Cheers!
Showing posts with label creative writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label creative writing. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
One for the Locker: Charlie Jane Anders on Worldbuilding
Like I said last week, I'm taking a class on worldbuilding, and we just got a great link to a worldbuilding checklist. I want to have it to hand, and I want to share it, so here it is, preserved in the locker for posterity.
Monday, June 16, 2014
Some Thoughts on Markets, Authors, and Submitting Short Stories
So while I'm working on my various summer short fiction projects, I've been doing a lot more thinking about traditional publishing and submitting stories to the few markets that pay very well.
Really, there aren't very many.
I've also been reading more of them. I work my way through a story every morning at breakfast now, and it's been a fantastic addition to my day. I've also learned that there are an awful lot of very good writers creating very good short fiction out there, and that many of them have never published a novel.
And because let's go ahead and form a trifecta so we can triangulate my thoughts, I've also been thinking more about writing fiction for a living and how simultaneously terrifying, liberating, and exhilarating it must be.
These three things have come together and forced me to ask myself a new question every time I write a story. They have also shed some light on why traditionally published authors can be so darn hostile sometimes.
The question is this: Is what I'm writing so good that it deserves to take bread off someone's table and put it on mine instead?
Because that's an undeniable reality. Clarkesworld, Tor.com, Asimov's, Lightspeed, Apex, et al. only publish a few stories each every month. Depending on the particulars of a story (length, especially), the markets for it might be even more limited. There really isn't that much money to go around (and for the record, it's better in SFF than it is in other genres), and if some of it goes to me, it's not going to someone else. Someone else who's probably writing something great, and who may be depending on the sales of their short fiction to stay afloat.
I won't feel bad about that, but only if I'm writing something that's so damn good that when they read it, they'll agree with the editor for buying it.
This isn't to say that you shouldn't write and shouldn't seek markets for your writing once you've finished it. But it's a piece of the puzzle that I had forgotten about, and it's worth remaining conscious of.
Cheers, and Happy Monday,
Jeff
Really, there aren't very many.
I've also been reading more of them. I work my way through a story every morning at breakfast now, and it's been a fantastic addition to my day. I've also learned that there are an awful lot of very good writers creating very good short fiction out there, and that many of them have never published a novel.
And because let's go ahead and form a trifecta so we can triangulate my thoughts, I've also been thinking more about writing fiction for a living and how simultaneously terrifying, liberating, and exhilarating it must be.
These three things have come together and forced me to ask myself a new question every time I write a story. They have also shed some light on why traditionally published authors can be so darn hostile sometimes.
The question is this: Is what I'm writing so good that it deserves to take bread off someone's table and put it on mine instead?
Because that's an undeniable reality. Clarkesworld, Tor.com, Asimov's, Lightspeed, Apex, et al. only publish a few stories each every month. Depending on the particulars of a story (length, especially), the markets for it might be even more limited. There really isn't that much money to go around (and for the record, it's better in SFF than it is in other genres), and if some of it goes to me, it's not going to someone else. Someone else who's probably writing something great, and who may be depending on the sales of their short fiction to stay afloat.
I won't feel bad about that, but only if I'm writing something that's so damn good that when they read it, they'll agree with the editor for buying it.
This isn't to say that you shouldn't write and shouldn't seek markets for your writing once you've finished it. But it's a piece of the puzzle that I had forgotten about, and it's worth remaining conscious of.
Cheers, and Happy Monday,
Jeff
Friday, June 13, 2014
Some (More) Thoughts on Worldbuilding
Hello, dear readers!
I'm back from my trip to the Great Upstate, where much planning of weddings was done and I even managed to read most of a book. Hazah! Now it's back to work, and I feel quite refreshed.
I gave up on the idea that I was going to an authorial wunderkind years ago and resigned myself to what I think of as the Rod Smith approach (Denver Broncos fans will probably know what I mean here, but the tldr is that he thought of himself as much less talented than the other topguys people in his field, so he made sure to work twice as hard). Part of that, for me, is a constant drive to improve various aspects of my writing from book to book. I have a long list of things I want to get better at, and one of them is worldbuilding.
