This lesson came from Sarah MacLean, although she was quoting the great Linda Howard:

If your hero is a firefighter, your heroine better be an arsonist.

I’ve heard this said in other ways before, but the way Howard put it is a hundred kinds of brilliant. The best romantic couples are the ones who start off so different, you just can’t possibly imagine them ever getting together. But at the same time, they are so in dire need of each other, you also can’t imagine them ever being apart.

I went to an amazing session on writing villains by Allison Brennan, and came home with a ton of tips. This is the first:

Your villain must be better than your hero, otherwise your hero will look stupid. At the same time, your hero must be worthy of your villain, otherwise it won’t make sense for the villain to oppose him.

For example, think about Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort. There is no question that Voldemort is stronger, more powerful, and better at magic. Every time Harry faces him, the reader immediately wonders how Harry could possibly win. But at the same time, Harry did win once when he was a baby and that is what makes him worthy of Voldemort. It’s also what drives Voldemort to destroy Harry (because no one has beaten him before).

This lesson was probably the biggest eye-opener for me.

Whenever something important happens in your novel, your character’s reaction should happen in this order:

1. Emotional reaction (often shown through physical change)
2. Mental reaction (shown through thoughts or speech)
3. Action

For example, your character comes home to find the door locked. He first scrunches up his face to show confusion. Then he thinks, “That’s weird. I thought Bob was home.” And finally, he goes to look in the window to see if there are lights on.

My brain is full after 4 awesome days at RWA14, but I’m going to try to share the top 14 things I learned in 14 different posts. This is the first.

According to James Scott Bell (who is truly a master when it comes to craft), you should never use coincidences to help your main character. You should only use them to complicate his situation.

What does this mean? It is not okay for your main character to suddenly discover that the key he needs to save the universe just happens to be identical to one that is hanging by his back door. It is okay for him to discover that the key he needs to save the universe just happens to be identical to one that is usually hanging by his back door, but that his brother accidentally took this key with him. On an airplane. To a rainforest. In South America.

Why is this a problem? The first one makes the reader think you are being lazy, while the second makes them think, “What bad luck!”

I was tagged in the Writing Process Blog Tour by Kelly Jones, author of Unusual Chickens for the Exceptional Poultry Farmer (coming from Knopf in 2015).

Here are my answers:

What am I currently working on?

Hmmm. I’m currently working on a YA novel set in Norfolk, UK in 1936.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

My debut novel, 5 TO 1, kind of crosses genres and this one does too. It is a lot like Historical Fiction, except that I’ve changed certain elements of history so I suppose that makes it Alternate History. With both of my books, I started with the idea of asking, “What if X changed?” For 5 TO 1, I wrote about how this would make the future of India different and for my current novel, I’m writing about how this would change the past.

Both of my novels are half verse, half prose told in two alternating POVs.

Why do I write what I write?

I wrote several novels of several different genres before I wrote and sold my debut novel. In the end, my debut ended up being a combination of them which turns out to be what works best for me. I love writing verse, but I also love writing prose, and so being able to do both in one story is perfect for me. Also, I’ve discovered that I like using settings that require a lot of research which is strange because that is kind of like saying you LIKE doing homework!

How does my individual writing process work?

I usually come up with the idea first, which for me, is often the concept plus setting. Once I have that, I write a full synopsis of the idea so I can see if it works. Then I break that synopsis up into chapters and start writing.

I rarely write in order. Sometimes, I write one whole POV first and then start the next. Sometimes, I write the beginnings of both and then the ends. Basically, I write whatever scene I am in the mood to write. My first drafts are crazy short so I do a lot of revising.

So that’s me. I’m tagging two more authors who’ll be sharing their answers with you next week, so be sure to visit their blogs!

Authoress is the secret mastermind behind Miss Snark’s First Victim. She writes YA and MG science fiction and fantasy and is represented by the fabulous Josh Getzler of the Hannigan Salky Getzler Agency.

Renee Ahdieh is a writer of young adult books. Her life goals include becoming Twitter-verified and discovering what really matters. Her love for books, music, salsa dancing, and Sriracha knows no bounds, as does her passion for college basketball. She lives in North Carolina with her long-suffering husband and their tiny overlord of a dog. Her novel THE WRATH AND THE DAWN, a reimagining of The Arabian Nights, will be published by Penguin/Putnam in 2015.

Anyone who has participated in Nanowrimo knows how it feels to try to meet a word count goal each day, but the problem with aiming for quantity is that you often end up with a lot of filler. This is fine if you’re spending the next few months editing. It’s not if you think you have a completed book on December 1st.

