 Hello everyone, thank you for coming to the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum. My name is Angie Grove. I'm the executive director here and I'm really excited for tonight's, well today's, this afternoon's talk. Before we get into the talk, I want to just briefly say a few words about the institution that you're in. We're a community nonprofit run mostly by volunteers. In fact, we have one, two, three, three volunteers in the room right now. Thank you to our amazing volunteers for everything they do here. We, the artifact collection, our volunteers run the lecture program, our bulk club, our field trips, all the reenactment events that we redo and living history events as well. So check out our website to learn more about some of those things. But the program we're here today for is our monthly lecture series. And I was given a little history lesson by Phyllis actually. He will be up here at the podium. I was given a little history lesson by Phyllis about this monthly lecture series. It is in its, what is it, like 17th year or something like that, of having a lecture by different guest speakers every month of the year, except for usually December. Although a special announcement, this year we are hosting a December lecture on the first Sunday of the month for members and volunteers in the museum only. And you can purchase membership at the front desk. It's really quick to spell out a form. Actually, and I'm going to be giving that talk, it's going to be called Ethan Allen Infernal Villain. So if you're interested in coming to that, that will be our members kind of give end of year gift as a special talk is for them. So, but the talks here, Phyllis was telling me, started around the year 2007. This was at a time when the original museum organization had kind of collapsed and wasn't running the full museum at that time. And a group of volunteers and tour guides for that former museum got together monthly and it rotated like volunteers were basically giving the talks and just sharing history and stories and information. So it was kind of, this is really a grassroots program that started by the volunteers for the volunteers and has since grown and now we have guest speakers from all over the world. Sometimes they just zoom in onto the TV screen with us and sometimes they're lucky enough to have them in person. And we have local speakers as well like today's speaker too. So before I step away, I'm just going to introduce Phyllis and then she's going to introduce the speaker. Phyllis is our current treasurer of the Ethan Allen Homestead Museum and also our past president. So a wealth of knowledge and has been a volunteer here at the museum since 2007 when those lecture series started. So I think she also has the senior cap for the most veteran volunteer for all of us. I'm not sure. I think John was here a little before I was maybe a month or two. A little bit before. Okay. So she's June. So she, what's the second not valedictorian? The salutatorian. Okay. Phyllis and I have been here a lot longer than Ethan Allen was. Oh, true. Okay. So without further ado, I'm going to hand it over to Phyllis and we'll be introducing our speaker today. Hey, Phyllis. A lot of them for the better. And so we have grown quite a bit from the time when I started. So welcome everybody. So glad you came to hear Angela today. One of our very own people here who has been with us for a while too. She's a native from Monter as we say and she grew up in Essex Junction and still lives in Essex Junction even though it's changed from a village to a city. Oh, well. Marybeth has two wonderful grown children, a son Stephen and his wife Amanda, and a daughter Alison and her husband Scott. So they of course are have left the nest, but her nest is not completely empty because she has a kitty child named Billy, who's her writing companion too. So she's been writing fiction since the early days of school, always scratching out ideas for stories rather than doing her homework as she says especially math. Her first completed novel No Safe Haven was published in 2016. We're trying to add about that same time. And her second available Oyster Bay published last year 2022. So she's moving up in the world of writing. Right now she's hard to work on a contemporary series, but is working on the idea for historical fiction. That will reflect today's political atmosphere. Sorry, my vocal cords are receding, they tell me because I'm getting old. Yes, they're shrinking. So that's why I croak a lot. But so you'll have to excuse that. But anyway, let's welcome our wonderful own Angela. Well, knowing it's a small group makes me feel a lot more comfortable. So thank you, Phyllis. Yeah, I've been, I started here when I was doing research for the Bell and Oyster Bay. It's an 18th century novel. So I needed to know what an 18th century home looked like. So I came here to the homestead to take a look at the house. And the executive director we had at the time, Dan O'Neill was so good that when I came here, he did the tour with me and he toured me through the house. And by the time I left, I was a volunteer. I've been here since 2017, and I have loved every minute of it. So, but you're not here to find out about that. You want to know about writing fiction. And as you can see, that's what I do. So I have a contemporary series that I'm working on right now, because I kind of need a break sometimes from history. But I am working on, I'm starting the idea for a new book that will take place during the Salem witch trials. But what I want to do, what you can do with historical fiction that you kind of can't do sometimes with contemporary is take today's issues and problems and put them in a historical time period and get a message across that way that you wouldn't be able to do in a contemporary, because the more things change, the more they stay the same, really. So that's why a lot of people choose to write historical fiction so that they can get that message out in a way that people will accept it. But let's start with what fiction is. Fiction as a noun is literature in the form of prose, especially short stories or novels. And they describe imaginary events in people. You might hear the term novel or stories or creative writing, imaginative writing, works of the imagination, prose literature, narration, storytelling, romance, fable. It's all fiction. I'll just put it under that one umbrella. There are two, I call them the forks in the road. There are two kinds of fiction, of genres of fiction. One is commercial fiction. That's your Tom Clancy or your John Grisham or Danielle Steele or whatever. And then there's literary fiction. And those would be more lofty books like Brooklyn by Colm Toybin or The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I think his name is the slower paced, more internally driven kind of stories that don't have a whole lot of action. They deal more with relationships or personal growth or things like that from the protagonist. Here's a fun fact. You've all heard of pulp fiction. In fact, there's even a movie called Pulp Fiction. But pulp fiction actually comes from a term that originated from the magazines of the first half of the 20th century. They were printed on cheap or pulp paper. And that's how they got the term pulp fiction. And they published, they were stories of fantastic escapist fiction, general entertainment for the mass audiences. Think of the stories where the heroine is tied to the railroad tracks and the guys got to jump in and rescue her just as the train zooms by. That's your pulp fiction. And this can be fun to read, but get that page turned. There are genres and then there are subgenres in fiction. I'm not going to go into too much detail, but when you think of genre, most people think if I'm going to walk into a bookstore, where do I find the book I want to read? And what shelf and in what area of the store? That's what we think of generally when we think of fiction. You go in, you know, you want to read a historical. So you go to that historical genre section and