So I'm taking a class from Scott Lynch of Gentleman Bastards fame, and I'm learning more about worldbuilding and spending a lot of time thinking about it. Fairly early on, it became apparent to me that I build my best worlds in a way that's often been described to me as "lesser." To wit: my best worlds seem to be the ones I build as I go. When I build a world and then try to set a story in it, the story, and by extension the world it's set in, usually feels a little flat. I really have to struggle to get all the elements to line up. On the other hand, when I start with a story and then build a world around it, everything seems to fit together much more tightly and harmonize much better.
With the help of my classmates, I've come to call the second way "discovery-style" worldbuilding, because you discover things about the world as you write.
I was working on an exercise for the class last night, one for which I'd been tasked to write a short bit of description to accomplish some worldbuilding goals. I wrote it. It read like crap. Absolute crap. I even cheated by setting it in the Soulwoven world and choosing an interesting scene from the backstory to write (for the curious, it's the moment when Eshan and Crixine leave Duenel).
As I was describing a river in the distance (again, for the curious, the Soulth'nth---the one the characters travel up to reach the mountains in the end of the first book), I realized why.
When I do "discovery-style" worldbuilding, I get to create the setting to match the theme. A river only exists in a discovery-style narrative (that I write, anyway) because it serves a thematic purpose; it's a metaphor for a journey, or a point that must be crossed and can never be uncrossed (like the Rubicon, the Lethe, etc.), or one of any other number of things. When I set a story in a world that already exists, the river is there, and I must describe it if the characters are looking at it. That's very limiting to me as a storyteller.
I'm glad that I spent months building the Soulwoven world, writing history and language and geography and myth. Doing that taught me a lot about how to build worlds, and I have a better sense now of what I need to discover when I'm writing them discovery-style (though I'm still learning and probably always will be). Plus, that was how Tolkien built his world, and given how much the traditions I work in derive from his work, it felt good to follow in his footsteps for a while.
But I don't know that I'll build any big worlds like that again; they just don't quite fit my style.
I'm back from my trip to the Great Upstate, where much planning of weddings was done and I even managed to read most of a book. Hazah! Now it's back to work, and I feel quite refreshed.
I gave up on the idea that I was going to an authorial wunderkind years ago and resigned myself to what I think of as the Rod Smith approach (Denver Broncos fans will probably know what I mean here, but the tldr is that he thought of himself as much less talented than the other top
So I'm taking a class from Scott Lynch of Gentleman Bastards fame, and I'm learning more about worldbuilding and spending a lot of time thinking about it. Fairly early on, it became apparent to me that I build my best worlds in a way that's often been described to me as "lesser." To wit: my best worlds seem to be the ones I build as I go. When I build a world and then try to set a story in it, the story, and by extension the world it's set in, usually feels a little flat. I really have to struggle to get all the elements to line up. On the other hand, when I start with a story and then build a world around it, everything seems to fit together much more tightly and harmonize much better.
With the help of my classmates, I've come to call the second way "discovery-style" worldbuilding, because you discover things about the world as you write.
I was working on an exercise for the class last night, one for which I'd been tasked to write a short bit of description to accomplish some worldbuilding goals. I wrote it. It read like crap. Absolute crap. I even cheated by setting it in the Soulwoven world and choosing an interesting scene from the backstory to write (for the curious, it's the moment when Eshan and Crixine leave Duenel).
As I was describing a river in the distance (again, for the curious, the Soulth'nth---the one the characters travel up to reach the mountains in the end of the first book), I realized why.
When I do "discovery-style" worldbuilding, I get to create the setting to match the theme. A river only exists in a discovery-style narrative (that I write, anyway) because it serves a thematic purpose; it's a metaphor for a journey, or a point that must be crossed and can never be uncrossed (like the Rubicon, the Lethe, etc.), or one of any other number of things. When I set a story in a world that already exists, the river is there, and I must describe it if the characters are looking at it. That's very limiting to me as a storyteller.
I'm glad that I spent months building the Soulwoven world, writing history and language and geography and myth. Doing that taught me a lot about how to build worlds, and I have a better sense now of what I need to discover when I'm writing them discovery-style (though I'm still learning and probably always will be). Plus, that was how Tolkien built his world, and given how much the traditions I work in derive from his work, it felt good to follow in his footsteps for a while.
But I don't know that I'll build any big worlds like that again; they just don't quite fit my style.
Monday, May 5, 2014
Thoughts on Fictional Characters and Free Will
My sister recently sent me a link to this blog post, which contains a link to this blog post, which consists mostly of four questions for writers on how they think about their characters. I've been noodling it, and I figured I'd take a stab at answering them today, in part because somehow it got to be 11:00 p.m. and I still haven't written a blog post today.
So here goes.
1. Do you ever perceive your characters as having any free will? Do you feel like you consciously control everything your characters do, or do you sometimes feel like they control their own actions?
A two-part question! That's cheating. I don't think of my characters as having free will. One reason I think fiction is worth having (because this cannot be done to nearly the same degree in nonfiction) is that it allows you to very clearly lay out the chains of causation that lead people to take the actions they do. There are greater and lesser degrees of that in every story, and how much you show the reader is a creative choice, but in my head, every time a character takes an action, I know why. And that makes it difficult to maintain the illusion that they have any free will. The world is constantly pushing them into things, and even when they choose to buck what other people want them to do, they're still doing that because of who they are, which is a result of their life experiences.
No and no. But what the question seems to be digging for is "do you ever feel like your characters have more a mind of their own?" and the answer to that is yes. Every once in a while, a character seems to spring forth from the depths of my mind more or less fully formed. Their personality is so strong that I know what they're going to do in any given moment without understanding why or sometimes even knowing more than the most basic facts about their history. And when that happens, they surprise me more often.
Yes. Maybe it's a sign that I'm not as tight a writer as I'd like to be, but I imagine this happens to everyone. When I write, I leave space inside the narrative for the reader to inhabit. Every person who reads my books will read them slightly differently. Thinking the way I do about stories (which is that they take place only in the reader's mind, and that the words on the page are really just code designed to evoke a story in someone's mind), it surprises me more often that anyone ever agrees on who my characters are.
Go ahead. Rub it in. I'll have you know that Peter Jackson has been alerted to my book, so it's only a matter of time before he turns it into a trilogy.
So here goes.
1. Do you ever perceive your characters as having any free will? Do you feel like you consciously control everything your characters do, or do you sometimes feel like they control their own actions?
A two-part question! That's cheating. I don't think of my characters as having free will. One reason I think fiction is worth having (because this cannot be done to nearly the same degree in nonfiction) is that it allows you to very clearly lay out the chains of causation that lead people to take the actions they do. There are greater and lesser degrees of that in every story, and how much you show the reader is a creative choice, but in my head, every time a character takes an action, I know why. And that makes it difficult to maintain the illusion that they have any free will. The world is constantly pushing them into things, and even when they choose to buck what other people want them to do, they're still doing that because of who they are, which is a result of their life experiences.
That's not to say that my characters don't surprise me. They often do, if only because when I'm plotting or writing a first draft I often make assumptions about how they'll behave that don't add up when push comes to shove, or I learn/create things about them as I write that alter the way they interact with the world and with other characters.
2. Do you perceive your characters as having more free will (or more of a “mind of their own”) if they are similar to you or dissimilar to you? Does the point of view you are writing in ever affect this?
3. Do reader/fan reactions ever change your understanding of who a character “really is” (or have you ever discovered something you did not realize was true about one of your characters based on feedback from early readers?)
4. If you’ve ever had a movie made from your book, do you think the movie altered your mental image/concept/understanding of the character in any way?
Hope that's some interesting food for thought! And happy May.
Monday, April 21, 2014
Backstory
This is a very scattered blog post. Because the "log" part of "blog" comes from a time when blogs were more or less public, online substitutes for journals, and sometimes I like to use mine that way still.
Backstory is a very interesting thing. In case you're unfamiliar with the term, it's the part of the book that explains the things that happened before it. Like in The Lord of the Rings when Gandalf tells Frodo about the Ring. It's a very old thing; the Greeks used to do it with choruses of singing people in plays.
When you learn how to write, particularly if you write fantasy or science fiction, one of the first things people are likely to tell you to do is to cut out extraneous backstory. Done poorly, it bogs down a narrative and confuses readers. This is especially true if it's not immediately relevant and triple-dog-dare true if the reader isn't sure who and what the story is about yet.
