I wrote my YA coming-of-age novel, Chasing Harmony, seeking to explore the gaps between expectations and lived experience. The main character, Anna, is a musical prodigy. Her path seems set. But life is messy, and as we grow up, we rarely move in a linear way toward a goal. Sometimes we want and/or need to get off the beaten path and lost in the weeds!

This contrast inspired me to use a non-linear timeline, alternating past and present at different points in my protagonist’s life. How did I do it? How could you use alternating timelines in a narrative? And is it the best choice for the story you’re telling? Here are some questions to ask yourself if you’d like to try your hand at a non-linear novel. 

When do the timeline breaks happen?

Are you going for flashbacks interspersed with the action, or are alternating timelines a core part of your structure? Do the timelines change within chapters, between chapters, or between sections? 

I decided to move back and forth between chapters, with one taking place in year A and the next one taking place in year B. I included one chapter with scenes from multiple years, as a pivot point. Some authors will go from scene to scene when moving between times, or set Part 1 at one point in time, Part 2 at another, and so on. 

How do you keep track of what happens when?

Writing alternating timelines works best when you plot them out, at least to some degree. I made a chapter outline, noting the times each chapter took place. It’s often helpful to add time markers. Because mine were chapter dependent, I wrote them under my chapter headings. I assigned ages; some authors use days, years, or other signifiers. However you alternate times in your story, you have to keep track of them!

Do the points of view change with the alternating timelines?

Chasing Harmony uses a single point of view character, touching on different points in her life, so her perspective changes depending on her age. If you’re writing about multiple characters at different times, such as two people at different points in history, the perspective shift will be more dramatic. Think not only about what your different timelines are, but who is telling each temporal story.

How do the different timelines impact each other (if they do)?

Does your story focus on how different times affect each other? On how history repeats itself? Do you set up scenes in the past as, for instance, clues to a mystery that unfolds in the present? Or insights into what shaped a character’s psychology? 

If you’re writing speculative fiction, such as a time travel story, you have even more options: people from different timelines can move between them or interact, and characters from the future can impact the past! Or are the different timelines discrete in their impact? If they don’t affect each other directly, there needs to be another clear reason for them to alternate.  

Why do your timelines alternate?

I’ve saved the most important question for last. What do you want to show with your time jumps? In Chasing Harmony, some of my chapters follow the main character’s relationship with a girl and are directly contrasted with her later relationship with a boy. Other events were juxtaposed to contrast expectations and reality. If you choose to move between timelines in your story, it’s probably because important events happen at different points in time, but there’s a narrative reason they shouldn’t be revealed to the reader in sequence. Narrow down that reason and use it to focus your storytelling.

Once you’ve written a novel with alternating timelines, make sure to read back over your draft and edit it for consistency. Moving between timelines can be trickier than telling a story in order, but its impact can be profound. And it can be a rewarding way to write. Have fun playing time traveler from the safety of your own laptop!

Melanie Bell is a Canadian multi-genre writer living in the UK. Her books include Chasing Harmony, Dream Signs, and The Modern Enneagram. She has written for several publications including Contrary, Cicada, The Fiddlehead, and Huffington Post. She loves music, art, and nature, and aspires to see as much of the world as she can. Connect with Melanie at InspireEnvisioning.com.

The post How to Write a Novel with Alternating Timelines appeared first on DIY MFA.

No matter what you’re looking to write, you’ll be well served by developing the skills to write coming of age stories. These are tales of firsts, from first love to finding a direction in life to realizing for the first time how the world works.

Below are the basic questions to consider when you’re writing a coming of age story of your own. Thinking about them deeply served them well when writing my YA novel Chasing Harmony and defining what was important for the main character and her arc. 

1. Who?

Most coming of age stories focus on one protagonist. Make sure it’s someone you’re interested in writing about for a whole book. Think about their demographics, interests, values, and goals. Who are they as a young person? What do they expect and aspire to grow into (and are these two things the same or different)? In what direction will they actually grow and change? These things should be interesting for you to write about, making them engaging for the reader, too. There is also, of course, the option of focusing on multiple characters, which requires a balancing act between storylines.

2. Where? 

The setting of your coming of age story is important in defining its character. If you’re writing about a young person growing up in a remote rural area (whether fictional or real), their concerns and experiences will differ from those of someone in a bustling metropolis. And the character’s interaction with the setting will say a lot about who they are, whether they embrace it, plot to escape it, or somewhere in between. If you’re crafting fiction, you’re at liberty to choose or invent your setting.  If you’re writing nonfiction, the setting is determined by your subject, and you might want to do background research to get the nuances right. (This is useful for fiction set in a real place, too, of course, and inspired by aspects of reality.)    

3. Why? 

Lots of things happen as we come of age, but a childhood does not automatically make a story arc. What is the thematic throughline of your story, the first or cluster of firsts that you are focusing on? This will drive the action and interactions of your plot. Maybe you want to focus on your character’s growth as an athlete, on their first successes and failures. Or perhaps you’re more interested in the first time your character lost a loved one, and their recovery from grief. These will be two very different stories. Sometimes a theme can help you determine and define the characters (the “who”). For other writers, it’s the other way around, with the characters emerging first and then revealing their thematic concerns.  