you find the book you want. Genre subgenres can be within those categories further down. Say for instance, you're looking for an action adventure story. There are in the writing world genre goes a little bit deeper than just where you're going to find it in the bookstore. What you're going to look for. And when you're writing genre, the things you need to think about are controlling ideas of the story. The core emotion you want the reader to feel. Believe it or not, genres have obligatory scenes and conventions. And if you're writing, say an action adventure story and you don't have the right conventions in there, your readers are going to go, this isn't what I wanted. I didn't, this isn't the book I wanted to buy. So you have to be sure when you're writing in a genre that you know what you need to meet the reader's expectations. You need to know what they are. So for instance, an action adventure, you want to write a book that's person against nature, like Jurassic Park is a good example of that. Action duels, person against person, such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid or a fistful of dollars, those kind of books. Action epics, a person against the state, Star Wars, The Born Identity, those kind of books. The action clock, person against time, like Ransom, The Andromeda Strain or this fun one, Back to the Future. Most people don't think of that. So for historical fiction, you're comprising narratives that take place from the past and you characterize them chiefly by an imaginative reconstruction of historic events and personages. You can, that means in plain language, you can have a fictional character and put them in an actual time and place and put them up against characters like, say George Washington or Abraham Lincoln. Or you can have an actual person from a time period and make them into a character. They were actual people who live, but you're making, giving them a character and then you're presenting their life and their time period and how they would have moved through, how you imagine they would have moved through that lifestyle. Fiction can come in many different forms of length. So if you're writing a novella, which we call a short novel, you want to look at maybe, keep your word count between 17,500 to 50,000 words. That could sound daunting to somebody who doesn't write, but like a friend of mine once said to me, 1,000 words a day in 90 days you have a novel. So that breaks it down for you, makes it a lot easier. Young adult books, if you want to write a young adult, 50,000 to 80,000 words. Romance novels, 50,000 to 100,000 words. These are what they call industry standards. So if you are taking your manuscript and you're handing it to a publisher and you're saying, I wrote a romance novel, they're going to want to know how many words are in that novel. And if you say, I wrote a romance novel and it's 150,000 words, they're going to tell you cut 50, cut 75 because you've gone over the length that they want to publish. Historical novels, generally 80 to 120,000 words. And why is that? Because you have to do something called world building. You have to create the place where they live and your reader has to believe that that's where they are. So it takes a little more time and words to do that. So that's why a historical novel will generally give you a better leeway when you're writing a full length manuscript until you write the end. At the end, you are not writing a book, you are writing a manuscript. And we also call them a work in progress or a whip. If somebody asks you about your whip, that's what they mean. It's a work in progress. Your full length manuscript is not a book until it is published. You can use the terminology interchangeably when you're talking with your friends, when you're talking with your writing partner or your critique partners, but know deep down that your manuscript is a manuscript until it has a book cover and you're selling it. It's a rookie mistake. We all make it. Don't worry about it. You can change or be against or editor specific. Oh, I'm sorry. This may change or be agent or editor specific if stated otherwise, but manuscripts are always, you have a trinity. They are always in Times New Roman or aerial font. They are 12 point type and they are double spaced. Otherwise, they'll just send it back to you and say, no, this isn't what we want. They won't tell you that. They won't tell you what's wrong. So you need to kind of glean. So knowing some of the industry standards before you send out your manuscript is always a huge idea. You want one inch margins. You don't want extra spaces between paragraphs. These all seem like silly things, but they're things you need to know. Single space between sentences after periods. Those of us who grew up learning how to type on a typewriter, no more period double double. No, it's period space and then move on. And they will ding you for that, believe it or not. They will send it back indent new paragraphs and each new section of dialogue with the exception of your opening paragraph that is always flush. And then or your scene break at the beginning of a chapter or the beginning of a scene, it's always flush after that you indent indicate your scene breaks by inserting either a blank line, a single centered hashtag or triple hashtag. But that's just tunes in the reader that, okay, we're making a break here and it's time to move on to another one. I usually use the single hashtag. I think it's messy to do more than that, but that's me. So whatever you choose to do. Begin new chapters on new pages and center the chapter title, even if it's only chapter one or you write chapter one using the number. Go down about a third of the page. This is a formatting step that usually in later stages of editing and formatting, but most writers expect a new scene or chapter to beginning begin at the top of the page when it's still a whip. So you have to remember to move it down. Format the header to include your last name and the title of the book. The page number that you're on, that's very important because if something, a page gets out of order and you haven't numbered them, it's murder to try to figure out where it's got to go. And then also your title, your last name, the word count, the genre. If you're sending it to an editor or an agent, that's what they want to see. So they know what they're and then make sure you include the page number. So that's just the nuts and bolts. So let me give you some quick and dirty little writer vocab and see how you do with it. Craft. When we talk about craft, that's the technical aspect of writing. That is the knowing how to set up, how to format, how to write a chapter, editing craft, writing craft, whether it's a pro-taganist antagonist, it's kind of the jargon and also the how to of writing a book. Your voice, that's the author's style and it's as unique as your DNA. The voices and I used to get this a lot when I would send my manuscripts out to editors or out to contests. They would come back and they would say, I can't hear the writer's voice. And I was like, this is the hardest thing to learn. And I was like, I don't know what that means. And luckily one time I was in a writer's group and I got that kind of feedback back from a contest and I said to my writer's group, okay, I've had it up to the eyeballs. What does it mean when they say you don't have a voice? And one of the people said, oh, that's easy, I can fix that. I ran through that all the time. I've learned what it means. And she taught me how to write. My characters will speak, your characters will speak in a specific way. And that is their voice. That's what you have given them to write, to say. And when your readers are reading them, they will recognize them instantly. That's what they mean by a voice. A beginner is someone new to learning the craft of fiction and or the publishing industry. It's not an assignment of quality or status. It is simply I'm starting out. Reader tension, that's something that is hard to do until you learn your voice. And then you can learn how to ramp