Anne Greenwood Brown

About Anne Greenwood Brown

Anne Greenwood Brown (@AnneGBrown) writes Young Adult ("YA") fiction. She is represented by Jacqueline Flynn of Joelle Delbourgo Associates. She is the author of the LIES BENEATH trilogy (Random House/Delacorte Press), GIRL LAST SEEN (co-author/ Albert Whitman & Co.), and COLD HARD TRUTH (Albert Whitman, April 2018). Anne was a proud contributor to Writer Unboxed's AUTHOR IN PROGRESS as well as a presenter at the 2016 UnConference. She also writes adult romance under the pen name "A. S. Green."

How to Write Emotional Scenes When You’d Really Rather Not

July 23, 2018 By Anne Greenwood Brown 13 Comments

This book gave me “all the feels.”

We all strive to write the quintessential delivery system for “feels,” whether we know it or not, whether we’re consciously striving to deliver, or not. We do this because that’s what drives us to tell stories in the first place. Somewhere along the line—whether it was Vonnegut or Brontë, Irving or Rowling—we all read something that touched a chord and made us say, “Ah. Yes. I’ve been there.”

Or maybe we were too busy blowing our noses to get those actual words out, but you get the idea.

So what can you as a writer do to elicit more empathic reactions from your readers than detached ones? Writing emotional scenes has less to do with the scene itself and more to do with tapping into universal experiences and the emotions that go with them. Not many people (if any at all) will have experienced the exact scene you are writing and be able to connect to it. But all people have experienced some sort of loss, triumph, grief, disappointment, or love.

Empathy creates a bond. When you as the writer find your empathy for the character, chances are you will create an empathetic bond between your reader and the character, as well. Therefore, if you find yourself in a scene that is so much bigger (emotionally) in your head than it is coming out on the page, take a step back. Identify the emotion you are going for, then recall the last time you felt that way yourself.

Easy, right?

Confession time. I talk the big talk. Walking it is a whole lot harder. I come from a long line of stiff-upper-lipped Scandinavians who settled in the Midwest. Stoicism is a virtue; “not too bad,” is high praise. My natural reaction to writing an emotional scene is to pull back. Getting in there and feeling right along with my character seems very rude and more than a tad voyeuristic. Good manners tells me to fade the scene to black. But I know in my phlegmatic Midwestern heart, that this won’t do for storytelling. So I make a list. [Read more…]

Visual Thinking

March 26, 2018 By Anne Greenwood Brown

A month or so ago, I was deep into first-pass editing. This is the stage after you receive an editorial letter that poses questions about character development, suggests adding scenes (or removing them), and encourages other “big picture” thinking. I posted a photo of what my editing process looked like for that morning, and Therese Walsh messaged me: “Please write a post about this.”

I thought that was Therese just being sweet and supportive (as is her way) because what could I possibly say about something so obvious?

But then, over the course of the day, similar comments trickled in. I was surprised, and it got me thinking that maybe…was it possible?…not everyone organized their thoughts in pictures? So I did a little digging.

Turns out, I am a visual thinker (aka picture thinker), as are 60-65% of the rest of you. When you write, do you first picture the scene in your mind, and then describe what you see? Or, do you begin to write and the scene slowly materializes as your words hit the page? If you are the former, [insert Jeff Foxworthy’s voice] you might be a visual thinker.

If you are athletic, musical or mathematically inclined, you may be more inclined to visual thinking.

Back in the 1970s,“visual” and “verbal” thinking were set up as opposites, but the brain is never that simple. Most of us think and learn in a combination of ways.

For example, Temple Grandin reports that words touch off cascades of images as her visual and language systems interact. (Otis, Psychology Today)

Poet Natasha Trethewey has such a strong visual memory that, when she studied for tests in high school, she would visually memorize her notes and then read the answers off her mental scans. (Id.)

Jessica Spotswood, an author friend of mine, gets down to editing by retyping her entire book, character-by-character, starting with page one. She says, seeing the words all together on the page visually disengages her from the specific words originally selected, and allows her to fine-tune her message.

So, this brings me back to my own writing and editing processes. Why do I do it the way that I do, and might it also help you? [Read more…]

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Cleaning the Lens

October 31, 2017 By Anne Greenwood Brown

I have a daughter. She’s seventeen. She’s a fantastic writer (truly), and a big-time reader (no surprise). She’s also totally blind. And this is where things get interesting.

