Reinventing Your Story: Part 2: Types of Reinventing

2: Types of Reinventing

Let's talk a bit about types of reinvention.

There are three big categories, and we can deal with them each in new topics:

1. Reinvent the book. This happens when something has changed and the book that seemed just great no longer works. For example, my last book was written as a women's fiction, but sold as a mystery. Big surprise! The mystery plot was pretty lame. Why? Because I wrote the main plot to be the heroine's life journey to recover from a divorce. Sure, she had to solve her ex's murder along the way, but the big triumphant climax was her getting over her fear of disappointing or losing her son. Cough. I had to beef up the whole mystery thing, put in clues, motivation, suspects. All that stuff mystery novels usually have.

A friend of mine right now is trying to turn an old manuscript aimed at Harlequin (that is, a "category romance") into a "single-title" romance, which means, at minimum, adding in a subplot or two and deepening the interaction with other characters.

Another friend wrote a young adult novel in third person and the publisher likes it... but wants it in first person.

There are, these days, many reasons we might want to perform major surgery on what is a pretty good book (and complete too).

2. Reinvent the author. We used to just have to change our penname, you know, to let go of the baggage associated with our author name! But now, everyone knows that Jane Romance is really Bill Suspense, so it takes more than a name change.

Why would you need to reinvent yourself as an author? First would be after a long series of rejections if you're unpublished. But even published authors might need to start over after a long dry spell, or when the market for their type of book has dropped out, or if they've somehow screwed something up so that readers have started a boycott, or they were caught up in a scandal, or had some serious health issue that derailed them, and "Amy Author" is no longer a good person to be in the intense new publishing world.

3. Reinvent the career. In some ways, this is the adventure of the new millennium. We're all reinventing our careers, whether we want to or not. All the old verities are discarded, and what used to work to make for a great career might not anymore. And all the street savvy you might have picked up along the way might not do much to help you avoid all the new pitfalls.

Reinventing a career might involve discarding an agent or the entire "legacy publishing industry." It might be about changing genres or learning how to navigate social media or how to do your own negotiations. It might mean going from being just an author to being a business. It might mean finding and fixing a brand.

We'll just talk about reinventing the book now. For the moment, what would you say is your current situation? Anyone need/want to reinvent? Are there other categories?

Reinventing Your Book: Part 3-- Type of Story

3: Changing the Emphasis of the Plot

Reinventing your book.

First, think about what isn't working.
I found that if you can define what needs to be changed, you're halfway to changing it.

Let's go over the major categories, and share with us if you have other thoughts.

Say the book is fine, but it's a romance with a mystery subplot, and the publisher loves your voice and your characters, but wants it to be a mystery with a romantic subplot, for example. Or you decide that you want to make it a mystery because it will be easier to sell that way. At any rate, you've decided you need to flip the plots.

Most books don't just have one plot. They'll have what they call in the films an "A" plot and a "B" plot.

The A plot is usually the one that reflects what genre or subgenre this book is in, so if you wrote the book as a romantic comedy, say, the A plot is probably the journey of the romantic couple to fulfilled love.

The B plot is usually an important plot, and might actually take up as much space as the A plot. If you, for example, have your romantic comedy couple solving a crime, the mystery plot would be the B plot. If they are trying to rid the town of zombies, the B plot would be a horror plot. Because the B plot is usually so important to the structure of the story, it's fairly easy to beef it up and – if you need to—make it the A plot.

So let's start just with plot structure, and then scene structure.

Plot Structure:

Sometimes it's just a matter of emphasis and sequence that determines which of two major plots is the A plot, and if you fix the sequence, you can go a long way to flipping the plots.

You have probably absorbed a whole lot of "story grammar" and have done this instinctively or by learning: Usually we start with the A plot. That is, in the first scene or first chapter, usually we'll have the couple meeting if it's a romance, or a body being discovered if it's a mystery. We might have a slower opening, but we're still hinting in the opening what the main conflict/plot will be (like heroine has decided she'll quit dating –romance—or she's talking to her mom about how much everyone hates the mayor- mystery).