up your tension or slow it down as you need. It's also called pacing. Sometimes they'll talk about pacing. But your reader tension is how fast you want you, you know, you are you with Tom Clancy when you want your readers to flip in the page as fast as they can to get to the next thing. Or do you want to slow leisurely, Howard Zen kind of read where you just go into the next and just enjoying and relaxing as you're reading your book. That's reader tension. GMC or goal motivation and conflict. Good scenes and novels are filled with goal motivation and conflict. What that means is your character has to have a goal. They need a motivation to get that goal. And you have to do everything in your power to throw conflict in their way so they can't achieve it. So it sounds counterintuitive, but that's actually how novels work. So pacing, like I said, do you want a fast page turner? Or do you want maybe a slow, enjoyable read? Or do you want something in the middle? Pacing, if somebody, if you've written a manuscript and somebody says it was really good here, but I really kind of was like bogged down here, then you have a pacing problem that you've slowed your book down too much. And or you've added too many things at the same time. And your characters literally don't know what to do. That's a pacing problem. And it's easily fixed. It's easily edited out. You just have to recognize that that's where you are and then fix it. Sounds easy to say, but once you get going and actually writing a lot, you'll recognize it instantly and you'll know what to do. Weasel words and pet words. I'm big on those. That just fairly seems, thinks, looks, could, should. Those are mine. And when you're writing, you're going to have your own words fairly as a word that I use a lot. I don't know why that is. But you have these specific words that come to your mind and you use them a lot. Some people use words like that have a lot of s's to them. Other people use like short snappy, but the same words over and over again. And those are weasel words. You want to go through your manuscript and once you recognize what they are, circle them so you can remove them or use your search and find in Microsoft, type that word in, read the sentence first, because sometimes you need that word. But most of the time you don't and you can easily bring down your word count by getting out, getting those words out of your manuscript. A contrivance is considered a deadly sin in the writing world. This is when you've written your character into a corner and you don't know how to get them out. So you give them a gun that has not been in the book before and you shoot people and then you can move on to your story. Your readers are going to go, if they read that, that was like no way. And we've all read stories or seen movies where we went, no way. That no, that should not have happened. Then you recognize that that was a contrivance and it's lazy writing to not figure out a better way to do that. And then word count. We talked about that a little bit. Then that's pretty much how we measure everything, your progress, your story form, your genre expectations. It is literally the number of words it takes to tell your story. So let's talk about the journey. As fulfilling and necessary as completing of a manuscript is and releasing it out into the world, the journey from here to published novelist has two things, high points and low points. Your high points are going to be your first three chapters. You get those done and you're going to feel like you're on top of the world. I wrote three chapters. I finally did it. Yes. I did that. Connecting with other writers and finding your community and your tribe. It is very important. I can't stress enough how important it is to have a writing network. People who you can give your pages to in a safe place, not your family, not your friends. Your writing partners, your critique partners, you hand over your pages to them and you know it's a safe space. They're going to read what you wrote and they're going to come back and they're going to have questions. They're going to have comments. They're going to have suggestions, but all of them should be couched in loving terms and they know because they know how scary it is to give that stuff to someone too. They have to do it too. They're going to say things like, I don't understand why your character is doing this or I like that, but I didn't like this. They'll point things out to you that you probably weren't even aware of, but that you need to be aware of. Your writing partners and your critique partners are very helpful. A little rule of thumb though. If one person says, I didn't like XYZ, then you can take their opinion into account, but if nobody else says that, then that's their opinion. But if that person and that person and that person said, I don't understand why, then you have a problem and you need to fix it. So just something to keep in mind. The euphoria of typing the end at the end of your manuscript. The first full novel I wrote was in 1993 and it took place here in Burlington, Vermont. I was watching the news story one day and they were talking about how they were replacing gas tanks from a gas station on corner of North Avenue, which I don't think the gas station is even there anymore, but they were replacing the gas tanks and they came across this pile of bones. So they had to call the police and they came and they were able to, the medical corner showed up and they were able to deduce that those bones were more than 200 years old. So where did they come from? Well, from there I was fascinated. When the war of 1812 was happening, there was an encampment here in Burlington where Battery Park is now. That was an encampment. They had disease that went through that camp and any Civil War historian will know about disease in the early times of the wars. The same thing, smallpox or something. I don't know what it was, but what running through that camp and people were dying so fast that they were just digging holes and throwing the bodies into pits and then burying them and they were forgotten. So there was an idea for a novel and I wrote this book in 1993. The best thing I ever did was write the end, but the book wasn't, I didn't write it for publication. I wrote it simply for the whole idea was to prove to myself that I could write a full book and it never went anywhere. Went into my drawer and stayed. In fact, I think it's still there. I have no intention of publishing it. That was my proof that I could do this. And if that's what you have to do, do it. It's really helpful. So your first proposal or request from an agent or an editor, that's an exciting thing. That means that, oh my gosh, I'm so close. I can do this. I can do this. Your first rejection letter, believe it or not, celebrate them because that means that they were actually intrigued enough to read enough of your book to know whether or not it was going to work. The frustrating thing about rejection letters is they don't actually tell you specifically what's wrong. They'll just say, well, it's not right for us or maybe next time or something and you have to kind of read between the lines to figure it out. That's really frustrating. But a good editor or a good publisher, if you get that letter and you reach out to them and you say, well, you said it's not right for you this time. Can you tell me specifically what I need to work on? 99% of the time, they will write you a very detailed letter of what they saw that they wanted to see fixed. But they haven't got the time and the resources to do that because they get thousands of manuscripts a month that they have to weed through. So if you reach out to them and you ask them, they will tell you. And I didn't know that when I first started writing and I would just get so frustrated. But I finally figured it out and did that. And I got a very nice letter back saying what I needed to work on. And that was so helpful. So rejoice in your rejection letters and reach out and find out why they rejected it. They'll tell you. When you receive that call, hello, we would love to publish your book. We enjoyed it ever so much. That's do your happy dance, jump up and down, scream, holler, do whatever you have to do. Take yourself out to dinner, whatever, and then get back to your computer. Start writing. The hardest part of writing a book is not actually the writing process. It's the editing process. It's the rewrite. Stephen King says it all the time. I can write anything I want to write. The hard part is rewriting. So because then you have to do what's called killing your darlings. You get attached to certain things that you've written and you really like it, but it doesn't serve the story. And you kind of know it doesn't serve the story, but you don't want to get rid of it because you liked it so much. That's a darling. Kill it. Get it out of your book. It doesn't need to be there. The low points. Self-doubt all the mode. That is me. I feel like an imposter every time I write a book. Like, that was just a fluke. That was the Bella Voistor Bay. It was terrible because no safe haven did pretty well. And then I was like, I can't do this again. I can't read. I can't lightning struck. That's not going to happen again. I can't do so. I've really struggled with self-doubt and the imposter syndrome. Writer's block. To me, that's an excuse not to write. That's your brain telling you you're stuck. You don't have an idea. You don't know what you're doing. You really can't tell writer's block to go sit in the corner until you get your thousand words in and then you two can have a conversation, but not until. Realizing your masterpiece isn't just yet, but it will be. Feedback that wounds and you will get feedback that wounds. Basically, take your ego out of your story. It is hard to do and we all add it in there. We don't even know we're doing it, but take your ego, put it in the corner with writer's block. When you get feedback that wounds, be hurt, feel it, and then go back and go, okay, well, what are they really saying? And is it valid? And should I be listening to that and do I really have an issue that I need to fix? And then fix it if you do. And if you don't be like, okay, well, that was that person and fine, move on. Having to answer no for the millionth time to the question from your friends and family. Have you gotten your book published yet? No. Losing all your work. I'm ashamed to say. Losing all your work because you did not bother to do a backup and your computer goes blue screen. And everything in you are maybe three chapters from the end and it is gone. That is a definite low point. Back up your work. There are programs out there now that you can get like Scrivener. That is a wonderful program. It backs up every time you close. It does a backup. It will back up every 10 or 15 minutes, however you want. So even if like last year I had to replace my laptop. I went out and I bought a laptop and I went, oh my gosh, I'm not going to have Scrivener on here, but I downloaded it from the program from the company and I had my key, my manufacturer's key and I loaded that in and I went in there and there was my book and I was like, oh, thank God. It was that book and I was three chapters from the end. So yeah, Scrivener is a good one to have. And one star reviews and reader rants. Don't pay any attention to them. One star reviews, those are, I've decided one star reviewers and reader rants are people who wish they had the guts to write a book, but don't and they want to pretend like they're an expert. So don't even pay attention to them. Spend a few minutes considering two adages I want to give you. The first is finishing your manuscript will be the hardest thing you ever do. And the second is a finished manuscript is the easiest part of getting published. And if you think new writers are, you have an idea, if you're a new writer, I was talking to this lady, she's got a book that she wants to write about a character, a woman, an actual historical figure, right? And she's read other books about this woman. So she could easily say to herself, well, you know, people have already read written about her, what would I have to say? But think of Asha Dornefest who said, I think new writers are too worried that it's all been said before. It has been, but not by you. So write it. Character plot and setting. These are three things that are very important to every story. It may sound like, and I may be, you might be sitting here going, why are you telling us this? Of course we know all this stuff. It does seem intuitive, but you also need to understand that a lot of people don't understand. So these are things that you need to think about when you're writing your book. Characters, from concept to creation to maturity. Your characters drive the story. They drive the plot within the setting of the story. So if somebody comes up to you and says, well, is your story character driven or plot driven? The answer is yes. Because you can't have a plot without a character and you can't have a character without a plot. So it doesn't matter if your story is plot driven or character driven. The answer is yes. It's both. Some writers build character sketches and assemble their hero, heroine and villain, et cetera, from a box of character traits like a Mr. Potato Head. And if that works for you, fantastic, do it. Other models, others model them after a real person they know. Some people do a hybrid. I use a program called 16 personalities and it's a one six personalities.com. It's the online version of the Myers-Briggs tests. And I use one stop for writers.com. So what I do is I go on to 16 personalities and I find, okay, this is kind of the type of person I want to write about. These are the personality styles I need to look at. And then I go to one stop for writers. And in there, they have backstory that you can fill in, siblings, family structure, where they are in the birth order, what their dreams are, what traumatic event might have occurred to them as a child or a young adult or these sort of things. And you build a deeper person from that program. I have found using one stop for writers for the character things, it's been essential for me because I tend to character development for me has been a very hard thing to learn how to do. And my characters tend to be inconsistent because I don't write to a, I don't write to an outline. I'm what they call a pancer. So I just kind of let the story evolve as I write it. But that means my characters evolve as I write them. So when they started out this way and they end up that way, that's a character inconsistency. And it gets me every time one stop for writers. Once I've built that character, I can go back and reference it. Oh, yeah, they would not do that, or they would do that. Okay. And I can write it that way. So it keeps my characters consistent. And it's really been a huge, huge gain for me. So you have three, you have two kinds of characters actually, you have your protagonist, and you have an antagonist. And these days with gaming getting so popular, they're also starting to call protagonist and antagonist avatars, which can be confusing. But that's the new term. So I'm going to throw it out there for you. Your protagonist or your avatar protagonist is your hero or your anti hero. He is the main character. He or she is the main character of your story. Your antagonist is the villain or the person who's throwing obstacles in your protagonist's way to keep them from getting that goal or that motivation, whatever it is that they want to achieve at the end of the story. It's the antagonist's job to see that they don't get it. So those are the two major characters. You have minor characters also that are filtered in because nobody lives in a vacuum. They all have friends and family and things like that. And they can also be people who are preventing your protagonist from getting to where they want to go. Or they can be called what is called helpers or hindrances. So they can hinder the main character and stop them or they can be their helpers and help them get their allies and help them