But a lot of authors use backstory pretty intensively nonetheless. I'm reading Among Others by Jo Walton for my local SF/F indie store's book club, and I just finished a whole long passage of backstory. I've noticed others in Neil Gaiman (American Gods) and Scott Lynch (Lies of Locke Lamora) recently as well. I've noticed it in a whole lot of other authors too, but I can't remember whom or in what books precisely.
And it has occurred to me that when backstory is done right, you can get away with an awful lot of it.
The trick is to focus on the story part of the word.
When backstory works best, it's structured as a little miniature story within the story, almost like flash fiction. It has a beginning and a middle and an end. There's an important event that starts it and an important event that finishes it. The people or things being discussed change in the middle in interesting ways. And ideally it tells you something about characters you already know about and has some kind of impact on the plot.
Of further note: once you've demonstrated that when you use backstory it has an impact on the plot once, readers will trust that anytime you use it from that point on it will become important later, unless you betray them.
Y'know, in case you were curious.
Backstory is a very interesting thing. In case you're unfamiliar with the term, it's the part of the book that explains the things that happened before it. Like in The Lord of the Rings when Gandalf tells Frodo about the Ring. It's a very old thing; the Greeks used to do it with choruses of singing people in plays.
When you learn how to write, particularly if you write fantasy or science fiction, one of the first things people are likely to tell you to do is to cut out extraneous backstory. Done poorly, it bogs down a narrative and confuses readers. This is especially true if it's not immediately relevant and triple-dog-dare true if the reader isn't sure who and what the story is about yet.
But a lot of authors use backstory pretty intensively nonetheless. I'm reading Among Others by Jo Walton for my local SF/F indie store's book club, and I just finished a whole long passage of backstory. I've noticed others in Neil Gaiman (American Gods) and Scott Lynch (Lies of Locke Lamora) recently as well. I've noticed it in a whole lot of other authors too, but I can't remember whom or in what books precisely.
And it has occurred to me that when backstory is done right, you can get away with an awful lot of it.
The trick is to focus on the story part of the word.
When backstory works best, it's structured as a little miniature story within the story, almost like flash fiction. It has a beginning and a middle and an end. There's an important event that starts it and an important event that finishes it. The people or things being discussed change in the middle in interesting ways. And ideally it tells you something about characters you already know about and has some kind of impact on the plot.
Of further note: once you've demonstrated that when you use backstory it has an impact on the plot once, readers will trust that anytime you use it from that point on it will become important later, unless you betray them.
Y'know, in case you were curious.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Research. Also Being Rusty.
Tonight I'm researching things I'd rather not have to research because I wish they didn't exist. There's a scene in Soulwoven: Exile that was very difficult to write, and that it's extremely important to me not to get wrong. So. Research. Dark Things. Frightening Things. A whole mess of unpleasantness that taps my pysche in all kinds of unsettling ways.
And it's Monday, and that's one of the days I blog now, and I don't really have anything else to talk about.
Oh! Except being rusty. Good. Let's focus on that because it's less of a bear to write about without spoiling. Also, it's a happier subject.
This morning I finished making revision notes on Soulwoven: Exile and started revising. At the end, actually. Because one of the great tricks of a good novel is the way the end wraps around to the beginning, and the end wasn't working quite right. I need to nail it down before I go back to the beginning and make sure the circle closes.
It's been a month and half since I wrote anything new, and man, am I rusty.
Returning to writing after a layoff is always a little bit terrifying. I'm never sure whether it's going to come back, or whether I'm just going to keep on sucking as much as I do for the first however-many-hours-it-takes-to-get-out-the-kinks. Inevitably, it comes back, and then I get better. Thank God.
But right now, I feel like a shadow of the writer who finished Soulwoven. And having spent most of the last month and a half staring at the pages of Soulwoven, I'm not sure how I'm ever going to achieve that level of polish again.
I will. I'm quite certain of it, because that's how this whole thing works. You just keep spitting and polishing and spitting and polishing until it shines. And the thing that is Soulwoven: Exile lying underneath the grime of I-haven't-polished-this-yet is going to be beautiful. It's better than Soulwoven. It may even be much better than Soulwoven. The final paragraph (which only became the final paragraph this morning, after I snipped off some extraneous bits) gave me shivers. I will get the rest of it to look like that too eventually.
But in the meantime, I'm scared. And that's normal. And I say that because I don't think there's anyone in my life who isn't scared about their career sometime, no matter how good they are at it. And if you're reading this, there's a reasonable chance you think I do a decent job as a writer. Maybe if I'm honest about how terrified I am of sucking sometimes you'll think of it someday when it can help you.
And that would be wonderful.
And it's Monday, and that's one of the days I blog now, and I don't really have anything else to talk about.
Oh! Except being rusty. Good. Let's focus on that because it's less of a bear to write about without spoiling. Also, it's a happier subject.
This morning I finished making revision notes on Soulwoven: Exile and started revising. At the end, actually. Because one of the great tricks of a good novel is the way the end wraps around to the beginning, and the end wasn't working quite right. I need to nail it down before I go back to the beginning and make sure the circle closes.
It's been a month and half since I wrote anything new, and man, am I rusty.
Returning to writing after a layoff is always a little bit terrifying. I'm never sure whether it's going to come back, or whether I'm just going to keep on sucking as much as I do for the first however-many-hours-it-takes-to-get-out-the-kinks. Inevitably, it comes back, and then I get better. Thank God.
But right now, I feel like a shadow of the writer who finished Soulwoven. And having spent most of the last month and a half staring at the pages of Soulwoven, I'm not sure how I'm ever going to achieve that level of polish again.
I will. I'm quite certain of it, because that's how this whole thing works. You just keep spitting and polishing and spitting and polishing until it shines. And the thing that is Soulwoven: Exile lying underneath the grime of I-haven't-polished-this-yet is going to be beautiful. It's better than Soulwoven. It may even be much better than Soulwoven. The final paragraph (which only became the final paragraph this morning, after I snipped off some extraneous bits) gave me shivers. I will get the rest of it to look like that too eventually.
But in the meantime, I'm scared. And that's normal. And I say that because I don't think there's anyone in my life who isn't scared about their career sometime, no matter how good they are at it. And if you're reading this, there's a reasonable chance you think I do a decent job as a writer. Maybe if I'm honest about how terrified I am of sucking sometimes you'll think of it someday when it can help you.
And that would be wonderful.
Monday, March 3, 2014
Unexpected Influences
I'm presently about halfway through doing the hand-annotated copies for early Soulwoven backers. Doing them has forced me to look at the book in a different way than I have before. Among other things, it's meant scanning for influences and spotting broad trends, because I jump around from page to page and sort of skim, which isn't a normal part of my writing or revising process.
One of the trends I've spotted is an unexpected influence.
I've never been a huge consumer of stories in the horror genre. When I was a kid, they terrified me. Like, seeing movie trailers for scary movies would give me nightmares, never mind the movies themselves.
And yet horror has its fingerprints all over key moments in Soulwoven.
It starts with the descriptions. When things get dark, really dark, the characters begin to see the world in the way that characters in horror stories do, where everything is out to get them. And their descriptions reflect that fact. There's a character with sharpened, yellowed teeth. There are undead crawling out of the ground and terrorizing people. And there's the dragon itself, floating in their minds and taunting, taunting, taunting them.
Soulwoven is a fantasy novel. There's no doubt in my mind about that. But if you wanted to, you could plot it against the structure of a horror novel and find a surprisingly high correlation. There's one (short) chapter, in particular, that's more ghost story than anything else in terms of structure.
So apparently, even though I didn't enjoy horror stories much growing up, and I still don't read a ton of them, they left a strong imprint on me. Maybe it's because they resonated so strongly with me that I didn't enjoy them. Or maybe it's because they terrorized me so much that their elements burned themselves so deeply into my brain. I can't really be sure.
But they're there nonetheless, and I don't think they're going anywhere. I suspect all writers have these sneaky little influences. There are things we're aware of that shape us (for me, Tolkien, Martin, Kay, Gaiman, Mieville, Hickman and Weis, the teams who wrote the Final Fantasy games, and much more), and there are influences we're not aware of until after the fact. With all the hours I've spent staring at and analyzing and fine-tuning this book, it's amazing to me that I continue to find things inside it I didn't know were there.
Incidentally, I think "What Lies in Darkness," the horror novellette I wrote for All Hallow's Write last year, is one of the best pieces of short fiction I've ever put together. It's up for free here on the blog as well as on Wattpad, and if you've got the stomach for horror, you might want to check it out.
One of the trends I've spotted is an unexpected influence.
I've never been a huge consumer of stories in the horror genre. When I was a kid, they terrified me. Like, seeing movie trailers for scary movies would give me nightmares, never mind the movies themselves.
And yet horror has its fingerprints all over key moments in Soulwoven.
It starts with the descriptions. When things get dark, really dark, the characters begin to see the world in the way that characters in horror stories do, where everything is out to get them. And their descriptions reflect that fact. There's a character with sharpened, yellowed teeth. There are undead crawling out of the ground and terrorizing people. And there's the dragon itself, floating in their minds and taunting, taunting, taunting them.
Soulwoven is a fantasy novel. There's no doubt in my mind about that. But if you wanted to, you could plot it against the structure of a horror novel and find a surprisingly high correlation. There's one (short) chapter, in particular, that's more ghost story than anything else in terms of structure.
So apparently, even though I didn't enjoy horror stories much growing up, and I still don't read a ton of them, they left a strong imprint on me. Maybe it's because they resonated so strongly with me that I didn't enjoy them. Or maybe it's because they terrorized me so much that their elements burned themselves so deeply into my brain. I can't really be sure.
But they're there nonetheless, and I don't think they're going anywhere. I suspect all writers have these sneaky little influences. There are things we're aware of that shape us (for me, Tolkien, Martin, Kay, Gaiman, Mieville, Hickman and Weis, the teams who wrote the Final Fantasy games, and much more), and there are influences we're not aware of until after the fact. With all the hours I've spent staring at and analyzing and fine-tuning this book, it's amazing to me that I continue to find things inside it I didn't know were there.
Incidentally, I think "What Lies in Darkness," the horror novellette I wrote for All Hallow's Write last year, is one of the best pieces of short fiction I've ever put together. It's up for free here on the blog as well as on Wattpad, and if you've got the stomach for horror, you might want to check it out.
Friday, November 1, 2013
All Hallows Write Wrap-up
Well, All Hallows Write 2013 is done, and I've had a few hours of sleep and am ready to start processing the experience a bit.
First off, it was really everything I hoped it would be. It was fun to have the pressure of an insane deadline and an ambitious project and to try to pull it off. And it feels immensely satisfying to have conceived this thing and brought it to life. I do think I'll try it again next year, though with some tweaks to make it a bit more palatable to people with jobs and lives and families. I missed out on a pretty fun holiday, and I don't want to do that every year.
The story itself...well, to be honest, I can't really evaluate it right now. I suppose I'll leave that up to you.It's here and will go up on Wattpad tomorrow. It was extremely ambitious to try to write in 13 hours, and I'm pretty amazed that I finished it. I got in two revision passes, which means that I'm pretty happy with the bones of the story (the plot details, the characterizations, etc.), but I'm also fairly certain that the language isn't as polished as I'd like.
Maybe more importantly, it showed me how little I really know about the horror genre. I'm wearing my influences baldly on my sleeves in the story. I'm not really breaking any new ground. I wanted it to be fun in the way that a haunted house can be fun, and I wanted it to make you think in the way that my favorite horror stories always do. I have no idea whether my use of the conventions I played with was trite or cliche, because I don't read enough horror to make that judgment.
It was good for several things, though. One, it scratched my itch to do something difficult that I'd never tried before, and that's not an itch I get to scratch all that much anymore now that I've put my adventuring days behind me in order to write seriously. Two, it stretched my mind. I got a chance to try out a new kind of story, a new kind of narrative, a new kind of suspense and atmosphere and tension, and that will probably seep into my other work in places where it's appropriate. Three, it showed me what I'm capable of when I have the time to work on a project properly.
Writing is a funny career, because in order to succeed at it without starving to death or getting very lucky, you must become so good at it that you can make a living working part-time before you jump into full-time. A lot of people never really do write full-time, because if you can make a living doing it part-time...why not relax and take your time and enjoy life? You (probably) suffered for years to get there.
I can't wait until I can do this full-time. Not a day goes by that I don't wonder whether the next project will be the one that lets me get there.
Anyway, if you enjoyed the story, let me know, and if you didn't, let me know that too. I really have no idea whether it's any good, and I'd appreciate the feedback.