4. How? 

In a coming of age story, your character undergoes formative experiences and emerges changed. Think about what these experiences are like from their perspective, how they will alter your character, and what experiences will most effectively drive the changes you have in mind (or, if this is nonfiction, what real-life experiences were most impactful in changing the subject’s life). What’s hard for the character? What do they have to learn? How are they transformed by their experiences? The person they are at the end is usually somewhat unexpected, both to the protagonist on page 1 and to the reader. 

5. When? 

We discussed the setting above, and the time period is part of it: maybe your story is set today, maybe it’s set in the 1980s, or maybe it’s set in the 1800s. How well do you know your time period, and do you need to research to fill in the gaps? Another big aspect of “when” is the period of time that your story covers. I see this as one of the biggest questions to consider when writing a coming of age story: are you focusing on one pivotal summer in the character’s life, or following them all the way from early childhood to adolescence or adulthood? What time period matters most for the growth arc your story focuses on? Are there flashbacks or alternating timelines? Memory can be a powerful tool in coming of age narratives. Think about how wide or deep you want to go. What times matter most to your character? 

Hopefully, this has given you a few things to think about if you’re looking to write about coming of age. Most stories are about growth and change in some form, and coming of age stories take this focus up to 11. Have fun asking yourself these questions and creating a coming of age story of your own!

Melanie Bell is a Canadian multi-genre writer living in the UK. Her books include Chasing Harmony, Dream Signs, and The Modern Enneagram. She has written for several publications including Contrary, Cicada, The Fiddlehead, and Huffington Post. She loves music, art, and nature, and aspires to see as much of the world as she can. Connect with Melanie at InspireEnvisioning.com.

The post #5onFri: Five Things to Think About When Writing a Coming of Age Story appeared first on DIY MFA.

Fortunately, you’re not alone in facing the challenges of starting and ending your writing. Many writers have slogged through the same terrain, emerged successfully, and created resources to help you out. The following five books offer a wide variety of strategies to help you start your writing, finish it, or both. From inspirational titles that will loosen up your inner critic and get ideas flowing, to pragmatic reads that will help you on the road to completion, you’re sure to find something here that will work wonders on your own creative trouble spots.

Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within

By Natalie Goldberg

If you’re anxious about putting pen to paper, this book is like a warm cup of a tea to calm your nervous system and allow inspiration to emerge. Goldberg draws on her practice of Zen meditation to offer guidance and encouragement to anyone who wants to write. She sees writing as available to everyone, since all of us have valuable stories to share and can learn the tools to articulate them. Many of these tools are introduced in the book, from timed writing to descriptive exercises, teaching readers how to lay the foundation for a vital and ongoing writing practice.

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

By Anne LaMott

Lamott is a friendly teacher whose wit contains wisdom. Her book on writing, with its modest claims (it purports only to give “some” instructions), is accessible and funny. Through personal stories, she shares practical guidance for writers, from working on one small piece at a time (the titular “bird by bird”) to navigating jealousy to letting your characters live and guide you. Her descriptions of “shitty first drafts” will surely resonate, and get you excited to begin your own!

The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers

By Christopher Vogler

And now for something completely different. Vogler was the first to apply Joseph Campbell’s “hero’s journey” model to screenwriting, and his book describes how mythic structures can be applied to modern storytelling. The Writer’s Journey offers a thorough look at character roles and stages of the hero’s journey, and gives examples from popular movies to show how they make use of a heroic narrative model. If you’re looking to structure a story from the beginning, if you think something in your plot isn’t working but aren’t sure what the problem is, or if you’re seeking to craft a satisfying, coherent ending to a project you’ve been working on, you’ll find this book to be an insightful guide to the mechanisms of story.

How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method

By Randy Ingermanson

Another structure-oriented book, this one has a framing narrative that humorously puts its writing advice into practice. A woman named Goldilocks wants to write a novel and learns different methods from different bear teachers, until she finds one that’s “just right”… and a murder mystery ensues. Ingermanson is the first to admit that his Snowflake Method isn’t for everyone, but because it’s quite detailed, it offers a number of tools to get novelists started out. You’ll learn how to make character sheets, develop a one-sentence premise, and build increasingly complex layers of structure from there. Like The Writer’s Journey, this book is a great one for diagnosing plot problems, and it’s useful for writers who prefer to know the jist of what they’re writing in advance.

Finishing School: The Happy Ending to That Writing Project You Can’t Seem to Get Done

By Cary Tennis and Danelle Morton

After years of struggling to complete a novel, advice columnist Cary Tennis brought together a community of writers in the same boat to try out a new method of getting projects done. Morton was one of his guinea pigs. The “finishing school” method they practiced involved egalitarianism and accountability: participants blocked out times to work on their writing, then buddied up and checked in with each other. Reading along with Tennis and Morton’s book, it’s easy to put this method into practice yourself. The authors also offer advice and perspective on overcoming common writing blocks: even Steinbeck struggled with them!