get to where they need to go. Your character should be as dynamic and complex and as rounded as possible. You don't want descriptors for your characters to be. You don't want people to say, this character bored the crap out of me. Nothing. They didn't react to anything. They're flat. They're static. You don't want that. You want like, oh my gosh, I just loved it when this happened and she blew a gasket. That was so cool. That's what you want your readers to feel when you're doing your characters. And if they're like, meh, then you need to go back and work on your characterization. But beware of stereotypes. We all write them and we don't even realize we're doing it. And you can sometimes it's okay to have a stereotypical character if that's your intention. If you want that character to show a certain attitude that maybe we don't want to reflect anymore and you want that character to kind of really point that out, that's okay. But if you're going to go with the dumb jock or the vain cheerleader or the religious zealot, the bad boy biker, the town gossip, the rock star, the rich socialite, the clumsy waiter or the noisy neighbor, have a specific reason for doing it. If you don't, it's a stereotype. It's what they call a trope and you want to get it out of your book. And the question people would say, well, aren't stereotypes bad? They can be, like I just said. But you have to be very careful and intentional and respectful when you use them, particularly when one is of a religious, ethnic or other community group, either collectively or as an individual. Wherever you are on the spectrum between the thought police and you overdo reform as an author and individual, be wary of the way and the manner in which you choose or choose not to include a diverse cast. When in doubt, stick to the wisdom of the adage, write what you know. And if that person happens to be stereotypical, write it. But what defines your character and how does the reader get to know them? Through appearance, mannerisms, habits, speech, think of a caricature artist that pulls out specific features on your face and then kind of exaggerates them. That's what you're looking for when you're writing a mannerism, certain characters. I have the character in my contemporary. She's, she likes to be honest, but she doesn't like to hurt people's feelings. So she'll always preface what she's going to say when she thinks it's going to be hurtful with, can I ask a question or can I tell you something? That's a mannerism. How to, how to imply that to your story. Here's a couple of examples I wanted to give you. Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal. Thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious because they just didn't hold with such nonsense. That tells you a lot about the Dursleys. They are the muggles, muggle. They don't hold with nonsense. They like everything to be prim and proper. And you, you get all that just by reading that little blurb. Here's another one. The school gymnasium was so loud that Fern had to lean down next to Bailey's ear and shout to be heard. Bailey was more than capable of maneuvering his wheelchair through the teaming student body, but Fern pushed him so they could more easily stay together. So that tells you two things about Bailey and Fern. Bailey is very self-sufficient. He can do these things, but Fern is very caring and wants to help him, whether he needs it or not. She's also kind of pushy because she knows he doesn't need it, but she's going to do it anyway. Plot, that's something that you need to know about. Every story has a plot. It's got, it's going from A to Z through your story. The definition from the dictionary, plot is a work of fiction as, as its storyline, the ordered number and sequence of events that make up the story. The story's climax or turning point is a crisis moment of high tension and emotion in which the main characters solve the conflict and learn important things about themselves, other people, and the world. The definition from the editor's, the editor's blog, courtesy of the editor's blog, a simple definition of plot is that it's the storyline of your novel. Plot is what the, it's the what of the story. Plot might, out of necessity, include who and when and where, but it's the story events that truly define the plot. It can be a one-liner. A guy has to prove he didn't kill his wife. Or plot can be that rambling explanation, that 20-minute explanation when you're trying to tell your best friend about that great movie you saw last night. How do you make a plot? There are lots of ways. If you're what they call a plotter, J.K. Rowling is a perfect example of that. She plotted out every single book, all seven of them before she even began writing book one. You can do that. Or you can be what you call a pancer. That's me. A pancer is somebody who has kind of a general idea of how they want the story to start, how they want the story to end. Maybe something that goes on in the middle and you can write to the middle and then figure out the rest as you go. That's me. That's one reason why my characters are never really... They tend to be inconsistent because my story evolves, my characters evolve and it's a mess. You can be somewhere in between. You can plot and then write, you know, to pants it as you write. I've tried to do that, but usually when I end up going back to my plot to see where I am, I've already written like five pages or 500 pages ahead of that. So then I'm like, okay, that doesn't work for me, and I just keep going. But if whatever works for you, whatever is comfortable for you, that's what you should be doing. Setting is where the story takes place and much more than that. It is the time, it is the locale, the weather, believe it or not, can be a setting. Objects, the era, the time period, the culture, the geography, those all make up your settings. So the who, the what, where and when of a story as you're setting. Don't let your story take place in a white room. And if a reader reads it and they say, well, I couldn't really see what was going on or I kind of felt like everything was white, you don't have your setting down, you need to work on that. It can be something as simple as two people are walking around or talking and one goes over and moves the book from this end to that end. That's a setting. But you gave your character something to do that your reader could see. So you want them to be able to visualize the scene in their head as they're reading it. And if they can't, then you have problems with your setting. Weather is one I tend to forget a lot most writers do. It's just not something we think about when we're writing. And in my one of my contemporary romances, I had a traumatic scene where I'd seen where this woman had to confess a traumatic event that happened to her. And as I wrote it the first time, it was really kind of white roomy. So I rewrote it and I put them on the street and I made I had cars going by and this and that. It was okay. But as I was going through and editing that section again, there was a thunderstorm I could hear approaching us. So I wrote in the thunderstorm and just made that scene come alive. So don't be afraid to use the weather. It's a great way to get your setting firmly in hand culture. A lot of people don't think about that either. It's the laws, the social practices, the societal taboos, the societal expectations, politics and government entertainment and games, religious practices, education, war, mores and technology. And if you're writing a historical fiction, that is absolutely important. You need to have the culture of the time in there. And don't be afraid to immerse yourself into that time period and have your 21st century readers go, but that's not the way it is. Well, you're right. Today it's not the way it is, but then it was. And I have to write to that, not to your expectations. So make sure that you know what your culture is and immerse yourself in it. And if that means you have to read a whole lot of nonfiction to get there, read it. Point of view. There are three