So if you want to flip the A and B plots, start there at the beginning. Revise the opening slightly so that the first hint of what's to come is the plot you now want to emphasize.

For example, in my women's-fiction-turned-mystery, I originally had the first scene between the heroine and her ex-husband involve her complicated feelings about him and his hints that he wants to move back home. When I flipped the plots, I kept all that "divorce heartbreak" stuff, but punched up Don's confession that he was getting sued by an angry client, and moved that up first. It took a bit of rewriting, but now the opening has changed subtly to make it a mystery opening.

Similarly, the A plot is usually the one fully resolved in the climactic scene (which is usually the second-to-last scene in the book). Again, it might take some rewriting to get the murder plot, say, resolved in that scene. But if you can do that, you'll be sending the structural message to the reader that this is at base a mystery novel.

Scene Endings:

The great script doctor and workshop leader Robert McKee offered this invaluable tip for establishing the genre (or sub-genre, or just major plot): End the turning point scenes, particularly the "inciting incident" (first turning point), on a moment that reflects the chosen genre. Sometimes this just means extending the end of the scene and closing on a comic note or a horror note or a mystery note. That is, you don't have to rewrite all the turning point scenes… just the ending.

This is quite helpful if you have been getting rejections that say, "You're a great writer, but this doesn't fit our romantic comedy line," and you just know that it's a romantic comedy. Look to the end of the inciting incident scene (which is probably in the first or second chapter). Does that end with a moment that reflects the chosen genre?

Let's try an example:

Tom is fairly young. Under 30. Start the scene
however we want, couple paragraphs maybe of Ordinary World or whatever
works here.

Out of the blue he gets a call from a funeral parlor, saying that his
Uncle Walt has died and is there and Tom was listed as next-of-kin. (Keep
in mind that we're going to be making choices all along, and every choice
leads to another choice-- you make a million choices in every scene, and
only some are conscious. And some can be deferred, so we don't have to
decide yet whether uncle Walt is his blood uncle or an un-related
godfather.)

(We also presumably will have to decide at some point whether Tom knows
Uncle Walt and is grieved by his death, or barely knows him, or has never
before heard of him and can't figure out how Tom's name appears as
next-of-kin. In a cozy mystery, for example, usually the murder victim
isn't personally important to the sleuth. So if you're, say, switching from a suspense novel—which has intense emotions—to a cozy mystery—which does NOT have intense emotions, you might want to make Uncle Walt more of a distant relation so Tom doesn't have to grieve.)

So he goes to the funeral parlor. Here maybe some internal conflict--
maybe when he was 19, both his parents were killed in a car accident and
he had to handle all the details, and ever since ge's avoided funeral
parlors. Now notice-- if we go with that backstory, that heavy tragedy in
the past, we are immediately darkening the tone of the book.
If we go with the death, and if it's going to end up a comedy, it's going
to be a dark or black comedy. One of the issues that comes up a lot with
openings is what I call "inappropriate emotion", and I don't mean
actually the character's emotion, but the emotion that the events inspire
in the reader. The opening and backstory do have to be tailored to the
scope of the book-- and, as we're seeing, it's really important that you
know as you draft, or as you revise, what your story IS.

If you mean this to be a suspense thriller, sure, go with the tragic backstory, and also maybe
make Uncle Walt a real uncle and close to Tom. But if you want to make it a cozy
mystery, the "coziness" comes from detachment from the bad
circumstances-- the victim is usually someone not well-known by the
sleuth or is actively disliked. And the internal conflicts are minor,
more quirks or annoyances than traumas.

If it's a deep dark wrenching romance, go with the tragedy. If it's a
sweet romance, or a romantic comedy, see if you can come up with another
reason Tom hates funeral parlors.