Oh, and you can buy Three Dances here if you want more stories (sometimes every bit as weird, but not nearly so horrific) from me.
First off, it was really everything I hoped it would be. It was fun to have the pressure of an insane deadline and an ambitious project and to try to pull it off. And it feels immensely satisfying to have conceived this thing and brought it to life. I do think I'll try it again next year, though with some tweaks to make it a bit more palatable to people with jobs and lives and families. I missed out on a pretty fun holiday, and I don't want to do that every year.
The story itself...well, to be honest, I can't really evaluate it right now. I suppose I'll leave that up to you.
Maybe more importantly, it showed me how little I really know about the horror genre. I'm wearing my influences baldly on my sleeves in the story. I'm not really breaking any new ground. I wanted it to be fun in the way that a haunted house can be fun, and I wanted it to make you think in the way that my favorite horror stories always do. I have no idea whether my use of the conventions I played with was trite or cliche, because I don't read enough horror to make that judgment.
It was good for several things, though. One, it scratched my itch to do something difficult that I'd never tried before, and that's not an itch I get to scratch all that much anymore now that I've put my adventuring days behind me in order to write seriously. Two, it stretched my mind. I got a chance to try out a new kind of story, a new kind of narrative, a new kind of suspense and atmosphere and tension, and that will probably seep into my other work in places where it's appropriate. Three, it showed me what I'm capable of when I have the time to work on a project properly.
Writing is a funny career, because in order to succeed at it without starving to death or getting very lucky, you must become so good at it that you can make a living working part-time before you jump into full-time. A lot of people never really do write full-time, because if you can make a living doing it part-time...why not relax and take your time and enjoy life? You (probably) suffered for years to get there.
I can't wait until I can do this full-time. Not a day goes by that I don't wonder whether the next project will be the one that lets me get there.
Anyway, if you enjoyed the story, let me know, and if you didn't, let me know that too. I really have no idea whether it's any good, and I'd appreciate the feedback.
Oh, and you can buy Three Dances here if you want more stories (sometimes every bit as weird, but not nearly so horrific) from me.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
All Hallows Write Tonight!
Quick blog post for today, with the promise of a larger coming tomorrow.
Tonight I'm going to stay up all night and write a scary story. Because it's Halloween, and because that's the kind of thing that sounds like fun to me.
So tomorrow, there will be a brand new, hot-off-the-laptop scary story up on this blog for you to read. Hopefully it will be good. I have a plan for it, but according to the rules I made up for All Hallows Write, I can't put that plan on paper until sunset tonight, and that means I can't quite see how all the pieces are going to fit together yet.
And of course, these things always change in the writing anyway.
Why do this? Why have the rules? Why not break them?
For the same reason poets write haiku and sonnets and villanelles and sestinas. Sometimes having rules makes you more creative.
Anyway, it's going to be fun. If you're a Twitterer, you can follow the action starting at sunset (6:45 EST where I am) at the hashtag #AllHallowsWrite. If you're a Facebooker, you can watch my Facebook page, where my updates will stream automatically.
Hope you'll join in for a few hours and come back tomorrow to see what I've done. The plan is...ambitious.
But I have two energy drinks and am anticipating a surplus of Halloween candy to fuel me.
What could possibly go wrong?
Tonight I'm going to stay up all night and write a scary story. Because it's Halloween, and because that's the kind of thing that sounds like fun to me.
So tomorrow, there will be a brand new, hot-off-the-laptop scary story up on this blog for you to read. Hopefully it will be good. I have a plan for it, but according to the rules I made up for All Hallows Write, I can't put that plan on paper until sunset tonight, and that means I can't quite see how all the pieces are going to fit together yet.
And of course, these things always change in the writing anyway.
Why do this? Why have the rules? Why not break them?
For the same reason poets write haiku and sonnets and villanelles and sestinas. Sometimes having rules makes you more creative.
Anyway, it's going to be fun. If you're a Twitterer, you can follow the action starting at sunset (6:45 EST where I am) at the hashtag #AllHallowsWrite. If you're a Facebooker, you can watch my Facebook page, where my updates will stream automatically.
Hope you'll join in for a few hours and come back tomorrow to see what I've done. The plan is...ambitious.