A few weeks ago, we were driving down the road. She was reading aloud to me from her work in progress—a fantasy that featured a blind person as the main character. Here’s a snippet of that conversation:

Daughter reading: “As the minivan approached the curb, we all turned to look, and John’s face clouded with disgust.”

“Stop,” I said. “Stop right there. Isn’t the main character blind?”

“Yeah,” she said, as if it should be obvious. She’d already told me so.

“Okay, so how did she know it was a minivan approaching? How did she know everybody turned to look? How did she know what John’s face looked like?”

Long pause…Then, from the passenger seat. “Dammit.”

This exchange triggered a fascinating conversation about points of view and author intrusion. My daughter had infused her character with a point of view that was not specific to her character’s visual impairment, but rather to every sighted character in every book she’d ever read. This disconnect caused reader/listener confusion and a lack of trust.

“How can you rewrite it?” I asked.

A few minutes later she came back with: [Read more…]

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In Memoriam

May 29, 2017 By Anne Greenwood Brown

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Pinch Are You Awake?

November 30, 2016 By Anne Greenwood Brown

Photo by alq666

We all have an inherent sense of story. There is an expected rhythm to it, like breathing, and we notice when that rhythm gets interrupted. This is why we give up on a novel we’re reading because it’s moving too slowly, or why we are dissatisfied with an ending because it felt too rushed.

I had the pleasure earlier this month to present at Writer Unboxed’s Unconference in Salem, Massachusetts. One of my topics was “Wrangling with Plot,” to correspond with my essay in Author in Progress. Rather than focus on the three-act plot structure that, perhaps, we have all heard too much about. I attempted to focus my remarks on the pacing of those three acts so that they resonate well with modern-day audiences’ expectations. In other words, while you want your plot to surprise, to inspire, and to get readers thinking about things in new and interesting ways, the pacing of that plot, the delivery of that message, is often best received when it has a certain anticipated rhythm.

If you are getting comments from agents, editors, or even readers that the story is “hard to get into” or “moves too slowly,” then you are likely dealing with a pacing problem. Your story is not beating in rhythm with the pulse of the modern-day audience and that lack of rhythm can, no doubt, be unsettling. [Read more…]

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Character Connections

June 29, 2016 By Anne Greenwood Brown

(Photo by Alexis Mire)

I’ve been thinking a lot about empathy lately. It’s been an obvious subject of conversation in the wake of the Orlando massacre and high profile sexual assaults. Violence is often the result of one person’s inability to connect with and appreciate the value and integrity of another person.

In that regard, author Shannon Hale has been very vocal about schools not engaging female authors for speaking engagements and not promoting books with female protagonists on the premise that the author or the book won’t be interesting to boys (while not having the same concerns about male authors and male protagonists being interesting to girls). Hale recently tweeted (and I’m paraphrasing here): When we constantly tell young boys that they don’t have to consider the female point of view, that the female protagonist’s story has nothing to teach them, and even to ridicule those boys who (gasp!) pick up a book about a girl…is it any wonder why there are so many young men who cannot empathize with their female peers?

Obviously developing empathy is an important piece to cultivating a safer and healthier world, but I’m not here to bemoan current events. Instead, let me focus on the importance of developing empathy for the purpose of improving our writing. This is Writer Unboxed, after all.

Why do we, as writers, need to develop a strong ability to empathize? [Read more…]

Untitled

October 30, 2015 By Anne Greenwood Brown

Once upon a time (because that’s how all good stories start), the title of my work in progress was: LATEST BOOK. I considered submitting it that way. It was ironic. Poignant. It begged a deeper question of philosophical importance. Maybe.

Or maybe the truth was: While I am rarely a victim of traditional writer’s block, I am a frequent victim of title paralysis (or TP, for short). As a result, I once consorted with the most dubious of online resources for book title ideas. I regret if this post only adds to the pile.

Upon my first experience of being TP’d, I Googled “title generator.” Doing so, I got a handful of websites that offered helpful algorithms for generating book titles. It is really quite simple. They ask a stymied writer to insert two adjectives, two verbs ending in -ing, and two plural nouns. They don’t specifically tell you to use words that have anything to do with your novel, but I dug deep and got clever like that.

My WIP was a Young Adult romance with thriller elements, set in a cold Minnesota winter. I typed in: cold, dangerous, shifting, helping, friends, enemies. After that, I hit “title me,” and the site shot out ten possibilities. Ten! That was eleven more than I had!

I immediately took the title generator’s advice. At that point my manuscript was titled: DANGEROUS FRIENDS BY COLD ENEMIES. Catchy, right?

Apparently not.

Next up: the Wordle technique. Wordle.net is a website where you can paste large blocks of text from your novel, or even your entire manuscript, into its search window. You hit “Go!” and the website analyzes your most-often appearing words and gives you something that looks like this: [Read more…]

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Fun With Literary Allusions

May 29, 2015 By Anne Greenwood Brown

Let’s talk about literary allusion. For some of you, it may be a literary device you haven’t thought much about since tenth grade English, but it is a technique that I love as a reader and turn to often in my own writing to inform a character, to enrich a scene, or to evoke emotion.

First. A refresher. Literary allusion is a quick reference to something or someone of historical significance–whether real or fictional. “A little bit of one story joins onto an idea from another, and hey presto, . . . not old tales but new ones.” (Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990)) But the success of an allusion in enhancing the new tale depends on how well-seated the old tale is in the intended audience’s collective psyche. For example, a writer would have greater success with an allusion if it were made to Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa,” than if it were made to Leonardo’s “Ginevra de Benci.” Most, if not all of us can immediately call to mind Mona Lisa’s secretive smile, but what of poor Ginevra? Hers is a face that has been lost to the centuries.[pullquote]Most, if not all of us can immediately call to mind Mona Lisa’s secretive smile, but what of poor Ginevra? Hers is a face that has been lost to the centuries.[/pullquote]

Consider this excerpt from Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep (2013): “Danny strolled to the town common, sat on one of the benches in Teenytown and took one of the bottles out of the bag, looking down on it like Hamlet with Yorick’s skull.” It is a successful allusion because it adds meaning to the scene (the bottle is a symbol of the shortness of life, just like the skull) and because it informs the reader about the character of Danny (the bottle has been his longtime acquaintance, just as “Poor Yorick” was to Hamlet).

So it is good to remember the general rule: that allusions should recall something commonly accessible. But like most rules, don’t be afraid to break this one because allusions can also be

just about having fun.

[Read more…]

Collaboration

September 1, 2014 By Anne Greenwood Brown

In April of this year, I got a call from my agent that went something like this:

She:“I’ve been hearing from several editors that they’re looking for a book like X. They were wondering if I had anything to submit that would fit the bill. I don’t, but I do have an author who could write a book like that.”

Me:“You do?”

She:“Yeah. You. Can you get it done in twelve weeks?”

Which is about when a few annoying character traits of mine kicked in: (1) I find it impossible to say no; (2) I think I can do anything as long as I put my mind to it; and (3) I hate to let people down. The trouble is, I work full-time (and not at writing), plus I’ve got three kids who like to be occasionally fed.

As much as I put my mind to bending time and squeezing forty hours into twenty-four, I have not yet been able to pull that off. So here I was. I’d said yes to my agent, and now I was going to let her down. I wrote a synopsis, then sat down to cry when I realized how much work lay in front of me.

A few days later, a woman in my critique group mentioned how she thought it would be fun to co-write a book with me. The heavens parted.

So, we wrote that book, which was told from four points of view (2 major; 2 minor). We each took a major and minor character; thus, we each committed to writing 50% of the book. By the end, this equated to approximately 36,000 words each. Totally doable. We finished the project in not twelve weeks, but seven, and it is now edited and ready for submission.

As quickly as the process went for us, it wasn’t always easy and I learned some lessons along the way. If you’ve ever considered co-writing a book, these tips are for you.

[Read more…]

Plotting, Pacing, and Crossing Over

May 4, 2014 By Anne Greenwood Brown

Awhile back, I attended the three-day Story Masters Workshop, given by James Scott Bell, Donald Maass, and Christopher Vogler. I highly recommend it, and you can check out more information about their workshops here. Vogler’s expertise is movie scripts. One of the things that I found most interesting about his presentation was his 12-stage hero’s journey, which suggested that every well-plotted and well-paced story had a “crossing over” at approximately the 25% mark, and a “near-death” at the 50% mark. His case in point: Star Wars. At the 25% point, Luke “crosses over” by leaving his Aunt and Uncle’s farm, and at the 50% mark suffers a “near death” when he’s caught in an intergalactic trash compactor.

If you have read my posts before, you know how fond I am of mathematical approaches to plotting. You can check out my mathematical formula for kicking out a fast first draft here. Clearly I was intrigued by Vogler’s premise, but I wasn’t able to tap into the high-testosterone crime/thriller movie examples he was using: Casablanca, The Godfather, etc. Believe it or not, with the exception of Star Wars, I hadn’t seen a single one of the movies he cited. It made me wonder if the formulas he was promoting were as applicable to the Middle Grade and Young Adult fiction my kidlit colleagues and I were writing, as they were to the thrillers and crime movies he used as his examples. As a result, I took it upon myself to put his formula to the test.

I picked random books off my bookshelf, checked how many pages were in the novel, divided by four, then opened the book to the 25% and 50% mark to see if there was, in fact, a crossing over scene and a near death scene. In my not-so-scientific study, I looked at approximately twenty novels and, for the most part, Vogler’s markers held true. The following three novels were typical of the results.

[Read more…]

Practical Tips for Writing a Series

December 1, 2013 By Anne Greenwood Brown

There is no one way to write a series. There are, however, some practical considerations that will save you time and frustration as you take off on your journey, particularly if you intend to pursue a traditional publisher. Some of these tips I learned from agents and editors; others I learned myself (the hard way) and offer them up to save you some of my own frustration.

Series Potential. Let’s assume you have written a book and now you’re wondering if your book has series potential. One obvious consideration would be if you have a main character who can go on more adventures or solve more mysteries. Or perhaps there are minor characters or story threads left hanging that deserve their own development.

Another clue might be your word count. For example, the average YA novel is about 80k, though the range is probably more like 60-120k, depending on the sub-genre. If you have written a 300,000 word YA novel, you may have really written three books in one. I say may because 300k words is indicative of one of two things: either you have a multi-storied story, or you have a lot of “fat” that needs to get cut. Don’t mistake one for the other. If you do truly have several arcs going on, consider breaking each arc into its own novel.

Staying Consistent. After you finish Book 1, create a series “Bible” (3-Ring Notebook) where you can keep a list of story details for easy reference.

For characters, keep track of their birthdays and ages. Note their speech tics, nervous habits, eye color, and clothing styles. If a character has scars, record where they are located because you don’t want them to move around over the course of the series. Also, write a paragraph on each of their back stories

For each building, draw a floor plan, indicating the decor, flooring, furniture, kitchen, and the location of windows and what direction they face (you want to make sure a character doesn’t watch the sunrise and sunset from the same window). Know if the kitchen counters are marble, tile, etc. If they are tile in Book 1 and marble in Book 2, your readers will notice.

For cities and towns, create a map with distances between places noted in miles/kilometers because you need to know how long it should take a character to get to each place by car and by foot. Again, know where north is so you know where the sun rises and sets.

Time Lines are important too, particularly if the story stretches over many years. You need to track how someone ages through the book, how the seasons are changing, and how long someone’s hair should be in Book 2 if she cuts it two-thirds of the way through Book 1.

Cart Before the Horse. After making Book 1 the very best it can be, write the synopsis for Books 2 and 3, then most agents recommend that you move on to something new and unrelated. In other words, don’t go on immediately to write the subsequent books.

Why? [Read more…]

The Shy Writer’s Cocktail Party Survival Guide

July 28, 2013 By Anne Greenwood Brown

Confession: For me, the scariest part of a writer’s conference is the cocktail party. There’s no structure. No speaker. No handouts. Instead, hundreds of people who are used to spending long hours at a keyboard in coffee-stained jammies are let loose into a hotel ball room and left to fend for themselves. There are a few, you can spot them right away, who relish these things. But for many of us, it’s a struggle. Here are some practical tips for tackling those introverted road blocks.

Step 1: Prepare in Advance

Google the keynote speakers, the VIP attendees, or anyone in particular you would like to meet at the event. It is amazing what you can learn. Perhaps someone shares your passion for rescue dogs and roller derby;
Ask friends who know people you’d like to meet if they’d be willing to set up a pre-event introduction, either online or off;
Send an Email to three people you’d like to get to know better, saying “I heard from [mutual friend] that you’re going to be at the SCBWI Summer Conference. I’ve heard so much about you, and I’m really looking forward to meeting you in person. Hope to see you there!”;
Enlist a Friend to Go with You;
Volunteer to Help with the Event;
Go with a Specific Goal in Mind: e.g., I will find a critique partner.

Step 2: Practice Your Small Talk [Read more…]

About Anne Greenwood Brown

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