Think about connecting the conflict-causing backstory to the type of
story. For example, in a romantic comedy or a cozy mystery, that might be
something kind of jolly but embarrassing, like when he pledged his
fraternity in college, one of the challenges was to steal a shoe off a
cadaver, so ever since, he's been squicked out by funeral parlors.

Just keep the backstory appropriate to this scope. I can't tell you how
many contest entries I've seen where the story is supposed to be light
and there's some huge tragedy in the past, or when this is a "serious"
story, maybe a romantic suspense, and it opens with a "cute meet" or
clever comic scene. It's just jarring, and it makes me wonder if the
author is actually INTO her story. If she were into it really, she would
feel the right feeling as she wrote and conceived that first scene.
She would be sensitive to the effect this whatever choice had on the
reader. Again, begin as you mean to go on! Don't bait-and-switch the
reader. So if you're switching MOODS here—like from a serious romance to a cozy mystery—make sure that the backstory is changed to reflect the new choice.

Okay, so there's some stuff that goes on that is consistent with his
backstory and the tone of the story and the scope of the story that
influences HOW he meets the funeral director and what they talk about.
But at some point, the funeral director takes him to "the chapel" and
there's the coffin, and the director discreetly leaves Tom alone to pay
his respects to Uncle Walt.

If this is the initiating event scene, something's going to happen,
right? And the END of a major scene is when the disaster (or "surprise"
if we want to be politically correct happens.
Disastrous things can happen all the way through the major scene, of
course-- after all, getting a phone call that your uncle died is pretty
disastrous- but THE disaster should come at the end of the scene, to
impel the reader to the next scene. Yes, it's the cliffhanger, but it
doesn't have to be all dire and scary. The point is to disrupt the
trajectory of the story, derail the scene protagonist, and start
something new going. So the end of the scene can be some kind of question
or mystery or puzzle or problem—and you can shift that to reflect the new choice of a plot.

Okay, back to Tom and Uncle Walt. Tom is alone in the "chapel". Soft
lugubrious music is playing on the speakers. The room smells like (choose
one that fits your tone/scope-- lilacs, disinfectant, death, Tom's own
sweat, expensive wood....). The light is dim. He approaches the coffin.
It is (choose what fits) an expensive mahogany and satin casket, or a
plain wooden box, or a ridiculously elaborate shiny white boat with
gleaming gold handles.
The lid is (choose what works for the new choice) closed. Open. Half-closed.

He goes up to the coffin. (Does he have to open the lid?) He sees....

Now here is where you delineate the scene ending – the
disaster/surprise-- which makes this a major scene, but also a major
scene for THIS TYPE OF STORY.

Let's say this is a mystery. What would he see if this is a mystery?

Let's say this is a horror story. What would he see, or what would
happen?

Let's say this is a comedy. What's going to happen? (And what if it's a
black comedy? What would happen that's different?)

Let's say that this is an adventure story. (Tom, I suddenly realized,
could be a Navy Seal!

Let's say this is a thriller.

Let's say this is a family drama.

Let's say this is a suspense novel.

Let's say this is a romance. (You can have a woman come in if so... but
why? Who?)

What if it's a romantic comedy?

What if it's a sweet romance?

What if it's a dark romance?

Let's say this is a paranormal/occult story.

Let's say this is an urban fantasy.

Let's say this is a literary fiction novel.

Let's say this is a near-future s/f post-apocalyptic dystopia.

Now very probably in the original, you're ending that scene on the moment that reflects that original type of story. So say you end with Tom seeing his father's signet ring on the corpse's hand and grabbing at it and knocking the coffin over and spilling the body on the floor—a comic ending.

If you're changing the A plot to a romance, you might just move the romantic meeting to right here—he dumps the body out, and in walks the funeral director's daughter… who will become the romantic heroine.

Go through the major scenes, the turning points, and look at the ending moments. Can you change most of those to reflect the shift in A plot?

Questions? Suggestions?

Reinventing your book. 4: Reinventing the Length

Reinventing the Length

The most effective length of books varies, of course, and you should write the book to the length you think the story needs. But if later you decide for whatever reason that the book would be more effective longer or shorter, here are some tips to make that easier.

Longer: Today's new adult readers read 700-page books (okay, all starring Harry Potter) when they were 10 years old. So they won't be intimidated by length. Whether a long book would be more marketable as one volume or two or three is a discussion for another time. And you never want to stretch a short plot into a long book—the threads get pretty frayed then!

However, you might be looking at an older category book (written for a line like Harlequin Intrigue or Berkley Prime Crime), and considering expanding it to single title length, which is generally between 75K and 100K words. You don't want to just add more words—that's like drinking milkshakes to bulk up your muscles. Add length by adding complexity.

One way to do that is to add an additional major plot. Shorter books naturally tend to have a single central plot (a romance will have a central romantic plot, a mystery a central crime plot), and any other storyline is generally reduced to subplot level, starting further into the book and being resolved earlier than the main plot. Rather than adding more subplots—a lot of subplots often leads to confusion—beef up the subplot that is most connected to the main character's emotional or psychological journey and make it clearly support the main plot.

For example:

Character journey: In this romance, the heroine's father died when she was a child, and her mother married again and moved her far away from dad's family. The subplot might be about reconnecting with the family—phone calls, setting up a visit—but it's resolved quickly because the original purpose was just to get her back to dad's hometown where she meets the hero.

What's her emotional journey? She's moving perhaps from a fear of abandonment to trust? That's a good journey for a romance, as learning to trust is a major step on the way to love. To lengthen the book, consider having that subplot of reconciling with the family take place over most of the time of the book. That will mean adding conflict—that is, to make it a full plot, you can't resolve it in Chapter 3 when she starts interacting with the hero.

If you want to have her start with fear of abandonment, you could have her—instead of reconnecting –before- she comes to town—keep quiet about her identity, come to town, and scope out the family before revealing herself. After all, if she's afraid of abandonment, she might think the family kind of abandoned her by losing contact. So she could come to town, planning to observe her relatives in secret before deciding whether to approach them. This would add a motif of disguise that could complicate the budding romance (is she open with him about her real identity and connection to the town?), and if you make him have some issue with the family (business or political rivalry, maybe), this would add a further conflict to the romantic plot.

That is, add conflict, not words. This will affect the entire story, of course, and require changes in most existing scenes and additions of new scenes, so this isn't a task to take on lightly. But it's a choice we witness a lot these days as authors go back to perfectly good category books that didn't sell back when category was king. Now they have a real option—keep it short and try to sell it as is, or add 10-30K words and sell it as a single-title.

Just as common these days is the decision to shorten a book. This is more the norm for me as I always write too much and have to cut on the order of 35K words just to get it down from "epic" length to "single-title" length. So I know there are different kinds of "too long." Take a few days and read over the book as it is. Is the plot too long and complex for the length you want? Or (as always in my case) are there the right number of scenes, but the scenes themselves are too long?

Diagnose the problem before you start cutting! You don't want to end up just cutting words when you really would do better to cut out a subplot or combine several scenes. It can really help just to boil the plot down to an outline with a line or two of summary for each scene.

See if there are some scenes where only one plot-important thing happens, or none at all. For example, I've edited books where the only really essential event is that the sleuth finds a clue. In that case, could that paragraph or page about finding the clue be moved into the previous or subsequent scene, so that one scene can be eliminated? What I like to do then is find whatever in that scene is important (either to the plot or to the author—you know what I mean, the perfect sentence of description, a great interchange of dialogue) and start stripping away everything else in the scene. What's essential and/or worth keeping? Move that into an adjacent scene.

Also look for scenes that basically do the same thing (like the hero twice encounters his prime suspect downtown) without any escalation of conflict. You might not need both those scenes. Another place you might find extraneous scenes is in the beginning. We often write long openings because we're trying to get to know the story and the world, but that might mean that we start a couple scenes before the story really begins. Leisurely openings can be interesting, but if you're trying to trim your book, you probably can't afford extraneous scenes.

Now if you're like me, you might have just the right number of scenes, but spend too much time on each. When I decide to cut the length of scenes, I start at the beginning. Often I can cut a couple paragraphs right from the first page of the scene. I also replace long explanations of motivation or action with a "narrative bridge" of a few words, like "She gave up, too exhausted to continue." I also look for redundancy, where I show something in the action, and then explain it again in introspection—I cut out the introspection unless there's no way for the reader to get the point of the action.

Trimming like this can really improve the pacing as there aren't pages of narration between important events. (By the way, it's always painful for me to delete my passages, so I just cut them and paste them into a "cut file," just so I'll have them if I need them. That makes it easier!)

To cut radically, as when you are trying to turn a novel into a novella, you probably have to get into the very structure of the plot and simplify, first by cutting out a subplot or two, and second by streamlining the conflict. The main conflict might have to be simplified so that it can plausibly be set up, intensified, and resolved in 150 pages. Think about diminishing the internal conflict. In a longer book, perhaps a man can get over being unjustly imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit, but for a shorter book, you could diminish that to an unjust accusation without any imprisonment (maybe he got off because of a hung jury), so that he just has to vindicate himself, not deal with the ramifications of having been in prison.

Reinvention takes re-imagining. But I've found it much easier to do when I am clear about what the book IS and what I want it to be. Just asking the questions about whether I need to change the plot or just the scenes gets me half the way to determining what reinvention will transform this story and make it new.

What reinvention situations have you encountered? What did you do?

Who is what? Confusing sentence alert

I think there's a term for this-- there's a term for everything-- something about "squinting" because it makes you "squint" and look back to figure it out. Anyway, confusing sentence in a news article (names changed to avoid getting all politicky):

He is a friend of John Doe, the son of spiritual leader Don Doe, who was killed Friday.

Who was killed? I think John Doe, but maybe it's his dad. I can't immediately anyway figure out a way to make that clear. Can you?
Appositives are interruptives, and presumably you can just withhold that, and have:
He is a friend of John Doe,  who was killed Friday.
So I'd probably go with two sentences--
He is a friend of John Doe, who was killed Friday. John Doe was the son of ...

or 
maybe getting rid of the comma ---

He is a friend of John Doe, the son of spiritual leader Don Doe who was killed Friday.

would make it clearly Don who was killed, so having the comma makes it John who was killed?



Well, I don't know. Don't put three people into a sentence as if they're all equally important, I guess. What's important? The friendship? The killing? The father-son relationship?

Sometimes I think the "need for a lede" misdirects journalistic writers. Everything doesn't actually have to be explained all in one sentence. That's why we have paragraphs. 

Alicia

Good site

Our old friend Jami Gold has some really helpful worksheets for creating scenes. I love that kind of mind! Check it out--

A

First lines

Sorry to be so incommunicado. Both busy with work. It never ends.

Anyway, thought I'd stop by and post this link to an article about first lines-- authors tell their favorite first lines from other writers' books. http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/07/this-did-something-powerful-to-me-authors-favorite-first-lines-of-books/278085/

What do you say? What's the best first line you can remember, and why did it work for you?

And would you say we're too obsessed with first lines? I'm just asking because so many of us just agonize about the first line. I always find the last line the hardest to write. "And then they walked hand-in-hand into the sunset." No matter what, all my last lines kind of sound like that-- treacly, trying too hard to resolve.

Alicia

Editing today

I was asked for advice on becoming a book editor, and of course, as a young friend calls me, I'm the dreamkiller. I go around being "realistic" and/or "negative" and killing people's dreams. It's a thankless job, but maybe someone will thank me someday. SO THIS IS JUST MY OWN EXPERIENCE! OTHERS MIGHT BE FAR MORE POSITIVE AND HELPFUL!

Anyway, there aren't many editing jobs in the old traditional ways, frankly. New York is full of laid-off book editors. So most now are working free-lance, doing copy editing, proofreading, rather than acquiring and taking a book into production for a publishing company. (Those jobs still exist, but there aren't as many as in the heyday of the 90s. It will help, no doubt, to be young and cheap and willing to live in an outer borough.)

As for me, my advice to a student thinking of a career in editing who still wants one even if there aren't many jobs in the traditional book publishing sense:

1. Absolutely take a couple advanced grammar classes, especially those which deal with syntax, if you're going to be doing mostly actual editing (and not the whole book acquisition-production process). Editing is a valuable skill, and in some demand, but you really have to understand how written communication works to fix it when it doesn't. 

2. Get familiar with the sort of editing required for web-based writing (like websites), as that's where much of the work is going to be. If I were going to do it all over again, I'd study document design too-- not coding, really, but laying out the text on a page, choosing graphics, all that, just like they used to do for magazines.

3. Free-lance editors generally work for authors, not publishers, and on a free-lance basis (no benefits, no guarantee). That is, the authors are trying to get the book ready for submission to a publisher, or ready to self-publish. You have no power to say, "This is good enough" or "You're rejected." You have to work with what they send you. This requires a level of interpersonal skill that equals the level of technical skill required.   Most authors think what they write is wonderful, and maybe it's not, but they're the boss. You have to make it as good as you can, knowing that often you're not going to end up with a great book. And you have to "fix" without being critical. It's a lot harder than editing used to be, when editors could just reject books they didn't think were good enough.

The breakdown for types of editing, from an author's perspective:

There's the story (content or main) editing, which identifies problems in the story structure, like that the hero tends to whine and the heroine sometimes acts irrationally, and that there are these two big scenes that

ought to pack a punch and don't, and that there are three endings and no beginning. This will be examining things like motivation, logic,conflict, and drama. Plot, character, structure, scene, sequence.

There's the line-editing, where prose problems are identified and fixed, particularly on the sentence and paragraph level-- things like making all those darned one-sentence paragraphs into, you know, actual paragraphs; and determining which fragments add to the conversational aspect of the voice and which just annoy; and replacing static and vague verbs with stronger ones. This is probably the most time-consuming aspect, and the one most likely to result in conflict, because this very much involves the author voice.

There's copy-editing, which is where the Chicago Manual comes in. :) This is the step that readies the manuscript for publication, where grammar mistakes are rectified if they weren't in the line edit, where potential mistakes are identified ("Didn't she have blue eyes in Chapter 2?"), formatting is standardized (all chapter headings the same), and research is questioned and checked. 

Then of course, there's proofreading, to find and fix typos, duplicated or dropped words, formatting errors.

The last two are what authors often seem to think are "editing," and yet,when they come to an editor, they aren't clear about that being all they want. I recently was talking to a writer who said that she wanted her

book "edited" and was shocked when I said for a "full edit" she'd be looking at maybe 5 cents a word. (Of course, many editors work for much less.) As we talked, though, I realized she only wanted copy-editing and proofing, which don't do much to change the story or voice. She didn't WANT to change the story or voice, and so shouldn't go out and hire someone who is going to make a bunch of suggestions she won't want to follow. (Whether she ought to make big changes is another story... but it's her book, and she should decide.)

As writers, we should get to know our process, and our strengths and weaknesses before we send the book out.  And an editor is sometimes not what we need to help us with those weaknesses. Probably most writers do need a copy-edit and proofread, just because those involve fairly arcane decisions and training, and it's next to impossible to do that close a reading of our own work. But not all need story-editing. Not all need line-editing. I would say I don't actually need line-editing, as I'm pretty strong on the prose level. But

I can never tell when the tension has dropped in my plotting, or when I love characters a tad too much so that readers will be alienated. So at the story level, I often need help, which is why I have a great critique

group, and brainstorm a lot with several discerning friends. 

Great storytellers are not always great writers. But a great storyteller probably doesn't need a content editor-- she already has good "story grammar," knowing how to pace and dramatize and characterize. She might need help, however, making the prose match the story.

