiah is cruel to his wife, but he is exceptionally tender around their young daughter. When you think of your characters as actual people you know and can converse with rather than images in your head, they really do come alive in the story.

Next week’s Camp Counselor will be the great Patricia C. Wrede, author of fantasy novels such as the The Enchanted Forest Chronicles.

Ask her your questions here!

The “Now What?” Months are here! In 2014, we’ll be bringing you advice from authors who published their NaNo-novels, editors, agents, and more to help you polish November’s first draft until it gleams. Marivi Soliven shares four steps she took to publishing her book, The Mango Bride:

Maybe you woke up on December 1, sleep-deprived but exhilarated over birthing your novel. What now? You can bury it in a folder or grow that NaNo-newborn into a novel fit for publication. That’s what I did.

I plunged into NaNoWriMo 2008 to overcome my life-long phobia of novel writing. After self-congratulation got old, I did a reality check: of my 50,000 words, only 26—all in the first sentence—were any good. The rest wallowed in histrionic dialogue and sordid drama. 

NaNoWriMo was a mad sprint, but if you’re ready for the long slow slog of rewrites, here are a few ways to grow your newborn novel into a book: