Welcome

Toni Anderson,

author of

Edge of Survival

Toni Anderson is a former Marine Biologist turned Romantic Suspense writer who now lives in the Canadian prairies with her husband and two children. Her stories are set in the stunning locations where she’s been lucky enough to live and work—the blustery east coast of Scotland, the remote isolated mining communities of Northern Labrador, the rugged landscapes of the U.S. and Australia.

Toni's November release, Edge of Survival, Carina Press, will be published Nov. 21st. Toni is donating 15% of her royalties from Edge of Survival to diabetes research. Brenda Novak  wrote the Foreword for Edge of Survival.

Sea of Suspicion will be released in print in December. To learn more about Toni and her books, visit her website.

1. What’s your writing process?

I’ll get an idea that ferments in my mind for a few days or, more likely, months, even years. It starts with a scene or a simple what if thought and my mind starts to fill in the blanks. Who are these people and what terrible thing happened? And then I try to twist it all up. I write romantic suspense stories, so tied into the thought processes are what sort of person would the main character fall in love with, who would fall in love with them, and why J.

Pantser? Plotter?

Plotter. I use a range of plotting techniques to try and figure out the internal and external conflicts between the characters and then tie that into the storyline. I make notes, find images that represent the characters I’ve created, and get to know them as intimately as possible. But as I write, the story takes detours. Sometimes it a matter of common sense police procedures and knowing my characters have to follow a logical path to solve a crime (assuming there’s a crime—there usually is J). But also I’m a natural problem solver. My characters are smart and figure out solutions to their troubles more easily than I expect, which creates problems for me as a writer. I need to add extra roadblocks and twists to keep torturing them.

Do you strive to complete a first draft in a certain time frame?

I do. I work best to a deadline, even self-imposed ones. I try to write a chapter a day when I’m working on a fresh story.

How long do you allow to deep edit a complete manuscript?

I tend to do several drafts of a manuscript. The first draft is all about getting the story down. The second, I look at the story flow and structure. The third one is where I look deeper at the words. I probably take a couple of weeks per manuscript.

2. Toni’s writing is so fresh and strong, it was a challenge to limit myself to just a few examples for this blog.

Enjoy four separate examples from the first chapter. I’ll add my deep edit critique  after each example.

The Setup:

The story is a romantic suspense but the setup isn’t your normal romantic suspense. The heroine, Cameran Young, and her assistant, Vikki Salinger, have traveled to Northern Labrador to conduct a research study on the migration of Arctic char. They arrive at their destination, a remote mining camp, only to encounter some unexpected hostility from the miners. The hero, a helicopter pilot, arrives to pick them up.

1.  Every person in the bar had a Y chromosome, and testosterone lit the air like campfire smoke.

Smart way to paint the scene. Fresh writing. So much stronger than a line about the bar being filled with horny men. :-) Excellent cadence too.

2.  Vikki raised her glass and fluttered her lashes. “Why, Dwight, what on earth do you mean?” Her voice was pitched dumb-blonde perfect. Cam wondered why men didn’t hear the steel mechanisms turning with quartz precision inside the other girl’s mind.

Strong dialogue cue and amplification. Perfect. The reader gets that the blonde is no dummy, but Toni practiced SHOWING NOT TELLING.

3.  “Aren’t there any women in this camp?” Cam eyed the distance to the exit, a little unnerved to find herself in the middle of a Stephen King novel.

This one made me laugh. So fun! And – Toni used the rhetorical device, eponym (Stephen King novel).

4. It was belittling to recognize the green-eyed monster jumping up and down like a big fat frog in her head.

Loved that cliché play!

5. The accent was British and Cam didn’t like the way it stroked her James Bond fantasies. Even so, a huge bubble of relief swelled inside her. He must be their pilot and she couldn’t wait to get out of here.

Toni used a dialogue cue (his accent) as a stimulus for two responses: the character’s fantasies, and relief that their pilot had arrived and they could leave. The fantasies piece deepened character. Well done!

And – she used the rhetorical device allusion (James Bond fantasies) too.

Note: Strong cadence in every example. :-))

Margie Asked Toni:  I’ll hit you with several questions:

--- Can you share how any of the examples above evolved?

The first example: Every person in the bar had a Y chromosome, and testosterone lit the air like campfire smoke.

Started as: Testosterone lit the air like campfire smoke.  Every person in the bar had a Y chromosome, and every eye in the place was latched onto Vikki’s clingy, crimson, halter-neck top.

I realized I was overwriting and needed to pare down the words to pull out the good stuff (yes, cliché alert J).

The third example:

“Aren’t there any women in this camp?” Cam eyed the distance to the exit, a little unnerved to find herself in the middle of a Stephen King novel.

Started as:

She glanced apprehensively over her shoulder, a little unnerved to find herself in the middle of a Stephen King horror novel.

“Aren’t there any women in this camp?”  Cam mentally measured the distance to the exit.

It lacked punch J I combined the two and kept the best bits.

The fifth example:

The accent was British and Cam didn’t like the way it stroked her James Bond fantasies. Even so, a huge bubble of relief swelled inside her. He must be their pilot and she couldn’t wait to get out of here.

Started as:

“Daniel Fox.”  The accent was English and Cam didn’t like the way it stroked her James Bond fantasies.  “My friends call me Danny.”

The dialogue didn’t work here. It weakened the internalization. And it didn’t address the conflicting emotions she felt at his arrival.

Thanks for showing us how those lines evolved, and why you changed them. Excellent!

--- Are from your first draft?

Vikki raised her glass and fluttered her lashes. “Why, Dwight, what on earth do you mean?” Her voice was pitched dumb-blonde perfect. Cam wondered why men didn’t hear the steel mechanisms turning with quartz precision inside the other girl’s mind.

It was belittling to recognize the green-eyed monster jumping up and down like a big fat frog in her head.

I’m pretty impressed with myself to find these in my first draft.  :-)

I'm impressed too!

--- Do you write Dialogue Cues on your first passes, or layer them in later?

I write them as I go but I find myself deleting heavily during edits. I think it’s easy to be lazy about dialogue cues. I have to work at making them fresh, and none repetitive.

--- I have to ask, when you wrote the Stephen-King-novel line, did you laugh?

I did. I worried it was a little clichéd but it felt so right I had to keep it. :-)

So glad you kept that line!

2.  This excerpt impressed me. This is within a minute of when Cam and Daniel meet for the first time.

She kicked back her chair and stood, knocking her shoulder into Daniel Fox’s steel-plate chest.

“Sorry.” Cam flashed her own dimples and tried to maneuver around him, but he took a half step to block her path. The bill of her cap obscured her view so she had to tilt her head way back to meet sharp, intelligent eyes. For a split second they flashed with some indefinable emotion before studiously going flat. She backed up, bumped into the table.

“Two minutes—” he glanced at the bartender, “—and we’ll be on our way.”

“I’m just going to the restroom.” Cam tried to circle around him, but he stopped her with a firm grip on her shoulder and leaned close to her ear.

“Don’t wander off.” His voice was low and hypnotic, his eyes fixed on hers. She didn’t like the heat his touch spread to parts of her body that should have been stone cold. Some of the other patrons watched them speculatively. The warm, smoke-filled bar felt suddenly claustrophobic, and Cam’s cheeks burned.

Margie Asked Toni:  Was this an easy piece to write? What tips do you have for writers regarding writing scenes like this – considering dynamics like choreography, proxemics, stimulus/response, intimacy, and body language?

No need to address each point.  :-))

It looks like it should be an easy piece to write, doesn’t it? I think I rewrote this section twenty times. The problem, of course, is the layering of all the complex reactions (voluntary and involuntary) going on in two different characters. One you get to experience firsthand because you are inside her head, and the other person’s, that you can only guess at, using the POV character as a filter.

I was trying to instill a sense of attraction (it’s a romance), combined with a measure of danger and uncertainty between these individuals. On top of that I wanted to show Cam’s strong and determined nature (the way she bumps into him and tries to step around him shows she isn’t afraid of him), but also her unexpected reaction to him and the situation she finds herself in, knocks her off balance. Balance is something that is fundamental to who she is.

