edittorrent

I have a guest blog post

2012-01-30T21:31:00.001-06:00

http://www.pinkfuzzyslipperwriters.blogspot.com/2012/01/alicia-raisley-editorautor-is-in-house.html

and another!

http://www.nanreinhardt.com/?p=846

See, I'm so addicted to blogging, I do it in my spare time. :)

Also-- I don't know how to get followers except by begging. Can some of you just follow us so I can prove to my friend Lynn there is a reason for Twitter?
Alicia Rasley and Lynn Kerstan are tweeting as #RegencyTwisters. Two novellas about two sisters, see? Tweeting sisters- Twisters.

And if you have advice on how to achieve world domination or at least a bit of notice through Twitter, plz share. (See! I've learned twitter-spelling!)

Alicia

Little adverb movements make everything precise

2012-01-29T09:19:00.000-06:00

In the previous post, I was reading it over and realized I'd (horrors!) misplaced a modifier.

Too late she remembered the reason for that generous gift, and how embarrassed he had been, confessing to his secret fear of windmills last year.

This is a common mistake with "time" adverbs and adjectives like "back then" and "in the past" and "on Monday." Here, the problem is that with the modifier placed at the end of the sentence, it's not clear whether he became afraid of windmills "last year," or if the embarrassed confession was last year. Why make the reader wonder, when all it takes is a bit of movement?

The modifier should be placed right next to whatever element actually happened at that time. In this sentence, the gift and embarrassment and the confession happened "last year," so the modifier can go close to either of those, whatever sounds best. So:
Too late she remembered the reason for that generous gift, and how embarrassed he had been last year, confessing to his secret fear of windmills.

We need to be sensitive to what our sentences actually say, and open to the minor fixes that make it say what we actually mean.

Alicia

Just to Clarify

2012-01-28T09:52:00.000-06:00

Many questions regarding my post yesterday. One of them is important enough to post about. Several of you asked whether this clause came from one of those agents helping an author self-publish.

No.

These particular agents have no hand in any self-published material. They don't read and provide feedback on manuscripts, format or typeset them, or provide cover art. They don't write jacket copy or arrange blurbs. They don't upload anything, and they don't download anything, and they don't provide networking assistance.

They do nothing. It could easily come to pass that you would self-publish a work without them even seeing it or being aware of it. And yet you would owe them a commission on it. It could even come to pass that you would have This Book with them, and while they shop it, you upload That Novella as a self-published work. They fail to make the sale on This Book, and yet they are still entitled to a commission on That Novella. (One of you argued that this would never happen in the real world. Maybe not -- certainly it should not -- but the language I saw would allow this exact possibility.)

I could draw lots of analogies here to help you understand how damaging this is. Imagine you bank at Big Horrible Bank With Protesters Out Front. And every time you make a transaction at this bank, they charge you a quarter. You don't mind paying the fees because you figure they've earned them. It's fairsies. But then you open another savings account at another bank, and the Big Horrible Bank With Protesters Out Front is now claiming that you owe them a quarter on every transaction made at the new savings account, whether they ever touched the money or not. So when you find a ten dollar bill in the grass and decide to deposit it in the new bank, BHBWPOF wants a commission on that. And when your grannie writes you a birthday check from a bank other than BHBWPOF and you deposit it into your new account, you owe BHBWPOF a commission on that. And so on. "It's only fair," they say, "because by using our banking services, you learned some things about using banking services." Yes, and they were paid for it, a quarter every time you made a transaction at BHBWPOF.

Just remember what you own and what you pay for. You own your brand. You own your skills and knowledge. You might pay someone to help you improve those things, the same as a soft drink company pays ad agencies to craft memorable, brand-building commercials. But that doesn't mean your ownership is suddenly converted to co-ownership. It means you paid for a service.

One of my friends said, roughly paraphrased, "It used to be my trad pub that made my house bills and insurance payments each month. Now they can only make the house bills, but my self-published books are covering my insurance. Just barely, but they're covering it. If I have to give that up or split it, I would have to get a day job again. I can't take any more cuts to my income."

To that, many industry professionals would respond with a shrug. If this one drops out of writing, ten others are waiting in the wings to take her place.

That attitude and reality has scared authors into accepting bad terms in the past. But the difference then was that there was only one path to publication, and that path ran through the people offering the bad terms. Now there are other options. Is self-publishing the savior of everything? No. It changes some rules of the game, but we're all still playing the same basic game. Nevertheless, it's an important change because of the way it empowers writers. Don't give away that power. Don't even give away 15% of it.

Theresa

Sign of the Times?

2012-01-27T10:03:00.001-06:00

I heard a disturbing rumor -- and I have to repeat, this is a rumor, not something I saw personally -- about an agency contract that takes a standard commission on an author's self-published books. Self-published. So the author would be contractually obligated to pay 15% of their self-published royalties to the agent even if the agent has never laid eyes on the book.

The theory behind this is that the agent is "building" the author's career through traditional sales, and the author benefits from that in direct published sales, so the agent is entitled to a cut.

This is utter garbage, of course. Not every tenuous connection creates an entitlement. What's next -- if you write on your day job, they can take 15% of your day job salary, too? Agents act as brokers, selling books to publishers and earning a commission on those sales. Why should they ever be entitled to earn anything without performing the work?

You know what's really going on here? They're gambling that you're more desperate than they are. They're pretty desperate, some of these agents, because sales and advances are falling across the board, so agents are taking hits just as much as anyone in this business. Or, to put it another way, 15% of nothing is nothing. Actually, that's 15% of 8% or whatever your trad pub contract calls for. But your direct pub royalty rate is probably anywhere from 30% to 70%, depending on how you distribute and price the book, so 15% of that is a bit more of a cut to the agent. As an added bonus, it's free money because they didn't have to lift a finger to earn it.

But there will be some writer out there who's been struggling to break in and who sees this as the one chance to do that. And they'll sign away their kidneys and lungs if they think that will get them a good book deal. So what's 15% in perpetuity on work the agency never sold? As long as the agent signs you, it's all good, right? No. Not right at all. For one thing, you don't know that this agent will ever sell a single thing for you. Plenty of authors are signed but never sold. You don't know whether this agent will treat you well or screw things up for you -- and if you don't understand that agents can screw up a writer's career, you haven't spent much time talking to writers about agents.

Don't get me wrong. A good agent is worth every (legitimately earned) cent you pay them. If you get a good agent, thank your lucky stars and buy them chocolate. But how do you know what kind of relationship you'll have with your agent when you're at the signing stage? Oh, you can go by reputation. Maybe Agent Alice has a great reputation because she represents a bestseller or two. But sometimes these powerhouse agents focus all their attention on the stars. They take you on in the hope they can get a star deal for you, too, but if they can't, they're stuck with you just as you're stuck with them. That's how their stables get filled with authors who wonder why they can't get a call back.

And reputation only tells a partial story. In this business, in public, we're all quick to praise and slow to criticize. (Notice, for example, that even though I'm not hiding my annoyance at this contract provision, I have not named the agency or the agent. I might be mouthy, but I'm not that stupid.) If you don't share a confidential relationship with at least one of the agent's clients, you might not be hearing the whole story.

Be smart, kids. It's a cruel and treacherous world we're living in.

Theresa

ETA: Since this post went live this morning, I've received confirmation of two agencies doing this. One was the original agency that prompted this post, and the other is a mid-sized agency with questionable ethics. Anybody know what the AAR has to say about this?

As You Know, Alphonse...

2012-01-26T08:35:00.002-06:00

Theresa's post about exposition reminds me of something our friend Lynn Kerstan used to laugh about, the "As You Know, Alphonse" dialogue, where one character tells another something they both know, just to get the information (exposition) out. Like:

Paula said, "As you know, Alphonse, Murray is our own sainted father, and you and I lost him twenty years ago in a tragic windmill accident, right in front of your very eyes. And ever since, you have been deathly afraid of windmills, so much so that when you won a trip to Holland, you gave the ticket to me, your sister."

What's the problem? Well, of course Alphonse already knows his father's name and that Paula is his sister, and surely knows he himself is afraid of windmills. It sounds artificial, and it is, because of course Paula would never really say it that way. She'd never recite a bunch of info that her conversation partner already knows. It's a clumsy way to avoid putting exposition in the narrative (where it belongs-- that's one of the purposes of the non-dialogue parts).

Of course, we can do exposition (information conveyance) clumsily in narrative too. But while it might be clumsy, it won't be too inauthentic if it's not in the mouth of someone who would never say it.

How then can we convey to the reader the reason for Alphonse's terror of windmills? Or whatever the important info is there? The ticket to Holland? The name of their father? One question is, of course, what does the reader NEED to know to understand this scene and to build suspense or interest for what's to come? One problem I see a lot in exposition passages (in or out of dialogue) is that the information is thrust out indiscriminately, without consideration for what is the important piece of information, and without consideration of if this is the best time to tell it, or if maybe it should be presented only partially (to build suspense). Another aspect which is important especially in dialogue but also for character point of view is the character's motivation for telling/thinking this bit of info.

Let's start at the top. What's the important info here we want the reader to know? Maybe it's that ticket to Holland. (Don't ask me what the plot is where that's most important. This is just an example!) In that case, maybe all that other stuff isn't necessary right here. Maybe it is, but notice-- all that is ALPHONSE'S motivation, not Paula's. Paula didn't see the windmill accident and suffer lifelong trauma. What's Paula's motivation here? What does she want? Why is she bringing up this no-doubt painful subject? Once we know that, we can decide what about that paragraph of info is really necessary, and we can decide how best to convey it.

I generally use a mix of dialogue and narrative, in the point of view of one character. That is, the speaker says something, and the POV character (the speaker or listener) reacts mentally, maybe filling in some important bit of information, maybe translating the information (rightly or wrongly). And the dialogue doesn't have to say much-- just enough that the listener and speaker both have enough to know what this is about, and the reader gets some idea too. (It's important to cut the speech off -after- the speaker has said enough that the reader has at least some notion of what this is about.)

For example, let's say the whole point of this, Paula's motivation, is that she wants Alphonse to accept a gift of money that he needs but is too proud to accept. So she wants to remind him that she owes him because he gave her that trip to Holland. See how immediately this will transform that exposition? Now there's a reason for it to be there-- her desire to give back. Let's see:

Paula said, "Come on, Alphonse. You know I owe you. Remember that trip to Holland you gave me? You didn't--" Too late she remembered the reason for that generous gift, and how embarrassed Alphonse had been last year, confessing to his secret fear of windmills. She tried to cover up her lapse. "I mean, really. I owe you more than a thousand dollars for that."

Let's say you want to convey a bit more, maybe that Alphonse is her brother, which isn't apparent there (and presumably wasn't established before-- if it was, don't worry about it now). Well, in narrative, a bit of explication isn't all that noticeable, so you could amend a bit:

Paula said, "Come on, Alphonse. You know I owe you. Remember that trip to Holland you gave me? You didn't--" Too late she remembered the reason for that generous gift, and how embarrassed her brother had been last year, confessing to his secret fear of windmills. She tried to cover up her lapse. "I mean, really. I owe you more than a thousand dollars for that."

It's one of those narrative conventions that a name can be replaced in dialogue with either the pronoun (he) or a simple descriptor that the character might actually use. We do think of our siblings as "my brother" or "my sister," so that wouldn't strike the reader as odd.

Notice that the exposition there is confined to just his fear, but notice that the addition of "secret" helps make this seem more important. No, I didn't talk about the tragic windmill accident... but now the reader is alerted to something about windmills. Suspense is all about making the reader anticipate something bad-- in this case, some secret event involving windmills that terrified Alphonse. Later maybe one or the other could mention or think about dear old Dad's tragic end.

Now what if I want to be in her POV, but convey that Alphonse is still reactive to this subject? Add her perception of his body language, like:

Paula said, "Come on, Alphonse. You know I owe you. Remember that trip to Holland you gave me? You didn't--" She saw her brother tense up, and too late she remembered the reason for that generous gift, and how embarrassed he had been last year, confessing to his secret fear of windmills. She tried to cover up her lapse. "I mean, really. I owe you more than a thousand dollars for that."

One thing to keep in mind is that the POV character is the one that tells us what's going on (for example, she sees the body language of her brother). The POV character doesn't have to interpret this correctly (Alphonse could be tensing up because he heard a car door slam outside and thinks it's the police), but how she interprets it can be a way to slide in more information gracefully (that he'd confessed a fear of windmills).

Now watch how different it can be in Alphonse's POV. Why? Because then we know his motivation at this moment, and also we can see him interpret (or misinterpret) Paula's purpose here. (You know siblings. Always assuming the worst.)

Paula said, "Come on, Alphonse. You know I owe you. Remember that trip to Holland you gave me? You didn't-- I mean, really. I owe you more than a thousand dollars for that."

Alphonse studied his sister coldly. Of course she'd take advantage of his financial problems to remind him of his humiliating fear of windmills. Hell, maybe she was even trying to tell him how much she blamed him because, long ago, as a child, he wasn't able to keep their father from climbing that windmill. It would be just like her, pretending to be all generous and giving, then sticking in the icepick of memory and twisting it in his guts.

Little edits after the first draft can help a lot in subtly pointing things out to the reader. For example, I first had "his father" then changed it to "their father" so that the reader wouldn't wonder, if only for a moment, if they had different fathers.

There are no rules here, but good writers can adroitly manipulate narrative and dialogue to convey what they want to convey. But the speaker and POV character's motivations in imparting this info are key to doing this effectively. The reader doesn't have to know every bit of backstory, but she needs to know what information is important right now to the story and characters. However, in the deeper forms of narrative POV, it's essential to impart info subtly enough that it seems to be coming out authentically from the characters' speech, thought, action, and reaction, rather than from an imposing author.

It helps me to read the scenes of authors who do this well and see how they do it. Any suggestions for subtle authors and scenes?

Alicia

Question About New Scene Transitions

2012-01-25T11:13:00.000-06:00

In the comments, Michelle asks,

Great post! I have a question, though. It doesn't really relate to your topic, but the topic reminded me of this.

What do you do when you have long passages of time you're skipping over? Do you summarize it? Make a note that so much time has passed? Or do you just jump right into the action and slip clues into the text that tell the reader time has passed?

Actually, Michelle, this is on topic if we define our current topic as, "Theresa rambles about exposition, etc." The start of scenes is a common place to rely on exposition to transition a reader to a new time and space. This can be done with a subheader at the top of the scene, such as--

January, Okanagan Lake

This tends to work best when it's already been established that the protagonist will be located at this spot for some reason. Maybe he's searching for Ogopogo, the famous sea monster of Okanagan Lake, so the reader has been prepared for him to reach the shores. This kind of quick, non-narrative transition allows the text to zoom forward without a lot of set-up at the start of the scene.

There are other times this type of transition will work. Maybe you have a multi-thread plot and keep shifting the reader between the pieces. Then the subheaders can help the reader track which plot thread is which. The current scene is Larry searching for Ogopogo on Okanagan Lake, and the next scene is Jessica searching for Nessie at Loch Ness, and the next scene is Bonita in a secret science lab trying to hatch a lake monster egg. The three of them are racing to produce a live lake monster, and the plot shifts freely between the three threads, and the subheaders help the reader track it all.

In any case, some authors avoid these kinds of headings because they don't want to clutter the page, and there might be some good arguments against using these kinds of subheaders. Much like chapter headings and title/author headings, these pieces contain words that help identify something in the story but are not really part of the story. So they might serve as a distraction to the reader. If you think this isn't an issue, consider the reason we put last name/page number headings on the upper RIGHT corner of a manuscript. This keeps us from turning the sheet and processing the heading as the first line of text on a new page, which can break the flow of the narrative. Scene headers are not quite as disruptive, given that they're inserted in breaks in the story action, but they are still external intrusions of a sort.

So that takes us to narrative transitions at the start of new scenes. How much is too much? Can you ever skip it all together? I have a rule of thumb for this, but it's one of those things that can be hard to apply. But here's the basic idea. At several points over the course of most manuscripts, we will have to effectively press a reset button for the reader. The protagonist or another character will have changed enough, or the plot or setting will have changed enough, that we will need to create something like a touchstone for the arc within the text. Those touchstones can serve like transitions in to the next big piece of the plot. The bigger the changes, the greater the need to press the reset button. The greater the need, the more text you might need to re-orient the reader. But that's by no means hard and fast. Sometimes it's possible to re-orient the reader with a very quick transition. That's why I say this general rule of thumb is hard to apply. It can be difficult to gauge just how large a touchstone you need to create.

But as with all exposition, you will usually be better off minimizing the length as much as possible. Let's say, for example, that our monster-hunting friend Larry has been searching for Nessie for years and only just learned about the existence of Ogopogo. His goal has always been to find Nessie, so traveling to Canada would be a big change that might not support his original goal. Why would he do it, then?

Maybe there are scenes in Scotland with his band of Nessie hunters in which they debate the matter. Maybe Larry is opposed to going, but the group votes that one of them must go. Maybe he wants to go, but the group scorns him and tries to prevent his departure. In any case, the moment when Larry arrives on the shores of Okanagan Lake will be the moment when his quest has changed. Depending on what came before and what follows, you might need a small touchstone or a large touchstone. But, unless the change has been adequately prepped in preceding scenes, you will probably need a touchstone. (This is also partly dependent on how much has happened since the last touchstone. As I said, this analysis is very book-specific.)

But let's say you're not worried about pressing the reset button and reorienting the reader. Let's say everybody already knows why Larry abandoned Nessie for Ogopogo. In that case, a simple clause indicating time and space might be all you need.

Larry shielded his eyes against the bright spring sunshine glinting off the surface of Okanagan Lake.

Boom. One sentence, all action, no exposition, and yet we know the time and place after reading it. Or maybe you're a traditionalist and prefer an adverb clause.

When Larry reached the daffodil-covered shores of Okanagan Lake, ...

This is an expositional transition, and it's brief enough that it won't drag on the pacing. In ten words, we get the new time and space. It might be enough information.

What you probably want to avoid, unless it's strictly necessary for reader comprehension, is a long run of exposition like this.

Okanagan Lake was a deep lake with two islands. Because of the temperate but rainy climate, Larry knew he would need a different equipment and clothing. He shopped for two days to gather waterproof fleece pullovers and windbreakers, new rubber boots, waterproof matches, and a supply of his favorite Scottish tea, which he was pretty sure would be rare in rural British Columbia. The hardest part was deciding which camera equipment to pack. He only wanted to have one suitcase and one carry-on, but the equipment took a lot of space. But he would only be there a few days. He did pack some extra socks in case it rained on the boat and tossed in his favorite copy of a Douglas Adams book to read on the plane. Maybe this trip would be a complete waste of time, but at least he arrived in Vernon with everything he needed.

These kinds of blocks at the beginnings of scenes are almost always worth cutting or trimming. Notice how much of the text summarizes things that happen in the moments between the last scene's ending and this scene's beginning. Shopping and packing are usually dull events, so we wouldn't want to convert this passage into actual scenes if nothing dramatic happens. But if they're dull, guess what's also going to be dull? This info dump of a transition. If for some reason we need to plant the notion that Larry packed specially for this trip and bought new gear, we can reference it in an adverb clause transition.

After two days of shopping and packing, Larry arrived at Okanagan Lake with more than he probably needed.

And then, if the extra pair of socks is necessary to the action of a future scene, you can probably just have him change his socks then and there without a lot of explanation. If it's relevant to character or theme, maybe you would have Larry think about the cautious packing when he changes his socks.

He stripped off his sodden footwear with silent gratitude that he had remembered to pack extra socks.

But this depends on whether the detail is the kind of detail that needs to be set up in advance. Packing extra socks for outdoor adventures in a wet climate is probably not remarkable enough to require set-up. But again, this is one of those things that is highly book-specific.

So, to answer your question: Depends on the book, depends on the scene, and depends on the author's goals. But it's usually best to keep start-of-scene transitions brief.

Theresa

Exposition, Not Dialogue

2012-01-24T15:25:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, among other things, we looked at a sample passage of description and discussed why it was description and not exposition. Today, I want to show you a paragraph in which dialogue is replaced with exposition in the form of narrative summary. This is from a story called "Gryphon" by Charles Baxter that has to do in part with a substitute teacher talking to students.

She talked for forty minutes straight. There seemed to be less connection between her ideas, but the ideas themselves were, as the dictionary would say, fabulous. She said she had heard of a huge jewel, in what she called the Antipodes, that was so brilliant that when the light shone into it at a certain angle, it would blind whoever was looking at its center. She said that the biggest diamond in the world was cursed and had killed everyone who owned it, and that by a trick of fate it was called the Hope diamond. Diamonds are magic, she said, and this is why women wear them on their fingers, as a sign of the magic of womanhood. Men have strength, Miss Ferenczi said, but no true magic. That is why men fall in love with women but women do not fall in love with men: they just love being loved. George Washington had died because of a mistake he made about a diamond. Washington was not the first true President, but she did say who was. In some places in the world, she said, men and women still live in the trees and eat monkeys for breakfast. Their doctors are magicians. At the bottom of the sea are creatures thin as pancakes which have never been studied by scientists because when you take them up to the air, the fish explode.

You might think this is dialogue, but it's not. It's a condensed, representative version of a 40-minute ramble from a substitute teacher. It might or might not contain exact quotes from her speech -- we can't be sure which sentences might have fallen as-is from her lips and which are the schoolboy's representation of the teacher's words. Because really, even if some of these words are verbatim, they're all part of the schoolboy's rendering of the speech.

This works as a technique for the purposes of this story because nobody wants to read a verbatim record of the entire 40-minute speech. So instead, Baxter chose to use narrative summary, which takes events on the story's true timeline and compresses them in to a smaller space. This way, we don't have tons of page space being consumed by a rambling monologue, but we still get the full flavor in this "highlight reel" type of compressed version. This is a rather long patch of narrative summary, so Baxter leads us into it carefully with some explanatory notes at the beginning (also exposition). And he peppers the passage with "she said" and other reminders that this is not the actual speech, but the boy's recollection of it.

If it had been written as actual dialogue, not only would it be substantially longer, but it would be in quotation marks to indicate that these are the true words spoken aloud by the character. It might look, in part, like this:

"I've heard of a huge jewel in the Antipodes," the teacher said, "that is so brilliant that when the light shines into it at a certain angle, it will blind whoever is looking at its center. The biggest diamond in the world is cursed and has killed everyone who owned it. By a trick of fate it is called the Hope diamond. Diamonds are magic, and this is why women wear them on their fingers, as a sign of the magic of womanhood. Men have strength, but no true magic. That is why men fall in love with women but women do not fall in love with men: they just love being loved."

This still feels like a bit of a ramble, but we lose the sense of time unfolding slowly as these stories about diamonds are told to the children. But doing it as Baxter did serves two goals: it enhances the sense of time passing, and it avoids weighting down the pace with a long but accurate representation of the actual dialogue.

So, here's the thing. The same basic story elements are being conveyed in the original and in my partial modification. A teacher is talking about diamonds, sharing legends and fables about diamonds in either case. The difference is not in the story content but in the narrative element being used to present the story. This is the cool thing about narrative. It's very flexible in how it can convey story.

The trick is learning how to manipulate those elements in a way that has the best impact on the reader. Ordinarily, we would urge you to avoid long runs of exposition. But here, in this case, compressing the dialogue into exposition was a good choice. So I wanted to share this for two reasons, first to give you practice in seeing the difference between exposition and dialogue, and second, to show you one place where the general guideline was rightly ignored.

Theresa

Question from the Comments

2012-01-23T15:29:00.000-06:00

This is a really good question from Chemist Ken. It was posed on one of Alicia's posts, but I'm going to take it because this is a pet topic of mine.

I have a question about the sample text you wrote:

The grotto was ancient and long-forgotten, the mossy ground soft and rotting underfoot. The tiny pond was filmed with algae, and the air stank with the smell of the stagnant water. Even the rustle of the wind over the water was hushed and abashed.

Would that sentence or series of sentences be considered telling? I'm still confused by the concept.

You're not alone in this confusion, Ken. The rule sometimes referred to as "Show, Don't Tell" is a shorthand way of advising against the use of exposition. Exposition is a narrative element, a way to categorize the words on the page, which basically refers to text that compresses, summarizes, explains, or otherwise reduces story material into condensed passages. We all learn expository writing in school, so for even the best fiction writers, we sometimes lapse into exposition almost as a default style in places.

Some exposition is necessary in every text. Micro-exposition (things like dialogue tags, thought tags, transitions, and other tiny bits of exposition) are key ingredients in good writing. The trick is not whether you have exposition, but how you use it. Here are some general rules of thumb for exposition.

Avoid long runs of exposition.
Avoid using exposition in place of action, dialogue, or description.
Make sure the interior monologue is actually interior monologue and not exposition.
Make sure the opening of your novel is as exposition-free as possible. (By "opening," I mean the chunk of text from page one until the start of the rising action, usually a few scenes, a few chapters, maybe 10-25% ish of the text, depending on story)
When you have to use exposition, keep it as brief as possible.
Exposition in the form of narrative summary (compressed events within the story's real time line) is useful for shorthanding trivial or repetitive action. But it should be kept as brief as possible.
Use action beats in place of expository dialogue tags.
If you're writing in a subjective point of view, eliminate expository thought tags.

I could go on. In fact, I could probably write a post on each of these points, and maybe I will. The point is that the use and misuse of exposition is a broad and complex subject, and "Show, Don't Tell" has become a shorthand rule of thumb for handling exposition.

But Alicia's sample is not exposition. It's description. Description is not "telling" in the same way exposition is, but description does contain its own set of pitfalls. For one, it can be static. If you look at Alicia's example, all three of her sentences contain a verb of being, "was," in some form or other. This is a static word -- not to be confused with passive voice, no matter how many times good-intentioned people insist that verbs of being are passive voice. The confusion on that point stems from this: Static verbs are the opposite of active verbs, and passive voice is the opposite of active voice. "Active" is used to name both things, so people sometimes think "passive voice" refers both to the type of verb and to the type of sentence structure. It does not.

In any case, although we generally say that active verbs are better than static verbs, this is anything but a hard and fast rule. Sometimes we want the emphasis in a sentence to be on something other than the verb, so a quiet little verb of being or appearance can help you accomplish that. Sometimes an active verb is so overused that it becomes worthless -- reach, pull, push, move, look, gaze, stare, and many more besides these, although active, have become associated with weak writing merely because they are repeated so frequently.

So, in Alicia's example, where she was trying to convey a still, dead, stagnant wilderness area, the description relied on static verbs. This makes sense. But if she'd been trying to describe a school playground at recess, more active verbs might have worked better.

I know I'm throwing a lot of concepts into a single post, and I hope it's not confusing. But I thought it would be better to do a comprehensive, if short, answer.

Theresa

Abstract from concrete

2012-01-21T01:23:00.000-06:00

Was watching the waves collide and crash today. (Yes, at beach. Lovely.) And I remembered how mathematicians and physicists extrapolated all sorts of complex stuff from ocean waves. They looked at the concrete, real, or natural, and came up with something abstract.

That made me think about-- yes, even on a beach, I am thinking about things to blog :)-- how in fiction, the abstract also grows out of the real. I'm thinking of motivation and conflict here. We start with something concrete and external, and then as the story goes on and we get to know the character, the abstract is revealed. But the external/concrete is a clue to the internal/abstract.

This is one thing, I think, that distinguishes popular fiction-- the external plot is a way to manifest the internal problem. Example-- Well, let's say I'm thinking of this protagonist and I know that his major internal motivation is a fear of failure. That's abstract-- it's real in that it exists, but it's not obvious and probably not something he would be able to articulate. "I have an outsized fear of failure:" no, he probably wouldn't say that.

But we can show something real like the ocean wave, crashing into his life and making him act. So maybe he's got some big job promotion coming up, and he suddenly quits the job so he never gets promoted. The question the reader will have is "why? Why quit just when you're about to achieve so much?" The answer is more abstract and will be revealed later-- he is afraid (if only subconsciously) that the promotion will launch him into a job he can't do, and will fail at. His act of quitting was an early, concrete representation of his fear of failure.

So... try that. Real/concrete/external early. Manifests the internal/abstract which is revealed later.
Alicia

Today at Romance University

2012-01-20T09:40:00.000-06:00

We're starting a new line editing series at Romance University today. If you send in the first 2 or so pages of your manuscript, I will line edit them and explain what I would change and why I would change it. Take a look at today's column to see what you would be in for if you volunteered your pages. Editor Gina Bernal (currently with Carina, formerly with, um, Ballantine? can't remember) will be alternating months with me, so this should be a lot of fun. I don't know how they're choosing which pages go to which editor, but Gina is very talented, so you would be in good hands with her, too.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that Jody Wallace, who sent in the pages for the column today, is a Red Sage author. I never had the pleasure of editing her when I worked there, but I certainly kept my eye on her and her projects. It was fun for me to be able to dig into her prose myself.

On a side note, thank you to everyone who has sent good wishes to my mom for a speedy recovery. It's been a difficult, stressful time, but the good news is that she will make a full recovery.

Theresa

Another Oddity

2012-01-19T13:16:00.003-06:00

Just one of those odd constructions.

"That academic article used so much jargon. I didn't understand 20% of it!"

Okay. How much did I actually understand?

A. 80%.
B. Less than 20%.

What if I would have added "even?"

"That academic article used so much jargon. I didn't understand even 20% of it!"

What if I would have done this as most people would with the "even" before the verb?

"That academic article used so much jargon. I didn't even understand 20% of it!"

When I said this, I meant that I understood less than 20%, but the friend I was speaking to assumed I meant I understood 80%.
Just an oddity, but to be precise, I would have to probably add the "even"-- "even 20%."

And we should be more precise in our writing than our speaking, right? I sure hope so, because obviously in speaking, I'm imprecise!
Alicia

Reporting back on "Freebies"

2012-01-17T20:46:00.000-06:00

I promised a report back on putting a book up for free on Kindle. Now my publisher has done this successfully for my standard-published book-- seriously. Coming off the few free days last Xmas and this, the book sailed into the top 100 paid in Kindle (the first year into the top 5), and into the top 10 for the genre. But I am not sure it works that well for individual direct publishing.

Still, I gave it a try for one book. To do this as a direct publisher on Kindle (other platforms work differently), you have to join the "Select" program which means Kindle has the book exclusively for 90 days. I did it with a book I'd just put up without much history attached, figuring I don't yet have much of a sales record with the other platforms, so I wouldn't be losing much. This program lets you put the book as free for up to 5 days. I put it free for 2 days, then returned it to the standard price.

Results: Still coming. I sold -- actually sold, not free-- about 50 copies (a lot so far for me) of the book in the week after it went free. Also I sold 20 copies of the "prequel" to the book and about 50 copies of other books of the same genre I had for sale. Not the sort of revenue to fund my next trip to England, but better than I had been doing before. So it was worthwhile.

There were about 2500 free downloads (in contrast to last year, when my free book got 100K downloads-- but there weren't so many free books then). I think Kindle owners (esp ones who got the Kindle for Xmas) were trying to get books for free while they could, and saved them to read later. (That's what I do, anyway.) So far, I have almost no new reviews on the book site, which is disspiriting. But maybe those will come.

So here are my thoughts, what I did right and wrong. Understand, YMMV, and all that, also I think this should have a long tail and could be months before all the benefits are realized (so I hope).
1. I chose the book pretty wisely. It's a good book, well-written, representative of the genre (Regency) but not confined to it. (There's Shakespeare and adventure for those non-genre fans who dl'ed it.)
2. The book is a sequel to another book already up for sale, so I put a note in the end that if they want to find out how two secondary characters met, they should buy (title). I think that led to a sudden spurt in sales of the second book.
3. I have several books for sale. If someone reads the free book and wants to read more of my work, they can quickly (immediately) buy the others. I had a list of the other books there at the end of the book and a link to my Kindle bibliography page. Some authors put their first book up for free to "build name recognition," but I think we're all into instant gratification these days, and will be disappointed if there are no more books available, and might not remember the name a few months later.
4. I wish I would have put a short (1 page maybe) excerpt from another book in the end of the free one. Not the first page, maybe, but an exciting later moment.
5. I did put a pleasant "author's note" in the end, asking them to review the book on Amazon if they liked it because that really helps an author. Clearly, so far, this has had no effect. :) But I do think we might need to work on helping readers to want to review!
6. I also included a bio with my website, blog, and email info. Again, I'm hoping to make readers feel benevolent towards me!
7. I am going to work more on the blurbs/descriptions. The great thing about direct e-publishing is that for almost no cost (the book isn't available for sale for a few hours), you can fix or change almost anything. The Indie Romance list I'm on has been discussing how many "buyers" of the free books are annoyed at the bad writing and editing of many of them and are coming to assume that free books are lousy. Well, maybe if I put in my blurb that the book is by a "RITA-award winner and bestseller," they will have more confidence that at least it will be a literate read.
8. Two days was a good amount of time. However, the downloads really tapered off the second day, so I can imagine that one day free won't have that different a result. We shall see-- will investigate.

So... worth trying anyway, at least if you have several books up for sale.
Next time I'm going to try putting out a short story on "permanent free," as a loss leader to attract the sort of readers who will like my other books. Some said that readers don't like short stories (even free?), so I'm trying to get together a Regency anthology, free, that each of us would place on our sites to promote all our works.

Anyway, we'll see. I know it CAN work because it worked with my standard publication. So let's see how well it helps get my name out there to my targeted reader.

Anyone else trying this method?
Alicia

When to use modifiers

2012-01-16T12:55:00.000-06:00

Just a minor note as I edit this chapter-- I'm a firm believer in making use of modifiers. Pace, EB White! The language wouldn't have evolved to have adjectives and adverbs if they weren't useful!

However, even I think too much is, well, too much. Sometimes a modifier is an unnecessary and distracting amplification of what's already there. For example, I had:
Felicity slid the heavy box to the floor and used her foot to push it down the hall.

Well, obviously, if she has to push it with her foot, it's heavy. So I don't need the "heavy."

That said, I'm editing a Regency in the Georgette Heyer tradition.
The sort of stripped down style that might be fashionable now and useful for fast-paced adventure novel won't work in a more leisurely, "voice-driven" social comedy. That's why we all (including me :) must be careful about issuing edicts about what constitutes effective writing. After all, what is effective in one kind of book might not work in another. I can't even imagine trying to write any comedy, especially social comedy, without adjectives and adverbs (which, because they "modify," carry much of the humor), but more than a couple absolutely essential modifiers will slow down an action book. Multiple point-of-view will probably destroy the character identification needed for a psychological drama, but will add to the suspense perhaps of a thriller. With the rise of the internet and the many niches created (knitting mysteries, Midwestern white bread family sagas :), it's more important than ever to know the type of book and what the readers above all enjoy about this sort of book. What a non-historical saga reader might consider a distraction might be exactly what the typical historical saga reader loves most.

So whatever rules we all espouse aren't really rules-- just thought points that might not be relevant to your story, but might inspire some consideration which might help you enhance aspects of your own voice.

Alicia

Making use of the tools at hand

2012-01-14T18:32:00.001-06:00

When we come to the end of the book and want to wrap things up and resolve the conflict and finish the theme, a technique that can help "coherence" is making use of the tools-- motifs, objects, and patterns-- that we've set up earlier in the book. This can help connect the ending to the rest of the book and make the climax feel more 'fitting," more like it really finishes this book and not just, oh, a generic mystery.

For example, that play I just saw by August Wilson, Golf Radio, has two "connectors" in the end. Earlier, a secondary character had used paint to mark himself (the paint was itself an important prop, as the character was painting with it a house set for demolition, and so the paint symbolized sort of a futile action). The character marks his face like a Hollywood Indian going into battle, to the amusement and horror of the main character Harmond (who is set to demolish the building). Later, in the last scene, Harmond also paints his face as he leaves his office to join the forces protesting the demolition. The face-paint shows that he has chosen to fight for the right, and not just the legal, but also connects back to the earlier character and shows how far Harmond has come from despising that man and his quest.

Second is the "radio." Each scene in the play starts with the local radio station coming on with the traffic and weather and what's going on in the Black community that day. The radio station is bought during the fourth act, by a predatory businessman who is trying to exploit Harmond's partner by putting him as the "local face" of the new ownership. The implication is that the radio station is going to stop covering the community and become some sort of generic Clear Channel clone. I was wondering how the ending would deal with this, as the play had set up that each morning of the story starts with the radio coming on. (Groundhog Day uses the same effective technique.) The playwright understood, however, how to make use of the tools at hand, and has the radio announcer announce the "paint party" at the protest site, showing (I think) that the community radio is still tuned in to the community, and also that Harmond's old partner might actually be undermining his new boss.

Anyway, whenever we make use of the tools we've used earlier, we're adding to the coherence of the story. More than that, even without consciously trying, we're showing the change in character and the development of the theme since the last time in the story that the tool was used. The reader understands that all scenes using this tool are linked, and that the differences between how the tool is used or the effect it has will manifest a new meaning.

Give it a try. The parellelity of the scenes using the tools actually creates meaning and subtext, whether we're conscious of it or not.

Alicia

Another little ebook revelation: The format dictates in part the content

2012-01-12T10:53:00.000-06:00

If I notice anything more, I'll try and let you know. It's funny how the medium can affect the message! Well, I guess someone else came up with that formulation before I did.

I'm really interested in how paragraphs organize information in fiction. It's not as apparent as in non-fiction, but as an editor, I've gotten really sensitive to what belongs in a paragraph, and what should start a new paragraph. Will shorter paragraphs affect this? I don't know. I know writers think mostly one-sentence paragraphs are more "forceful" and "fast-paced," and they get mad when I say it makes stories sound juvenile and bombastic-- all assertion (topic sentence) and no evidence (rest of paragraph)!

Oh, one other thing about e-reading-- it's much harder to "flip back" to an earlier point in an ebook. (This is also true in audiobooks. I think if I missed something, oh, well. Too much trouble to find it.) I wonder if this will mean that we writers will get a bit more CLEAR in our narration, driving home important points. I wonder what this will do to mysteries, where hiding clues is the whole point.

However, ebooks do allow searching (though that feature can be cumbersome). And you can highlight interesting lines and-- here's the wild part-- see what others have highlighted, so as you read, you can see what captured the attention of other readers. I can't say whether this makes reading more communal or just less thoughtful. ("Oh, this must be important! Everyone says so!")

Amazon actually collects the most "highlighted lines" in books that have been out a while and puts them on the book sale page. I was interested to know what lines of mine captured the reader's attention. I think they can also highlight words and get a definition.

Alicia

Not so brilliant observation about ebooking

2012-01-11T22:03:00.002-06:00

Minor thought here as I once again wander into the labyrinth that is formatting a ms for e-publication:

I think long paragraphs aren't going to work well in ebooks. So many are read on electronic readers like Kindle, even on phones. and the font size is adjustable. So anyway, there are fewer words on a "page" or screen than we'd have on the average print page. (I'd say an average of about 200 rather than 300 words per "page"-- I say "page" because ebooks aren't really paginated like print books because the reader can change the font size, rendering page numbers unhelpful.) So a really long paragraph will fill one screen and into the next. That's visually confusing to the reader. So that's what I'm noticing right off-- shorter, or at least "non-longer," paragraphs. That has interesting implications, the paragraph being the way a writer organizes information bits. So ... maybe information is going to be broken into smaller bits. (That's already happened because paperback books have smaller pages than hardbacks-- compare, say, a Henry James paragraph with a Barbara Kingsolver one.)

That's as much wisdom as I can muster now. :)

Alicia

Book for free-

2012-01-04T10:48:00.000-06:00

Just for today, Poetic Justice is a free download on Amazon (you don't need a Kindle). Please go ahead and download and if you enjoy the book, leave a review! (And "like" the book for me?)
Let's see if putting a book up for free actually helps sales at all. An experiment!
http://www.amazon.com/Justice-Regency-Romance-Escapades-ebook/dp/B006QNRIEQ

I'll report back on the success or failure therein.

Alicia

Your author blog or website

2012-01-03T11:34:00.000-06:00

This one comes from the FAQ file. People often ask me whether I looked at author websites and blogs when making acquisitions decisions. I did. I still do that sometimes with prospective clients to get a feel for where they are in their careers. And that's really the point, isn't it? You use your author site to lure people in, and I look at it to see how you've baited the hook. So here, I'm going to relate some of the specific questions I've been asked over the years about how (not whether) I look at author sites.

Do you have preferences for colors, images, layouts, and the like?

I interpret this type of question as a plea for guidance on style choices. Will particular style choices -- an orange background versus a green background, two columns versus three, etc. -- impact the way people view the site? The answer is both yes and no. If the layout and graphics appear professional and communicate a brand or type, that was a point in favor.

It sometimes happened that the blog or website would look sort of patched-together and sloppy, like something straight of of 1996 DIY-pagemaking, complete with sparkly Myspace-style graphics. This always baffled me because it's so easy, in this day of templates and pre-fab graphics, to make it look good with little effort and expense. For the record, I'm not talking about particular color preferences or other visual aspects that would appeal to me on a personal level. I'm talking about things that looked like errors on the page, like text that scrolls on top of graphics (when the graphics should scroll with the text instead of remaining static). (By the way, yes, I did once reject an author after seeing her very awkward website. I was on the fence about the submission and might have rejected it anyway, but the website was what tilted me toward a no.)

With that said, it's important to keep in mind that people do respond negatively to things like music that plays in the background. Certain colors, like orange, are more likely to draw strong love it/hate it responses. Certainly, it helps to pay attention to that sort of thing, but don't get crazy with it. I once knew a woman who spent months -- literally, months -- researching color preferences and color therapy and searching for particular graphics for her website. When the website finally launched, the internal links didn't work properly. Her time would have been better spent learning html than learning the demographic breakdowns of responses to an orange-red versus a blue-red. Keep your eye on the prize! The goal is to create a working site which will appeal to readers of your type of story.

What if there's a typo?

I'll let you in on a little secret. Editors live in a land of typos, missing commas, wordy clauses, and other niggling errors. Obviously, we want everything to arrive on our desks in perfect condition. But we don't anticipate that happening. So make your text as clean as possible, and make it internally consistent on style and usage points, and don't stress too much about debatable points. Chances are, no matter what you do, we'll edit it in our heads as we read it anyway. That's just what we do. It's not you. It's us.

But if the text is flat, poorly written, or otherwise a poor representative of someone's writing skills, that's a point against. But this can go beyond the basic typo/crappy writing thing. Think of it this way. You're a writer. Your blog or website should showcase your writing skills. I once saw a website where all the content was aggregated blog posts from other sites, quotes, and the like. The content was selected well and presented well, and the writer had obviously spent some careful thought on what to include and how to include it. However, it was still a point against, because my first thought was, "This one can't even write her own web page." This is not the impression you want to make, is it? That said, a few judicious quotes or other outside references can add personality to a page. Just remember that the overall goal is to communicate something about you, the writer. (For the record, I've never rejected someone for having occasional minor errors in the website or manuscript. But I have rejected writers whose blogs were just plain bad throughout.)

Do you need your own domain name? What if you just use a freebie platform?

There might be a split of opinion here. On the one hand, who cares what shows up in the address bar? That's not really important. As long as people can find your page, they probably won't care if the words wordpress or blogger show up in the address. On the other hand, it's probably a good idea to grab domain names so that you can't be prevented from using them later, should you want them. I can't make a website under my own name because other people own those domains. This is not something that puts joy in my heart.

When we set up this blog four years ago, we chose blogger because it was free and easy to use. I had been using it myself for a few years at that point for a couple of other projects, and I knew Alicia would be able to pick it up quickly. In any case, I'm not going to fault an author for using a free platform when we made the same choice here. (I have never rejected an author because of their url, but I have gotten some giggles out of the strange email addresses people choose.)

How important is the bio/background/bookshelf stuff?

Pretty important, actually. When I go to an author's page, other than the general impression made by design and content, I was looking for specific things.

Had the author published? If so, where? When? How many books?

There are two basic reasons to look for this information. The first is so we can see sales history (such as Bookscan data, when available), and the second is so we can see what kind of work and work process might be familiar to you. Some houses are known for building strong authors. Harlequin, for example -- it's always a pleasure to work with authors who have experience there because they have a great professionalism about the process. Something about the culture there promotes this attitude, so I always viewed Harlequin experience positively.

Is there a platform?

This is really not as important for fiction authors, but it doesn't hurt. Platform can give the sales department a way of positioning your book. "This forensic analyst has written a crime thriller." That sort of thing. Platform is a point in favor, but it's not strictly necessary. Your website itself might even be your platform, depending on what we see happening there.

Do I think I might like working with this person?

This is the subjective factor, and there's not much you can do about it except try to come across like a basically decent person on your website. Whether your vibe is fun and playful or serious and scholarly is not as important as whether you seem like someone who will make the process pleasant. Or at least avoid making it unpleasant.

Theresa

Switching senses

2012-01-02T17:35:00.003-06:00

When you're in a character's point of view, you're probably observing the world through those "spectacles". What Joan experiences in the scene is what we narrate, right? So her sensory perceptions provide the details of the description you make of the setting and the experience of the events. We feel with her body; we see through her eyes.

But as we all know from our own lives, the experience of a new place/time isn't always coherent and understandable. Some sensory input leads to overload immediately (smell, sound, and pain-- notice how when we are overwhelmed with one of these, we close our eyes). Sometimes the different senses come in sequence-- we might be more audial and so figure out what we're hearing before we figure out what we're seeing.

Anyway, in a scene, we have to narrate the experience in a reader-comprehensible way. That might mean going back and forth between an inward experience ("she was overwhelmed by the din of the band,") and a more sequential and more mechanical chronological ("when she could hear again, she looked around and..."). But something that will help this feel more natural to the reader is to take care in switching between senses, with an action bridge easing the transit so that the experience is more than just an explosion of synesthesia (a confusion of the senses, so that the input doesn't result in the expected output, so you "feel" color and "smell" sound).

Here's an example of how -not- to do this, with several sensory experiences jammed in together without a transition--

His nose was assaulted by the garlic fragrance while a Joy Formidable song played loudly in the background. In the corner a black-and-white Snoopy dog lay chewing on a toy. Sunbeams streamed in through the open window.

There's no focus there, no connection, no experience. Whoever "he" is stops mattering as the sensory details just occur as if they are not being experienced by anyone, as if they're merely discrete occurrences. The reader is going to have a hard time assembling this into a place or experience. This is, btw, the sort of description that readers skip. They probably sense that it's just a pro forma description, dutifully put in there because scenes are supposed to have description.

So as you edit, consider rewriting such passages to actually create an experience. Some suggestions:

1. Think of this as a moment, a special moment. And choose it well. You don't have to describe the sensory experience of every moment-- that would be way boring-- so choose the moments you want the sensory to, if only momentarily, dominate. Have a purpose then for bringing in the sensory now, describing this moment.

2. The most important moment for the senses is at a shift in setting (when she leaves the hallway and enters the office, say, or goes outside), and when something in the setting changes, like another person enters it, or the tea kettle catches on fire. So whenever there's some change, particularly when the character moves from one setting into another, take a bit of time to describe the new experience. Many scenes will probably start then with a short unified paragraph about the new place. That sets the context for the reader, shows that there's been a change, and provides a way for the reader to experience the scene as if she's there. Describe the change, not just the setting.

3. Put it in someone's point of view. Really. This doesn't mean just sticking in the character name or pronoun (his nose). It means showing this character experiencing this. That means considering who this character is and describe what he'd notice-- as he notices it. If in fact he notices in a sort of scattershot way, all sorts of sensory input arriving at about the same moment, say so-- but make it important. Make it signify something about him or the moment he's in: The room was chaos. He couldn't breathe because of the garlic fumes; he couldn't hear anything over the pounding of the CD player. ... Most important, think of how he would experience it. Most of us have a dominant sense, and most experience have a dominant "feel". What is that? If it's too loud for him to hear, that's likely to be predominant, so say that first maybe. If he's a musician, or loves or hates this band, he's going to have a different reaction than a tone-deaf Sinatra fan. Describe this person's experience, not a sort of generic set of sensory inputs.

4. Link the description to some danger or threat or awareness or emotion. The primary evolutionary reason we have most of our senses (especially smell) is to warn us of danger. Now of course every moment isn't dangerous, but our senses don't know that. Think of what in the scene needs to be noticed (again, especially when something changes-- we don't usually notice when they stay the same). If the picture of his mother on the wall is crooked... if a draft is coming in under the door... if the floor is gritty under his feet... those are things he probably couldn't help but notice and mentally remark.

5. You can have one sense dominate. That is, forget that about making sure all five senses are represented. That's mechanical and boring. Go into the experience and think about what it feels like. If she's leaving a dark movie theater and going out into a bright afternoon, for that moment, maybe the visual dominates. Talk about what the experience of dark to bright is like first. You can have her awareness expand as her eyes adjust, but thrusting in the lingering taste of popcorn at this moment will detract from the more primary sense.

6. What do you want it to MEAN? Do you want this to echo some emotion in the character? If she's angry, everything will be objectionable, including the lingering smell of her husband's aftershave. If he's feeling oppressed by a dream he had of his mother's funeral, the crooked portrait of her might amplify his sense of dread. If in fact the crooked painting is a clue that someone's been in the room searching for the papers he's hidden, show that awareness dawning in his head as he sees the painting. You can fill in the blanks around the meaningful bit, like she also angrily notices that the faucet is dripping again.

7. Think cause and effect. The sensory bit causes the character to do something, or he notices it as an effect of something he does. It's not just happening in some static between-worlds moment, but inside a scene where things are happening. Link it to action, maybe-- what he experiences as he moves through the scene or interacts with the setting. He notices that the floor is gritty because/as he walks over to the painting. Not every sensory bit has to be linked to action, but try that first. So he -stops in the doorway- and sees the room. He smells the garlic and waves it away with his hand, or goes to open the window. This will keep the scene moving, and the narrative focused on action.

8. Don't overdo it. Restricting yourself, say, to a paragraph of pure description might seem artificial, and feel free to break any self-set rule when appropriate. But having a guideline in mind will help you be selective about what you choose to describe. Everything isn't equally important, so decide what is important, and that's first and foremost going to be what is meaningful-- what reflects or causes emotion, what shows a change or threat, what he encounters as he moves through the scene.

9. Read writers who do this well and figure out what they're doing right. Too many writers think of sensory description as a chore-- I know I do-- and so do it perfunctorily to get it over with. But some writers use the sensory moments as a way to convey something in a new and interesting way. Analyze why you enjoyed this passage, how this writer focused, what the meaning was and how it was conveyed, how the language, sentencing, and paragraphing enhanced the passage.

10. If you're going to shift from one sense to another, try to make it graceful and organic. For example, group like-sensories together. In the first paragraph or series of sentences, group the visual. In the next, the audial. Find a way to unify. Also, find a way to mark the shift with a transition of some kind. Action here can help as a transition. He stops in the doorway to look at the room (visual). When he notices the crooked painting, he moves towards it and notices the grit under his feet (tactile). Or use a time marker to start the sentence of new input-- "When his ears stopped ringing (audial), he took a deep breath and for the first time noticed the faint tinny smell." The transition helps unify the different sensory bits, so they don't seem so willy-nilly.
If you're going to describe more than a couple sentences worth, consider a paragraph break when you shift from one sense to another. If that leaves you with a couple one-sentence paragraphs, well, deepen the experience. Say more about what he sees or what it means, so you have more than one sentence in that paragraph!

The problem, of course, is that we do experience sensory input willy-nilly. In real life, our bodies and brains sort it out immediately. But when we write, we don't have any way to convey that immediacy and totality. We're bound by the march of words down the page, the temporal limitation that only one word can happen at a time. We have to accept that limitation and make the experience as coherent and meaningful as possible within the restrictions of narrative and prose. And that does probably mean focusing on the character's experience, but parsing it so the accretion and sequence of input helps create the experience for the reader and adds to the meaning within the scene.

What are some other techniques you use to focus the description and make it understandable?
Alicia

New Year's Resolutions

2012-01-02T07:27:00.000-06:00

It's sort of disspiriting to make NY resolutions after realizing that last year's are unachieved. (I have got to stop resolving to organize my office, because apparently it's never going to happen!)

But who has got a writing-related NY resolution? What do you want to do, achieve, conquer this year?

Alicia

Grandma was right-- write thank you notes!!

2012-01-01T13:04:00.000-06:00

I did a workshop last month because a friend was coordinating it. It was one of those county library things, and she finagled $250 for me. I'd taken some of the POV books and ended up giving them away because I didn't want to carry them home (and I bought 300 copies when they were remaindered, so I have many). Anyway, here I gave all these attendees books that would have cost them $20, and ran out before one guy got one, so I mailed him one. The book cost me $3, the mailing $5. I received, clearly, very little for having done so, but I am a very nice person. :)

NOT ONE THANKS. Nothing. They all had my email, and didn't bother. Weird. The husband said, "Well, it's because you gave it to them free. Some people don't appreciate anything they don't pay for."

Okay, I am the least diva person you'll find (really- ask Theresa). I don't expect a lot. But I was sort of appalled that no one in this big group of writers thought to send me a thank-you email for a FREE BOOK.

It costs nothing to send a "thank you" email. You'll get points in heaven, but even beyond that, really-- think ahead. Let's say I give you a free book... or free advice... or a free critique... and never hear from you. Then you sell a book and want a blurb. Or you want a recommendation to graduate school. Or you want me to do a blog post for you. If I don't associate your name with something pleasant like a thankyou note, how likely do you think a letter of rec is???

This was brought to mind by someone who did send a note, and I'm going to blurt out her triumph as soon as I have some more info. But just in case you're wondering... email LEONA for more info. :)

Writing for audio

2012-01-01T00:59:00.002-06:00

Someone I know just signed a contract for one of her books to "go audio"--- be turned into an audiobook. That got me wondering if we should think about audio when writing or revising. Does anyone else listen to auidobooks?

I read terribly aloud-- I mean, embarrassingly so. So I try never to do a
reading and will resist it to the end.

However, I'm an audible.com subscriber, and I think I've learned a few
things from listening to a few hundred audiobooks.

First, if you ever hope to "go audio," don't tag every line of dialogue.
Every other line will do and will sound better.

Also, if you sell to audio, provide a pronunciation guide for any
non-normal word. The reader won't be offended.

Other tips? Shorter sentences?

Alicia

"if" Negations

2011-12-31T12:20:00.000-06:00

Last post I found myself writing a construction that always confuses me, but is so common it was the first wording that appeared. Something like:

"I wonder if the realization of the perfect ending isn't part of the pleasure of reading."

"Isn't". Negative. Huh? (I think it has something to do with the subjunctive created by "I wonder if", but not sure and too tired to think it through.

I made it positive and CLEAR-- I wonder if the realization MIGHT BE....
Anyway, do you ever use that negative construction? Like:

She had to consider if he wasn't lying to her.
I questioned if she couldn't be this cheerful every day.

Well, now I'm having trouble coming up with examples! But I know I encounter this all the time in editing. The "I wonder" and other conditional verbs seem to cause this.

Anyone else come across an example? Anyone have any ideas why we do that?
Alicia

Blog about writing process

2011-12-31T09:37:00.000-06:00

I'm starting a Goodreads blog to chronicle my writing process and the questions and problems that come up as I write. I doubt anyone's interested in this, but what the heck. Maybe some future anthropologist will find it illustrative of the creative process or something.

Anyway, come join me there if you like watching sausage get made, I mean a book get written, though this probably is something you know from your own experience.

Alicia

Article on ending

2011-12-30T00:20:00.000-06:00

I thought it was just me, but this article on endings reports, "Earlier this year, researchers demonstrated that readers enjoyed stories more when they knew in advance how they would end, but the belief persists that an untimely revelation of plot points will ruin the experience."

I do like to know the ending (I know, I'm a wuss), but I wonder if part of the pleasure of reading the perfect ending might be the surprise. That is, you're momentarily surprised, but then the rightness of the ending impresses you even more?

I don't mean twist endings. (I'm your father, Luke!) I mean the sort of end the article talks about, that truly makes sense of the whole story, like 1984 ending with Winston professing his love for Big Brother. Will that realization be spoiled truly if you're told ahead of time, "Oh, Winston is brainwashed and ends up loving Big Brother?"

I hate coming up with last lines. I never seem to find the right one. I often do a variation of "and they lived happily ever after" (well, not that bad).
\
What about you? How do you decide on a last line? Do you feel like you want to provide some philosophical coda?

Alicia

The "Why" of Character Worksheets

2011-12-26T21:19:00.000-06:00

There are a lot of character worksheets floating around. You might have seen a few yourself. They list hair color, eye color, occupation, age, clothing preferences, voice qualities, car, hobbies -- the lists vary, but the idea is the same. Fill out this list, and you will have a quick reference sheet to help you recall whether the police detective drives a Ford or a Buick and what color the pretty waitress's eyes were in chapter three. It's a good and useful aid to memory, and any good copy editor will have several such forms on hand to help them do their jobs.

But if you, the author, fill out a sheet like this and think you've created a character, you might have only done half the job. Sure, you have to remember whether the heroine's house is a ranch or a Cape Cod. But if I tell you, "Juliet lives in a white brick Georgian house," do you understand her character any better? Not really. Not without knowing why she lives there. Is it her dream house, or does she think it's a lemon? Did she inherit it? Did she buy it in a rush when her job relocated her across the country? Her relationship to the house -- the why of the house -- tells us more about the character than the fact of the house alone.

When you fill out one of these worksheets, ask "Why" at every stage. Sometimes the answers might be a little pat. Why is the romance heroine 27 years old? Because this is a good age to marry and start a family. It might really be that simple. Then again, think about how your story would change if your romance heroine was 67 or 17. Maybe now she doesn't have to worry about getting pregnant. Or maybe the hero has to worry about the age of consent. How does a simple detail like age affect the essentials of the story? Whatever the effect, understanding that will help you understand the "why" of your character choices. And when you understand that, then you understand your characters in a deeper, more meaningful way.

Theresa

Over at RU

2011-12-24T11:04:00.000-06:00

I'm talking about form and content and innovation and genre and why this isn't the same as a formula over at Romance University. We could subtitle that post, "This is what Theresa thinks about when she's walking through a roomful of Monets on her way to view the Rothkos."

Theresa

Scene Length

2011-12-18T15:47:00.000-06:00

Someone emailed a question seeking guidance for how to determine the best length for scenes. She said her CPs were complaining that her scenes were too long, and she wasn't sure why they were making that comment.

Scene length is tricky because each scene is different. There's no set template for scenes or even for types of scenes. But if people are saying, "Your scenes are too long," that might mean they're literally physically too long, or it might mean there's a pacing issue within a scene that is a more or less appropriate length. These are related problems, of course, because if a scene goes on for 5k words and all they do is check their calendars to see when they're both free for coffee, chances are the length problem stems from a pacing problem.

How do you know when it's a pacing problem? Pacing problems occur when the story elements are not given an appropriate amount or type of attention in the text. To diagnose a pacing problem, start by identifying the important story elements in a scene. The more important an element is, the more space it should occupy on the page. (This assumes you're not trying to hide an important detail in plain sight, as sometimes happens with mystery clues. In that case, minimize the amount of page space granted to that detail.) Less weighty details should occupy less page space.

However, there's more to it than just the amount of page space. We also have to look at the type of narrative element being used to reveal the story element. So, let's say the story element is a bit of action -- someone does something in the physical world of the scene. Action is usually faster paced just by its nature, but it's possible to slow it down by revealing the character's physical movement through dialogue or exposition instead of through action.

Right then, Aaron pulled the trigger. (action)

"I am pulling the trigger right this second," Aaron said. (dialogue)
Aaron realized this was the appropriate time to use a pulling motion against the trigger. (exposition)

So, we've said that important story moments require more space on the page in order to carry their own narrative weight, but in this case, the longer the sample sentence gets, the slower the pace gets. What makes it slow down? Instead of directly conveying movement through action, it's being translated into another element, and the reader will have to mentally translate it back from dialogue or exposition to actual physical movement. This creates a drag on the pacing.

So, pacing is a complex issue that requires careful appraisal, and the general principles of pacing and length sometimes work against each other. That said, we can still formulate some very broad ideas about how long a scene should be.

Broad Idea #1:
If a scene is built around action and dialogue, it can be a bit on the long side.

Broad Idea #2:
If a scene is built around description, interior monologue, or exposition, it can be a bit on the short side.

These first two broad ideas work from the equally broad ideas that action and dialogue are faster (so you can have more of them before they feel slow), but description, interior monologue, and exposition are slower (so you should scale back on them to prevent a pacing drag).

Broad Idea #3:
The more the reader's emotions will be engaged, the longer the scene can be.

The reader's emotion can result from sharing the characters' emotions (as in a fight scene or a love scene), or it can occur from scene tension (as in a scene where the reader is on edge about what will happen next).

Broad Idea #4:
Modulate both the pace and the length of scenes.

Unless you're writing something meant for serialization and have strict format requirements, use a mix of lengths and paces to avoid a repetitive tone in the text.

Theresa

Call to action

2011-12-17T10:50:00.001-06:00

Working with a friend's ms, and I suggested she pump up the "call to action." That's usually in the first chapters, and is where the protagonist is given the incentive to act. It doesn't have to be a big high-stakes event, or some insistent demand, but I think a good "call to action" (Vogler calls it the "call to adventure," which is maybe more intriguing!) can entice the reader to keep reading and also launch the story into the second act of rising action.

Sometimes the call is rendered a bit too subtly to provide enough motivation for the protagonist to get off her duff and get moving. However, we don't necessarily need a Wizard of Oz style tornado call to action. It can seem minor and become more important later, or actually be minor but end up dragging the character deeper and deeper into danger. Point is, whatever the incentive is, it should be enough to motivate the character out of her routine and into doing something.

and I came up with a few suggestions that might help power up the call, and give the reader a clue that conflict will be heating up.

1) Make it matter to the protagonist. The main character is usually our surrogate in the story, so it has to matter to him/her for us to feel that it's important. I was just reading a pretty good book, a police procedural, that could have benefited from a stronger call to action. The detective saw the central crime as just another murder of the 20 or so he investigates a year. There wasn't anything special about this murder, at least as far as he was concerned, and his "just a job" attitude made it easy not to get really invested in the conflict.

So what's different about this conflict event? Why is it a "call to action" that's more imperative than "get to work on time?" How can you show that either when the event is initiated, or as the character gets more involved?

2) Place it early. Don't make the reader wait too long. The call to action is the signal to the reader that the plot is getting underway. But it's also the event that tells the character to do something, to get started on the goal or overcoming the obstacles. In the classical dramatic schema, it's the end of the setup and the beginning of Act II. It means things are changing.
Even if you want to ease into the conflict-- it seems like just another murder at first-- think of having some little signal that this particular one is just a bit different, like the police commissioner calls right after the body is discovered in Chapter 1, oh so casually, to ask who caught the case. That way, when the victim is revealed in Chapter 3 to be the commissioner's mistress, the reader will experience a certain glee-- aha! I knew something was up!

3) Make it new. The police procedural never really overcame the "just another job" problem you see often in books where the protagonist's job is taking care of this problem. The call to action might SEEM routine-- just another murder for the homicide detective!-- but think about how you can pretty quickly make it more than just another job. Maybe the victim is the mayor's college roommate, or the evidence points to the police chief, or the modus operandi reminds an old-timer in the department of an unsolved murder, or.... What's different about this event? How is it not just routine? How can you show that early enough that the reader's attention doesn't wander off?

4) Make it demand some action. The "call to action" means the protagonist should act or react because of this, and not just the usual or routine (opening a file, stopping at the bank). What does the protagonist have to do in response to this event that's different than usual? Maybe he agrees to call the police commissioner back after the autopsy. Maybe he stays late to wait for a call from the Pacific Time parents about their daughter, and so misses the pickup at his kids' daycare center and gets into trouble with his ex-wife. Or he has to call her at 5 pm and ask her to do the pick-up, even though it breaks his heart to hear her voice. The call to action should quickly disrupt this person's life and call for some unusual activity.

5) Use scene placement to show that however negligible this might seem, it's actually important. Anything placed at the end or beginning of a scene gains importance just from the position, from the pause that comes before or after, from the sense that all builds up to this event or ripples from it.

6) Use another character to elicit some notion of "specialness". The police commissioner is elaborately casual in his inquiry... too casual. The ex-wife remarks that the detective has always picked the kids up-- what's wrong? The detective's partner passing by the desk picks up the file and mentions that this is the third "Brittany" killed this year-- weird, huh?

7) Don't be too gradual. This is my mistake every time. I think I want to make it entirely plausible, completely logical, and so I spend three scenes carefully setting up the interlocking clues that This Is Special. (I also keep telling myself to "bury" the big clues in the middle of other clues, so I have to create all those other clues, hence more scene detail, more scenes.) In the first scene, maybe the detective notices her charm bracelet. In the second, he has to call her parents to tell them that she's dead, and they weepingly tell him that she had a new boyfriend, someone important. In the third scene... you get the idea. By the time the reader has carefully picked through the minefield of event, clue, detail, I might have lost her interest.
Stack. Get more than one big moment into the "call to action" scene. Start with the charm bracelet, have him call the parents, let the partner notice something-- all in one scene. Let the small event build into the larger revelation or realization that.... "this is different!"

8) Show the change soon. Again, don't be too gradual in the opening. (I think in the middle of the plot, you can probably take things more slowly and meticulously, but in the opening, you want to get underway.) The call to action changes things not three scenes later, but right now. If you can make the change clearly a result of his taking this unprecedented action, all the better. As soon as he agrees to keep the commissioner informed, he gets caught up-- the commissioner is "casually" calling him the very next morning.

9) Show the character having to change-- that is, how does this skein of events make his actions and/or attitude different? For example, he might be sort of flattered that the police commissioner is paying attention to him, but he knows that his captain won't approve, so when the commissioner calls, he lowers his voice and takes the phone into the hall so no one, not even his trusted partner, overhears.

10) Let this call to action open to a new world or a new opportunity. Say the police commissioner is grateful to be kept informed, and invites the detective to his club where the mayor and the judges hang out. Or the trail of clues leads to Los Angeles and he has to board a flight and leave the frozen Midwest for the beach.

11) Notice what you set up in the call to action scene and use that later in the book, to deepen characterization or develop new conflict. If you want him to get back together with his ex-wife, for example, in the end, how can you let the call to action and aftermath set that up? Like instead of just abandoning the kids at daycare (not conducive to later getting back with ex!), he uses this as an opportunity to call her, get her to do the pickup, and... this is the important thing... promise her in exchange a nice dinner out. That last in the chain of actions will set up the much later "date" that resolves the romantic conflict.

Again, you're in control here. You're the one who determines what the event is, and how it first appears. You can turn up or down the emphasis. You can move the initiating event earlier or later. You can use dramatic or understated prose. You can select detail that adds to the suspense or narrows the focus. You can show the ripples of the event on the character's life and the setting. Challenge yourself to use the tools you've got to make this event a real call to action, for the reader as well as the character.

Alicia

What to get your favorite author for the holidays....

2011-12-16T11:49:00.002-06:00

Here are some tips to help your fellow authors, but also a short summary of how you can use social media to promote your own books. Trish's blog.

Four!

2011-12-15T09:07:00.000-06:00

Four years ago today, Alicia and I plunked ourselves down at a Panera and opened a single laptop between us. An hour later, this blog had been born. We had no idea what we were getting into, really, and I remember at one point sort of wistfully wondering aloud if people would ever read it.

Here we are, four years later, and this blog has turned out to be a blessing in so many unexpected ways. We've made new friends with so many writers we might not otherwise have met. Our readership averages nearly 20k unique hits a month -- a fact that never fails to shock me. Several of our early readers are now published authors, and several of our published authors are now topping bestseller lists. We're humbled by the response and the effect this little blog has generated.

Thank you, all of you, for making that happen.

Theresa

It takes more than a question mark to make a question.

2011-12-12T11:00:00.000-06:00

Thea asks:

"I wonder if" sentences I was taught take periods at the end because they make a statement. These days, I often see "I wonder if" sentences end in question marks. Have standards changed on this matter? I'm wondering what is the correct handling of such sentences. Thank you.

There are two issues with the construction you mention. Let's start by creating a sample sentence. We'll work in third person because that's the standard for most kinds of fiction.

She wondered if this sentence would survive the red pen?

As written, I would want to correct this sentence. But I see two issues here, one of style and one of grammar. The grammar issue is a quickie, but it will help show the style issue for what it is.

Normally, to make a question in English, we do two things. We replace the period with a question mark, and we invert the main subject and verb. In our sample sentence, the main subject and verb are, "she wondered." Those are followed by a dependent adverb clause starting with the word "if." We don't invert the dependent part of the sentence. We invert the main subject and verb. So we would end up with:

Did she wonder if this sentence would survive the red pen?

That looks kind of bad, right? If we're in the pov of the "she" from this sentence, then she would know if she was wondering or not. The pov character's thoughts would not be hidden from the pov character. (Well, barring any plot elements involving mental derangement, experimental mind-bending drugs, and the like.)

You see, the real issue with this sentence lies not with the punctuation, but with the relegation of the important thought to a dependent clause attached to a "thought tag" type main clause. Thought tags attach to interior monologue the same way dialogue tags attach to dialogue.

She asked, "Will this sentence survive the red pen?"
She wondered if this sentence would survive the red pen.

In the dialogue, the tag serves to identify who asks the question. It's necessary to tag dialogue (or add a beat that identifies the speaker) when the speaker might not be otherwise clear. But if you're writing in an intimate point of view such as limited third, then the identity of the thinker ought to be known to the reader. The pov character can't think other people's thoughts. He can only think his own thoughts. So we don't need to attribute those thoughts if the pov is clear. And if that's the case, slice off that thought tag and move the dependent material into an independent clause of its own.

Will this sentence survive the red pen?

Now it's a proper question in terms of grammar, but it's also better fiction style.

Yes, there will be times you'll want to attach thought tags to the interior monologue because the nature or manner of thinking is important to the action. For example, if you're writing about a brain-trauma patient becoming capable of thinking again, then using those kinds of words -- he realized, he reasoned, he thought, he wondered, etc. -- at the moment when thought returns would be important to the text. But for ordinary circumstances, the fact of thinking is not critical to the plot, and so these kinds of words serve only to weigh the pacing and create narrative distance.

Theresa

A Minor Rant About a Bad Trend

2011-12-10T18:00:00.000-06:00

This afternoon, I was taking a moment to read one of the few non-publishing blogs I visit, and something in the comments section made me cringe. A regular commenter there, who is articulate and intelligent, used a colon in his comment. A colon, you know, is the one that has two dots stacked atop each other, a smile, not a wink. ( : ) Immediately under this comment, another commenter praised this use of a "semicolon" ( ; ), and then she claimed she was an editor.

Now, this error didn't escape my notice, but it did escape my censure, because we all can make a simple error like this in less guarded moments. We talk about semicolons all the time, and about colons only rarely. Her fingers may have typed the word semicolon automatically, and then she didn't catch it before she clicked to post the comment, and this is one of those places that doesn't allow for comment editing. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she caught the error too late to change it. It's an embarrassing mistake, but what happened next was even crazier. Others chimed in with, "Hooray for semicolons! I'm an editor, too!" type comments.

And those are a little harder to overlook or forgive. The bigger problem, though, is that they point up a disturbing trend I've noticed growing over the past six months or so. Seems everyone is claiming to be an editor these days, and some of these folks are displaying an appalling lack of command over the language. It's not just this chain of me-too comments from self-styled editors who don't know colons from semicolons. I've received DMs from people on twitter advertising their "editting" skills. I've heard countless tales of authors who hired the cheapest editor they could find, and were shocked at the complaints from reviewers about horrible editing. As more and more people pursue direct publishing, I imagine this trend will continue to grow.

Be careful when you hire an editor. When you submit to a house, of course, you don't always have control over who does the editing, and not all in-house editors are built alike. You get what you're stuck with. But when you hire a private editor, you have more control over who edits your work. That's one of the benefits of DIY publishing, right? So why would you hire a shoddy, cheap editor with no credentials other than the claim that they can edit? Would you hire a plumber without first checking whether they can actually fix pipes?

There are plenty of good editors out there. Really, there are, and we're not hard to find. Ask around. Ask your author friends for referrals. Word of mouth is the best advertising for any of us, but a good editor can usually point to a solid track record of published projects, strong reviews, endorsements, and the like. (Take a look at my minimalist informational website for an idea of what I mean. I cobbled this together in half an afternoon just so I'd have something to link to -- believe me, other editors can boast better developed sites, but mine at least has listed the basics.) And though many of us don't like to reveal the names of private clients without express permission, an absolute refusal to reveal anything about past projects probably means that there aren't any, or those projects never amounted to much.

I'm hearing some of the same complaints about people trying to claim that they're cover artists. They're selling cover art for a pittance, and the grateful author snaps it up without realizing it's the wrong specs or there are copyright issues with the artwork. I haven't heard of similar problems with disreputable typesetters or file-makers, but that might just be because I haven't heard of them. The whole thing reminds me a bit of the days when everyone was rushing to set up an author website (mid-90s, late 90s) and so many people got burned by homecooked design jobs. Just be careful out there. There's a sucker born every minute, and right now, it seems a lot of people think writers are the suckers.

Theresa

Mouse help?

2011-12-10T17:39:00.000-06:00

Help! I need a mouse, I mean, really. I hate the touchpad. But my mouse isn't working-- suddenly. Here's the scoop:

Rebooted.
Put another battery in mouse.
Tried another mouse.
Tried all the USB ports.
Flashdrive worked fine in all USB ports.
Tried mouse in another PC and it worked fine (not mouse problem).
Reinstalled drivers.

I did all the troubleshooting and stuff, and nothing worked. I thought it might have something to the function key F9, so tried to toggle that, and nothing happened.

Device manager doesn't list the mouse, just the touchpad, now.

Any thoughts? I am pretty sure it's just a setting issue, that I inadvertently switched something off or on, so I'm really reluctant to spend $70 to have the tech keep it for a week and say, "Oh, you just needed to press Ctrl something."

Windows 7. Computer is about 2 years old, no problems.

Help! Any ideas?

Alicia

Editing and rights

2011-12-08T22:47:00.000-06:00

RWA reports that at least one publisher (let's guess which) is suggesting that authors who get their rights back shouldn't use the edited book as that's a collaboration. (Let me say quickly that RWA's position-- they got an attorney brief-- doesn't support this at all.)

This is pretty pernicious. (For one thing, the finished book is usually copyrighted NOT to the publisher or editor, but just the writer.) RWA suggests that everyone in this position should check their contract's reversion clause (none of mine, btw, say anything like that).

RWA does point out that material actually written by the publisher's employees, like the back cover copy, might be better left unused. (And the cover.)

Anyone have experience with this sort of situation?

I'm getting the idea that everyone wants to get yet another piece of the pie.

Alicia

Dean's at it again

2011-12-07T12:26:00.000-06:00

I love Dean Wesley Smith's jaundiced blog posts looking back over 40 years in publishing. He's got one up about agents, and maybe if you read it, come back and let's talk about this question: Are agents still essential? Were they ever? If you have decided to go another route, how does it work without an agent? Will agents be useful in the new publishing climate? How?

I was just in a discussion of "how to use IPads in a writing center," and I thought, "We're trying to come up with a purpose for the hardware!" So tell me if you think delineating "roles of agents in the new publishing climate" is sort of like trying to invent a purpose that isn't really there-- to help agents out, not expecting agents to help writers. I'm wary of that, because as Dean points out, the 90s and later, the industry kind of shifted in order to create roles for agents. Many writers were enriched that way, yes, but many never got past the door too.

Anyway, read the post (and comments-- Laura Resnick's is intriguing) and maybe tell what you're doing, how you've dealt with agents in the past, whether you're looking for or using an agent for your NYC-submissions, and whether if you're going direct or small publishing, whether you're using an agent, etc.

Alicia

Who did Nano?

2011-12-06T19:35:00.000-06:00

Who did Nanowrimo this November? Results?

No, not me. Sorry. I graded about 50K words of papers, but I don't think that counts!

Alicia

Why Romance Novels Are Feminist in Nature

2011-12-06T09:42:00.001-06:00

This might be the greatest thing I've ever seen on youtube.
Theresa

Writing to Genre

2011-12-06T08:59:00.093-06:00

This tends to happen more with newer, inexperienced writers, but it also happens with those who have been hanging around writer circles long enough to understand the mysterious and baffling world of genre. Here's the basic scenario. A writer generates a manuscript that doesn't fit any particular genre. There's a mystery, but it's handled in a subplot. There's a romantic relationship, but it already exists on page one and doesn't really change by the end of the story. The main character is female, but her personal journey doesn't form the central plot or structure -- some other external plot does, and the protagonist doesn't change as a result of the external plot action. There are family dynamics involved, but those dynamics are not large enough to carry the weight of a family saga. There are supernatural characters or horror elements, but all the other competing elements relegate them to a supporting role. There might even be a political assassination attempt thrown in somewhere around the midpoint. And, the cherry on top, it's set in 1870 in Wyoming. In short, the book is about everything and nothing, and it doesn't fit into anything like a recognized genre, let alone a particular subgenre.

A book like this will be hard to market even during good times. During these times of across-the-board uncertainty, it will be virtually impossible.

I know that's a tough reality. Believe me, I see the evidence of how tough it is for writers with this kind of book. This is something I deal with pretty regularly with clients, and these dealings tend to follow predictable patterns. I suggest ways to shift the book more firmly into one or another genre (which is the right move, especially if you're a new writer with no track record or fan base). I usually outline more than one strategy to accomplish this so that the writer has a choice of direction. But the response is usually uncomfortable, sometimes even hostile. "Why do I have to change this?"

Because you do. Because books are a retail commodity marketed under "the same but different" principles. Because you are an unknown. Because until readers start asking bookstore clerks for your books by your name -- "Do you have the latest Steven King/Scott Turow/Nora Roberts?" -- they will be more likely to buy your book if it bears a resemblance to the latest King or Turow or Roberts.

Someday, you might have enough pull, or times might be good enough, so that you can publish your hybrid romance/mystery/horror/political thriller/family saga/coming of age/western novel. But when you're new and untested, the best way for you to find readers will be by writing to recognized genre standards. Innovate within the form now, and innovate the form itself later. (If ever. Chances are, after you have ten or so books out there, you'll also have a tidy collection of tales of woe from authors who risked books like that. Seriously, folks, there's a reason these books rarely get published. No matter what happens on the actual last page, the story almost never ends well.)

Does this mean the hybrid book is terrible? Of course not. In fact, I've read some excellent hybrids over the years. None of them have seen publication, but they were darned good, and I'm glad I had the chance to read them.And yes, there are tales of breakout, genre-busting books -- and yes, some of the books I've read could find huge crossover readership. Or they could end up disappointing readers who were looking for "the same, but different," and found not enough same, and too much different. Regardless, the reality is that these books are a damned hard sell, and if you're interested in being a career writer, it's wise to start by writing to genre specifications.

Theresa

Misdirection for emotion

2011-12-05T01:09:00.000-06:00

I just saw a heartrending scene on TV (Law and Order, actually), which would be devastating anyway-- parents identifying the body of their slain child. But the scene made it even more excruciating. When the cover was drawn back, the mother breathes a sigh of relief and says, "It's not my baby." For a moment, there's this hope... and hope, you know, is the most dangerous emotion of all. The husband looks at her, and embraces her, and his face tells the truth-- it is indeed their son.

I'm wondering if that moment of misdirection is something we can use when we designe scenes, as long as it fits and doesn't seem contrived. (In this case, of course, we understand that the mother might wish so hard she sees what's not there, or doesn't see what is there.) The misdirection gives another moment of suspension, a gathering of dread and hope-- and then the emotion that results is that much more intense.

How can we postpone the emotional denouement to increase the power? It's all in scene design.
Alicia

Poll results

2011-12-02T21:07:00.000-06:00

We recently polled our readers about a common twitter practice seen from authors.
Here are the results.

An author followed you on twitter, and you followed them back. They immediately DMd you a link to their amazon page. This is:

Smart marketing, and I will click the link. 2 (1%)

Acceptable marketing, and I will not click the link. 6 (4%)

Something I delete without further consideration. 31 (21%)

Bad netiquette, but other than temporary annoyance, I let it slide. 82 (56%)

Unacceptable, and I unfollow them, and maybe report the spam. 25 (17%)

Of course, this isn't a scientific poll, but I think we can safely assume that sentiment runs against this particular PR practice. If the poll is accurate, this means DM spam is 12 times more likely to result in an unfollow than in a clicked link. About three out of four people find it bad or unacceptable, and only 5% view it as smart or acceptable. Even if these numbers are off by a wide margin, that margin won't be wide enough to reverse the trend. In fact, given that many of our readers are authors who are on twitter and looking for ways to promote their books there, I tend to suspect any error is in the other direction. I tend to suspect self-promoting authors are more tolerant of author self-promotion (even bad self-promotion) than the general public might be.

In any case, this all leads me to ask one question. If sentiment is so strongly opposed to this kind of self-promotion, then why in the world would anyone continue to do it? Is it mere ignorance, or are we missing something?

Theresa

Forgot to Mention--

2011-11-28T15:36:00.000-06:00

I had a post last Friday at Romance University, and I completely forgot to link it here. Blame my forgetfulness on the combination of the holiday and a virus that just won't quit. In any case, here's the link. The post is about the four aspects of "mateability" that we look for in a romantic hero.

Coincidentally, after the post went live, I pulled out my old copy of Leslie Wainger's Romance for Dummies -- which is a very smart book, notwithstanding the title, and probably the best all-around guide to writing romances I've ever read. I still had a page flagged in this book leftover from my study of Lost in Austen. Under the subheader, "Heroes are for loving," Leslie writes:

Think of your hero as a prize, the prize the heroine wins after all the conflict is resolved. (By the way, just so you don't think I'm being sexist: Make your hero realize that the heroine's love is the prize he wins.)

This echoes Propp's fairy tale structure derived from Russian wonder tales, which ends with a wedding as a symbol of victory and as a reward for vanquishing the baddie. Yet more evidence to support the notion that genre romance follows fairy tale structure. One difference, though, is that Propp seemed to operate on the idea that the hero won a bride, but in genre romance, the hero and heroine win each other, as Wainger notes.

Theresa

Another Monomythic Structure

2011-11-24T12:01:00.000-06:00

I was reading the October issue of the Journal of Popular Culture (yes, a little behind on my reading), and I stumbled across this gem in a paper about the Omen trilogy.

Jewett and Lawrence have argued that the classical monomyth is not a common pattern in American popular culture. In the United States, mythic consciousness has evolved into a distinct form that highlights redemption rather than initiation. It dramatizes the Judeo-Christian redemption discourse that emerged early in American culture to produce a narrative in which "[a] community in a harmonious paradise is threatened by evil: normal institutions fail to contend with this threat: a selfless superhero emerges to renounce temptations and carry out the redemptive task: aided by fate, his decisive victory restores the community to its paradisal condition: the superhero then recedes into obscurity" (Jewett and Lawrence, American Monomyth xx). In this mythic narrative, helpless communities are redeemed by a Christ figure who is never integrated into the community, but leaves at the end, remaining a perpetual outsider. He or she has an unchanging moral perfection and a strong capability for action while the community is changeable and must be saved through the violent action of the hero.

The author is Neil Gerlach, and the paper is "Antichrist as Anti-Monomyth." As you might imagine, this paragraph has grabbed my interest. I'm deeply interested in the ways these various monomyths might be useful to writers. So I hopped onto my university's library site and ran a quick search, and from this preliminary scan, it seems Jewett and Lawrence were primarily concerned with comic book narratives and characters, though they did apply some of these concepts to news stories about modern warfare.

Before I pursue this line of inquiry further, I thought I would ask if any of you have looked at this American monomyth, and if so, did you find it useful?

Theresa

When grammar elements go out drinking.

2011-11-22T08:04:00.002-06:00

Jenny sent this along from a FaceBook post by Jeff Blackmer--

A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
A dangling modifier walks into a bar. After finishing a drink, the bartender asks it to leave.
A question mark walks into a bar?
Two quotation marks "walk into" a bar.
A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to drink.
The bar was walked into by the passive voice.
Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They drink. They leave.

More on Book Country

2011-11-21T08:59:00.000-06:00

Here's an article quoting a few self-pubbing heavy hitters about Book Country, Penguin's controversial new vanity/direct branch. Penguin was given the chance to respond, but to my eyes, their response is thin. "You can avoid line spacing issues in the finished e-book." Um, okay, but if I hire a typesetter, any typesetter at all, I expect to avoid these kinds of issues. And other typesetters are cheaper by a mile. So how exactly does this translate to added value? In fact, you can easily run down the list of benefits in the Penguin press release (on page two of the article), compare those to places like Createspace, LSI, etc., and see for yourself whether it's a good deal. And if you think this is the best deal you can get, then by all means, take it.

Theresa

Interdiction

2011-11-20T10:12:00.000-06:00

If you've been hanging around writers circles at any point in the last fifteen or so years, you have probably run into the concepts of "call to action" and "refusal of the call" from the hero's journey. There's another pattern which is something like the flipside of this call/refusal pattern, though, which centers around the concept of what is forbidden to the protagonist.