Melanie Bell is the author of The Modern Enneagram. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in various publications including The Fiddlehead, Cicada, Grain, CV2, xoJane, and Autostraddle. She offers writing coaching and editing services through Inspire Envisioning, and you can connect with her work on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The post #5onFri: Five Books to Help You Start and Finish Your Writing appeared first on DIY MFA.

Below is a little taste of the motivations and personalities of each Enneagram type. See which ones fit your favorite fictional characters, and your own characters, most closely. If you’re starting a new story, try using these personality types as characterization starting points.

Type One:

In search of a principled ideal, your character seeks to bring themselves and the world around them as close as possible to that ideal. A One character might be a mover-and-shaker activist, a perfectionistic top student, or a homemaker who keeps a spotless house and arranges their book collection alphabetically. Whatever their station in life, they strive to live by personal standards and put in the hard work to improve things that matter to them. Character growth comes from learning to loosen up and find the perfection in the here and now.

Type Two:

Seeking connection, your character focuses on helping others and demonstrating love. They might be a caring mentor, a person who tend to the needy and readily volunteers to help, or a networker or matchmaker who knows exactly which people will benefit from getting to know each other. Warm and interpersonal, Twos are adept at understanding others’ needs and earning affection by fulfilling them. Character growth is marked by attending to inner life and caring for personal needs–not just everyone else’s.

Type Three:

Success-driven characters cultivate an image that earns them external regard. They are adaptable enough to embody traits and roles that others find valuable, making their presentation quite varied based on what their family or culture models. A Three character could be a high-powered CEO, an outrageous rock star, or the most involved parent at the PTA meeting. Driven by the desire to excel, they inspire and motivate others. Build in character development by having them connect with who they truly are and want to be.

Type Four:

Identity seekers focus on their feelings, striving to know and express themselves. Their introspection lends them a rich inner life. Fours feel like outsiders, and tend to focus on how they are different from others. However, they can understand other people’s emotions more easily than they’d like to admit. Four characters might be distinctive artists, empathetic therapists, or that angsty teenager who feels like they just don’t fit in. Their growth journey involves moving outward, overcoming self-absorption to make a positive impact in the world.

Type Five:

Seeking clarity and mastery over knowledge, these characters tend to specialize in a particular topic or interest. They might be an IT professional on the cutting edge, a biologist who researches crawfish mating habits, or a musician who knows a wealth of musical trivia and invents a new performance style. Fives like to stay ahead of the curve and innovate–that’s how these thoughtful, reserved people feel they have something to contribute. Show growth by having them engage with others and broadening the scope of their curiosity.

Type Six:

Loyal and skeptical, these characters seek guidance externally, yet tend to doubt themselves and others. They are on the hunt for a sure thing, and on the lookout for anything that could go wrong. Sixes make excellent fictional detectives, and are often cast in the role of supportive sidekicks. They’re relatable as protagonists because readers can connect with their doubts and anxieties while admiring their courage to persevere through them. Growth comes from getting in touch with their inner compass and finding their own path.

Type Seven:

These distractible adventurers pursue options, freedom, and happiness. They’re always looking on the bright side and looking forward to the next thing. Whether they’re a party planner, a parent, or a pirate, Seven characters are distinguished by their high spirits and their focus on entertaining people. Generalists rather than specialists, they have wide-ranging interests and may have talents to match. Growth comes through focusing on finding happiness in the present rather than pursuing future options.

Type Eight:

Seeking power and impact, this personality type acts more forcefully than they realize. Eights are the characters who step into a room and get noticed. Being bold and proactive comes naturally to them, making them easy fits for heroics, fight scenes, and big decisions. Archetypal Eights include the boss, the gangster, and the “tough one.” They are fiercely protective of the people who matter to them, and they don’t pull their punches. Show growth by having these characters embrace their tender, sensitive side.

Type Nine:

Dreamers and peace seekers, these characters can fall into habits and self-effacing agreement. They want both the world and their inner lives to be harmonious. Whether they act as wisdom-imparting mentors, mediators, or affable heroes, they excel at setting people at ease. Nines can make great “everyman/everywoman” protagonists who see themselves as nobody special, but come to realize their own capacity to take meaningful action. Growth can be shown through asserting themselves and owning their power.

If any of your characters clearly fit an Enneagram type, can you work aspects of growth into their journey? Do you have a favorite tool or system of your own for creating fictional characters? Feel free to share in the comments!

Melanie Bell is the author of The Modern Enneagram. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in various publications including The Fiddlehead, Cicada, Grain, CV2, xoJane, and Autostraddle. She offers writing coaching and editing services through Inspire Envisioning, and you can connect with her work on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

The post Using the Nine Enneagram Types to Build Dynamic Characters appeared first on DIY MFA.