As a verse writer, I must get the same message across in one sentence that a prose writer might take several sentences to accomplish. Because of this, I’ve become very attune to redundancy. For example, I recently read a sentence that went something like this:

The car lurched back and forth as it travelled across the many divots in the bumpy road.

There’s nothing wrong with the sentence except that it’s telling us the same thing three times:

1. The car is lurching back and forth (so the road is either rough or the driver is drunk).
2. There are many divots in the road (therefore the road is bumpy).
3. The road is bumpy.

Additionally, we’re being told that the car is travelling which is already obvious from the previous lines that were discussing a character on a car ride.

When you aim for a high word count, a sentence like the one above is the kind of thing you may end up with. But what if you tried to say the same thing in the least possible number of words? What if you simply said:

The car lurched through the divots in the road.

Or, with a metaphor:

The car ping-ponged over the divots in the road.

This last line is 10 words instead of 17. This means that, if you had a 75,000-word book, you might be able to edit out 30,000 of these words. Think about it: 30,000 words of filler. That’s 30,000 opportunities for your reader to tune out because they’re not engaged. Is that what you want?

In the last couple of months, I’ve heard the same piece of advice from 3 reputable sources therefore I’ve decided there must be some truth to it. The advice is this:

Great books have intriguing settings

Think about it. How many of you read Harry Potter because you loved Hogwarts? How many of you watched the movies so you could see Hogwarts and then got on a plane and flew to Orlando so you could then STAND INSIDE a mock Hogwarts castle? Don’t get me wrong; the books are great too. But the setting of Hogwarts is as interesting as the characters and that adds a whole new level of awesome.

This same thing is true of many other great YA books. We love Anna and the French Kiss because it’s set in France and we love The Name of the Star because it’s set in London and we love The Hunger Games, not because we want to LIVE in the districts, but because we are fascinated by them and how they came to be.

I’m not saying that we can’t love a book that’s set is a regular town, but if you have the option, find a way to make your setting special. Make it unique and interesting and yet flawed in a fascinating way. Basically, treat it like a character.

I was sitting in a workshop at RWA and suddenly… WAM! I was Gilligan getting hit in the head with a falling coconut. I knew all about making things worse for your main character but what hit me was this: what I’ve been doing was NOT making it worse. I was making it harder and this is not the same thing. Let me explain.

I thought making it worse meant adding extra obstacles on the path to the goal. So, if Mary needed to walk 5 miles to get milk from the store, I was adding snow and then a shorter deadline and then a broken leg and a heavy dog that needed to be carried along the way. These things all make Mary’s goal more difficult to reach and they’re all necessary and great, but they’re not making it worse. They’re simply making the journey harder. Making it worse means gradually increasing the stakes. When I heard this, I was like, what? Gradually? Increasing? En Inglés, por favor? I thought you were supposed to use your first act to lay it all on the table so that the inciting incident would seem like the WORST POSSIBLE THING THAT COULD HAPPEN and so the reader would think THE MAIN CHARACTER MUST WIN.

I was so wrong. It’s supposed to go something like this:

Part 1: Establish a good reason for the main character to need X. For example, Mary just loves milk and she needs it every day with dinner.

Part 2: Take away X so your character is incited to get X back. For example, Mary opens her fridge and the milk is all gone. <insert gasp here>

Part 3: Add an obstacle on the path. For example, Mary starts on her way to the store and it begins to snow. DON’T STOP THERE. You also need to increase the character’s motivation. For example, tell us that the reason Mary needs milk for dinner is because she has a calcium deficiency and her bones might spontaneously crumble if she doesn’t get it.

Part 4: Add more obstacles to the path. For example, Mary finds out there is only one store open today and it closes early. Then, she trips and hurts her leg. You must increase the motivation here too. For example, Mary wants to win the love of Dave and she can’t unless she can give him milk at dinner too. (Dave obviously has ties to the Milk Board!)

Part 5: As a final step, add the proverbial straw to the camel’s back. For example, Mary realizes she forgot her money so she must trade something for the milk but the only thing she can trade is a limp dog that she must carry all the way to the store. This is usually the part when Mary gives up. But it is also the part when you need to give her the one thing she needs to go on and that one thing is not a guy with a car: it’s the final piece of motivation that pushes her to limp the rest of the way with the dog on her back. For example, tell us that Mary was deprived of milk as a child and only by having milk can she feel like she has escaped the milk-less tyranny of her past and learn to love Dave the way she needs to love him.

And now, I have a sudden craving for cookies. With coconut.