As a brief reminder, the call/refusal comes in the early part of the structure referred to as the hero's journey, the quest myth, or Campbell's sun god monomyth. This is a powerful and enduring story structure which begins with an extraordinary character, unaware of his true nature, who has been stashed in an ordinary world for safekeeping (or for some other purpose) during his youth. The call to action is the first major step in this character's evolution. An external force intrudes on the ordinary world and makes some request or demand of the protagonist. Whether due to fear, uncertainty, or a general feeling of unreadiness, the hero refuses this request or demand. Ultimately, of course, the hero changes his mind and does it anyway.

Some story analysts have suggested that the refusal of the call -- more specifically, the way that this refusal allows the protagonist to demonstrate humility, uncertainty, insecurity, or other less heroic emotions -- is necessary to allow the reader to bond with the character. Without it, the hero might seem foolhardy or arrogant. With it, he seems more moderate or tempered. So this might be the purpose of this refusal to do something we all know he'll end up doing anyway.

This particular story structure is naturally well-suited to action/adventure, fantasy, some scifi, and can be adapted to other story types. But there are other structural models, and one that I talk about quite a lot is the fairy tale structure which lends itself well to horror and romance. (By the way, if you've ever wondered why paranormal romance works so beautifully as a subgenre, but scifi romance is a trickier marriage, it may have something to do with these structural tendencies.)

In fairy tale structure, we start with a virtuous character in a hostile or treacherous world. (Virtue, by the way, doesn't mean sexual innocence in this context. It means the characteristics which we most value in that type of character.) Frequently, the hostility or treachery in the environment follows the loss of a key family member -- think about what happens to Cinderella when her dad dies.

But there might be another aspect to the hostility or treachery of this world, and it comes in the form of what Vladimir Propp (who analyzed a wad of Russian wonder tales much the same way Campbell analyzed all those sun god stories) calls an interdiction. This just means that someone in a position of authority -- or perhaps, an authoritative entity -- has officially banned some act. There might be legitimate safety reasons for that interdiction. "Don't go into the woods at night." Well, we all know what happens when you ignore this rule and go into the woods at night anyway. Freaky bad stuff.

But hey, we're going into the woods anyway, right? Because that's the next step in the structure. Just as the call to action is met with a refusal, the interdiction must be violated. If Cinderella is banned from going to the ball, you'd better be sure she's going to find a way to get to the ball. The ban must be broken, and the forbidden must be experienced. Yes, there will be problems. But those problems will test the heroic traits in a way that proves them to be true and worthy of reward. So, even though we might think it's bad for a "virtuous" character to break the rules, really, it's all part and parcel of that virtuous nature. (This technique, if not this exact structure, is sometimes used in "rebel cop" stories, too. Anyone want to discuss the difference between using this as a mid-scale character technique and using it as a structural element?)

Theresa

Setting up the punchline

2011-11-20T09:25:00.002-06:00

Sometimes when I'm reading a manuscript, I come across a passage or a scene which has a punch of some kind at the end-- humorous, emotional, or suspenseful-- that doesn't really pack the force it should. The problem is usually that the writer cut to the quick, giving the punchline or disaster or surprise without sufficient set up. The reader needs some time, some development, some prep, to fully experience that "punch" in the end.

Good scene design helps here. Here's a kind of simple set up:
Context or status quo (the "before")
Change event
Big change momen
Results
Contrasting punch

For example, this is kind of a humorous sketch, not very funny, but it's just an example.

Billy discovered a new species of marmoset!

A year later, it went extinct.

There's the bare-bones of it. (And that is pretty much what I've seen in a couple contest entries this month! Good idea, poor execution.) Have you ever heard a 5-year-old tell a joke? It's like that. Just the punch line.

But the reader doesn't experience in a bare-bones way. The reader probably needs some additional context, some process, some transition. So here's a sketch of how I'd suggest fleshing out that bare-bones treatment:

Set the context: Billy was such a loser! (Maybe an explanation or example here.) He was the sort of kid who read the encyclopedia from A to Z, and would later bore dates by reciting the particulars about different animal species.
Change event: Finally, after failing miserably at school and profession, he found a job surveying the rain forest for resort development. Unfortunately, it was in Madagascar.
Big change moment: One day, while searching for his sextant, which he had dropped in the brush of the forest, he saw a quick little animal, the likes of which he'd never read about in the encyclopedia. He took a photo with his camera, and went back to his tent and emailed the picture to his friend the zoologist. A new species!
Results: Billy became the toast of the zoology world, giving speeches and powerpoint presentations to students and faculties throughout the world. (More here... women zoologists wanted to bed him, men zoologists wanted to shake his hand...)
Punch: Of course, a year later, the species went extinct.

That's just a sketch. But see how by setting up the "loser" context, guiding the reader through the big event and the results, we've given the switcheroo (back) at the end more power.

Our job, at base, is to give the reader an experience, not an outline. Anyone, frankly, can tell the punchline or jot down the turning point event. It takes a -writer- to make it into a joke (or a scene). Execution is all in creating a reader experience, and that goes beyond mere plotting of events into presenting not just the events but the context and process and consequences... and in the most effective prose too.

No, it's not easy. But deciding to do it well is the first step to doing it well!
Alicia

Twitter Opinion Wanted.

2011-11-19T09:30:00.000-06:00

I've added a poll to the sidebar (http://edittorrent.blogspot.com in case you read this through a feed reader) asking for your response to a common marketing practice on twitter. Please note: I'm not asking whether you as an author engage in this form of marketing. I'm asking what your most common response is when you receive this from another author. Please be honest about your response. Don't answer with how you hope others might receive your marketing, but with what you typically do when you receive this yourself. It seems feelings run high on this subject. I'm looking for a measure of response to this practice, not for a defense or condemnation. Okey-dokey?

Thanks!
Theresa

In a Book Country

2011-11-18T12:26:00.000-06:00

"I'm not expecting to grow flowers in the desert."
~Can you name that tune?

Reader question: Is Book Country, the new "self-publishing" unit from Penguin, a good deal?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: It's the same amount of work for you, but you will earn less per copy, and there is no added benefit. If you want them to do some of the work (formatting or typesetting) for you, they will, but it will cost even more, and you can hire someone else to do the same work for a fraction of the price. There are loads of people out there who do great work with rapid turnaround times. Jim Brown is one I've worked with, and he's very reliable. (His conversion price is $75/6 digital formats. Book Country's is $99/1 format, and they limit you to one of six templates.)

If you want to do the formatting yourself, spring for Joshua Tallent's kindle formatting booklet, which is very easy reading and loaded with tips. There are also some websites with good, free information about formatting.

Theresa

Paragraph power... at the end

2011-11-18T09:15:00.001-06:00

Came across this. The speaker is a gunslinger type, kind of danger, one of those who survives partly because he's hard to kill. The questioner, knowing that when Bishop was young, the "powers" had sent out a hitman to kill him as punishment for just this transgression, and almost succeeded, has just asked him, why wouldn't they do that now.

Point was to reinforce this guy's ruthlessness and recklessness, his continued defiance of authority.

So he answers:
"I'm not a boy anymore. Not so easy to kill. I do what I want and no one dares to interfere. I've outlasted them all. Even your commander, who has retired to the golf course."

Hmm. Got all the elements, the answer, the hidden threat, the bit of exposition (commander retired). But.. but it doesn't have much power. This is supposed to be a dangerous guy making a threat to the questioner (don't interfere), but it fizzles. Why?
Because it ends on the golf course.
If possible, paragraphs (especially speech paragraphs) should end on the note you want to leave in the reader's mind. So let's flip the sentences, so that golf course "no big deal" comes before the implied threat.

"I've outlasted them all. Even your commander, who has retired to the golf course. Anyway, I'm not a boy anymore. Not so easy to kill. I do what I want and no one dares to interfere."

Hmm. Now that I look at that, the most powerful and dangerous and threatening word in there is "kill". Can I revise to end on that? Let's see.

"I've outlasted them all. Even your commander, who has retired to the golf course. I do what I want and no one dares to interfere. Anyway, I'm not a boy anymore. Not so easy to kill."

(Need one more revision pass so that there aren't so many short sentences... but maybe that's the way to convey that ruthlessness.)

I'm not sure that these little revisions matter all that much, one by one. But I think if we go into revision with the mindset of revising for power, for that jolt of extra precision, we will find many opportunities. And altogether, they will create more drama and meaning.

Alicia

Sneaky dangling participle

2011-11-17T14:38:00.000-06:00

I'm scouting nearby rental houses for a friend, and in an email to her about one house, I -almost- committed a dangler:
I just saw the sign driving by, so all I know is the house is for rent by owner.

Before I finished the "-ing," I felt something was wrong. And I immediately backspaced and made it:
I just saw the sign as I was driving by, so all I know is the house is for rent by owner.

Constant vigilance is the price of freedom... from danglers.

Anyone else "almost dangle" lately? Some of them are sneaky little buggers.
Alicia

The real sexiest man

2011-11-17T11:50:00.000-06:00

The world's sexiest man: Gregg Breinberg, the choir leader at PS 22 in Staten Island, N.Y. (Check them out in Youtube.)
As a teacher, I am honored for him. Wish we were all as great as he is, but he is definitely #1.

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/17/salons_sexiest_man_of_2011_the_interview/singleton/

Alicia

Character vs. trait

2011-11-10T17:34:00.000-06:00

A character trait isn't characterization. Just declaring that a character is arrogant or obsessive or showing that means little. What's important is the cause of the trait and the effect on the character's life... and the plot, of course.

For example, in Pride and Prejudice, Darcy is famously arrogant, and behaves arrogantly towards all, especially Elizabeth. The effect of this character trait is shown immediately. Almost no one beyond his old friend Bingley likes him, and Elizabeth rejects his impetuous proposal, declaring that she can't abide his arrogant assumption that she will love him back.

So the effect is shown soon (he is disliked, and E rejects him). The cause is revealed more slowly, as Elizabeth herself comes to understand it. He grew up rich, of course, and indulged, but lost his parents early and found himself the guardian of a large estate, a huge staff, and a younger sister. His arrogance, she realizes (with the reader), was a response to the many responsibilities. She also realizes that he does not act with such arrogance to those he loves when she meets his housekeeper and his little sister.

So the cause and especially its revelation become part of the progress of the plot. But more than that, this central trait is actually changed by the events of the plot. Darcy is a snob at the start of the story, making clear that he looks down on Elizabeth's family for being socially inferior. But when he begins to help rescue her wayward sister, he must interact with her uncle, who being only a barrister is far below him in social class. He changes to someone who can appreciate the honesty and honor of this man, and even defends Elizabeth and her family against Lady Catherine, the most aristocratic snob in the book.

Arrogance is more than just a character trait here-- it leads him to behave badly and so is a catalyst for action (Lizzie rejecting him), but is also a catalyst for change, as he moves beyond his arrogance to win Lizzie back.

So let's not stop with assigning character traits to characters! That might be the start, but it isn't sufficient.

Character aspect:
What caused it? How is this revealed?
How does this affect the story events?
How does this aspect change because of the story events?

I'm also curious about how we reveal it, perhaps early, but don't necessarily show the causes right away. I think probably we'd have to show effects right away (as it will of course affect the scenes where it "appears"). But how do we hold off the cause so we aren't just dumping backstory?
Alicia

Free writing books! Hurry!

2011-11-07T18:06:00.002-06:00

Lisa K passes this along:

Here are 6 Kindle books on writing that are free right now. Normally most are $15-20.

http://dailycheapreads.com/2011/11/06/free-now-six-books-on-writing-from-writer%e2%80%99s-digest-books/

Act quick! I don't think this is going to last long!

Alicia

Description and texture

2011-11-02T17:14:00.001-05:00

I'm the worst person to talk about description. I hate writing it, and I don't much like reading it either. I'm lamentably un-visual, and so reading what the scene or the room or the world looks like doesn't register for me, and writing it is just an ordeal, as I don't "see" well, and so I almost have to mentally invent the visual aspect of a scene.

However, I think if we think of description as merely description, we might be missing an opportunity here. Description is useful for deepening a scene, for making it seem more real and authentic-- books without much "scene-setting" often seem thin. We are, after all, the children of a visual age of cinema and TV, and we might need the additional details of the setting to make this feel real to us.

Another way we can use description-- perhaps the other important one-- is to create a tone. A straightforward description of a room ("As he entered, on his left was a closet door, and on the right was the entry to a gleaming modern kitchen. Ahead were two leather couches set in sequence in front of a big screen TV. The effect was that of a tiny movie theater.") accomplishes that goal of making the scene seem real-- the reader can visualize this place.

But the straight description doesn't create much of an emotional atmosphere-- a tone. I think a lot of us just fall short at this point. We describe what we want the reader to see, but we don't go further to create what we want the reader to feel. This is a lost opportunity. We've wasted a few paragraphs on something many readers will just skim because it doesn't add much to the experience of the scene. I'd just like here to suggest some ways that you and I (especially I!) can use those paragraphs to deepen the texture of the scene.

1) Description can vary with the genre or the scene purpose. That is, the same scene (a park, say) might be rendered in a romantic way in a romance or in a scary way in a horror film. It might just be a matter of emphasis, on what details we select. For example, in a romantic scene, what about this park would enhance the romance? Maybe the sun filtering through the trees and casting beams on the velvety lawn. A lone park bench facing the pond, a pair of swans floating serenely by.
Now take the same park and make it "horror-fying"-- the wind is blowing the fallen leaves around. The sky above the pond grows ominously, paradoxically still. The park bench is still empty, but now a few of those fallen leaves are trapped against the benchback.

If we can isolate details that help create the genre tone, that will put the reader in the right mood to accept whatever romantic or horrifying or suspenseful event is going to happen momentarily.

2) Vision isn't the only sense. Describing the sound of the wind or the smell of the stagnant pond or the feel of the grass under the character's feet-- those can individualize and flesh our the description, while giving us more details to select from in order to create that mood or tone. Most of our sensory information does come in through our eyes, no doubt, but the depth of our understanding of the world probably depends on the addition of our other senses.

Some writers will laboriously tick off each sense and make a line in each paragraph about that sense:

He saw the sun filtering through the leaves, and beyond in the clearing, the campfire. The smell of woodsmoke filled his nostrils. He could almost taste the roasting marshmallows. The crackle of the leaves under his feet woke him from his reverie.

That's sort of dull, and it doesn't add up to much. Think instead about starting with a little topic sentence that might put this in context, like:

The grotto was ancient and long-forgotten, the mossy ground soft and rotting underfoot. The tiny pond was filmed with algae, and the air stank with the smell of the stagnant water. Even the rustle of the wind over the water was hushed and abashed.

Another option is to have a sentence of visual (can't escape that), but then really zing into the most imperative sense. If this park abuts the town dump, then the smell is probably going to overwhelm the pleasantness of the visual. If there's a bagpipe band playing in the bandstand, then very soon the visual will give way to a recounting of how the lonely music wails across the still air.

3) Don't forget the character. If she's hungry, then no matter how picturesque the scene is, as soon as she sees and hears that ice-cream truck blaring out "Bicycle Built for Two," her mouth is going to start watering and she's going to "almost taste" the creamy ice cream and the nuts on the top of the Drum Stick and the sharp tang of the orange popsicle.

Her emotions might also distort how you describe it. If she's worried, she might see even the most pleasant scene in a pessimistic way-- those kids on the merry-go-round look hysterical, not excited.
Also consider the character goal. Why is she in the park? If she's frantically searching for her lost wallet, she's not going to notice how pretty the flowers are in the rosebeds. If she's dallying there, waiting for her boyfriend to get out of work and meet her for lunch, she might see everything in a rosy glow of anticipation... or be scoping out the area for a place to sit and picnic. How she apprehends the scene will vary depending on why she's there, so describe it as she experiences it.

4) Don't lose the emotion, but use it. What is he feeling when he enters this setting? How does that change what he experiences through his senses? How does the setting change his emotion-- that is, he might grow more agitated if he sees disorder (overflowing trash barrels, cracked sidewalks), or more calm if the breeze is soothing. But show the emotional transition happening, show the setting details that affect his mood.

5) If the character interacts with the environment, the description becomes integrated with the action, and takes on dual purpose. So rather than just describing a muddy playground, we could have our character cross it, trying to pick his way from dry spot to dry spot, worrying about his shiny shoes, stepping accidentally into a puddle, grabbing for the pole of the monkey bars to extricate himself.

6) One of the most valuable techniques I learned in graduate literary criticism class was to reveal what's not there. Yeah, I read all that impermeable Derrida stuff about deconstruction, but here's what I took away-- what isn't there is as important as what is. So describing the absence of something can increase the emotional quality of the scene. An empty swing, creeking eerily in the wind, suggests loss-- of a child, of childhood, of hope. You can mention what's missing ("empty") to add a subtext. As MacLeish put it:

For all the history of grief
 An empty doorway and a maple leaf

Anyway, no need to moan and groan as I do when I realize I probably ought to describe this room where they're going to have the big argument. Stop thinking of it as a "place" and start thinking of it as a "revealer," and describing it might come easier.

Alicia

Author interview

2011-11-01T07:02:00.000-05:00

Nicholson Baker in a good interview in Paris Review (h/t James Wolcott)-- talks about the ultimate question of a novel, and I like the idea-- is live worth living?

The question any novel is really trying to answer is, Is life worth living? That's a major question, a huge question, but the best way to answerit might not be to crank the novelistic universe into a crude, lurching motion by employing a big inciting incident. Sometimes life provides only the tiniest of telling incidents--that your left shoelace snaps within a day of your right one. That's enough for me. When something is beautiful, it can't be minor.

I kind of get that-- we don't always know what the meaning is that this event or moment will convey, but if it's amazing, the reader will find the meaning.

Alicia

Your Turn - Spot the Themes

2011-10-28T23:58:00.000-05:00

We've been talking about routine tasks in fiction this week. First we talked about two common errors in the reliance on routine tasks, and then we looked at two example of scenes in which routine tasks are manipulated to highlight theme.

Now it's your turn to apply some of the ideas we've been using. But I'm not going to make it easy for you! This clip is of a scene sequence from the film Pretty Woman, the eponymous shopping scene. This sequence is not without its problems, but it also contains elements which many viewers loved. The trick now is for you to watch the sequence with the concept of deeper story architecture in mind. What are the themes, and how do those themes resonate in this sequence?

Another Good Example - Dinner Done Right

2011-10-27T09:23:00.000-05:00

We've been talking about routine tasks such as cooking and getting dressed. We started by looking at two ways these kinds of actions are misused in the narrative, with clues to diagnose and tips to repair them. Then yesterday, we looked at the first minute and a half of Lawrence Kasdan's film, The Big Chill, as an example of how routine tasks are manipulated to establish the dominant themes of the film. Today I thought we could take a look at another example from film, this time a classic dinner scene from Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas.

First, take a look at the scene. Henry (Ray Liotta) and his partner have been sentenced to ten years for beating up a bookie. This scene takes places in prison.

It's a dinner scene, yes, and it goes into detail about a lot of mundane points: the thinness of the garlic slices, the number of onions, the need for pork in the sauce, the bread, the wine, and so on. But these details serve a deeper purpose by reinforcing the theme. This is a film that attempts to convince us that the mobster's life was glamorous and privileged even as it depicted the grittiness and tawdriness of it all. This scene hits that theme hard. They are in prison. It's not a pretty environment. Paulie wears a bathrobe, black socks, and sandals while he slices the garlic -- far from a glamorous look, and yet it shows us how relaxed his is, even in the cement-block prison environment. A single sheet hangs over the window in place of a curtain, and yet there is a linen tablecloth on the table. The gangsters have lobsters and steaks on ice in a makeshift cooler hidden behind an ugly oilcloth sheet. Everywhere you look, there are these pairings of something ugly with something that speaks to privilege and a better lifestyle.

What else do you notice in this scene that ties into the themes of the movie?

Theresa

How to Use Routine Tasks to Make a Deeper Point

2011-10-26T09:10:00.000-05:00

In my post yesterday, we talked about scenes and scene starts which rely on trivial action in the wrong way. Today I thought it might be useful to look at an example of a scene that uses the same kind of action to make a larger point. I suspect most of you are familiar with the Lawrence Kasdan film, The Big Chill. The first minute and a half of that film portrays routine actions: a dad bathing his toddler son, a mom taking a phone call, a man dressing. I found a youtube clip of the opening -- it's got subtitles, but it was the only video I could find of the first scene. Take a look at the first minute and a half.

Now, the film's dominant themes have to do with the loss of innocence and the tension between idealism and everyday concerns. This opening sequence sets the thematic tone by using everyday, routine tasks as a counterpoint to the phone call that changes everything. One of my favorite moments in this sequence comes when, after the phone rings several times and is finally answered by the mom, the dad asks, "What's that?" We're all wondering the same thing because we know phone calls in movies usually have a big impact on the action. But, even though the dad has one eye on the phone call, the question, "What's that?" is actually posed to the kid, who answers, "Super-Nothing." The call is not about a superhero. It's about a Super-Nothing, a man who never found his way in life but now has found his way to death. The tragic news is delivered against the backdrop of a child in a bubble-filled tub singing Joy to the World.This image is filled with innocence and imagination, two key ingredients in the idealism examined by the film.

And then the opening credits are played over an image of a man getting dressed -- or being dressed, rather, for burial. Getting dressed is a routine act that we do every day, but we only are dressed for burial one time. The ordinary act is made extraordinary by its unique context.

Do you notice anything else here about the way the ordinary actions are used to make bigger points?

Theresa

Dressing and Dining

2011-10-25T18:02:00.000-05:00

We've all heard the advice to cut things like getting dressed or cooking meals from your narrative. And we've all heard the reasons behind this rule. These are non-dramatic actions. There's no tension or conflict in these actions. They weigh down the pace and bore the reader. They have nothing to do with the plot.

All true. But I thought it might be useful to look at two common ways authors slip into "dressing and dining" mode. I think there are reasons authors reach for these kinds of filler actions in certain spots, and understanding the usages might make it easier to revise them out of the narrative.

The Non-Transitional Transition

Sometimes, we see a long run of "getting ready" details at the start of a new scene. You know what I mean.

The next morning, Elsie woke slowly in the fading darkness before the sun crested the horizon. She stretched against the mattress and huddled deeper under the quilt. It would be at least an hour before anyone else rose. Time to herself. What a treat. With hardly a whisper of sound, she threw back the covers and donned her robe and slippers, made the bed, and headed toward her closet. It would be warm today, and Miller had warned her that their project would be physically challenging. T-shirt and jeans? But she wanted to feel pretty even if she was sweating over fence posts and rails.

And so on, the prose continues in a languid manner, dawdling over moments of solitude and ordinary household and hygiene tasks. Maybe some of this information is tangentially related to the plot, and maybe some it sheds light on the character or conflicts. However, most (if not all) of this kind of passage can be cut without having any impact on the story.

I think there are two reasons for this kind of flat scene opening: the author isn't sure what happens next, or the author isn't sure how to transition between two events or moments in story time. To cure the first issue (what happens next?), just keep reading until you reach a point where some kind of opposition occurs. Remember in high school when you learned all the forms of conflict -- human versus nature, human versus human, human versus god, and so on? Look for that kind of oppositional moment in the scene. The first place it occurs is the first place where actual scene material is unfolding. That is the natural start to the scene, the place where "what happens next" begins to actually happen. You might still need some kind of transition or set-up before that moment, but you want to open the scene close to that spot in the narrative.

I've heard advice suggesting that when your scene starts slowly with a solitary character, you should cut everything that happens until a second character comes on the scene. But that's not always a cure. Sometimes, a character can be totally alone and experiencing a tremendous conflict. Or a second character can arrive and spend six pages discussing the weather before anything meaningful occurs. The better option is not to look for the arrival of another character but for the commencement of the scene-level conflict.

But sometimes, these long intros don't result from author confusion over what happens next. Sometimes, it's a clumsy transition. Usually, we can identify these by the fairly small number of lines between the chapter heading (or scene break) and the start of the scene conflict. These clumsy transitions rarely go on for more than a full page, though it is possible for an author to get really bogged down and "transition" for a few pages. Usually, there's a real sense of wheel-spinning in the text, often in the form of multiple adverb clauses mentioning the passage of time. It reads almost as though the author keeps trying to formulate a good transition, and tries again, and again, and then finally kicks into gear with real action.

In those cases, the first question is, do we need this transition or can we start with the natural beginning of the scene conflict? Sometimes, you can jump right into the fray, and that means cutting all the false starts. Other times, a transition is necessary. In that case, pick the best one out of the false starts -- or cut them all and craft a new one -- but keep it to a single sentence, maybe even a single phrase or clause if you can manage it. With only rare exceptions, transitions don't need to be longer than that.

We sometimes see an author try to fix a flat opening by moving things around without cutting anything. In those cases, you often see a line of provocative dialogue, maybe a paragraph or two of real action, followed by a long blob of, "after the last scene, this is what the characters all did" type information. That doesn't fix the problem. The only difference there is that, instead of being bored by the first pages of the scene, the reader will be bored by middle pages. (It is possible to place transitional information after the natural beginning of the scene, but it must be short -- a single sentence, a single phrase or clause, as mentioned above.)

The Blank Background

Sometimes it happens that the characters are having a meaningful conversation as they eat or cook or get dressed. The purpose of the scene is to have that conversation. The purpose of the scene is not to eat or cook or get dressed. The author includes that "dressing and dining" action to keep the scene from lapsing into "talking heads" mode. It's the right instinct, but the wrong result.

Funny thing. More often than not, the author who uses routine household chores as scene background tends to use the same ones over and over again. Any editor who's been working in this game for more than, say, ten minutes can tell you a story of a book where the characters spend half the book occupied with some very ordinary task, always the same task from the same author. One author might have her characters bathe or shower in every other chapter. Another sends them grocery shopping six times in a 60k-word book. The conversations always occur over meals, or the sequel musings always happen while cooking. I will confess that an early draft of one of my manuscripts had the characters drinking tea on a shocking number of pages. Every now and then we'll run into an author who rotates cooking, bathing, eating, and the like, but more often than not, they reach for the same kind of filler background over and over throughout the text.

There's no cure for this but revision -- not just tinkering, but a total re-seeing of the scene. It helps to overhaul not just the scenes, but the way the author conceptualizes scenes. I recommend starting with the setting. Figure out places to set your scenes that prevents you from reaching for routine background tasks as filler. Make the setting relevant. Make the action interesting. Think deeply about what these characters DO over the course of the story, what makes them who they are, and figure out a way to leverage that.

This doesn't mean you have to make your characters practice their trapeze act while they discuss the suspects and clues in your mystery. You don't want the scene and background to overwhelm the meaningful action, after all.You're looking for something which enhances the deeper architecture of the story -- the themes and motifs, the characters' core beliefs, that sort of thing. This is going to feel hard and even frustrating if you're not used to this kind of scene construction. But it does get easier with practice, so suck it up, work it out, and look forward to the time when you can do this kind of scene construction easily. You know, you might even find that it's fun. Lots of authors do!

Theresa

More on Scene Design

2011-10-23T15:19:00.001-05:00

I'm still obsessing about scene design, and I'm thinking the essence of keeping scenes dramatic might be knowing what's important to narrate and what can be summarized.

Here are some common scene-narration opportunities:

Description
Many readers skim over even a paragraph which is just description. I think that's more in popular fiction than general and literary fiction, however. In pop fic, the setting might be best filtered through the POV character, or done in kind an omniscient opening to the scene (where it's conventional and won't bother many readers-- that's not always the best way to open a scene, of course, so do what's best for this scene, to accomplish your specific purpose).
Filtering through the character (more common in deeper and single POV) means presenting it as an observation by this person. What would she notice? How would he describe it? This gives the description the secondary purpose of developing the character. If she thinks about how much everything in the room costs, we might think she's materialistic (if she's spot-on about the prices), or poor and envious.

In general fiction and literary fiction, the descriptive passages can reveal the author's voice and perspective. Make sure they do. That is, don't wimp out and have some generic description. (This was a wealthy collector's house. On the left was a Renoir nude. On the right was a Rembrandt self-portrait. On the floor was a Persian carpet. The furniture was Louis Quatorze.) Highlight your voice, your powers of description, your way of approaching setting.

Now many writers are erring on the other extreme and doing almost no description.
Careful there. Think about what the reader needs in the way of setting and character description, and when. Readers don't want to wait till the third page of the story to realize, "Oh, we're outside?" They're trying to put together an experience of this scene, and that does mean they need to know where they are and what it feels like. (Visual is not the only descriptor, by the way.)
So can you establish a few points in the first few paragraphs of the scene?
inside/outside (try doing this with "feel"-- like the wind)
day/night
hot/cold
loud/quiet
Even the most distracted character would probably register that much.
Also, you can describe through interaction. If he has to push through a crowd to get up to his bleacher seat and he sits down and has to shift to fit his butt onto the metal bench, and he can feel the heat of the concrete floor through his sneakers and he has to put on his sunglasses to shield his eyes from the sun, and as he's eating his hot dog, he squirts mustard on his shirt and curses, and the guy next to him takes offense and shoves him and he goes sprawling over the plastic seatbacks, just as the batter 350 feet away hits a home run and it flies through the outfield and strikes Tommy right on the head... well, we're going to a good idea of the setting because the character is in constant interaction with the environment.

Motion
For awhile, I was narrating lots of MOTION. It would take a page to get the character across the street. ("He stepped off the curb. Then he moved his left foot forward on the hot pavement of the street. Then he moved his right foot forward. Then...") I don't need to tell you how excruciatingly boring that was to write (just imagine reading!). Wonder why I did it! Maybe just to get a sense of the physicality of the character, and that's good, but not when he ends up sounding like a robot. :)

So how much motion do you want to narrate? Not that much. Otherwise, it's probably moment-dependent. If the character is engaged in some intricate activity, like picking a lock, you might want to convey how complicated it is with a few lines (don't get to the boring point :) of close narration of what his hands are doing and what his ears hear and what his consciousness blocks out.

In an action passage, like where she's running from a malicious bulldozer, you might want to narrate closely her dash through the floodlit construction lot, her trip on a concrete block, her scramble through a hole in the chain-link fence. (Notice how quickly the setting is described when she's interacting with it.) At the same time, if you want the action to move fast, you don't want to slow it down with involved description of how she pulls the parts of the fence apart and latches each to the side, and ... Go for strong verbs-- she yanks the fencing aside and ignores the pain slashing through her hands and she scrambles through the hole and then she's free in the cold darkness of the highway underpass.

Again, in almost any scene, the reader needs some sense of movement, especially of the POV character. (I discuss this some in this post about action.) You don't want the reader stopping in mid-scene and thinking, "Huh? He's done with building the playground equipment? When did that happened? Last I heard, he was just unloading the tools from his truck!" If it's just "business," just what he's doing when he's thinking or talking, then you don't have to closely narrate, but you should narrate enough that the reader has some idea that he's halfway done, or close to done. Consider using the "business" to make action tags for thought or speech. I never should have let her go, he thought as he screwed in the last screw on the teeter-totter. He gave the plank an experimental shove, and one side came up and clanked him on the head. Just what he deserved for being so stupid.)

Give enough narration of action that the reader knows this character has a body that is doing something, and isn't suddenly pulled up short with, "Huh? I thought..."

But remember what your scene emphasis is here. If the action is central to the scene (like he's mercilessly beating up the bad guy), then narrate closely and keep the focus there. Tell the scene through/with the action. But if it's just "business," keep the focus on the conversation or thought or emotion or whatever you really think is important. Use the "business" as you would setting detail, to help anchor the scene and character in the environment and life. But the focus is still on the important aspect.

Alicia

Today at Romance University

2011-10-21T12:19:00.000-05:00

Today at Romance University, I'm talking some more about what makes a romance heroine a good character and why flaws don't necessarily make a romance heroine more sympathetic. It's all in the fairy tale structure.

Theresa

Ruling please?

2011-10-20T12:31:00.000-05:00

How about a ruling on this sentence? My problem is the "visibly".

The tears were running visibly down his face.

Tears can BE visible, but can they RUN visibly? That is, is this an adjective (modifying tears) which is being forced into adverb (modifying run) position?

I know it's not a felicitous sentence overall, but let's just focus on "running visibly." We know what it means-- the guy isn't trying to hide his tears. But if the narrator sees the tears, why do we need "visibly"? Also, really, running visibly? I don't even know why that makes my skin crawl.

What do you all think? If you were editing, would you let that sentence go by?

Alicia

Young author imprint

2011-10-17T04:18:00.000-05:00

Here's an article (rather hagiographic for my tastes) about a Harper line that seeks out (and awards small advances to) young authors with books that might not get a good reading elsewhere. One tactic that jumps out at me is that they might do a small print-run (usually that's going to cause the book to fail), but they are willing to go back and do further print-runs if the book seems to be catching on. That's the sort of action we seldom see with big publishers and "small books," but the willingness to go back to print is essential to create the sort of slow-burning seller.

One of the worst aspects of publishing since the 90s has been the willingness-- eagerness-- of publishers to declare a book a failure after it's been on the shelves a month. We know that "word-of-mouth" creates sales, but it takes a while for those mouths to get talking, and it does no good if the book is no longer available after a month or two. This is another advantage that the demon Amazon has over physical bookstores, and e-books have over print-- being able to depart from the "limited inventory" model where the shelves have to be cleared for the next month's offerings. That's also an advantage that small imprints have over large-- there aren't 16 more titles coming out next month!

It's always seemed to me the most cruel aspect of publication, that the books we spent a year on disappear in a few weeks, that there's often no chance of a slow success. I'm wondering if the future will hold

Don't like the "small advance" model, of course, because that often means that a publisher can abandon a book early without much cost. But it's such a dysfunctional notion, and anyway, so few authors get big advances anyway... hardly seems worth fighting for. I mean, how many of us ever got decent advances, even in the "golden era"?
Alicia

Controversy question

2011-10-11T16:36:00.000-05:00

I read an essay I liked, clicked on the author's website link (in bio at end of essay), and came to a blog where the writer showed an obsession with debunking the "myth of global warming." I felt as I did when I learned Ezra Pound was a Mussolini fan.

Should we care? What if the author -makes- us care by linking to a website with views we don't agree with? What's the dividing line? I mean, I don't want someone to think about me, "Well, she's all for semicolons and gay marriage, so I'll never read another book by her." Is global warming debunking okay, but we draw the line at fascism?

Or if we enjoy the essay or book, should we just be glad for that and not care about anything else?
After all, if we avoided writers with aspects we don't like, we'd have to quit reading. But....

Anyway, what do you think? This does really reinforce my thought that we should probably not link our creative work to controversial material. But of course, what might be innocuous to us might be controversial to others... also, how bland do we want to be, just to sell books to the greatest number? Maybe some people shouldn't read our books???
Alicia

Testing the Middle: Subplots

2011-10-10T20:08:00.000-05:00

A few days ago, we talked about some simple tests for the end of a book to make sure it fits the story and reads smoothly. In response to that post, someone asked me to do a similar post on the middles of books.

Middles are hard! They're like Tolstoy's families -- good middles share similar characteristics, but every bad middle is bad in its own way. For this reason, it's hard to say with any specificity how to fix a bad middle, because every bad middle is going to require a different kind of fix. That said, I can tell you some of the things I look at when I examine the rising action. First up, subplots.

Subplots create a lot of problems for a lot of books, and a junky subplot can confuse the reader and create a drag on the rising action as much as a junky main plot. We see a wide variety of subplot issues -- wandering action, irrelevant ideas, dull secondary conflicts, characters that are taking over when they shouldn't, conflicts that are overwhelming the main conflicts, and so on. When a book has subplots, there are a few things I do during the structural analysis to test the subplot.

First, I question whether the entire subplot is necessary. There's a great way to test the necessity of a subplot to the main plot. Look at the moment when the subplot is resolved. Does its resolution change the course of the main plot's action? If so, the subplot is necessary to the main plot. Next, we have to evaluate whether every scene in the subplot (not just that final scene) is necessary to reach the point where the main plot and subplot intersect. This isn't too difficult -- just take the subplot moment by moment and figure out which are absolutely necessary. There should be a pretty clean chain of causation in these subplot events. Anything not a part of that chain of causation can probably be cut.

Necessity isn't strictly, er, necessary. A subplot can serve functions other than pure plot functions. So if the subplot does not change the course of the main plot's action, I start looking for a non-plot purpose for the subplot. Perhaps the characters in the subplot are foils to the characters in the main plot. Perhaps there's thematic relevance. Perhaps the author is building a motif or a parallel scene to enhance the structure. There are legitimate reasons other than plot which would lead an author to write a subplot, and those reasons usually manifest in what I call echoes.

Echoes are little more than subplot aspects which resemble aspects of the main plot in some ways. Whether in foils, themes, motifs, parallels, or any other kind of non-plot element, relevant subplot echoes will relate in some way back to the main plot. That relationship will serve to underscore the element in the main plot -- that is, the subplot serves the main plot by making some aspect of the main plot feel more significant through repetition or reversal.

So first, I have to identify the ways in which these echoes exist on the page. And then I check whether those echoes are strong and meaningful enough to warrant the continued existence of the subplot. This requires a bit of subjective analysis, and it's not easy to say, "THIS is how you measure these kinds of echoes." All I can say is that, if it feels weak, it's weak. If it feels irrelevant, it's irrelevant. That doesn't necessarily mean it has to be cut, but it will need to be fixed.

So, on to the fixing. In general, I find that the first and last scenes in a subplot are the ones that count. This isn't always true, of course, but it's true more often than not. So I start with those two scenes, and I look at what is being accomplished in those scenes. Do the scenes in their entirety echo the main plot? Or is it only certain aspects of the scenes which contain echoes? Because the first and last scenes of the subplot anchor the subplot to the main plot in a more direct way, those echoes should be strong and clear. Those echoes should dominate those scenes. If they don't, we have to find a way to make them so.

Once the anchor scenes are solid, I turn to the middle scenes in the subplot thread. It frequently happens that an author will build an entire scene in the middle of subplots to accomplish something very small. So I look at those scenes and try to isolate the important echo bits. Can any of those bits be moved into other scenes? If so, do it and cut the unimportant parts. In fact, that's pretty good advice for any kind of scene -- figure out what's important in the scene, and cut the rest. But it's even more vital to do this in subplots, which need greater justification to survive the editorial ax.

At this point, we should have two solid anchor scenes and some bits or even full scenes remaining. Now I look at this collection of pages and paragraphs, and I try to determine patterns. With good, well-developed echoes, they will probably reappear in various forms and at various times throughout the text, but they will tie into a single concept -- so, for example, if water is a motif, and it's being used to develop the idea that secrets cannot be contained, the text will show streams, bottles of water, rain, swimming pools, and similar water elements at various moments. Do those water elements appear when the secrets are relevant to the action? They should, if that's the purpose of the motif. So, if you have a subplot scene with characters drifting lazily downriver on inner tubes, but none of those characters are worried about keeping or revealing a secret, then the scene is only accomplishing half its job. Either supply the other half in revision, or cut the scene.

Sometimes it will happen that an echo will be a one-off. That is, the particular echo will appear one time only in the course of the entire novel. That makes it a likely candidate for cutting, but it can be spared if that single instance is important enough to change substantially the way a reader interprets a text. This is more likely to happen if the echo is symbolic -- think of Eve in the garden eating the apple of knowledge. She only ate one apple, and she only ate it once. So even though it doesn't recur in the way a motif would recur, it's important enough that the entire story of the garden of Eden would fall apart without it. (Yes, that's a main plot, not a subplot, but you get the idea.)

As I mentioned, it's very hard to diagnose subplot problems in the abstract, but this is more or less the method I use when analyzing subplots. It all boils down to relevance, and generally, the result of this process is a pile of scraps on the cutting room floor.

Theresa

Help?

2011-10-07T10:59:00.000-05:00

Twice in the last month, my personal email account has been accessed by spammers. Personal email, not the editor account, so I have far fewer addresses in that book, but it's still pretty packed. The hackers -- or spoofers, perhaps -- flood everyone in my address book with spam, but near as I can tell, that's all they're doing. The first time, I was online within moments of it starting thanks to a wise friend with my cell phone number. (Thanks, Sunny!) I changed my password and it seemed to stop the spam cold. They only got to about a third, if that, of my address book.

This morning, I woke up to a mess in my inbox. Hundreds of mailer daemon bounces, and close to the same number of complaint emails from people wanting me to know that it happened again. I don't know that they got to everyone in my address book, but it has to be darn close.

So here's the thing. I think my computers -- both the laptop and the desktop -- are like mini-fortresses. I run mozilla instead of IE (with a host of add-ons for security), two different antivirus programs, a firewall, and an anti-keylogger (thanks to a certain former boss who made it necessary, not because of anything to do with the hacks).

What else should I be doing at this point to shut this down? I don't store any financial information on my computer, so I think that's about as safe as it can be, though I do wonder if it would make sense to change passwords on my paypal account. I know that several of our readers are very smart about computers and tech things, so I'm asking for help. All advice is gratefully received.

By the way, I think they might be getting to me from yahoo groups. It was a good excuse to go through and clean out my groups roster. Amazing how many random groups I belonged to that I had totally forgotten about.

Theresa, annoyed

Fixing the End Point

2011-10-05T17:22:00.000-05:00

So, maybe this is one of those Pantser-versus-Plotter* dilemmas, but some of us were talking on twitter recently about how to wrestle a recalcitrant ending onto the page. There were two side-by-side discussions unfolding in my stream simultaneously. One involved an author who had written the ending but thought it was flat and maybe a little to overcrowded with extra plot threads. The other involved an author who had brainstormed a dozen climax scenes and hated them all. She had no idea how to end her book.

I know both of these writers pretty well. In fact, I've edited both of them, so I have a strong sense of how their work is put together. I could be wrong, but my sense is that one of them is very controlled about her plotting methods, and the other prefers a more "discovery draft" type approach. Either method is fine, of course. The process is never as important as the final product -- in fact, the process serves the final product.

In any case, I thought it might be a good idea to take a look at some of the strategies we batted around. I think these are probably useful for either plotters or pantsers.The thing that struck me about this situation is that no matter the method you employ, you can still run into the same kinds of problems with the endings.

When I'm editing a book, the first thing I do is read it straight through to get a sense of the story elements. I might pause to mark up a few details or make some notes along the way, but my goal for this first reading is to grasp all the large-scale and mid-scale elements as quickly as possible. Almost the first thing I do after reading the last page is return to the first chapter. I read the opening and ending together like this so that I can be sure the ends match. Ordinarily, they do. If the book opens with a dead body, it ends with the arrest of the murderer. If it opens with a man and a woman seeing each other as potential romantic partners, it ends with them committing to each other. These kinds of big story questions -- Who done it? Are you the one for me? -- provide the large-scale structure for most books.

It sometimes happens that they don't. It sometimes happens that the initial problem in the first chapter has no impact on the outcome of the book. If this is the case, I have to figure out why. Did the plot get off-track? Or did the author use a false opening of some kind to get the plot moving before the real conflict could be established? Which piece better matches the middle of the book, the beginning or the end? Asking questions like these can often help pinpoint structural plot issues and identify possible solutions.

After I do this particular analysis, I think about what actually happens in the end scenes (the crisis and denouement scenes). Which details were surprising and which were expected? Some mix of both is usually best. That is, we might not know who is the murderer until he's revealed (surprise), but we can be darn sure he'll be revealed (expected). We might know that the hero and heroine will end up together (expected), but we don't know how (surprise). In other words, the innovative ending innovates in particular ways, within the established parameters of the type of story and the plot as it unfolds up until the end.

Then I think about all the loose threads that need to be tied up. Can any of them be tied before the denouement? Or before the crisis? A lot of times, authors try to withhold all of the answers until the very end, but this can lead to a crammed-text feeling that might interfere with the reader's enjoyment of the ending. For example, if your historical romance has an external plot about pirates and an external subplot about spies, you might be tempted to finish those plot lines during the same scene in which the hero and heroine demonstrate their commitment to each other. This might work. Or it might be better to wrap up the externals first (subplot, then main external plot) and let the internals have their own moment on the page. How do you know which would work better? It really all comes down to impact on the reader. If the externals and internals each have a strong enough impact to stand alone, it might be better to separate them. Let the hero swash and buckle and perform heroic feats, and then, after they've returned to safety, let him declare his love for the heroine. Especially if that declaration is going to be a powerful moment.

A similar type of crammed ending appears in mystery plots when the heroic sleuth gathers all the suspects in one location and dazzles them all by analyzing the clues and revealing the murderer. Every suspect represents a type of subplot, you could argue, that is being resolved in a single scene. In this case, of course, you don't want to eliminate all of the red herrings before the final scene. You want to keep some suspense about the ultimate outcome. But a clever writer will still analyze each of those bits closely and think about which can be resolved in advance. Focusing on some of the lesser suspects between the midpoint and the climax can actually help keep tension high in the rising action, as long as each eliminated suspect leaves the reader in doubt of the outcome.

So, if the ending is crammed, I try to think of ways to reel it out so that smaller threads can be tied down earlier in a way that will help the rising action. But sometimes, a final scene will have the right combination of characters taking the right combination of actions, and it will still feel flat. In that case, my knee-jerk reaction is to change the setting.

Does this seem like an odd solution? Remember our formula for a scene. A scene is:

Characters
In meaningful motion
Against a background

If you've got the right characters and the right actions, then this leaves the setting. In my opinion, this is the most overlooked aspect of fiction writing. It's not that we don't create good settings. We do. But then we use the same settings over and over again. Or we fail to incorporate setting details in ways that affect the characters and action. Or we always use the expected settings -- the bedroom for a sex scene, a coffee shop for a meeting between friends, and so on. Sometimes, if a scene feels flat, the best thing to do is change the setting and force a different backdrop into place. This almost always has an effect on the way the action unfolds and the way the scene reads. I mean, what happens if you take that sex scene out of the bedroom and place it on a balcony? Or under a moonlit waterfall? Or in the backseat of a car on the side of a busy highway? You instantly "see" a different scene, and it might be less flat.

(We brainstormed setting possibilities as an exercise for NaNo a couple of years ago. We also looked at some ways to use those setting lists to generate better scenes. Take a look at those posts for ideas about ways to leverage settings.)

So these are sort of the global things I examine in each book: matching the ends, testing the resolution of various threads, and setting. Specific books might also require other kinds of analysis, but these are the things I tend to do with each book.

Theresa

*In case you're not familiar with these terms,
Plotter = someone who plans the book in advance, often with scene charts, indexing systems, and other tools.
Pantser = someone who "discovers" the story by writing it, usually in several drafts, and usually generating many discarded scenes along the way.

Pathetic Fallacy

2011-09-24T08:26:00.000-05:00

So, we have been known to declaim in our charming *cough*ranty*cough* way about the dangers of adjectival phrases forming misalliances with nouns which they can never modify. For example--

Relaxing on the sofa, the pizza tasted great.

I have never yet met a pizza which was capable of relaxing on a sofa. Structurally, though, that left-branching present participial phrase modifies the subject, pizza. And that's a problem. The concept of pizza behaving this way is nonsensical.

But there are times -- rare times, authors, with an accent on rare -- when a similar construction might be used to achieve a thematic effect. Then, we might call such a construction a form of pathetic fallacy. Pathetic fallacy is a poetic device where, for the purpose of creating symbolic value or another higher-order creative expression, we attribute human emotions to items which don't feel emotions.

Shocked at his sudden appearance, her feet skittered backward.

Now, obviously, feet cannot feel the emotion of shock in the literal sense. But if the goal is to make the emotion come across as almost disembodied, or if there is some other symbolic value or thematic resonance achieved by attributing shock to her feet, then this might work in context.

Pathetic fallacy comes up often enough in creative writing that some simpler forms have become cliches or near-cliches.
Angry clouds
Happy flowers
One lonely tree
And so on. I'm sure you can think of other examples. Obviously, clouds don't feel anger, flowers don't feel happiness, and trees don't feel lonesome, yet we accept these concepts because the emotion attributed to the object creates a context for interpretation.

The danger in pathetic fallacy is the same as the danger in a botched modifier. If not handled appropriately, they can be confusing or even laughably bad. This is why I advocate for using this form rarely, especially when you're still learning the craft. You might not always be able to accurately gauge how your words will come across to your reader, and until you get better at that, it might be safer to avoid anything that might confuse or inadvertently amuse the reader. But as you gain in skill and insight, don't be afraid to try out this form for extra impact from time to time. It can add good things to a story if it's done right.

Theresa

Brought to You by the Letters R and U

2011-09-23T09:23:00.000-05:00

Let's talk about sex, baby. Or, to be more precise, sex scenes. Today at Romance University, I'm giving you three things to consider to integrate emotions and environment into your sex scenes. Come join us!

Theresa

Great Analogies

2011-09-22T09:09:00.000-05:00

Love these-- great analogies.

This is almost a poem:

Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

Alicia

Creating something from nothing

2011-09-21T15:03:00.000-05:00

A really good interview with John Edgar Wideman, whose wisdom for writers (and others) is to consider it a great privilege to create something new. He says so much around us is processed and given to us, especially culture but also (interestingly) the experience of our own lives, how we interpret what happens to us, and that we are lucky if we are able to ourselves create something new, something that isn't forced upon us.

Alicia

Defining a Few Terms

2011-09-17T11:22:00.000-05:00

We've been talking pros and cons of direct publishing a little here lately. So when Matt Zandstra (@inflatableink) tweeted a link to this Guardian article, it caught my attention immediately. But maybe not for the reasons you might think.

The article is about an author, Polly Courtney, who successfully self-published two books. That landed her a 3-book deal with Avon HarperCollins, a reputable big publisher with one of the best PR machines in the industry. Their publicists are ace. Their marketing is top shelf. So this is why I sat up straight and paid attention when this author announced she was dropping her publisher and going back to self-publishing because of their marketing approach to her titles. How can this be? Is the best in the business no longer good enough? I mean, we all hear about the tailspin every day. Marketing and PR efforts are dwindling, authors don't get good support, etc., etc.

So I read the article. And this is what I read:

"[T]he real issue I have is that it has been completely defined as women's fiction. … Yes it is page turning, no it's not War and Peace. But it shouldn't be portrayed as chick lit.... The implication with chick lit is that it's about a girl wanting to meet the man of her dreams."

That sound you hear is my mental brakes squealing as my ability to empathize with this author crashes. I say that in full awareness that the article might have been slanted to create this reaction. Perhaps those are not exact quotes. Perhaps the author got it right during the interview, but it was transcribed incorrectly. So I don't blame the author, and I certainly don't hold it against her.* Lots of people would read this article and not have my reaction to it. But those people? Probably aren't all that aware of the way books are marketed in this industry.

And the article's implication is that neither is the author. The implication is that an author who is complaining about her marketing is so unaware of marketing terms that she can't distinguish between them. Knowledgeable people read that and think, "She's cutting herself loose from one of the best teams in the industry because of how they slotted her, and she doesn't even know that these slots she mentions are not interchangeable."

So, I responded to the original tweet from Matt to suggest that there might be a credibility issue here, and we had a nice chat about it, and Matt asked me to define some terms. I attempted to do so in 140 characters, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew this should be blogged. Ergo:

Women's fiction = an umbrella term to define a broad segment of books targeted at women readers. For marketing purposes, this includes chick lit, romance, family sagas, old-fashioned glitz novels, what some call "weepies," and some mainstream and upmarket stuff. It's an important market segment because women tend to buy and read more books than men. (Note: Romance writers tend to use the term "women's fiction" to describe all stories for women which are neither romance nor chick lit. I disagree with that usage, as do some of other publishing pros I've talked to over the years. But it's not a problem as long as you're aware of who you're talking to.)

Romance = a type of women's fiction in which the central plot involves the formation of a romantic bond between characters. These stories are folkloric in both origin and structure (as we've repeatedly blogged about -- just click the structure link in the tag list on the sidebar for a sampling). They are close cousins of fairy tales or wonder tales, which are also forms of folklore. It's an important market segment because romance readers tend to buy and read lots of books, and they tend to buy only (or mostly) romance, so they're good customers. Consequently, before the arrival of chick lit, the overwhelming majority of books for women were romance novels. (And some family sagas and glitz novels, but mostly romance.)

Chick lit = a type of women's fiction about a young woman reaching maturity or coping with adult issues for the first time. These stories are akin to coming-of-age tales given that in our modern world, adolescence typically ends in a person's mid-20s. First real job, first real relationship, first steps toward financial independence, what it all means, a girl's place in the world -- these are the themes of chick lit. Romance can form a part of that, but doesn't have to. These books caught fire in the 90s and sold as fast as they could be printed, proving that women readers were interested in things other than the classic romance. In some circles, they were heralded as a feminist success because they portrayed women's full lives, not just their romantic lives. (That statement misunderstands the nature of romance novels, so please, romance novelists, no need to chide me.)

So maybe you can see why saying, "They defined my books as women's fiction," doesn't state a problem if, in fact, the books are aimed at a female readership. And maybe you can see why defining chick lit as "about a girl meeting the man of her dreams" muddies the distinction between chick lit and romance. Again, this is not meant to be a knock on this particular author, who may have had legitimate concerns about her cover art and other aspects of the marketing, and who for all we know never said these exact things*. But perhaps it should serve as a warning sign. Know the industry. Use terms precisely. If you're going to burn a bridge, be able to explain clearly why you lit that match.

Theresa

*I suspect that the Guardian misrepresented the author's words, in fact, because they tend to toss around the term "chick lit" as a pejorative to stir up controversy. And their disrespect of romance writers has led to worldwide protests. So I think they probably either screwed up or misquoted her on purpose. And I do still think that the Avon team is crackerjack, despite whatever may have happened here.

I love flash mobs in train stations....

2011-09-16T18:12:00.000-05:00

How about a whole symphony? I love the agog children. Bolero in Copenhagen.

Hate to refer to everything as marketing, but really, what a great goodwill gesture, also sure to sell some season tickets.

Alicia

New Malady-- writers who don't read

2011-09-14T23:35:00.002-05:00

This is a phenomenon I've noticed mostly among poets-- they write but don't read poetry. (I, on the other hand, read poetry but don't write it.) But this is also about fiction writers. You tell me -- do you still read? Does it help or hurt your writing? I know lots of writers who don't like to read when they are writing. What do you all think?

Alicia

Reselling Digital Products

2011-09-14T09:31:00.002-05:00

If you read my post the other day about why direct publishing will prevail, you will know that direct publishing and traditional publishing are different distribution models. In other words, they present two different options for moving a product from the author to the reader.

So, over the weekend, I heard a common author complaint. She had direct-published one of her books using the usual channels for direct publishing. Her sales were good. She intended to use that good sales record to entice a traditional publisher into taking over publishing duties. Her theory was that they ought to be interested in a title with a proven sales record. Readers were interested. And so should be the publishers.

To her surprise, she received nothing but form rejections and one personalized rejection that said, in essence, that the publisher doesn't think it makes financial sense to re-release the title when the author has already picked off the easy sales to friends in family. (More on this in a moment.) She was baffled that no publishers would be interested in taking over a title that was a proven seller.

But really, why would they want to? Books are neither fungible nor consumable. There is a set number of people willing to purchase a particular title, and they will usually only purchase it once. If those sales have already been made through one distribution channel, you won't re-make them through a different channel. Maybe you can reach new buyers, but why would a publisher want to take on a title knowing that its sales prospects are already limited by a competing distribution effort? "I've already made 50% of the sales this book can possibly make. Now I want you to make the other 50%, but your up-front costs will still be the same, even if your possible gross is diminished." It doesn't make good financial sense, and in this market, publisher have to watch their numbers very closely.

Now, about that publisher who complained that the author had already sold to her friends and family. That statement worried me for a different reason because it betrays a fundamental flaw in logic used by some smaller houses. For a long time now, the conventional wisdom has had it that the efforts of the publishing company will be responsible for 80-90% of a book's sales, and the author's efforts will be responsible for about 10-20%. (I don't know where those numbers come from, but I've been hearing them for years.) That 10-20% are the friends and family sales. I've heard more than one publishing professional at small houses say that the friends and family sales are their bread and butter. They undertake minimal distribution and no promotion, and they throw away the 80-90% of the sales they should be going after, instead expecting the friends and family sales to cover costs and generate profits. For many of these houses, it's a model that works for them. It might not be great for the author -- the author might make more elsewhere -- but if the author complains, the publisher response is, "Do more PR."In other words, maximize your friends and family sales, and hope you pick up some extra sales along the way.

But this is not what I said to my friend who was upset that a publishing house wouldn't take over responsibility for a direct-published title that was selling well. What I said to her was, why do you want a traditional publisher at all? If you're making good money doing it on your own, claiming 70% of retail on every sale, why would you trade that for an 8% royalty? The book is selling, and selling well. Thank the gods of publishing and cash the check. And for the next book, consider whether to direct publish or try to entice a traditional publisher, but do it in the knowledge that either option is more viable for this second book than it was for the first.

Theresa

Movement is not action

2011-09-13T09:03:00.000-05:00

Never confuse movement with action. Ernest Hemingway

Engagement Marketing Video

2011-09-12T15:10:00.000-05:00

This is a fantastic presentation on engagement marketing through social media, presented by Sister Diane of Craftypod and I Heart Art Portland. The original audience was small business crafters like Etsy shop owners, but I think the concepts are applicable to all creative professionals. The formal presentation part of this video runs about 20 minutes, and the remaining 1.5 hours are Q&A. It's long, but it's well worth watching. Watch it in pieces, or save it for a time when you're too drained to write or edit.

My favorite part of this presentation has to do with the importance of responding to attention you receive online. I admit, I'm not the greatest at responding to every comment, but I always read and consider everything aimed at me, whether on this blog or on facebook or twitter or other places. And I do respond to probably more than half, if you add up all the comments I get in all places. According to Sister Diane, I ought to be responding to all of them. *vows to do better*

What's your best tip for social media and engagement marketing?

Theresa

End of line

2011-09-09T18:26:00.000-05:00

I heard a lyricist talking about the words in a song affecting the sound, and she mentioned that Oscar Hammerstein (Rogers and...) had mentioned that one song from Carousel, What's the Use of Wondering? , had never "entered the repertoire" like so many of their songs did. He attributed this to the ending. The last line is "and all the rest is talk," which ironically echoes Hamlet's last words ("The rest is silence").

Hammerstein thought perhaps the problem was that that last line ends on a hard consonant "k" following a short vowel: "talk". It can't really be lingered on or drawn out. In a song about "wondering," it doesn't lend itself to wondering. Too final. Too hard.

Interesting.

Why Direct Publishing Will Prevail

2011-09-09T11:17:00.000-05:00

Those of you who've been around publishing for any stretch of time are familiar with the whining about traditional distribution. The same thing happens every six months, right after royalties come out. "OMG, returns! Hate! Hiss!" And yes, returns suck. You'll never hear me say otherwise.

But the thing about that system, the one that let a retailer return books to the distributor and publisher for full credit, is that it allowed widespread distribution of lesser-known authors. Retailers could take a chance on stocking a book that they might not otherwise stock. Small presses couldn't have flourished without this guarantee. The midlist existed in large part because of the safety net provided by returns.

Yes, it was an antiquated system, conceived in the depression era as a way to prevent the collapse of the book trade. Yes, it ate into profits and turned publishing accounting into a funhouse illusion where 80% of books fail to break even. Yes, returns could kill an author's earnings and career. No doubt about any of that.

But it also allowed retailers to have diverse stock in their stores. It allowed publishers to go to contract with new authors with no following or platforms. It allowed new authors to break in and have a shot at readership. And it allowed avid readers to have a steady stream of reading material, and casual readers instant access to the book of their whim.

Which is just to say, that system wasn't going to budge until we found a way to preserve those advantages in a new system. And that's exactly what direct publishing (that is, publishing done directly by the author through the retailer, whether POD or digital) does -- it still allows for wide proliferation of high-risk books, while minimizing the risk to retailers. Now the risk is borne by the authors instead of by the publishers, but the author also reaps much higher benefits -- as much as 70% of the cover price on digital downloads, and a variable amount on POD texts.

And this is why direct publishing will ultimately overtake other distribution models. Now, there is still some advantage to authors to being traditionally published, though those advantages are smaller than they were and continue to shrink. Let's break this down by function, and you'll see what I mean.

Editorial

This is the function authors probably think of first when they think of working with a publishing house. Which editor will acquire their work, and what kind of editing will she provide? Used to be that an author was pretty much guaranteed good attention from her editor. But then, as a result of the corporatization of publishing, editors began taking on extra tasks, and editing time became compromised. Editors might still have strong editing skills (though there are notorious exceptions), but that doesn't mean that they'll have the time to dedicate those skills to your book.

By contrast, with direct publishing, the author hires an editor and the editor is accountable to the author rather than to the house. The editor isn't saddled with endless meetings or interdepartmental supervision, so she provides editing, and only editing, rather than project management. Trust me -- former acquisitions editor, currently working freelance, so I have worked both sides of this process -- I have more time per project for editing now as a freelancer than I did when I was in-house. (Though I do frequently fall into the role of providing project management advice and other career guidance to my self-publishing clients -- but that's just because I can't help myself.)

Marketing/PR/Sales

In traditional publishing, these roles are sometimes lumped together in one department and sometimes handled separately. Sales is responsible for placing titles with retailers. PR and marketing handle ad buys, interviews, giveaways, and the like. The simple truth is that in most traditional houses, power is firmly seated with the sales team. They tell the editors what to acquire, and the editors have to win approval from sales for their buys. Ever hear an editor at a conference say, "In order to buy a book, I have to show X, Y, and Z to my sales team"? Now you know why. Ever hear publishing insiders talk about whether their house is or is not sales-driven or sales-led? Now you know why. The sales team talks to the retailers. The retailers say that customers are asking for this or that, and that some other thing isn't selling well. The sales team takes this information back to one of the endless staff meetings, and they use it to make acquisition decisions.

Think about it. This means that the current market is driving what will be on the shelves in a year. This means excellent books that don't fit the current market needs might get overlooked, because excellence is not the only criteria for acquisition. Editorial judgment and taste can be trumped by market concerns which will be outdated before the book goes to press. Direct publishing circumvents this issue in two ways -- first, it gets the product to market faster, so that lag between retailer desire and product placement shrinks. Second, it puts the sales decisions in the hands of the end customer -- or, I should say, it's more effective at letting the reader make the decision.

And you know how authors are complaining about how much PR they have to do on their own these days? That's the other side of the PR/marketing/sales department. Used to be that you could count on an in-house publicist to make at least some effort to promote a book. Every title got at least minimal attention, with bigger titles getting more attention. But little by little, these tasks are being pushed onto the authors. Some have to write their own jacket copy. Some have to design and buy their own bookmarks, postcards, and other promotional material. Some have to arrange their own interviews with the press. Some have to coordinate and pay for their own book tours. Book signings, ad buys, promotional packets for booksellers, gifts for warehouse distributors -- all these things used to be routine parts of the book business, and they're falling to the wayside because houses don't do them and authors can't afford to pick up all the slack. (Not at 8% royalties, anyway. At 70%, with steady sales, things become more possible.)

Subrights

This is one place where traditional publishing still has a big advantage over direct publishing. The houses have established methods for moving titles into audio, translation, large print, film, and so on. And there just aren't equivalent channels available in direct publishing. But I think that will change over time. Not soon, but eventually.

Accounting

We'll call this one a draw. Accounting is going to be a headache no matter who assumes most of the responsibility for it. With traditional print distribution, the distributor handled a lot of the accounting function, and there were good records kept for each title. (Note: good records. Not perfectly problem-free records.) Now record-keeping is a little shakier in some ways and a little more streamlined in others. This is probably going to continue to evolve as direct publishing grows. But for now, from the author's perspective, it's probably much the same no matter who provides the sales records.

Art and Design

With this aspect -- cover art and book design -- the advantage can go either way. Traditional print processes give a lot more leeway in book design than do POD or digital books. However, there are workarounds on the direct publishing side, for those who have the time, money, and technical skills to make it happen. So a direct-published book can be as good or better than a traditionally published book, but in most cases, a sharp eye will spot deficiencies in the POD product. And a digital book provides very limited design options. The bottom line is that direct-published authors tend to put a little money into cover, little or none into design, and that usually seems to work out okay. But a book produced in the traditional way is probably going to look and feel like a better book in some ways.

So that's how I see this shaking out right now. This is hugely different from any post I would have written as recently as two years ago, when direct publishing was similar to a vanity process. But now, with changes in distribution and retailing, the game is changing, and I expect that any post I write two years from now will also be very, very different from this current post.

Theresa

Guest Blog: Jenny Brown. Second Book Syndrome

2011-09-07T15:44:00.001-05:00

Jenny, a long-time commenter and successful non-fiction writer, has a three-book deal with a major publisher.

A long time ago, at a time when I'd written two novels that had failed to excite anyone in the great world of publishing, Alicia gave me some very good advice, which I ignored.

She told me to write five more books before I tried to sell anything. Not just because I might learn something about writing that way—which I would—but because making it in Romance isn’t about publishing one book. It’s about building a readership, and that takes writing a lot of books. Fast.

It was only after I’d finally sold my astrologically themed historical romance, Lord Lightning to HarperCollins’ Avon Romance, that I learned just how good her advice had been.

Because once you’ve received an offer of publication things change in a hurry. Writing is no longer a private experience, a delicate flirtation between you and your muse that may take many months to grow into a consuming passion. Your new agent and editor will want to know what you’ll be writing next and they’re likely to have strong opinions about what it should be. Even worse, before they mail out your contract they’ll insist that you commit to a delivery date for your next novel that will range from a few months to, at most, a year from the moment they offered you the deal.

And that’s just the beginning. Though your first book had to be very good to land you that contract, you’ll quickly learn that your next book must be even better than the first, or you’ll end up with a bunch of reviews that say, “Her new book isn’t as good as her debut.”

If that weren’t enough pressure, not only must everything in your next book be better than the first, it has to be different from it, which won’t seem like a big issue until you start writing and realize you’ve already used this bit of juicy dialogue, that heart-tugging backstory theme, and, yes, even that luscious bit of foreplay—in your first book.

There’s a name for what happens at the moment when you realize you’ve promised to deliver a book you know little about, in a time frame that is half of what it took you to write your first book, to an editor who expects it to be far better and completely different from your first—while fitting neatly into the marketing niche she’s assigned you. It’s called Second Book Syndrome. And sure enough as I set out to write the second book in my astrology series, Star Crossed Seduction, I came down with a classic case of it.

A large part of why was that when my agent decided to pitch Lord Lightning as part of multi-book deal in which the hero of each book would be of a different astrological sign she had asked me to give her a few paragraph describing the second book in the series before she took it to editor.

Still wrapped in a haze of excitement at having received The Call, I chose a Scorpio hero for that second book and dashed off two paragraphs. I knew Scorpios are notorious for their secrecy so I decided to make him a military man who dabbles in political intrigue. I paired him with a rebellious pickpocket—a good foil to his strong sense of duty. And since the only active war going on in my story’s time frame was in India, I decided to create conflict by having him learn that the pickpocket had been sent to steal a valuable Indian gem that the hero was supposed to deliver to England’s most powerful spymaster.

My agent loved it. My editor bought it. It was only when I sat down to write it that I realized I had described an external plot, not a love story, and that I had no idea who my secretive Captain and his pickpocket were or, more importantly, what was going to make them fall in love with each other in a way that would make my reader feel all warm and happy as she turned the last page.

I had to write three different partials and five full drafts to answer that question, and each one was written to the accompaniment of the famous Ticking Clock, though in this case it wasn’t my characters under the gun but deadline-phobic me.

What helped me the most—besides Alicia’s brilliant book, The Story Within Guidebook, which is invaluable to anyone trying to craft a character-driven plot—was an online course on “Crash Revisions,” taught by Holly Lisle. She taught me to print my work and edit it on paper in pencil, rather than fiddle with it on the screen. She also emphasized the importance of reading my draft for themes and revising at the thematic level first, rather than wasting my time playing about with words at the paragraph level. I also learned a lot from another online class Lynn Kerstan taught on how to tighten up your prose.

It was only after I submitted my manuscript to my editor that I discovered the other difference between writing for yourself and writing under contract. Because my editor, it turned out, really does edit. She pinpointed several structural flaws, wasted opportunities, confusing scenes, and missing backstory that none of my beta readers had noticed. And even better, my editor made very helpful suggestions as to how to fix these flaws.

By the time Star Crossed Seduction was in proof, I felt confident that I had written the book I’d hoped to write, but I wouldn’t wish the anxiety-laden process that got me to that book on anyone. So now, when aspiring writers ask me for advice, what do I tell them? Write a few books before you query your first agent. You’re likely to end up with a better book, and more importantly, you won’t have to start from scratch when it comes time to write that all-important second book.

Will anyone take my advice? Probably not. But if they do, they’ll find that what follows publication will be a lot less nerve-wracking.

Jenny Brown's sensuous historical romances feature heroes each of a different astrological sign. They are published by HarperCollins Avon. She began her career as a novelist late in life after years of publishing sober, instructive nonfiction. It's quite a change.

Her next book, Star Crossed Seduction, was released on August 30. It tells the story of dragoon Captain Miles Trevelyan, on leave from active service in India, who is heading out for a night on the town when he rescues a beautiful pickpocket from arrest. She's the perfect choice for a few days of dalliance--beautiful, cunning, and completely disposable. But Temperance has no intention of becoming the plaything of a man who wears the uniform of the solders who murdered her lover. Disarming Trev with a kiss, she escapes. But her sultry kiss opens the two Scorpio adversaries to an obsessive attraction that neither can elude--or possibly survive.

Her web site is http://jennybrown.net. You can read the beginning of Star Crossed Seduction on Scribd at

http://www.scribd.com/doc/61871682/Star-Crossed-Seduction-by-Jenny-Brown-excerpt.

Are You a Triple-X Brand?

2011-09-07T09:47:00.000-05:00

Triple-X domain names go into advance release today for trademark holders and brand holders. One purpose of this sunrise period for brands is to prevent cybersquatters from claiming domain name rights to things like "www.sesamestreet.xxx" or to any other brand which the squatter doesn't own. It also gives brands the opportunity to prevent adult entertainers from using their name as a .xxx domain. If you've ever typed in whitehouse.com instead of whitehouse.gov, you'll know why this could be a problem for some. Basically, the folks in charge of teh interwebz are giving brand holders the opportunity to avoid this problem by squatting on their own .xxx domain names.

So, claim the name under your pen name(s) now if you're concerned about this type of brand dilution. It's a one-time fee rather than an annual fee, and it might be worth the $200 or so this is estimated to cost.

If you write erotica, you might want this domain name for actual use, rather than to squat on your own trade name. If you currently have a domain name like www.mydirtypenname.com, you can take advantage of this early registration period and claim the .xxx version of your domain name. Do it now, before this sunrise period ends. Otherwise, you have to wait for the sunrise period to end before you can register a .xxx domain.

So, those are the two sunrise options: get the .xxx for a domain name you already own, or get a .xxx for your established brand to prevent anyone else from doing so. The erotic romance authors are caught in the middle, but that's no real surprise. Do you want to use a .xxx domain? Some of you might. Or maybe you just want to claim it and have it roll over to your .com site. For those of you who have considered the issue, what do you plan to do?

Theresa

The case for saying the same thing twice, thrice, frice

2011-09-05T18:35:00.001-05:00

I was trying to explain why the reality of fairly simple and successful "direct-to-reader" publishing has unlocked something exciting in my psyche, and I realized that one liberating factor is that I get to say the same thing as many times as I want.

Now I have always believed in traditional publication and have been gratified to have the minimal success at it that I have had over the years. When I was coming up, this was the only credential that counted, and I was glad to have gotten it early in my career. As impossible as it all got for awhile there, I always felt that I'd passed some test, that I'd "graduated." I knew that better writers than I had been ignored by the often-arbitrary marketplace that was traditional publishing, so I could never, like so many trad-pubbed authors, feel superior-- I know very well how much luck is involved-- and I never made enough money at it to feel the least bit smug. I assumed that everyone who was in the know was probably laughing at me and my paltry advances and my ever-necessary day job. However, trad-pubbing allowed me to know that I wasn't just being a narcissist when I thought maybe my writing was better than average. And, in an odd way, trad-pubbing made me more humble that all those who, rejected by the traditional publishers, felt the need to constantly extol their own brilliance. I could hardly entertain the notion that I was "too good" for NYC publishers, since I'd had three of them at that point. Or "too good" for NYC agents-- I've had seven of them, all of them discerning of brilliance (witness their sporadic, temporary, apparently unconvincing yet still extant recommendation of mine :).

Anyway, I cherished the minor prestige and the generally recognized credential, even if, as the years went by, I became more impatient with all the hassles that came along with that. Eventually I realized that, heck, I'd already gotten about all the cheap benefits (prestige, access to certain contests, etc.) and didn't need to keep storming the balustrades if I didn't want to, and I didn't. At the same time, though, I didn't altogether "trust" the alternative market of a decade or so ago. I suspected that, for good and human reasons, a whole lot of epubbers weren't being candid about their experience, or epublishers their sales figures, and wiser than most in the ways publishers can screw writers (taking all rights forever for $20 royalties, say; or getting writers to pay for things the publisher usually paid for), I didn't see the reason to go that route. I didn't need the validation of saying I was published-- I already had that.

Well, so then we arrive at the teens, or almost, and wow. The hardware has finally caught up with the software, and we have both dedicated readers (the Kindle, the Nook) which are not just plausible substitutes for print books, but in some ways better. (I stopped being nostalgic about "the feel of a real book" when I got a Kindle and found it was lighter and thinner than the littlest paperback... great on the wrists.) Most of the hassles of "publishing" which the publisher used to do can now be done by the author ("publishing" might take an hour of my time, and the cover I can hire out for not too much, and it's not like most NYC publishers ever did the slightest amount of promo for a silt-sucker like me). And far from boasting about a probably mythical financial windfall, writers who have chosen this "direct publishing" tend to downplay what turn out often to be (to me) impressive royalties, most of which they get to keep to themselves and not share with publishers and agents who take on ownership in a weird way not only of the work but the career.

Okay, so I'm going to do it, but I'm doing it with a far greater understanding of what it all means, and a confidence that comes from succeeding, however minimally when it comes to the moolah part, the old-fashioned way. That old credential liberates me to feel that I really don't have to prove myself, you know? And that feels good.

But now I'm thinking of other, intangible and perhaps inchoate benefits to going directly to the reader and bypassing those gatekeepers (editors and agents) who frequently responded to me with gratifying recognitions of my skill but disappointing (and perhaps, for the time, actually realistic) reads of the reading market. I don't need to worry about them anymore. Sure, if someone wants to offer me a $100K advance-- but you know what? They don't. Traditional publishing has gone in a new direction, one I think of as misguided, but presumably they have reasons they don't need to share with me.

So some benefits:
1) The medium actually doesn't have to be the message so much anymore. That is, when we decided we wanted to be traditionally published, there were two major possible "media"-- hardcover and softcover. Benefits to each, but limitations too. I remember being told that a book of mine which to me just screamed "hardcover" would probably never be published because it actually was hard-coverish, but few publishers would waste a hardcover slot on someone no one had ever heard of, especially someone writing a conventional (if good) story. And it just wasn't a mass-market paperback story, and the fact that I knew that, that I'd absorbed the difference, made it clear... to some extent, my understanding of the media, the forms of delivery and what stories were best delivered that way, and the publishers' reluctance to break that "contract", limited how I wrote, or at least how I published. Now, really, there's a lot more flexibility, partly because the electronic medium is as flexible as the Web itself (I don't actually see a lot of reason to do print in direct publishing, btw, unless it isn't the focus and can be done very cheaply, which it sort of can now). I don't have to mold my books to 'hardcover" or "paperback" expectations, or limit publication because of that.

2) The medium isn't a straitjacket either. Back in the old days, they'd print a few hundred thousand copies (well, never close for me-- tens of thousands, however, yes) in one printing, and if somehow "Napoleon" was misspelled 210 times, or you (or, uh, me) didn't do sufficient ornithology research (back then, children, even Eric Schmidt hadn't imagined Google-- we had to go to the library -- the actual physical library! -- and look these things up in books! And you know what? You don't know what you don't know, and maybe some of us didn't know even what to look up about birds!) to know that certain birds are native only to certain continents. Who knew, huh? Anyway, if you happened to put hummingbirds in England and nightingales in Louisiana, you were sure to locate a few dozen birdwatchers who could overlook the depth of your characterization and the suppleness of your prose and focus on the all-important "native" issue. (Ha, ha, before the internet, they were reduced to bitching about you in their birdwatching groups and writing you heated letters with painstakingly copied encyclopedia entries. Now they'd give you a 1-star review on Amazon and you'd feel lousy THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, not that I'm speaking of any particular author's experience, you know.)
Contrast that with what can happen with direct publication. So there you are, Innocent Author, absurdly assuming that no one is perfect, except you when it comes to your mysterious alchemy with sexual tension and delicacy of subtext. And you get this email from a birdwatcher, who points out that-- who knew? Well, apparently every birdwatcher in the known world-- that there were no hummingbirds in the old world nor nightingales in the new (I love the designations "new and old world," btw, though I suspect they will and probably pass from the earth soon, since probably all the continents qualify as "old" these days). NOW you don't have to die a little death every time you see the cover of your Sussex-set romp with that merry bitty pretty little hummingbird! Because there aren't 200K (I wish) copies of your book on shelves everywhere, testifying forever to your ornithological idiocy! There's only one file, or maybe a couple (you know, Kindle, Smashwords, wherever you're doing your POD printing...), and you can grab them back and FIX them, changing that hummingbird to a bumble bee. (Smilar sizes, hey, wait, let me make sure there were bumble bees in the old world.....YES!! You know, some people are happy that there are so many cancer cures now, but I smile, knowing there's Google. I love Google. I know, Borg, infodump McDonalds, all that. But... but... it works JUST the way my mind works, and it's good to me in ways no one has ever been. It loves me, and I love it. We're soulmates.) You can even instead of sullenly thanking the birdwatcher, enthusiastically thank the birdwatcher, and tell her that you've changed the acknowledgments page to acknowledge her help, and maybe she can tell everyone in her birdwatching group. Everything is eternal on the web, but everything can be easily fixed too.

3) I think the wheat is usually (not always) separated from the chaff. There's a lot of bad stuff out there, but the quality stuff generally has a way of being recognized and promoted, and with the almost eternal publication period (compared with maybe a month, if that, on the shelves even now with the old model), there's plenty of time for word of mouth to build you an audience, and for one book to lead your readers to other books of yours. I remember that no publisher of mine ever (I think?) went to a second printing of any book of mine-- there was the bare month on the shelves, and then the dread and soul-destroying grabbing and stripping. No matter what happened to the book, how well-received it was, how well-reviewed, that was it, the one chance. A couple of my books won major awards, and I couldn't capitalize on them because the publisher had little interest in re-issuing the books, and I write so slow that it wasn't worth it to them to use the award to push another book. NOW, well. There's a long, long, long tail. A book that sells virtually nothing for months after publication can be there (because I'm in charge, and I'll keep it there, damnit) for a long time, long enough for readers of my other books to mosey on over and decide they have to-- have to or they'll just DIE -- read every book I wrote.... and every book will sell every other book, if I'm good enough and wait long enough. (I hope.)

My model here is fan-fiction, about which I wrote a long academic paper that no one ever has said anything nice about, so it's probably really boring and stupid, but I totally loved. (I always totally love every word I write until I get a single bad review on Amazon, and then I hate myself, all my work, my stupid mismatched ears and my relentlessly mediocre mind and my life too, and my parents because they brought me into this world, and my friends because they should have warned me that I'm an idiot and should work at some anonymous job and never go out into public and I'm scum, scum, and those NYC publishers were RIGHT never to re-issue my books because the books were really stupid and so am I... okay, really, if after that, you can post a bad review of any book of mine on Amazon, all I can say is, you are really, really, really sadistic, and might want to rejigger your moral compass, you sociopath.)
Where was I? Oh! Fanfiction. There's a whole lot of fanfiction, and there's no commercial market for it so no "vetting" from any "gatekeeper". Instead, there's evolved all sorts of ways -- niche websites like "All about Spike," contests, award sites, recommendations, targeted forums-- where you can find out where the best "Spike/Xander amnesia baby fic" stories are, and the writers generally accepted as the best in any "niche". You go on livejournal (where a lot of Buffy readers hang out) and ask, "I love fics where Buffy learns that Spike's still alive and that Andrew knew it and she wants to kill him and Spike too, but Spike not until she's kissed him a few dozen times... any recs?" and you'll get considered and thoughtful recommendations, usually with live links.

The same is going to happen with, say, Kindle, plus there are all the Amazon tools, the reviews (the negative ones of which are sometimes entirely soul-destroying and besides will come back to haunt the bad reviewers some day if they have even the slightest vestige of conscience, which, to be sure, they probably don't, being ruthless, heartless sociopaths... oh. Sorry. Back to our regularly scheduled perfectly calm and reasoned analysis) (I actually think bad reviews are important in establishing the credibility of reviews as a decision-aider, but .. well. Soul-destroying nonetheless), the "Customers who bought X also bought Y" algorithm, the keywords, all that stuff I don't yet know about except for reviews. Instead of one person-- some editor or agent-- deciding whether your book is worthy of sharing with the world, there is a true democracy of access... and an actual means for readers to make plausible judgments of whether they might like your book.

4) Niche is all, and you as an author can have more than one niche. Finally, and at long last, this is what I was really thinking about. Because the ease is high and the expense is low, the writer can write whatever she wants to write. And that's amazingly liberating. Yeah, maybe no one will want to read it. But this is the internet. There are probably a few thousand readers who have been longing for a romantic thriller about a medieval knifemaker (hi, Jenny's Peter, not that you're medieval or anything). In fact, there might be some readers who will read ANY novel that's about knifemakers, and they will like some more than others, especially ours, which is not just meticulously researched (or quickly fixed if not) but also uproariously funny, beautifully written, and subtly insightful in its understanding of the psychology of the knifemaker (now see, THAT'S how you write an Amazon review! And click that 5 stars while you're at it). You can actually write what you want, and trust that you can find a market, rather than write to a generic market ("historical romance readers," you know, like they all want the same thing). Maybe there's no market for it, or maybe you can't reach it, or maybe you'll offend some influential member of the knifemaking community by, I don't know, what is a controversy in knifemaking? By presenting oak as a better hilt material than teak? I don't know. Something controversial. In Buffy fanfiction terms (that I know more about), it might be in suggesting that Faith, not Buffy, was the better fighter. I'm sure there's a similar controversy in knifemaker fics. You really never what effect, negative or positive, will come of your many choices as you write.

But now, with direct publishing, no one is going to be able to keep you from trying to find/create/reach the market of potential readers, as for so long the whole system of publication did. The entire aim has changed, in fact, from "we're going to tell you what you can read" to "you have to find what you want, but what you want is out there." To tell you the truth, while I think the editors and agents often have really good taste and can recognize high-quality stories, they often have little similar confidence about readers, and frequently used to say things like, "I love this, but it will never sell," or "This is exactly what I like best, but readers are now looking for werewolves, not angels, and quality doesn't matter." Quality actually matters to a certain group of readers. Jenny Brown and I were talking about historical romances, and a certain Very High Quality writer (okay, it's Judy Cuevas/Ivory) who is recognized by most "readers for quality" in romance as one of the best romance writers ever. (She's really good... I remember once realizing I was weeping helplessly because some dumb lamb had died, and it was just page 10, and then thinking, Oh, right, this is Judy Cuevas.... surprised it took so long for her to RIP MY HEART OUT this time.) And we know that both of us "read for quality" -- meaning (for us, not necessarily all "readers for quality" want the same qualities) high-level subtextual prose, a particular delicacy in handling emotion, and more historical detail than in most books. And a theme. Theme=important to us.Well, we're in contact, and if we happen to discover a book we know the other will like? We share the recommendation. Duh. And there are some influential readers (not us, so don't bother to woo us with free books and chocolates-- wait! On second thought, we're totally woo-able, woo away). Point is, we do not regard each other as "generic historical romance readers," as might those editors as they decide to send one of those soul-destroying (you think I have only one soul to destroy?) rejection letters about how they love this book but that 'readers' just want Scottish settings these days.

The niches can get both more narrow and more overlapping-- for example, Jenny might know that I prefer a Gloucestershire setting, but that I'll read anything deemed by someone I know to be sensitive to voice in fiction as having a really good voice, yes, even if it's set in WALES!!! (The sacrifices we make, I tell you.) And she might have picked up that I really like (this is SO embarrassing) dumb heroes. Okay, clueless heroes. Naive heroes. The guys who are great and all and handsome (note to all, I might be really accepting of clue-challenged heroes, as long as they have abs of steel and faces like those of fallen angels, okay?), but who ruefully admit that the minds of women are terra incognita. Now that's the sort of niche ("clueless heroes") that historical romance readers will chuckle at but allow is a recognizable category. Let's just say, traditional publishing didn't have any imprints for 'clueless romantic heroes", but those of you who read historical romances? You know what I mean, and I'm soliciting recs. And I could start a niche list for "clueless hero" books.

5) Direct-to-reader publishing allows for ever more focused niching, as long as the quality of the writing is worthy of recommending to those outside the niche. Start with the assumption that every reader might have a different set of niches, and that these sets are ever-shifting, and that a member of the "locked door murder mystery niche" might also, who knows why, be a member of the "arranged marriage romance" (though you know, notice what's the commonality-- being trapped?) and simultaneously a member of the "any book at all that has recipes in it" and also dabbles (only in secret!) with "books with main characters who own cats." You think I'm kidding? Wait till you hear just a few of my niches (and yes, recs are appreciated, but remember, prose style and meticulous grammar really matter to me)--

Amnesia stories
Books that are set in theaters, I mean, live theaters where there are actors
Mysteries with old lady sleuths (Miss Jane Marple types)
Romances about couples that have been married for a long time
Novels set in the Midwest and/or Great Lakes-area Canada, particularly the Lake Huron region, any genre
Novels about people who work in restaurants
Legal thrillers but with protagonists who aren't top lawyers, in fact, I'd love to read one with a paralegal or legal secretary protagonists, in fact, any book with a protagonist who is a really smart secretary- I love really smart secretaries, all those class and gender issues. Miss Moneypenny has long been one of my favorite secondary characters, and I think it's time she got to star in her very own story!
Complicated emotions, depth of interaction stories-- I know it when I see it-- all about how people seldom act in their own best interest
Art thieves. Really. Any book where art -- only the good art-- is stolen. White Collar is like my dream show.
I also love heroines who are trying to make it as artists in a man's world.
Rock star heroes. I attribute this to childhood Beatlemania (and still extant; please don't tell my husband, but if Paul McCartney needed a shoulder to cry on, well, you know, that's why God gave me TWO shoulders, and Paul, if you're reading this, I'm also a pretty good cook. Do you like bread pudding? Trust me. You will. Just in case, I'll put the recipe in my book with a rock star hero and the heroine caterer who cooks for the band).
Books with recipes in them. I mean, novels. I also like cookbooks, but novels with recipes more.

Point is, I intersect with others in one niche or another. And each of the members of each niche intersects with other niches. Just sayin'. If I read and love your mystery about the clueless punkrock drummer on the Bruce (Ontario) Peninsula who is trying to win back his secretary wife who finally gave up on him, well, who knows how many readers might eventually hear about your book? But I will be much, much more likely to recommend it to other niches, like the one for books with recipes in them even if you mysteriously neglect to put a recipe in there, if the book is well-crafted and well-written, so that other readers get not only to be impressed by your lovely prose but also maybe experience the new thrill of the rockstar hero who fakes his own death (yes, I think that's the only way he can win Miss Moneypenny back-- she's too sensible otherwise) (and will join my faked-death novel niche).

So I was thinking, one of the really liberating things about direct publishing is, what the hell, why not keep coming back to that weird thing that who knows why, I keep coming back to. Like I keep coming up with great ideas -- different genres, time periods-- that feature a main character faking his/her own death. Why? I don't know! Do I really have to know? I think it's like the wimp's form of suicide, maybe. But-- no kidding. I have three MIPs where the heroine fakes her own death, and another where the hero, who thought he was a widower, finds out that his despised trailer trash wife who ran off with that damned Greek general-- to save him from arrest and maybe execution, had sacrificed her own future for him (just like PRIMAFLORA!!!! See, Primaflora, I love you even if Lady Dunnett didn't), and is maybe still alive somewhere, having perhaps survived that supposed fall from Greek general's yacht.

It's kind of like live theater, this continued circling back to an oft-told tale or constant theme. There's probably a reason for this, some deep psychological issue. You know how it is in live theater, how they perform the same play night after night, and they think that's interesting? Why? Well, it could be because every time, they're getting closer to understanding something, or they're trying out some alternative interpretation (did Hamlet know during his soliloquy that Claudius and Polonius were listening? Maybe tonight I'll play it like he did know, and tomorrow I'll play it like he didn't know! I got that distinction, btw, from Slings and Arrows Season 1-- a great TV show, watch it). Direct publishing might actually reward authors who care so deeply and understand so deeply and explore so deeply about particular themes, they can cover and dis-cover them in several different versions, each differently intriguing.

Granted, it might take a while before faked-death fetishists find each other and start recommending books and even found online book clubs, but if my book features not just a good faked death but also excellent prose and maybe a big sub-genre theme (murder mystery) and some other fetish motif (rock stars?), the faked-death fetishist reader might be emboldened to rec the book to some other reader circle. All this can take some time from publication to taking offdom, and the greatest advantage direct publishing offers over traditional publication may be time. While my old Regency print books had one count 'em one month on the shelves, the re-edited "Author's Edition" offered (whenever I get around to doing the author edit!) will have perhaps years to draw an audience.

So. Point is. Know your niches. Love your niches. Try not to call them, as I just did, "fetishes," especially if you're going to do a Google search and are easily put to the blush. Start a website devoted not to your wonderfulness as a writer, but to the niche, you know, www.novelswithfakeddeaths.com. Start a Facebook group not of your "fans" but "fans of faked-death novels."

That's what I'm going to do. We can be on each other's blogrolls!

Thoughts? Suggestions? And, oh, never forget that what's important about direct publishing, really important, comes to those who figure out what they want, how they define success for themselves in publication, why not to settle for some default definition of success but rather one that will, in fulfillment, truly fulfill the inner writer.
Alicia

Wanted to foreground this so Adrian would see and rescue me

2011-09-02T09:08:00.000-05:00

Adrian (or anyone, but Adrian had the original suggestion), help me here.

Remember:

She stayed, but her reply was reluctant.

I want to use this sentence model in a class I'm teaching, to show the meaning change when something is 'diminished" or "demoted' from an independent ("but") clause to a dependent ("though") clause.

Can you think of a more active pairing than I have? like:

She (verb), but/though her (noun) was (adjective).
or--
She (verb), but/though she (verb).

Muddy brain here (hay fever halcyon).
Maybe "She walked out, but/though her withdrawal was temporary."

Hmm. Still quite static.

She choked, but/though her nausea was shortlived.

She vomited, but/though... no, let's not go there.

She resumed her seat, but/though her posture was tense.

Why am I so PASSIVE????

Help! Is it that the construction I'm looking for just doesn't call for much action?

Help!!!

Alicia

Another in a series of really picky line editing examples, where-in I supply your possible protests so you don't have to.

2011-09-02T07:59:00.006-05:00

Remember the game "Mad-Libs?" In that, you were given a sentence that had a lot of blanks, and you were supposed to supply words that fit the needed part of speech for some part of the sentence, and when the right p-o-s (part of speech) was inserted more or less randomly, you could get a theoretically hilarious sentence like this love letter:

Dear Wendy,

It has come to my air that you are the fastest girl in the hot dog. My ovary starts setting a catapult every time you speak. I would like to resist if you want to go to the operation with me next Tuesday. If you crane, please whimper me at the Andorra in week. I bicker you and everything about you.

Calculatingly,
Percival

The fun of this has always been that even the youngest language speaker can "parse" the absurdity while "hearing" the rightness of the syntax (sentence) order. While this might seem like merely a silly party game for word nerds, my perfectly normal college freshmen classes love playing this, missing utterly my point, which wasn't to Have Fun (heaven forfend). This exercise is used by linguists to learn when children start internalizing syntax as a giver of meaning. (Hilarity ensues only if you're able to understand that "fastest girl in the hot dog" is the right sentence order and can for a second envision a bunch of female track stars running around in a hot dog.)

Well, I had that discombobulating Madlibs reaction when I read this perfectly syntactical sentence in an article: The security forces scout and secure locations.

I was wondering why this sentence was so hard to read, and realized that almost every word could be a noun or a verb or something else. That is, most of the words could be a different part of speech than actually called for in the sentence:

"Security" is an adjective for "forces," but could be a noun on its own, like "cops," and
"forces" could be a verb ("compels"), and as I initially assumed "security" was a noun (so here the subject), "forces" became the predicate of the sentence in my preliminary read:

The security (subject) forces (present tense verb) (something to happen or something to do something).

Scout, of course, is most often a noun (the Boy Scout wore his uniform proudly). If I read "security" as a noun and "forces" as the verb, as I initially did, "scout" would seem like the object. It makes sense syntactically (that is, as a noun, the "right" part of speech to be the direct object), but at that moment, the semantics fall apart, because how can it be the security forces "scout" (no capital, so not the heroine Scout of the Harper Lee novel :) to do something? That's the instant I would have to go back and start re-reading, confused by my initial ("security= subject) mistake.

The confusion doesn't stop there, however. "Secure" can be (and usually is) an adjective, especially when used right before an applicable noun. "Locations" is an applicable noun-- "secure locations" is an understandable adjective-noun unit (locations that are secure), and a far more common locution than "to secure (verb meaning make secure of) locations (places)."

So… a syntactically correct (subject-verb- double direct object) sentence, that read as I first did, makes no sense.

Who is at fault here for the misreading? Well, why bother to assign blame? After all, it's not a moral issue. However, whenever there's a mismatch between what the writer meant and what the reader gets, the writer should "feel" that and go back and see if there's any way to make the meaning clear, to use the syntax to clarify, not obfuscate, the meaning.

The problem is, my initial confusion (taking "security" as a noun, not adjective) set off a cascade of other confusions, and I was well launched into my own misreading before I realized my mistake, and the other double-duty words just kept making the sentence ring plausibly in my head (all words were the right parts of speech for their position in the sentence).

What can be done? Well, it might help to diagram the actual meant-sentence. I can't find a site (can anyone?) that lets us do the cool diagramming diagonal lines we used to do on the board, but here is the sentence diagrammed as meant:

S V O

forces |scout and secure | locations.

\The \security

When I'm forced to diagram, I can see what's an adjective not a noun (articles like "the" and "a" are diagrammed as adjectives), and what's a verb not a noun. And I do see that the article (the) which is only used before a noun (and so is understood to introduce a noun) can just as easily "point" to "security" as the subject rather than "security forces" as the subject term. So an article ("the") is no help, as it might ordinarily be, in "announcing" the subject-to-come, especially with "forces" (a perfectly good singular-for-a-group-noun predicate) following.

Let me stop here and say that I bet those trained in the British tradition or who grew up speaking that other dialect "British-English" might have no trouble understanding this sentence. See, the Brits pluralize group nouns – The town council are going to the restaurant after the meeting—while Americans singularize group nouns unless the group is (are, actually) disputing something, so:

The town council is going to the restaurant after the meeting.

(In dispute)

The town council are disagreeing about whether to fire the constable.

So a Brit would see "The security forces" and assume that if "security" is a subject (group noun), "forces" can't be the verb, because as a verb it's singular while as a noun it's plural (someone explain to me why the "s" means singular one way and plural the other, please). In Brit-speak, "The security" (group noun) would "force" (plural verb), so as soon as Brits got to that point (third word), they would probably quickly shift to the correct meaning simply because they re-jiggered the opening words to make it the subject phrase, achieving the right meaning albeit for the wrong reason.

Americans would still be going merrily along down the wrong path with the putative group subject (The security) properly (that is, Americanly) taking the singular verb (forces). That is, the wrong reading is still quite plausible to an American even after word three.

So let's go back to the beginning. It's a good idea to start with a word which announces that what follows is the subject, and the best ways are the article (which should work, but doesn't, because "security" is a good noun and "forces" is a good verb), or a possessive noun or pronoun which is immediately visible as a possessive (so "his" or "Bailey's"). That at least gets the reader into the mindset (as the article does) that what follows will be the subject:

His (security) (forces)

Trouble is, as you can see, we still might have the problem of "security" read as the subject. So if I were to rewrite this, I might start there, replacing the ambiguous modifier "security" with a "adjective-only" or the full term with something that can be read only as an adjective-noun unit. Also I might get really specific in my choice of possessive, to subtly indicate an "owner" (possessive noun) that can immediately be understood as someone who has a security force. "His" doesn't do that, but "Governor Bailey's" does. (A governor would have guards.)

Governor Bailey's protective detail

See what I did there? Governor Bailey's protective detail can immediately be read (correctly, unambiguously) as the subject phrase. The whole term is taken in one gulp—"subject (noun) phrase". Why? It's mostly because "protective" can only be an adjective. No ambiguity. Adjectives aren't always as distinctive as most adverbs (most adverbs, as we all know, have the distinctive suffix –ly – "hopefully" or "angrily"), but there are suffixes like –ive which are mostly used with adjectives, and yes, I realize "adjective" is itself a noun (the suffix that would make it an adjective is –ival – adjectival).

That's the point. To be unambiguous, choose a word that "pings" only as an adjective that would be used (like a possessive) before a noun as part of a noun phrase. No ambiguity here—even if "detail" could be read as a verb (it can be a plural verb—John and Mary detail my car), the "protective" means I've already assumed that the next word will be the noun "protective" modifies. That is, "protective" can't be read as the subject/noun, so "detail" can't be read as the verb.

That's probably enough to launch the reader on the right meaning, so that "scout and secure" will be read as the verbs, and "locations" as the direct object (that which is scouted and secured). Still, some fixing might be required when we go from "forces" (plural noun) to "detail" (group noun which, remember, is usually treated as singular in American English)—have to go with singular verbs:

Governor Bailey's protective detail scouts and secures locations.

That Amer-English oddity (group noun taking singular verb) actually helps, because that "s" at the end of each verb renders it unlikely to be mistaken for an adjective (secures locations?).

What else might help? Well, "protective detail" could be replaced with a single word subject like "bodyguard" or "bodyguards," I suppose.

Or we could split apart the dual predicate, giving each a separate object. I'm not sure why this would work, except that the use of an object kind of "back-means" that a word is a transitive verb (transitive verbs take direct objects), so you'd get to "scout," see an immediate noun and assume that because it's a direct object, "scout" must be a verb, and then what follows the "and" is probably a second predicate-with-object.

So… hmm… this would require a bit more thought, and might be more than we need if we fix the subject phrase:

Governor Bailey's protective detail scouts places and secures the locations (might add to what purpose, like "to eliminate threats in advance of the visit").

I notice that I automatically placed "the" in front of locations, probably just to reiterate that "secures" can only be a verb (as we wouldn't put an article between an adjective and the noun it modifies). But with a singular verb (secures) that's not necessary, as "secures" can't be an adjective anyway.

Or I might take that dual predicate and reduce the words to participles (-ing words), which would require a single predicate for which the participles might serve as explanations or elaborations. I'm not really sure if this will help, but it makes the ambiguous verbs ("scout and secure" could be a noun and adjective, remember) more clearly "verbals," maybe:

Governor Bailey's protective detail work days in advance, scouting and securing locations.

I can hear the protests now from the sentence writer:

"But that's too complicated."

No, it's not. It was complicated before because the reader might get confused. Now it's simpler. The process the writer must go through to clarify might be complicated, but who ever said making good sentences would be easy, huh?

"That doesn't mean what I meant."

Okay, then make it mean what you meant. You're the one in charge. As the editor, I'm just guessing what you meant. If you make it clear, I won't have to guess.

"It's an ugly sentence."

Oh, come on. The original wasn't Keatsian in its beauty and truth either. This isn't poetry. Make it clear first, then make it beautiful if you want to.

"But what if I meant it to be ambiguous?"

You didn't. You probably didn't realize it was ambiguous until I pointed it out. Writers generally kind of (not always, not entirely) know what they mean, so they're already biased towards one meaning and can't usually see the other possible meanings unless they try, as with the "Rubin's vase/face" optical illusion.

"But I want to be ambiguous!"

Why? Just to justify being ambiguous? Why would you want to be ambiguous in a declarative sentence about what bodyguards do? But if you do want to be ambiguous, as you well might in a sentence unveiling a character's mixed motives or hinting at subtext (which this writer is definitely not trying to do), you happened on a good technique, to use terms which can be read two ways dependent on what syntactical element it's taken to be.

Be ambiguous because you mean to be, not just by accident.

"But you're messing with my voice!"

Someone has to. Lucky you have me! I accept gifts of chocolate as measures of gratitude. Email me for my address and brand preferences.

---

I notice I keep using the part of speech term (like "noun") and having to remind myself when to use instead the term for the syntactical element. I'll just define that here in case I didn't fix all those:

A noun will usually take the role of either a subject or an object in a sentence.

A verb will usually take the role of a predicate in a sentence.

An adjective or adverb will usually take the role of a modifier (respectively modifying a noun or verb).

(These are my definitions, not official ones.)

Oh, and:

Syntax—how sentence elements are placed in sentences, the roles different words and phrases take in a sentence, and the interactions between the parts.

Semantics—what a sentence actually means.

Alicia

Odd sentence edit

2011-08-29T22:30:00.000-05:00

I wrote this sentence and it felt wrong for what I meant:

She stayed, but her reply was reluctant.

What I meant was that -she stayed-. She was reluctant, but still she stayed. I know it's a little odd, but for xome reason, I felt the above made it sound like the reluctant reply was the most important thing, but in my head, what was important was that while she didn't really want to, she stayed.

Minor point, but it just felt wrong, and I realized it was because "but" makes these both independent clauses (each could be a sentence in its own right), and thus of equal syntactic "weight." One is not more important than another; neither is the primary thought.

But in my head, the important thing was... she stayed. And so I kind of let myself feel how that should be worded-- let instinct and sound-sense take over, and changed it to this:

She stayed, though her reply was reluctant.

So much of this, lol, is instinctual. And when I stopped and analyzed why, I realized that "but" and "though" mean the same thing (presenting a contrast of some sort to the first clause), but "but" makes the second an independent (equal) clause, while "though" reduces it to a dependent (lesser) clause. And that means the second is of lesser syntactic weight, so the reader will subconsciously understand it to be of lesser importance, and the "she stayed" is the important thing.

Now the question becomes, why do I put the main action/clause first in the sentence? When would I put the "though" first?"
Though her reply was reluctant, she stayed.

Hmm. Usually I think when "though" comes first, I say "although." (I don't know why. Sounds better.)

I think probably I'd put the dependent clause first when it sounded better (like if the rhythm was better when mixed with the adjacent sentences). That is, I don't feel a great deal of difference in the change in sentence order, nothing like the change from "but" to "though."

I know, I know. Picky. But nuance matters in sentences. Readers can pick up consciously or subconsciously such subtle changes in meaning. How important is this to you as a writer? Is that sort of pinpoint meaning accuracy something you spend time on? And have you any examples of that sort of subtle shift in meaning I can borrow for a workshop I'm doing on sentences? :)

Alicia

Exploiting Orphans

2011-08-27T16:00:00.000-05:00

Jenny and I got into a discussion once about how so many historical novels use "helping orphans" as a shorthand technique to supposedly make a jerky hero sympathetic. I always had a mental image of rakish looking hunks lining up outside an orphanage door, checkbooks in hand. Anyway, I don't think that works! I think that readers sympathize with interesting character confronted with interesting conflicts. That is, "doing nice things to poor benighted orphans" isn't necessarily going to make him sympathetic. (And why is sympathy the reaction we want anyway? I do think "reader involvement" might more important, and allows for characters who are more or less than sympathetic.)

What I think I’m discovering is that character development sort of depends on these particular circumstances (the opening situation and then the plot events) causing a change in his behavior. If your hero already supports a dozen orphans because he's just such a doggone good guy, then his taking care of this new orphan is not only effortless (he’s got the whole system set up already), but also, in a way, nothing special. He always does that. All you’ll end up doing is showing that he’s a wonderful, charitable guy—and always has been.

Consider what would happen if he has no history of supporting orphans, and this kid shows up, claiming to be the orphan of the hero's former girlfriend. And... worst possible time... he's about to marry the beautiful and moralistic daughter of his wealthy boss, and she's righteous and jealous and boss is the Old Testament type. So the arrival of this orphan kid is a catastrophe, a conflict, not just the latest in a long line of orphans Hero has helped, but a problem he doesn’t know how to solve, but has to solve anyway. In other words, dealing with this orphan makes him grow, in compassion or empathy or generosity—doesn’t just display those virtues for all to see.

And if he’s embarrassed and mad at himself for doing the right thing, If he’s not sure it’s the right thing, and if doing it gets him into trouble, all the better.

What do you think? Maybe I’m misreading the attitude of the reading public, but I think a bit of curmudgeonly spirit, when coupled with eventually good actions, really does increase the sympathy factor.

Talking Heroic Characters at RU

2011-08-26T12:14:00.000-05:00

Today at Romance University, we're talking about a technique to give a character flaws without undermining their heroic nature. We're talking about it from the romance perspective, but this technique applies to any type of heroic character. Come visit!

Theresa

The fault, dear Brutus... personal issues manifest as writing issues

2011-08-25T11:20:00.004-05:00

I did a guest blog at Denny's place, and Carlene asked if we ever manage to learn enough from our mistakes in drafting so that we don't keep making them in subsequent books. She identified as an example POV issues that might keep recurring in an author's first drafts. So I took this as an opportunity to go off on the dark confluence of deep psychological issues and writing issues:

I suspect there are two kinds of "opportunities for revision." The first we'll learn our way out of as we get more experienced. Like I've been working a lot on scene endings, and I think I've learned (forever maybe!) to end a scene on conflict and never (except at the end of the book, of course) on resolution, so that the story (and reader) are always propelled into the next scene.

But there are the other issues which are more intrinsically bound to who we are and what we are and what issues matter to us in life and art. And those, I think, we won't learn our way out of in our fiction until we learn our way out of them in life. We keep "making the same mistake" or encountering the same issue because we're subconsciously seeking to revisit it, to worry it, to debate it.

For example, I'm revising much of my backlist preparatory to offering it on Kindle and Smashwords. I'm editing a lot, partly because of course I want the stories to be the best they can be, but also because I want to make enough change that I can justify new copyrights. (Note to self, look up the rules on this.)

Anyway, here I am, confronted with the product of my 1992 self, you know? The one who felt helpless and overwhelmed (little kids, sudden career success, major decisions to make but no real power to make them with, all that young mother time trouble). And I realize that I have several incidents of heroine action where she acts impulsively and perhaps recklessly, for no real purpose.

Why? What does this say about ME? What issue would have had me-- the back-then me-- continually having a heroine who would behave without the sort of right-there immediate motivation that I would counsel other writers to show?

Well, I don't want to get too personal-- I'm still married to the same guy, still have the same kids, still even-- I am so boring-- teaching (again, actually, not still) at the same school, so I probably ought not to remind myself of all that stuff back then. But let me just say that back then, I never behaved heedlessly. I never did anything I thought maybe I'd regret later. I spent those years being really, really careful.

And it showed paradoxically in my creation of a few heroines who did behave recklessly, who acted spontaneously without regard for consequence, who jumped out of airplanes without a parachute (figuratively... these took place in like 1815 :). IOW, they could afford to be stupid when I couldn't.

This was an issue in my life that came out in my writing. And I wasn't going to resolve it in my writing without resolving it in my life in one way or another.

So here it is, jeez, 20 years later, and I've given up that need to control, or at least that dire suspicion that if I said the wrong word or opened the wrong door, terrible things would happen and It Would All Be My Fault and I Can't Let That Happen.

I also-- age does this to women, thank goodness-- gave up on any real aspiration to be so adorably cute and unexpected like a kitten and decided to be a grown-up at some point.

Anyway, for whatever reason, that issue seems to have mostly resolved in my life, and I can look at my earlier book and see not a heroine who is insufficiently adorable (so that I must up the madcap-heiress ratio, which is what I'd have done back then), but rather insufficiently motivated to act and thus I must give her a good reason to do that madcap-heiress cute thing. (That is, I'm keeping the cute action, just giving her more reason to commit it.) Here's how I did it.

1992 heroine, too stupid to live, too adorable to resist, is with hero in enemy territory, at the market fair of a French coastal town, across the Channel from Dorset (where he lives). They are trying to get past the big contingent of French soldiers who are patrolling the docks to slip onto the smuggling sloop which by arrangement is going to sneak them out of France and back home. Heroine espies Cute Plot Trick (a hot air balloon) and takes off in that direction and adorably madcappedly ends up in the air over the Channel with hero. (Their passage is in contravention, btw, of the whole prevailing winds issue, but that I dealt with mainly by having the hero marvel that, given the usual prevailing winds, the gods had favored them and sent northerly winds.)

This gives the hero a chance to Sternly Chastise Her and her a chance to be Suitably Adorably "sulky" (I swear, I'm going to do a Control-F and find every "sulk" in there and excise it, and "pout" beside… really, there's a limit to how adorable a non-kitten should be). But it doesn't make much sense, because they're in great danger, she's not actually that stupid, and the sloop they'd arranged is captained by his very own brother, of whom they're both pretty fond, and I don't think they'd put him in graver danger if they could help it. Here's how I resolved it—I gave her a reason to do what she does, a reason beyond "I am so cute I can get away with being an idiot! In fact, the bigger idiot I am, the more proof it is that I'm adorable!" Once I'd identified the 'need,' (that is, for more immediate external motivation), I had the answer just like that:

Michael (hero) is cognizant above all that his duty is to protect this princess he's bringing to England to marry a prince and cement an alliance. (It's a Lancelot-Guinevere story, natch.) And he knows his bro and knows that John, ever resourceful, tends to find a way out of bad situations. So he's more trusting than Tatiana (heroine) that they just have to get over there to the sloop and all will be well. Tatiana is, in her adorable way, less trusting of fate and less aware of how John has always managed to squirm out of every dilemma ever. So… here's the big change. They get close to the sloop and the military commander isn't just hassling John. He's about to ARREST John now. And so Tatiana runs off to steal the balloon (set up as an attraction for the fair—okay, dumb, but it's not HER dumbness at least ) to act as a diversion so that the military is drawn away from the sloop. Might not be Wellingtonesque in its strategic brilliance, but hey, effective—she gets on the balloon, Michael, cursing, follows her to try and get her off, she gets it to ascend in order to have everyone down there (including military people) turn to gaze up at the balloon. John takes advantage of the distraction to heave the military commander into the harbor, and he raises anchor and scoots out into the Channel.

There! Her adorable action is now to some purpose!

And this actually solves another issue, a coincidence (groan) I'd forgotten about. This town actually is directly across the Channel from his own estate. This isn't the coincidence part. He and John have arranged to meet here because as boys (before the war) they used to sail down here to pick up chicks, or whatever boys did back then (they probably still picked up chicks, or tried to), and know it well. The coincidence is that the balloon is going to end up crashing into his own land 32 miles north, direct hit, no action needed. Well, now, duh, I have John escaping from custody and sailing out into the Channel, and above are Michael and Tatiana. So John could point the sloop in the right direction, kind of like an arrow, and Michael can follow that and figure out a bit how to maneuver the craft (he's an experienced sailor, so understands winds). And with John's example below, he doesn't just happen onto his own land, but aims for it because he knows he can land in an open field there and not on the brow of a cliff.

So much more purposeful and directed, but without that terrible fear and insecurity I had when I first wrote it!

I really don't think I could have resolved that so quickly back then. Oh, maybe I could have done it deliberately, like if the editor pointed it out and suggested how to fix it. But I really don't know if I would have identified it as an issue. And I certainly wouldn't effortlessly-- as I just did-- have come up with the right solution, or at least a workable one. I guess I'm saying I had to grow up. :)

So... armchair diagnosis here, or at least armchair speculation. If I were having POV issues that I couldn't learn my way out of, well, I probably wouldn't know what the problem is. But as an outsider, and if YOU were having that recurrent issue, I might ask if there was some identity issue going on-- POV is -usually- about identity. For example, and we're just using this and "you" as examples, okay? I'm not actually trying to delve into your personality . Do you think maybe you have a bit of trouble "escaping the surly bounds of self," maybe, and "becoming" someone else? (Due to, perhaps, too much encroachment by family, or too little regard earlier in life for your own feelings so now you are more careful to assert "what is me and what I value".) This could result in shallow POV, the inability to get too deep into a character.

Or is a recurrent POV issue more a problem with too quick identification with others, too much empathy almost? That can lead to headhopping, maybe, because everyone's opinion seems equally important in this scene.

Just a thought. This isn't therapy, but it might be interesting to look at the issues that keep arising in our stories and speculate about what IN US might cause them. That is... the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our plotting, but in ourselves. :)

What do you think?

Alicia

Um and Uh

2011-08-18T11:11:00.001-05:00

This article discusses "disfluencies and discourse particles" (aka "uh and um") and posits the interesting notion that no one mentioned them as a problem until phonographs were invented and could record speech for playback later. That is, in "real time" we generally don't notice the little space-fillers that give the speaker a bit of a pause.

They mention the doubtlessly invaluable organization Toastmasters "fining" their speech-making members a nickel for each um. That actually solved a bit of a mystery for me. Hands-down, the greatest lecturer I've ever heard (and I went to a university with scads of great lecturers) was the writing seminar leader Robert McKee, who combines a hipster's insouciance with a cinephile's obsessive command of his material and a storyteller's sense of suspense. I've been to a couple of his all-weekend seminars, and really, he's so good that IN HOLLYWOOD, all these petulant Colin Farrell lookalikes and dead-eyed zombie gorgeous people TURN OFF THEIR CELL PHONES AT HIS COMMAND, then sit there in a college classroom for 20 hours or so listening to him and assiduously taking notes and then, at the end of the weekend, rise spontaneously to give him standing ovations. This guy really is great, and I say this as someone who has given many, many writing workshops myself. I wanna be him when I grow up, only I think we're both running out of time.

Anyway, I was talking to another writer after we saw McKee in another venue (at another organization's conference). He was typically awesome, mingling casual anecdotes about his golf buddy Paul Newman ("Yes, ladies, he really was what the rest of us guys call 'unfairly handsome'") with tossed-off brilliant analysis of scene design (one I always use now: "The end moment in a turning point scene should reflect the type of story it is, so the first scene in a romantic comedy should have a romantic comic ending event"-- sounds simple? Well, try it if you've ever been told that your romantic comedy just doesn't feel like a romantic comedy, try making sure that the very last bit of the first scene is romantic and comic). So when I marvelled at the insightfulness, this writer said bitterly, and, to my mind, obscurely and oddly, "Can we say 'um' and 'uh'? I wish I had a nickel for every time he said one of those!" Later she told me she'd been president of her local Toastmasters chapter. Anyway, this article mentions that Toastmasters used to fine members -- you got it-- a nickel for every "disfluency". (Way to miss the point, huh? :)

Anyway, linguist John McWhorter points out that these show up in most every language, and the "tone" determines whether "un-uh" and "uh-huh" are negatives or positives. And they're mostly vocalisms (though there are some equivalents in written language, n'est-ce pas?). And they are actually more "fluencies" (easing discourse) than "dis"fluencies. But interesting anyway, and if Robert McKee does it, that means it's cool. :)

Alicia

Groovy article about slang

2011-08-18T09:00:00.000-05:00

Groovy article about why "cool" is always cool, and groovy isn't.
A

Flotsam and jetsam

2011-08-13T06:40:00.001-05:00

Here's a newsletter about words, the origin of them, I mean. I'm enjoying the current issue, which explains how "flotsam and jetsam" are actually legal terms for material lost off cargo ships, and there are two other categories, and they indicate whether you can legally scavenge them, which would be useful, no?

INFO WORLDWIDEWORDS

This e-magazine is also available as an RSS feed, whose source is
at http://www.worldwidewords.org/rss/newsletter.xml .

Back issues are at http://www.worldwidewords.org/backissues/ .

None of this is a moral issue....

2011-08-12T00:03:00.000-05:00

Been accosted the other day by a couple questioners who made me think about morality and writing. That is, I don't think most writing issues are moral issues. It's not a moral failing, goodness knows, to use adverbs, or not to use adverbs. You don't need my permission or a saint's benediction to use omniscient POV, and headhopping is not a "sin".

None of this is a moral issue. How you choose to write your story is personal and practical, but not moral, as long as (here I get moralistic :) you do your best and never forget the reader.

That said, just about anything can be done well or done badly. I am continually perplexed by the notion so many writers have that someone else doing something well gives them permission to do it badly. You know: Tolstoy headhops! Why can't I? (Well, maybe, just maybe, Tolstoy does it better? Just a thought.)

All that counts is results. If you do headhopping in a way that adds to the quality of the story, zoom! There goes my bias against headhopping! But if, as most writers find, headhopping detracts from the quality of the story, then all you've done is give me more reason to mutter darkly about how dangerous such weapons are in unskilled hands. (You seriously don't want me muttering darkly. Maria Callas, I ain't.)

We are both of us analytical, and we've seen about everything in submissions and contest entries. We've seen all sorts of writing choices done well, and done badly, We try to warn off writers from the choices that tend to be done poorly, and/or suggest ways that some writers have done this exact thing well, or that we think might work around the icebergs and sandbars. But always, always, the trick here is to do something well, and you know what? The reader is the one that gets to judge that. Not you. Not me. Not Tolstoy.

But just remember this: That Tolstoy could do (whatever) well doesn't grant you absolution to do it badly. Serve the story, not some weird writing commandment or mutiny. This truly isn't about you. I am not your reader, not your editor, not, heaven forfend, your boss. Do what you want. But never forget the whole purpose of this enterprise is to give the reader a good experience. Ignoring that commandment is the only sin we've got in this free-wheeling art of ours.
Alicia

Good Article About Writing Productivity

2011-08-11T14:08:00.000-05:00

This is a good article that looks more closely at the old rule of thumb that we must write ten thousand hours before we achieve anything approaching mastery. Worth a read.

Theresa

2011-08-04T17:59:00.000-05:00

To no real purpose (of course, a poem should not mean but be), I've been reading and re-reading this Elegy. It's "for Fortinbras" but it's actually Fortinbras elegizing Hamlet. I'm altogether fascinated by the enjambment, the poetical technique of flowing the syntax of lines together to create a dual meaning, something we don't do much in prose (but Your Fearless Blogger determined to make it so). Anyway, I take this back to the notion of "form as metaphor." The emjambment, that flowing together, amplifies what Shakespeare did in the play between these two, where Fortinbras the bold soldier-prince is a foil for Hamlet the thoughtful philosopher-prince.

That is, the formal technique of enjambment is a metaphor for the complex relationship between these two. See that Herbert goes between stressing the differences between the two (separate "sentences" in enjambment) to stressing the similarities (the flowing together in lines). The relationship between the two isn't even clear, but it's a relationship-- are they lovers (I could never think of your hands without smiling) or just fellow princes (Now that we’re alone we can talk prince man to man) or opposites (You will have a soldier’s funeral without having been a soldier/the only ritual I am acquainted with a little, or each other's futures (both will be "black ants). Enjambment is a physical, concrete way to show that intangible connection.

Form doesn't just follow function, as the architects say. Form reinforces the message. It's a metaphor for the message. This is, if possible, even more important in popular fiction, which relies on the traditional storytelling forms to reflect something deep and essential and universal about the human condition or human nature. The form of a genre or tradition is a manifestation of the underlying theme or message. So the battle between the doctor and the monster in Frankenstein, for example, is a common metaphor in horror for the battle between the "good self" and the "bad self" within each of us.

What is the "surface" metaphor in your storytelling tradition, and what does it reflect? I really believe thinking this through might help us deepen the subtext of our stories.

Alicia

We Stand on the Shoulders of Giants? Or We Prefer Pipsqueaks?

2011-08-02T11:10:00.004-05:00

In recent months, I've heard writers diss or dismiss these "giants":
Aristotle
Euripedes
Shakespeare
Austen
Dickens

Here I don't mean a reader expressing personal taste ("Dickens doesn't do it for me") or analyzing and finding some issue ("Dickens's plotting so often relies on ridiculous contrivances"). But rather the dissing is (I think) as much about the writer's own writing than reading: "Dickens has nothing to teach me about writing."

I keep hearing variations of this, probably because I am too much the blowhard about how great all these guys are, or because of lingering resentment of "the dead white guys" (of course, Austen isn't a guy, and they're all dead because it's been centuries ...), or because the speaker thinks I'm the elitist talking about stuff I learned in grad school (actually, I was reading most of them in middle school, but that sounds even more elitist, doesn't it? But MOST of us were reading them in middle school, because that's when they're taught).

And you know, really, you can make a case for any of that, and if you want to make that case, go ahead, I'm listening (and my arguing back with you doesn't mean you're wrong or, conversely, that I'm stomping on your freedom of speech). But now I'm talking as a writing teacher, and WTF?

Yes. Categorically. Every writer has something to learn from each of them. You don't HAVE to learn from them. It's entirely possible to be a great writer without ever having read any of them. It's possible even to be a great writer in English without reading any of them. However, that doesn't mean they've nothing to teach you, only that you might not need to learn it, and/or that learning it would cramp your own style. (And this would be a much better case if writers who dissed them were more obviously great writers on their own.:)

But the real point here is: Don't come to a writing teacher and then get all patronizing about how wrongly my advice was formed (I rely on the shoulders of giants, etc.). For that matter, don't ask anyone for advice and then dismiss it to their faces. You don't have to take it, and you can even argue about it, but it's plain rude to be patronizing to someone that a minute ago you thought was worth asking for advice. What's a good response to advice you have no respect for? "Thanks so much for your time. I'll definitely have to think about this!" Then don't think about it, and go ask someone else next time.

Anyway, this dismissal of my advice isn't any big deal (I give bad advice all the time, I'm sure, to judge by how many politely reply, "Thanks so much for your..." :). But it does trouble me how frequently this dismissal is not of me (fair game, and hey, I can take it), but of the relevance of the above to writing today. Let me try to enumerate what and why--

1. Well, first, it's wrong. Dickens has a lot to teach modern writers; so do all the others. They are by no means the ONLY ones who can show modern writers something, and definitely we can discuss what Racine might have to offer, or Zadie Smith, etc. But yes, Shakespeare's examples of comic plotting are just as useful today as they were in his own time-- more maybe. These writers are a large part, or representative thereof, of the cultural soup that we all imbibe before writing, whether we admit it or not, and didn't just imbibe it, but contributed ingredients for it.

Even the writers (from Keats to Joyce, particularly) who consciously tried to push away, say, the overwhelming bulk of Shakespeare influence, were pushing away FROM Shakespeare. Shakespeare gave them something to rebel against; he was the big daddy who started the buggy company whose domination made you decide you had to invent the automobile just to show him. That is, whether we admit it or not, if we write in the English language (or the large genre of fiction in almost any language), we're going to be influenced by these guys and many others. Why be so delighted to be misinformed enough to dismiss it?

2. It's a sign of limited understanding. There's a great moment in Woody Allen's Annie Hall where he suddenly produces Marshall McLuhan to wither a debater's phallus: "You know nothing of my work!" McLuhan pronounces. And in fact, so often when I hear the sort of "nothing to learn from (name of giant guy)" it's rapidly clear that the speaker "knows nothing of the work". (Hey, I've taught college students for 20 years. I can tell when a student hasn't done the homework. :)

As I said, real disagreement is worth expressing, but you might actually have to know something better to diss it than to celebrate it. TS Eliot studied Hamlet for years and years before deciding that it was an "artistic failure," and his criticism is cogent enough that we can learn from that. (In fact, I think to some degree he's nailed it-- an essential problem with the play, and maybe a clue to the reason it's so long-- because S was aware something was wrong and kept writing hoping to figure it out.)

And it helps a diss if you're scathingly hilarious at it, like Twain on James Fennimore Cooper. Of course, that requires even more work! It's actually a lot less work to look for and find one of the many things you can learn from Shakespeare ("You know what I just learned? Foils. Shakespeare really did a great job using foils to show character journey"). If you want to diss him, you have to maybe read a lot more of the work, and why read a whole lot of something you don't like?

3. It's pretentious. Woody Allen again-- I think probably he is a genuine enthusiast surrounded by "fashionable pessimism," as he terms it, so he keeps encountering these pretentious "Van GOCH" people most of us would avoid. But he comes across a couple -- the man is named "Yale," which just goes to show something, at least his unfortunate choice in parents-- who proudly declare that they keep track of people they think are "overrated". And Allen is left sputtering, "Mahler??? Mahler is overrated? Bergman? Where the hell does this little Radcliffe tootsie get off spouting that Scott Fitzgerald is overrated?"

This kind of dismissal is just cheap. It's really easy to do, and when you do it without, you know, Eliot's erudition or Twain's acid pen, you might come off as, well, jealous. Heck, Eliot, erudite as he is, comes off as jealous.

4. It's narrow. "I'm sure Euripedes had lots of influence on Greek theater, but I write fiction, not drama, and anyway, I'm not Greek." Cough. Choke. Greek theater probably has more to teach us fiction writers than ever, because fiction is getting more visual (we live in the age of cinema and TV, after all). Even if you're Italian.

I remember -- I guess I know some pretentious people myself! Hey, Woody! My bro!-- hearing some contracts lawyer say dismissively, "Clarence Darrow might have been a crackerjack defense attorney--" (I love that "might have been" :)-- "but he knew nothing about contract law!" To which I replied, "WTF?" (Or something like that.) (In fact, the dh reminds me that Darrow started out in contracts law.)

"Michael Jordan might have been a good basketball player, but he couldn't hit a fastball!"

Greatness in any form is worth learning from, or at least acknowledging. And being great at one thing does suggest that you might have insight into other things, if only "why I'm not so great at that other thing." (I bet MJ has some good theories about fastballs.)

But more than that, the world and especially creativity are full of patterns that replicate in different media. One of the tenets of modernism (a "school" across several art forms) is that writers can learn from artists and vice versa. By narrowing the perspective so much in order to dismiss a possible influence, we have to deliberately ignore the reality of the wide scope of creativity. Frank Lloyd Wright, for example ("just some architect" of course :), drew a lot of inspiration from Japanese woodcut artists who were in their turn influenced by, get this, Ralph Waldo Emerson. The "Greek dramatist" similarly drew widely from other influences like epic poetry and legal philosophy, which should be a lesson to us all. To create something really new in our medium, we might open our minds to another art form or genre and see what we can steal. I mean, learn.

5. It's insecure. Sometimes I get the idea that the dismisser is insecure about his or her work, and that shows in the dismissal especially of contradicting advice, wisdom, or example. Someone doing something differently from me doesn't make my own work crumble to dust, however, and I shouldn't fear that. What I might be afraid of, however, is that when someone points out, say, that Shakespeare had "negative capability" -- that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason-- I might realize that my personal need to have everything calm and complete has resulted in a sterile story... and I really don't want to realize that. I mean, what am I going to do about it, but give up writing forever, huh?

Well, I guess now I've realized it, another possible option is to explore how I could experiment with leaving something ambiguous in my story, maybe go with a bittersweet not happy ending, or quit striving for a contrivedly "perfect" match of conflict and character need and instead go into the character and see where that leads. We might all benefit from a bit of "negative capability" about our own work, allowing ourselves to be momentarily uncertain of its universal and constant "rightness".

Something I've always noticed is that writers who are good or on the way to being good generally aren't this way. They might "protect the work" by deliberately shielding themselves from influences-- many writers won't read fiction while they're writing fiction, frex-- and they might be resistant to wasting a lot of time in cafes and blogs talking about writing rather than writing. (Harrumph.) I get that. (I even sort of admire that, I say as I head out to hang with some other writers at the coffeehouse where we're going to totally diss JK Rowling-- wanna come?) But they aren't dismissive of the value of others' examples or advice. They just don't want, for a number of reasons, to learn that way. They learn better by doing, maybe. And some, of course, learn by learning, and like to study what others have done. (I happen to be, I learn so late in life, more analytical than creative, and it occurs to me that there are some who are more creative than analytical, and might not benefit so much from analysis.)

Just dismissing ("Dickens has nothing to teach ME about writing") is a sign that the writer has a way to go towards confidence in his/her own work, or rather, having work good enough to legitimately inspire confidence. And often, you know, I get the idea that if Dickens agreed with this writer ("See? Dickens's narrative roamed back and forth across the continent, and if he can do that, I can do him one better-- mine zips all over the cosmos!"), the writer would not be dismissive of Dickens's relevance. Again, that's a sign of insecurity, accepting wisdom only when it correlates with what you've already thought.

(Once an attendee at one of my 8-hour workshops came up to me afterwards and said proudly, "I've already thought everything you said!" And he meant that as a compliment! How smart I was to think the same thing he's already thought! I felt like a big rubber stamp. "Approved!" That's all I was good for to him. And I suspect-- or at least I hope-- I didn't in EIGHT HOURS -just- replicate his pre-existing brilliance, or he should be the one getting paid to share it, right?)

6. It's short-sighted. When I started working at the writing center, we frequently observed the "varied voices" dynamic of teaching. Some student would come in and stubbornly (I'm always making personal value judgments, unwarranted no doubt, about people who don't take my advice :) resist what I had to teach about, say, topic sentences. And then the next week she'd come in and pointedly request another tutor, often that one with the cool Aussie accent-- hey, Belinda, miss you-- and I'd overhear that tutor talking about "idea coordinates" and the student would say, "Oh! Is that like that topic thing Alicia was blathering about last week?" and go away and now happily write effective TOPIC SENTENCES only to call them "idea coordinates" forevermore. Many voices. We can never know what voice will get through our thick skulls to the grey matter underneath, and that is quite enough of that mixed metaphor, I promise!

And I can't tell you how many students-- well, two-- came back after a semester or so to say, "Oh, Alicia, now that I am more experienced, wiser, and older, I get what you meant about using the last sentence to make a final point about the significance of the thesis! Wow! That was brilliant! I'm glad I've lived long enough to realize just how brilliant you are!" (Okay, maybe the students said just a few of those words, and not necessarily in a row like that.) We don't always know what insights will resonate for months, like the tune to a country song, and suddenly make perfect sense when we're presented with the right opportunity to make use of it. ("That Garth song about friends in low places! I so get it now that I've got my own favorite dive named the Oasis! It RHYMES! I can do it in karaoke!")

If we dismiss advice out of hand when we first hear it, we might never get the echo later when we need it. And now that we finally recognize the brilliance of the adviser, we might have alienated her so much by our early resistance that she won't give us any more time-release wisdom.

7. It's mean. "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach." Okay, maybe, sometimes. Teaching is itself an skill worthy of respect, I think (I would think that, though, wouldn't I?). And sometimes brilliance in doing doesn't translate to brilliance in teaching. (I'm reminded of Larry Bird, great great player, not very good coach. Same with Bill Russell.) Vice versa too. Often the middling player is the one who studies the game most (hoping maybe to get a bit of advantage) and shares it best. (For some reason, perhaps traumatized by the prospect of an NBA lockout, I'm thinking in basketball analogies today, but really, has anyone else noticed that the championship-less Indiana Pacers-- yes, they had championships in the ABA, lest we forget, which is a lot cooler-- turn out disproportionate number of good TV basketball commentators-- Jalen Rose, Chris Mullin, Clark Kellogg, Mark Jackson-- and only one of these could be universally acclaimed a great player? Hey, diss Shakespeare all you like, but don't you diss my Reggie! And no, Mullin wasn't better; stop smoking that funny weed and watch some highlight reels.)

After all, Aristotle didn't write great drama, but he wrote great drama commentary. Distance can help with analysis, and we can learn from that, especially when we're down there in the creative muck with no distance at all.

And and and and! You know what I really love? When someone else first makes a mistake so I don't have to make it myself! I was just noticing this in the comments to an agent's blogpost about how self-publishers need agents too. Anyway, along with all those current and would-be clients who, not being stupid like I have been in the past so they didn't have to be, averred often and enthusiastically how utterly wonderful the agent was, were a few grizzled veterans of various publishing wars who were willing , nay, eager, to share what they learned from their many wounds--loudly and obnoxiously, perhaps, but honestly. (As the proud possessor of seven count 'em seven former agents, I tend to get obstreperous on this subject myself, though not on an agent's blog. I'm not THAT helpful.) You know, some of us learn best by trial and error, emphasis on the "error," and in fact, the method of acquiring the knowledge might make it even sounder. Frex, when some guy who took his then-agent's advice and turned down a million-dollar advance for his history of the toilet because surely somewhere in publishing was an even bigger fool who will offer him two mill says now, "Don't listen to your agent! Grab that bird in hand and squeeze it till it poops!" well, I don't know about you, but I pay attention. This guy knows whence he speaks! There's something about a veteran's woulda coulda shoulda that gets me where I live. And I like the generosity here, the "I was stupid so you don't have to be," the willingness to admit mistakes and share lessons learned, like "I learned that all agents aren't all-knowing all the time."

Of course, then other commenters inevitably respond huffily, "I don't know why on the internet there are so many whiners and complainers who just want to tear everyone else down and destroy dreams and impugn the integrity of the Greatest Editor/Agent/Publisher/Human Being Evuh!"

Oh, then there's the priceless, "And notice he didn't sign his name! 'Anonymous' is a big coward! See, I signed MY name when I said proudly that (blog owner) is the greatest writer since Euripedes, no! Even better! She's not GREEK!" Uh, yes, when we're sharing horror stories, we might be a bit less likely to use our names than when we're kissing up. Just a thought. Maybe when you're a bit older and no longer blinded by Justin Bieber's smoldering gaze, you'll understand how a writer might be disenchanted with Big Publishing and still not quite ready to destroy any potential future in it.

Anyway, scoffing, "And what NYTimes bestsellers have YOU penned lately?" works only if you yourself have had a NYT bestseller lately. And generally those who have had bestsellers know it's bad form to insult someone trying to help. Don't forget what that non-NYTimes bestseller John Lennon used to say, "Instant karma's going to get you, gonna knock you upside the head."

First rule of life: Don't be mean. Or rather: First rule, flush. And second rule, don't be mean.

"Thanks so much for your time. I'll definitely have to think about this!"

Alicia

Ari Gold's Worst Thing

2011-07-26T09:58:00.000-05:00

This post will contain some mild spoilers for the final season opener for Entourage. If you want to see it and haven't yet, hold off on reading this post. Otherwise, soldier on for a discussion of why a certain plotting technique doesn't always work with antiheroes and other scoundrels.

If you watch Entourage, you know that talent agent Ari Gold isn't always a nice man. And he isn't always a bad man. In fact, he's cut in largely the same mold as Vito Corleone, the classic antihero: ruthless about business dealings, fiercely loyal to his people, willing to stop at nothing to destroy his enemies, and above all, a dedicated husband and father. Above all? Yes, above all, because the "family man" angle on this character type is what allows an audience to cheer for and ultimately love these characters. Sure, they stole (clients and cash) and committed all manner of other bad acts. But they did it for their families.

Ari says it over and over again to his wife through the course of the series. "I'm doing this so you can have six weeks traveling this summer, and our children can go to the best schools," and so on. He loves his wife, and that's evident even if he doesn't always treat her well. (In fairness, she's not always a devoted and supportive wife, either.) In fact, they spend much of the first 8 seasons in marital counseling. Some of the clips from these counseling sessions are genius, and here's one that demonstrates the tension in his character between work and family life:

So,he loves his wife. He loves his kids. It's not all smooth sailing, but if there is one person on the planet who can bring Ari Gold to his knees, it's Mrs. Ari. In fact, the clip I really wanted to show you guys, but couldn't find on youtube, was the one where they hired a clown for Ari's son's birthday party. Ari is hanging out at the party when he gets a call that he must go take care of something in person. His wife protests. They quarrel. He insists that he has to leave because his job pays for all these things, and she says something like, "Listen, Agent Boy, if you're not back in time for the clown, you're in big trouble." And he sort of collapses, all the bravado deflating in one whoosh, and he promises to be back in time for the clown. Mrs. Ari wins, and you get the feeling she's one of the few people, if not the only person, who can win this kind of response from him.

This brings us to the plotting device. We've all heard the suggestion. Imagine the worst thing that could happen to your character, and then do it to him. This can be a very useful plotting tool, but it's not all-purpose, and Ari Gold shows us why. In the season finale last series, Air's wife asked him for a separation. And in the season opener this week, when he begs to move back in, she tells him she's seeing someone else. The most important thing to Ari is his family, his wife and kids, right? So now we see that being removed from him.

But here's why this is a problem. Ari's not an heroic character. He's an antihero. His redeeming virtue -- the characteristic that is largely responsible for keeping him from sliding over into villainous territory -- is his love for his family. And they're removing that from his world.

Now, we don't know how the season will develop. It's possible that Ari will move heaven and earth to get his wife back. This would be in keeping with his character, though her betrayal might be something he can't get over. Loyalty is very important to him. But if they spin the subplot so that it becomes a challenge to Ari's notion of loyalty rather than a removal of his redeeming characteristic, we might not have a problem.

Otherwise, we're in a bit of trouble here. Ari could quickly become despicable. At the moment, he's just lost. He wound up the episode by diving into a bottle of vodka, and he was so emotionally wrecked that he didn't even realize it was fake, non-alcoholic vodka. Where he goes from here could be somewhere interesting, or somewhere that the audience won't want to follow. Anyone have any guesses as to what might happen next? Anyone see another path to redemption for Ari, other than fighting to get his family back?

Theresa

Agents and direct publishing?

2011-07-25T14:45:00.000-05:00

There's a discussion (h/t Bethany!) in the comments at the Book Ends (Agency) blog, about what role if any an agent has with direct publishing. What do you all think? Do you think an agent can help, and if so, how much do you think an agent's participation is worth? (They mostly get 15% when they make a deal for you with a traditional publisher.)

Alicia

Today at RU

2011-07-22T09:12:00.000-05:00

Did you get a request from a pitch at nationals? Good for you! Here's a checklist of ten things to do before you send in your requested full manuscript.

Theresa

What is Melodrama?

2011-07-20T13:54:00.000-05:00

Last week, I wrote about a lesser-used technique to cheat melodrama, and that prompted several people to ask me, "What's melodrama?" These weren't idle questions. So many times, in these discussions, I heard people give a variation of the old definition-of-pornography standard. "I can't describe it, but I know it when I see it." We know when something feels melodramatic, but we don't always know why it feels that way.

So I thought it might make make sense to talk about some of the ways drama tilts over into melodrama. Let's start by establishing a basic concept we've discussed before in other contexts on this blog: proportion matters. The size of a reaction should be roughly the same as the size of the action that caused it. The amount of attention paid to a particular setting or character or action should match the relative importance of that setting or character or action.

There are times we manipulate proportion to achieve certain effects. For example, in mysteries, we often try to hide clues in plain sight by mentioning them in small ways, and then surrounding them with bigger things. "Hey, look, there's a bullet hole in this wall. AND OMG SOMETHING JUST EXPLODED AND BLEW ME OUT OF MY BOOTS." The explosion might make good plot (in context), but the bullet hole is the detail we're trying t sneak into plain sight.

Another good example of minimized proportion is when a reaction is underplayed for effect. The quietness of a response can cause an extra zing of emotion for the surprised reader. This is the kind of thing that has to be deftly controlled in order to build up to the moment appropriately. Otherwise, it will lose impact instead of gaining it.

There's a great example of this kind of underplayed response in the tv series, "Lost in Austen," about a modern London woman, Amanda Price, who finds herself inserted into Elizabeth Bennet's role in Pride and Prejudice. When Amanda Price first meets Darcy at the assembly dance in Meryton, the moment is underplayed for dramatic effect. Mr. Bingley just asked Amanda to dance, and she declined but lied to him about the reason. Darcy can call her out as a liar if he chooses, something which would not be out of character for the scrupulously honest Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. The moment is beautifully underplayed, and music and a slow pace are used to heighten suspense so that the underplayed response packs an even bigger punch. Here, watch the clip, or the first minute and a half, anyway:

See what I mean? The easy banter between Amanda and Bingley shifts into an almost menacing mood. Slow turn, slow walk, scowl, clashing music, and then, that single word murmured very softly. That is the opposite of melodrama, even if it packs a big wallop of emotion. In other words, an underplayed emotion can still be very powerful. It's not that the emotion is lost, just that it is presented in a different manner.

So if the opposite of melodrama is a minimized detail, then melodrama itself is an exaggerated detail. The purpose of this exaggeration is to make an emotional appeal to the reader. The problem, though, is that melodrama feels cheap, like a giant flashing neon sign reading, "TIME TO BE SAD,'" or "NOW LET'S GET SUPER ANGRY." It creates a passive entertainment experience because the readers don't have to work for it or even become deeply engaged with the text. Everything is on the surface in giant glowing letters. It's too easy.

Melodrama can take many forms. Usually, when we talk about melodrama, we're talking about the emotional component of a scene. If the emotion is bigger than the situation warrants, it's melodramatic. But situations themselves can be melodramatic, as in soap operas where the outlandish is ordinary and the impossible is routine and coincidence is the savior of plot contrivances. And characters can also be melodramatic if they're exaggerated into near-caricatures -- like the villain (and we've all read this villain somewhere or other) whose vicious behavior is never explained. He's evil because he's the villain, and he's the villain because he's evil, and his motivation doesn't get much deeper than that. Another example -- the evil bitch ex-girlfriend in romance, or the first husband who was either physically abusive or sexually impotent. The romantic unfitness of these characters is exaggerated until you wonder why anyone ever agreed to a second date with them, let alone a long-term involvement.

I don't know if that will give you a foolproof way to identify melodrama, or if we're still in "I know it when I see it" territory. But the basic idea is that melodrama results from exaggeration. Learn to evaluate relative proportions of different fiction elements, and you'll have no trouble spotting melodrama.

Theresa