"Wordsmiths" might not need much line-editing, as they already experiment and edit sentences as they write. They might, however, benefit from story-editing, because they can't always see the big picture of plot and

character and scene. 

Free-lance editors have to get authors to state what editing they want, and they're in charge because they're paying.

I work mostly free lance these days, but of course those who work for a publisher or a company are having different experiences (and probably vacation and sick time too).

Alicia

Flashback or memory?

My younger son lives in LA, and he told me this is a game he and his friends play, looking at the people walking down the street talking to themselves, and asking, "Insane, or Bluetooth?"
(That is, crazy, or talking to someone on the phone?)
Another contemporary issue:
Flashback, or memory?

A commenter asked:

What is the difference between a flashback and the thought level POV when the character is thinking about the past?

From Alicia:

A flashback is an actual scene that takes place in the past. It might start in the character's POV, but doesn't stay there. 

Think of it this way. I'm going to assign years to the same character, because the PRESENT character might be remembering the PAST character experience, but isn't experiencing it:

Memory:

2013 Anna looks back and remembers 1995 Anna's firing. She has a wider perspective on it now. She realizes that the job was really wrong for her, and she probably wasn't very good at it; however, with the benefit of hindsight, she has figured out that her boss was threatened by her greater insight. Anna now gets that she was lucky to get out of the toxic situation, and anyway, if she hadn't been fired, she might never have gone back to school and gotten the computer security degree which has led to her getting the job she really wanted. So 2013 Anna looks back and remembers what happens, but also realizes it was all for the best.

Flashback (book is in 2013, and 2013 Anna is the main character):

1995 Anna gets called into her boss's office. She goes in to find her boss cursing at and pounding the computer, having once again clicked on an email attachment that has let loose the virus that eats all the files AND sends the whole company's clientlist a pornographic picture. 1995 Anna feels guilty because she forgot to back up her own files last night, and they're probably gone now, eaten by the virus. She ventures a comment that maybe we should have a company-wide meeting about computer safety. Her boss yells at her, and then fires her. 1995 Anna stumbles out, feeling like a loser, full of shame as her coworkers watch her pack up her stuff and leave.

(Back to 2013, and super-accomplished and happy Anna with the computer security degree and the great job).

See the difference? It's 2013 Anna. Is she remembering? Then it's a memory.

If she stops being for a moment, and 1995 Anna has a scene, then it's a flashback, and presumably 2013 Anna isn't remembering-- it's just being related to the reader. 

So which is yours? Is this "happening" to 2013 Anna? Is she changed by the memory in some way (like feeling better about herself when she realizes it was good that she got fired back in 1995)? Then it's a memory.

But if it's an actual scene that takes place with 1995 Anna, then it's a flashback.

I never have any success persuading writers who love flashbacks to rethink them (been trying a long time: http://edittorrent.blogspot.com/2008/06/revelations-and-flashbacks.html) or at least to understand how to make them work. But let me just say, the "present of the story" is when almost all the scenes and actions should take place. If too much happens in the past, then why aren't I writing about that great exciting past time? Why am I setting the book in 2013 if I'm really so interested in 1995? 

Now if what I want is for 2013 Anna to realize that she was lucky to be fired back then, I'd make something happen NOW that makes her remember (briefly) getting fired. What sets off the memory? Seeing that her old boss was sent to jail, I don't know.

That said, I tend to use flashbacks AND memory when I'm stuck for plot events in the present. That's always a sign I need to plot better quickly.

So what do you think you're doing? It's possible to improve the scene, even a flashback, so it doesn't bother readers and actually adds to the story. Here's the question: What difference does it make? How does this memory or flashback change things in the present?

What do you think?

Alicia

Words that mean the opposite of what they mean

Here's an article on "contronyms," words like "cleave" that have two meanings which are opposites --to cling, and to separate.

The one that most drives me nuts is "seeded," to sow with seeds, and to take the seeds out.

Alicia