Fifteen Nuggets from Cherry Adair at the Woodneath Romance GenreCom Master Writers Program

On August 1 and 2, I took a break from the hassles of moving to attend the Master Writing Class with Cherry Adair offered by the Woodneath Branch of the Mid-Continent Public Library as part of their Romance Genre Conference. Author Cherry Adair taught a two-day program that covered how to plot a novel, with additional emphasis on aspects of novel writing such as character development, dialogue, backstory, and action scenes.

Over the past twelve years, I’ve done enough reading (and practicing) of these topics that I didn’t hear a lot that was new. Ms. Adair has an engaging presentation style, and her unique offering is a color-coded method of plotting. For visual learners, it was probably a game-changer. I am a more prosy and linear learner, so I didn’t find that part of the class so useful.

Ms. Adair plots with the three-act structure that many other writers use—Act 1 being the first quarter of the book, Act 2 being the middle half (with a turning point at the midpoint), and Act 3 being the last quarter, with plot points and twists at each turning point in the novel. Since this structure was familiar to me, I could take much of what she said and turn her colors into words that made sense to me.

If color-coding your characters’ scenes and backstory and settings is something that appeals to you, you might check out her book, Writers’ Bible.

Though the color-coding didn’t appeal to me, I did glean several nuggets from Ms. Adair’s teaching. Again, some of these points I knew, but her pithy way of expressing herself brought them home to me clearly.

I’ve picked fifteen nuggets to share:

1. Writers should have a career plan. Where do you want to be with your writing in one year? In five years? What do you have to do this week to make that happen?
2. Authors’ careers have a progression. They move beyond what they used to write, which is why readers might like earlier books and not later books. Or vice versa.
3. It’s not helpful to be too competitive with other writers. Different audiences want different work.
4. It doesn’t matter if you do your plot map first or your character development. But you must do them both. And the more you do before you start writing, the faster you can draft the novel.
5. Writing is layering. Write the first draft, then add the depth and meaning in layers in later drafts.
6. Plot backward from the end, starting with scenes in which the antagonist appears. The antagonist drives the story. Know the ending before you begin.
7. If you spend 27 days or 7 months to write a book, you will spend the same number of minutes actually writing. It’s just how compressed your writing process is.
8. Characters’ decisions drive the plot.
9. Conflict tests your characters and makes them grow.
10. When writing romance, keep your hero and heroine together as much as possible to build their chemistry.
11. If you give a character or location or prop weight in the story, there needs to be a payoff at the end.
12. Only include the backstory that the readers need at the moment to understand the scene.
13. If you have something on the page, it can be improved. But first, get it on the page. Give yourself permission to write badly.
14. The first few pages of your novel sell this book, last few pages sell your next book.
15. You don’t want to make your readers work; your purpose is to entertain.

Writers, which of these points resonate with you? Do you disagree with any of them?