kinds of ways you can write a book. And they call it POV or point of view. There's first person in which we use the I or the we think Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games. She wrote that book in first person. Second person is you. Almost nobody writes in second person point of view. It's not a popular way to go. There's only one book that I've ever heard referenced and that's Bright Lights and Big City by Jay McInerney. He's the only one that I know of that most experts know of who wrote in the second person point of view. And then there's third person. He, she, they, that point of view. And if so first person is like someone is telling you their own personal story. Second person is the you. You walked into a store. You bought a bag of potato chips. You went home and watched TV. I would not want to read that kind of book. Most people don't. That's why a lot of people nobody really writes in that point of view. Third person narrator can be highly subjective and that's okay. So you have to decide which point of view that you want to write in. Now if you want to go into deep point of view, changing it from a third person to a first person does not necessarily give you a deep point of view. Just so you know that a lot of people make that mistake. But whichever is most natural for you that's the best for the story. It becomes about perspective and about how you would experience the story through your point of view character or characters. So first person point of view has the least amount of narrative distance. You are that character. And they live within the, you live within the character and the character relates all their thoughts and experiences. The drawback to this is, and it's actually not a drawback. It's a good thing. You can't head hop if you are the main character. And by head hopping, we mean by jumping into another person's point of view. Third person limited is the he, she. And this is the most common for commercial fiction because most people are used to it and they understand it. So a lot of people write this way. It remains limited to what that character knows and experiences. And the, again, you can't, you shouldn't be head hopping. You can't head hop into another point of view. And you have to establish in every scene and chapter who the point of view character is if there's more than one character in your story. So for instance, in the Bell of Oyster Bay, I have two main characters, Sally and John. And this is ultimately a failed love story. They do fall in love with each other, but they don't end up together. Spoiler alert. But there's a lot of good stuff in here. So if you decided to buy it, please, the homestead benefits from it. So, but I wanted to read you a couple of points of view, one from Sally and one from John. So you can understand how you would start a chapter with a new point of view. So this is from Sally's point of view. Saddle bags overflowing with Osnaburg linen, sugar cones, tea and a choir of paper, Sally Townsend set off for Daniel and Susanna Young's farm on Cove Road. Such a beautiful morning with a hint of building summer heat. The salty ocean breeze rustled through the trees and blew soft on her brow, teasing her hair. She lifted her face to the sun as she swayed to the movement of Farmer Girl beneath her. Chores waited for her at home, but she wrote at a slow and steady pace enjoying her rare solitude. So that tells you a few things about Sally and that you know that that chapter is going to be in her point of view. So we're going to go to John and this is in chapter two. If Lucifer claimed a home, Captain John Graves Simcoe was positive Staten Island was the place. Surrounded by water, the saturated air suffocated like steaming wet wool, not only stifling during the day and cold and foggy at night, but the place stank from Manhattan City's rubbish. He couldn't decide which reeked worse, the pigs rooting in the refuse or the constant stench from the heap called Pig Hill. So you know that you're going to be talking about John, you know that he hates Staten Island and apparently that hasn't changed in 200 years. And that Manhattan dumped all their rubbish on Staten Island and it's stank constantly. And when I wrote that and I was in a writer's group, I wrote that a one woman in my group wrote back to me. She goes, Oh, MG, I grew up on Staten Island and it's still that way and it still stinks and it's still hot and sticky. So I was like, Oh, okay, I did that right. We also know about Sally. She doesn't get much solitude. She loves to ride her horse. She loves being outdoors. She goes on these delivery journeys for her father just to get out of the house and get away from the chores for a while. So we've learned some things about characterization through point of view. Third person omniscient that is think Jane Austin where you can hear everybody's point of view. You can hear what everybody's thinking. This was more popular in the late 19th, early 19th to the early 20th century. This was generally the way books were written. The author was allowed to bounce from point of view to point of view from any character within the scene. What we call head hopping to capture the inner thoughts of all the characters as they happen. There is a narrator present who functions like God and can tell us everything about every character present. In fact, they do call it the God mode. So for instance, like I said in the Hunger Games, listen to what Suzanne Collins writes. It's this detail, the untucked blouse forming a duck tail that brings me back to myself. Prim, the strangled cry comes out of my throat and my muscles begin to move again. Prim, I don't need to shove through the crowd. The other kids make way immediately, allowing me a straight path to the stage. I reach her just as she is about to mount the steps. With one sweep of my arm, I push her behind me. I volunteer, I gasp. I volunteer as tribute. So that's your first person. Second person, Bright Lights in Big City by J. McInerney. You have friends who actually care about you and speak the language of the inner self. You have avoided them of late. Your soul is as disheveled as your apartment and until you can clean it up a little, you don't want to invite anyone inside. And that's kind of an uncomfortable narration. And then third person, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling. Something very painful was going on in Harry's mind. As Hagrid's story came to a close, he saw again the blinding flash of green light more clearly than he had ever remembered it before. And he remembered something else for the first time in his life, a high, cold, cruel laugh. Hagrid was watching him sadly. And you can hear that third person. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, The God Mode. Elizabeth, having rather expected to affront him, was amazed at his gallantry. But there was a mixture of sweetness and archeness in her manner, which made it difficult for her to affront anybody. And Darcy had never been so bewitched as by any woman, by any woman as he was by her. He really believed that it were it not for the inferiority of her connections. He should be in some danger. So you heard from Elizabeth and then you heard from Darcy. Point of view is technically the most difficult craft to learn and for to understand and then to master. And I haven't yet encountered a writer for whom that wasn't true. Excuse me. But once you spend time with that concept and you learn how to deepen your point of view, you're going to find that your writing improves exponentially. As you're deepening your point of view, you're actually adding to your word count. And that's something like, hey, when I was learning how to do it, it was like, okay, I'm actually writing more. I'm adding more and I shouldn't be. And they were like, no, no, no, that's what you want to do because you're going to take it out in different places. So it's okay. My girlfriend Nancy, she's my writing partner. She gave me these to go with and I'll just do one because I'm running out of time. This is a good point of view. And this is from her book, Unseen Love. And the character is Layla. And the first good point of view father Naomi is slave enough for our house and we can hardly afford a second. Then her father slapped her hard enough. She stumbled sideways. She hated him. That's pretty good. But we can make it better. Father Naomi is slave enough for our house and we can hardly afford a second. She tumbled sideways from the slap he gave her. She straightened hoping the loathing in her heart didn't show on her face. That gives us a deeper sense. But the best father Naomi is slave enough for our house and we can hardly afford a second. Pain exploded along her jaw as she stumbled sideways. She straightened fighting the urge to rub the ache in her lip for the thousands of times she wished her father was dead. And it's so much stronger. So work on your point of view. If you don't get that, you need to get back to work. So you can think of it as the glass is half full or the glass is half empty or maybe it just needs resizing. Traditional publishing versus indie publishing. I don't have a whole lot of time to go into that, but it's something to think about. Just know that there was a time when you could go to any publishing company. There were thousands of them. The big five is now down to the big three. They merge constantly and they drop authors and they pick up authors. They get hundreds of thousands of submissions every year and because there are so few of them now they only publish maybe three to five books a year. So your odds of being published by a traditional publisher are almost non-existent. So you can try it and I have heard of people who I'm very jealous of the people who write, I just wrote my first novel and I got a three book contract and I'm like, I freaking hate you because I've been trying. I tried for years to get published. Indie publishing, there are two kinds. There's Indie where you do it yourself. You load it up to Amazon. I recommend IngramSpark. But you are in charge of all the expenses for the book cover design and the marketing and the uploading and making your website and doing all of that stuff. You are responsible for it all or you can go hybrid where they'll do all that stuff for you but you're still responsible for paying for it all. You're also responsible for your marketing and all they do is give you a published by XYZ Publishing Company. And if that's what you're looking for, fantastic do it. If it's not then go Indie. I recommend it because you are more in control. But copyright your work. Go to copyrights.gov and get a copyright for your book because there are any number of pirates out there who will take your novel if they can and publish it as their own. And then you're wondering where all your royalties went when they're going to someone else. But if you have that copyright, they can't do that. So, okay so I just did the quick traditional roadmap. First thing you have to do though is finish the manuscript. You can't talk to a publishing traditional publisher company because they're going to say send me your whip and you'll be like oh it's not complete is that a yes that's a problem thank you very much and you've just lost your chance. So make sure it's completed. Same thing with Indie or hybrid publishing. If you want to go that route make sure your your manuscript is complete. If you're going to Indie publish find an editor. It's like doctors can't work on themselves. Lawyers can't be their best clients. Writers can't be their best editors. You can edit. There are some great editing books out there and I recommend a few like self-editing for independent for independent authors. I think that's what it's called. Let me see if I can find that real quick. I've lost it. Self-editing for fiction writers. How to edit yourself into print by Brown and King. That is an excellent book on learning how to edit yourself and it's something you should know as a writer anyway. But then once you've done that and your book is done and you think you're ready to publish it find an editor that you have to pay for because they are going to go through that book with a fine-tooth comb and they're going to get it back to you and you're going to go oh it wasn't as good as I thought it was. Everybody goes through that because we can't see what you know after a while it's like I used to have a boss that used to say a sign on the wall becomes the wall. You can't see it after a while so you need somebody who can and will point out to you the things you need to fix. So that's my advice to you and if you want some of these craft book recommendations I'm happy I've got them all and I'm happy to share with you what they are. A website is also important to have wix.com that's where my website is angelaimoodie.com it's very easy to set up you need four things and about you a bookstore page where people can order your book a little blurb on a page that's a blurb on you and how to contact you so that they can ask you questions about your book or whatever. So I know I talked about fiction in general but fiction in general is also historical fiction and those are just some of the things and if you have questions I'm going to be hanging out here please feel free to contact me and also if you just want me to get a take a look at your maybe your first three chapters or something I'm happy to do that too and you can talk to me about that after. So thank you Angie for having me here I hope you enjoyed that. Okay so we are going to do a Q&A time and so stay up here okay but I also want to make sure that we have a moment to thank our sponsors for this program so we have some community businesses who help sponsor our enrichment program here at the homestead and they include this season M&T bank north country federal credit union and AARP Vermont and so yay thank you to those sponsors and also we partner with town meeting TV also in a CCTV so those of you in your room can see Bella in the back and town meeting TV records this program so it can reach larger audiences through our YouTube page and they air it on the local television station as well. So after and after the Q&A I am going to announce our upcoming programs so after the community just stick around for one more minute after that but starting with some questions and before I ask the audience for questions I have a question okay so I'm going to start with that so with historical fiction can you speak a little bit about the how do you balance like historical fact oh with your story the story yeah okay this this is an issue I have all the time and my daughter will read my manuscripts and she'll hand it back to me and she'll say tell the story mom not the history it's really easy to get caught up and oh my gosh I didn't know that and then you want to put it in your book you start with reading a lot of nonfiction pick the time period you want to write in start reading nonfiction learn what you can about that time period and then find books that were written in that time period so contemporary authors to that time to get the flavor of the language you don't want to write like them because your readers today won't understand what you're talking about but you want it to sound like it's that time period but then don't get caught up in the things that you learn that about a historical time period that you put in the book because you think it's great the readers aren't going to care so that's why it's like always I'm always being told tell the story not the history so that's I hope that's but that's what you want to do you want to start out reading everything you can get so like the Salem witch trials I'm reading right now book called the witches Tom and out there he's got a whole I sent me an entire list of books that he thinks that I should read and I'll get to them eventually and then I'm going to go looking for contemporary works in that time period so that I can hear the language and understand and get the way that they would have spoken and the words they would have used things like that it also helps you to understand how they they're