My advice would be first to choreograph the scene (physically or in your head). Then layer in the reactions. Whether they get closer or move further apart depends on the story and the characters. Whether or not they touch is important. I mean, how many people do you touch in the average day outside your immediate family? Not that many. To me a ‘meet’ scene is vital in any story. They require careful attention to detail.

Ah -- you rewrote it 20 times. No wonder all the scene dynamics work so well. Perfect!

3.  Enjoy these two excepts:

“How do I know you didn’t kill her?” Her words sliced like razorblades across his skin and he flinched.

Murderer. Assassin. The taunts and accusations from the British media flashed through his mind, and for a moment he couldn’t see where he was going. He blinked rapidly to clear his focus. This was why he preferred numbness over feeling; this was why he did not get involved. The breath in his lungs struggled to get past the wave of anger that locked down his teeth. Heat surged through his body and evaporated off his skin like steam. He forced himself to breathe tactically because being accused of murder shouldn’t be a problem.

He should be used to it by now.

From the next page:

He focused on flying, trying to get back the buzz of racing high above the world. Over brooks that snaked across the valley floors, over the three-billion-year-old Laurentian Shield, the oldest rock in the world. Over ponds as deep and blue as the ocean. But excitement eluded him. Right now he was remembering how it felt to have everything ripped away—his career, his life, his honor. How suspicion tainted the air until you choked on every breath. Desperate to forget, he increased speed until they were rushing over the barren country, the boom of the rotors punching the atmosphere. But you couldn’t outrun memories and no one knew that better than him.

BLOG GUESTS – Powerful writing. I could fill a whole page categorizing what Toni did right in those two excerpts. I’ll hit a few highlights.

Power Internalizations. Fresh visceral responses. Fresh writing.

Used anaphora to share setting, followed by anaphora to hint at his backstory. Power words. Power Internalizations.

Margie Asked Toni – Were those two excerpts tough to write? Did they go through a few rewrites?

Both excerpts went through several rewrites although the second was easier than the first because the description of the setting didn’t change.

When I first wrote the story I had a prologue which I later removed because I decided I didn’t need it. I rewrote these passages to raise a few questions about just what type of man our hero was. We already know he’s familiar with death but this (I hope) makes the reader wonder if maybe he’s really dark, possibly dangerous.

It’s the first chapter. I needed to hook the reader. I can only hope it worked. :-)

Where to start? I need to reread all your lectures, Margie, because there is so much fabulous information in each one.

Getting rid of excess words—or as you say ‘writing tight’. I often use ten words when I can use five. The ability to take a knife to your work is invaluable. Cut all the filler words and make what you’ve got gleam.

Backloading a sentence and paragraph with a power word. Seems so simple and yet it’s underused.

Reading the words out loud. Hearing the cadence of the sentence.

And highlighting those scenes that don’t seem to be working using the EDITS system. I don’t highlight everything, but when I have a scene that I’m struggling with I’ll start dissecting it with color. Usually it turns out I have way too much YELLOW (internalization). Once I see it’s there I break it up.

Margie Chimed In:

-- Toni writes fresh, and her fresh writing hooks the reader.

-- She writes fresh visceral responses, fresh descriptions, fresh power internalizations, fresh settings.

-- She has a beautifully tuned Cadence Ear. Read any of those examples out loud, and you'll hear the compelling cadence.

-- She uses cadence-driven rhetorical devices like anaphora, asyndeton, polysyndeton, anadiplosis, to make her critical passages more imperative.

-- She braids her scene dynamics together. When highlighted with the EDITS System, you'd see the three and four color braids changing, dropping and picking up new colors.

-- And she deep edits some scenes up to twenty times, to make them the best they can be.

Toni's committment to deep editing makes me a Toni Anderson fan. Edge of Survival is filled with stellar writing. Kudos to Toni!

Thanks so much for having me on your blog. I love your courses and would recommend them wholeheartedly to both new and experienced writers.

Toni

Thank you. I hope to meet you sometime!

BLOG GUESTS:  It's your turn!

Please -- ask Toni anything writing or writing world related. Here's your chance to ask about Carina Publishing, agents, whatever.

Toni will drop by today and tomorrow. We'll have two winners!  We'll draw a name tonight -- and Friday night.

See you on the blog!