Happy Monday, friends! Shannon here to introduce our very last 2018 Summer Panelist (sobs!).
Please welcome author Kim Culbertson to the blog! I met Kim at an author dinner a few years back and was immediately taken by her smarts. I love hearing her talk about the journey and the craft of writing and I know you'll see exactly what I mean when you read her answers.
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| Shan and Kim at a dive only redeemable by its twinkle lights and conversation. |
Let me tell you a little bit more about the author herself:
KIM CULBERTSON is the author of the YA novels Songs for a Teenage Nomad (Sourcebooks 2010), Instructions for a Broken Heart (Sourcebooks
2011), which was named a Booklist Top Ten Romance Title for Youth: 2011
and also won the 2012 Northern California Book Award for YA
Fiction, Catch a Falling Star (Scholastic 2014), The Possibility of Now (Scholastic 2016), which was named a Bank Street Best Children’s Book of the Year (2017
edition), and The Wonder of Us (Scholastic 2017). Much of her
inspiration comes from her background teaching high school since 1997.
In 2012, Kim wrote her eBook novella The Liberation of Max McTrue for
her students, who, over the years, have taught her far more than she has
taught them. Kim lives in Northern California with her husband and
daughter.
We'll talk a little about Kim's books on Wednesday, but her dedication as a teacher and her work with the National Writing Project Writers Council are truly inspiring. I can't wait to learn from her this week. So let's get to it.
Today's panel question is:
Kim: I feel like my empathy is a big strength; it is essential to my writing – to be able to put myself in my characters' minds and hearts and try to understand why they make the choices they do. But my empathy can also get in the way of writing darker, more innately devious and terrible characters because I always try to believe they see themselves as justified or right and this softens them. I’ve had many readers over the years tell me that I love my characters too much, that I too often see good in people where there isn’t any. I used to feel like, “That’s a good thing!” but I do also see their point. There is a certain naiveté in believing people have good in them when they keep showing us otherwise. And it does keep me from writing truly wicked villains in the way some writers can, but I am coming to grips with that about my work. I prefer the messier, flawed characters who have both good and bad sides to clearly good or bad types of characters. Maybe this is because, for the most part, I have rarely encountered pure villains in my ordinary life. Sometimes people are broken or narcissistic or sheltered, but not evil at their hearts. Flawed people. And, yes, some are more flawed than others. I hope to keep playing with this idea in my future work.
Steph: I’m excellent at the discipline required to finish a novel. I’m rarely distracted by my messy house or social media. I’m trying to improve on my descriptive language. That’s always been a struggle for me, coming up with ways to prettily and efficiently describe.
Jill: I think I’m pretty good at worldbuilding--at creating a place that feels real, sometimes eerily so. I’m always looking to improve my plot structure and pacing. My books often take a while to get going. Perhaps it’s the epic fantasy genre, I don’t know. But I’d love to change that.
Shan: I love these answers! I identify with both Steph and Kim regarding empathy and discipline. I know what it takes to get a novel done and I'm not afraid to sit down and do it. The empathy thing can definitely get in the way, but is also so crucial. I think my biggest strength comes in a similar vein to that. I have no qualms crawling into a character's head and working to see the world as they see it. It can be exhausting at times, but it's a real strength.
Like Jill, my greatest weakness is probably structure. My own writing process is so valuable to the creative flow in my head, but it can work against me at times in the structure department. I'm actively working to improve here.
My strength...probably coming up with stories that keep people's attention, while promoting a cayse/value I'm passionate about.
ReplyDeleteMy weakness is easy...too many characters;)
Isn't it funny that our weaknesses are so much easier to name than our strengths?
DeleteVery much so!
DeleteRyana, I often get told I have too many characters in my books too -- but I love writing about ensembles and the way we all interact with each other, so I have to just keep reminding myself that every time I add a new character they must have a purpose, a clear reason for being in a scene (they can't just be background or props) :)
DeleteThank you so much, Ms. Kim! I appreciate the advice! Very helpful!
Delete:)
DeleteStrength: finishing stories that I LOVE
ReplyDeleteWeakness: too much telling, or so I've been told ;p
keturahskorner.blogspot.com
These are awesome, Keturah! Even your weakness. Too much telling is a great stepping stone in story development. It beats a struggling imagination any day.
DeleteWe get taught to "show" not "tell" but I always tell my classes, sometimes you really need to just get on with the story -- we can't show *everything*. Writers have to make choices and sometimes telling is the quickest way out of the woods. One of my writing teachers, Sands Hall, introduced me to the concept of "scene" vs "summary" instead of "show" vs "tell" -- sometimes, she argues, we need to summarize to get to our next scene. Sometimes, we need to just say, "Two days later" or even "she was mortified" rather than just show everything. We just have to make sure we're doing it on purpose and it's feeding the pacing of the story :)
ReplyDeleteI love this! I’ve struggled for years with show vs. tell and just recently discovered I could look at it as scene vs. summary and it has been so helpful.
DeleteThat makes so much more sense! This is literally the first time the concept has actually made sense to me!
DeleteI'm so glad, Ryana! It was a game changer for me as a writer. Like Maddie said, it has been so helpful to just look at my sentences as "when am I summarizing and when am I adding scene work?" -- both modes can still utilize strong writing and active language.
DeleteMy weakness is definitely not describing things well enough. My characters are always floating around in bare rooms with no setting description.
ReplyDeleteI’m also really bad at letting the reader into the character’s head and feel their emotions. I’ve been working with some editors and critique partners and they’ve been really helpful in showing me where to improve on it.
My strength...I create good characters. Once I’ve gone back and actually added their thoughts and emotions, people always comment on how unique, relatable, etc. my characters are.
I hear you on floating heads, Maddie! It's taken many years for me to kick that habit. It's an easier habit to fix than needing to learn to create good characters, so you're in a good place. ;-)
DeleteSo glad to meet you, Kim! Welcome to Go Teen Writers. I'll have to add your books to my TBR pile! :-)
ReplyDeleteI love what you shared about empathy. I, too, tend to empathize with my villains. At the end of my last book, which had multiple points of view, I left one of my villains lost. I think my readers were expecting her to come around, become a good guy, and while she came close, she still chose her own way. That was what she would have done. So while it felt right, it also felt weird to leave her lost. I understand exactly why she chose that path, though, and I will always empathize with her broken past, so perhaps I have more playing to do with this as well. lol
Thanks, Jill. I'm impressed that you had multiple villains! Last book I wrote, my editor was like, "Can you let *someone* be the antagonist!?" Hahaha. I'll keep working on it.
DeleteWow, Kim. Empathy is a great one! Such a valuable skill for a writer and for life!
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad you're here with us this week!
So happy to be here and learn from everyone -- thanks, Stephanie!
DeleteI think one of my strengths/weaknesses go hand in hand. I feel very deeply; I am passionate about the things I want to write about and I know the exact feelings that I want my stories to convey; but I have some trouble putting those things into words. I guess this is something that most writers deal with, but can be frustrating when I have such a specific picture of how I want my emotions to come across and I can't get it out.
ReplyDeleteI've gotten pretty good over the past year or so at plugging away at one main project and balancing stories that are in different stages of development. It might take me a year to finish one first draft, but I'm going to finish it and not let other (writing) projects distract me. Editing, marketing, other-kind-of-projects... quite possibly.
ReplyDeleteMy weakness is lack of balance between dialogue and description. I way overfill my stories with dialogue and then struggle to add in description later. I think I really need to go through in my second drafts and with each scene try to figure out what's in the scene, what the mood is like, what the MC would notice, etc. and try to fill that in. I'm trying to more consciously write description in my first drafts... but I'm not sure it's working. I'm also trying to learn from the stories I edit for others that either struggle with having enough description or with tying it to characters. (I'm way better at diagnosing and treating issues in others' stories than my own. Distance helps figure out what's missing more specifically. :P)
I love that some of the strengths people are listing are things that didn't come naturally to them. Stephanie has written about how she had trouble finishing a novel at the beginning of her career, so it's really cool to see you name it as your strength with no equivocation.
ReplyDeleteI think my strengths and weaknesses are pretty much the same as Shan's. I'm good at getting into my characters' heads and making decisions as them, but structure is still a struggle for me. But maybe one day I'll list it as a strength.