they thought about things the references that they make and the mores and the social cultures and stuff like that you learn you find yourself absorbing it and you don't really even realize it how many years of research goes into one of these books for you it's hard to say each book took me eight years to write because well from one thing no safe haven was one of my favorite topics of the civil war I've always been fascinated by the civil war I can't tell you why but that's time period has always fascinated me so the more I learned the more I wanted to learn and I couldn't quite stop doing the research and do the writing I had to force myself to do that the bell of oyster bay is the American Revolution time period I knew much less about that than I did about the civil war so both books took me the same amount of time because I had to read a lot to absorb information I didn't have versus reading to get the information I knew but loved so it's there's no hard and fast rule to how long it takes you some people I know can write a historical and just write the story and then go back and do the the homework I'm not sure I could do that I'm going to try that this time around but I'm not sure that's going to work for me it's a new experiment we'll see we'll see what happens thank you question for anyone how much does time period reflect on dialogue like how people speak so if you're writing a book on the late 19th century you don't want to use terms that you would hear in the 21st century so you're not going to use you're not going to have somebody say you know if it's a 19th century character they're not going to be like hey dude you know but I mean how much of the dialogue of that time do you need you don't need a whole lot you can outlander is a very good example if you've read outlander they use every once in a while to sprinkle in some Scottish words but not a lot because she wants she doesn't want to get bogged down in that so you know they might say I can something yeah so I can that yeah so but for the most part the characters speak you know pretty normally in no safe haven they used a lot of different well it was a very religious time period too far more than we have now so there are a lot of religious references in that book but that's how they spoke to each other and people understood that language and if I didn't put it in there it would not have been authentic so that's kind of I hope that answers your question so anybody else have yeah so I'm not a writer so okay you know listen to your creative process is so intense and indeed I find it hard to believe that chat GPT is really going to be a threat in this world and yet oh everybody's totally up arms about it I mean do you think but what's your reaction to that I'm a little afraid of it be honest with you because it's not so what it does from why my basic understanding of chat GPT is it takes writings from everything Shakespeare and the Wall Street Journal and yesterday's novel and you know whatever and it pulls all them together and it spits something out yeah so you run the chance of if you're going to rely on chat GPT to write your book you run the chance of plagiarizing that's my point of view but also you got to wonder if it's stealing your stuff which is why I say copyright copyright everything because my feeling is my fear is these AI programs are going to end up stealing your words I guess I was crushing more it's really it's it's ability to create a voice and I understand that it's coming you know it's drawing from all sorts of things but you're not going to get that kind of nuance yeah like yes do you know do you um is your question kind of like do you think publishers are going to start I guess just using chat gbd instead of hiring I don't know if the reading public will be able to discern the difference and that's the scary thing because well in fact I've been asked to judge a contest and one of the things that was in there was you know AI is you know we need to be careful about AI and I wrote back and said I would love to judge but how am I gonna know if AI has been used in the story and they said don't worry we have ways of scrubbing okay so I'll do it then yeah I've tried using it and what I've gotten back is just regurgitated facts that don't sound personalized right well then they're they're they're saying well the whole idea is then you have a basis you can start from and you can I like the whole process of using my brain and not using a computer and this is the other thing that we have to worry about how how dumbing down are we for our children that we're not even letting them think so you know I've also heard the theory that like AI is going to be so prolifically spitting stuff out that it's gonna just start copying itself like it's gonna flood the market with its own stuff so then it's gonna become more and more gibberish like when you make a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy so this is from someone who is saying that we shouldn't be that concerned because it's there there'll be a time where it could get right but then it's gonna start becoming more and more gibberish yeah but they'll fix that that's that's my that's my fear they'll fix it as they go along because they don't want people thinking that's my that's my um odyssey 2001 space odyssey thing is that they don't want people thinking for themselves and so they're gonna spit this stuff out that they want you to think and so you know how is alive and well that's a little scary well that's that's the future we're in a history museum so um does anyone have any other questions angel you'll be sticking around right you you have books here that you can talk about show people yeah you're certainly welcome to buy them they're from the the homestead anyway and all proceeds go back to the homestead if you choose to buy a book so you're welcome thank you thank you i have just a couple of announcements about upcoming programs so we do a monthly lecture every month um and so next month is on september 17th sunday at two o'clock and it is called the capture and rescue of remember baker um remember baker who was a cousin of was um active in the religion war and uh was murdered it was it was murdered the right early beheaded yeah but that sounds murdered to me yeah murder but a part of the military campaign so we'll kill an action i'm not sure what the right terminology would be it depends on what side you're on too in the war um but the greenout boys certainly said murdered um remember bakers murdered um early on in the war and bob turret from bennington historical society is going to be here to talk about remember baker and um also coming up is um not until november but it i want to mention it now because it's a book club meeting so we have a book club actually andel moody's in charge of our book club and we just met in august we meet four times a year so the next time our meeting is on november 5th at three p.m um that will be a virtual meeting i believe um and because the museum um will be closing at the end of october for the winter season and the book reading is called my bring up it's a memoir and um it's not too long so um it's really easy to read and it's uh really interesting it takes place in the mid 20th century here in vermont uh native vermont are growing up who also is a member of one of the ad nappy tribes here in vermont so it's a mixture of growing up in rural vermont in the 1950s and 60s um as well as um some of how uh the politics in vermont particularly in the earlier 20th century um influenced their family's life as ad nappy peoples as well so again that book's called my bring up we have a couple of copies available still in the gift shop but it is out of print so um we also recommend people buy the kindle version online from amazon as well so those are the upcoming programs thanks once again to our sponsors m&t bank north country federal credit union and a rp vermont and our partner for this program town meeting tv thanks bella for filming and we hope to see you all here at the museum for another event thank you