But I have two energy drinks and am anticipating a surplus of Halloween candy to fuel me.
What could possibly go wrong?
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Some Thoughts on Publishing and Rejection
Today as I was doing first page critiques on Wattpad, I ran across a message from a follower of mine asking how I deal with the constant threat and reality of rejection as a writer. My response to her got a bit longer than the standard e-mail, and I think it's got some points that other people will find interesting as well, so I'm going to share it here.
My response below. Thanks to @fairyfree on Wattpad for the question. :-)
For me, that's harder to deal with than rejection. Rejection can happen for so, so many more reasons than bad writing. It can be because a publisher already has too many books like the one you're submitting, or because the editor dislikes something about your writing that another editor might love, or simply because they were tired and grumpy and not in a mood to cut you any slack when they were reading your submission.
Publishing is an incredibly subjective business. Every piece of writing has an audience, and just because something isn't likely to be commercially successful (Soulwoven, for instance), doesn't mean it's not good. But publishers are businesses, and they can't afford to acquire things they don't think will be commercially successful, so not everything gets acquired.
So don't despair over rejection. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're a bad writer or that you're doing anything wrong (though I certainly had bad novels of mine rightfully rejected early in my career). In the end, if you're writing books that you're proud of, you're winning, period. Readers are a remarkably varied and forgiving group of people, and if you love your work, someone else out there will too, even if it's not a publisher.
Happy Saturday, folks. Everyone is out of town today, so I'm working through the weekend. Wish me luck. :-)
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Letter to a Younger Me
Lately, I've been trying to respond to as many Wattpad readers of mine as possible about Soulwoven, and to interact with them however I can. I do it in part because it's "best practice," whatever that means, and in larger part because I genuinely enjoying connecting with readers. It's the first time in my career I've had a chance to do so, and I'm really having a good time with it.
Yesterday, I ran across a reader of mine who's a college student. He was asking for advice on writing from the Wattpad community. There are several things I would really like to be able to go back in time and say to my college self on the subject, so I told him so and let him know what they were.
It occurred to me later that the advice might be useful to more college writers than just him, so I am now posting it here:
Write every day. Make it a priority. You may have a lot of excuses not to, like classes and college life and trying to remain sane in a high stress environment. You may even tell yourself it will be better to wait until after college to start writing seriously, because you'll be better then. You would be wrong to do so. Write now. Write often. Write whenever you can, on top of everything else you're doing. It will never get any easier to do it, and you will kick yourself down the road if you don't.
Signed,
An Older Jeff
Yesterday, I ran across a reader of mine who's a college student. He was asking for advice on writing from the Wattpad community. There are several things I would really like to be able to go back in time and say to my college self on the subject, so I told him so and let him know what they were.
It occurred to me later that the advice might be useful to more college writers than just him, so I am now posting it here:
Write every day. Make it a priority. You may have a lot of excuses not to, like classes and college life and trying to remain sane in a high stress environment. You may even tell yourself it will be better to wait until after college to start writing seriously, because you'll be better then. You would be wrong to do so. Write now. Write often. Write whenever you can, on top of everything else you're doing. It will never get any easier to do it, and you will kick yourself down the road if you don't.
Signed,
An Older Jeff
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Craft Breakdown! Soulwoven Ch. 5
Hmm...this post was supposed to go up over my vacation, during the middle of week in which I had neither Internet nor running water, and was in fact enjoying myself very much swimming and sailing and playing games with my family and writing in the dead of the night, when all was quiet and peaceful. But I failed at Blogger and it didn't happen.
Also, I built a deck that week. A deck!
Anyway, on to the craft breakdown for Soulwoven Chapter 5. Spoilers to follow! Read the chapter here first.
In Chapter 5, we shift back into Ryse's head. Only a little time has passed since we left her preparing to run away from the Temple. In the interim, she has torn like a bat out of hell through the city and ended up at the Jins' house. She enters Litnig and Cole's room through a window and finds Litnig awake and willing to help her. He then leads her up Sentinel Hill to a childhood hiding place of theirs where he thinks she'll be able to sleep safely.
This is another of my favorite chapters. It was a late addition--in most of the early drafts, I left the time between Ryse's departure from the Temple and her later reemergence at Litnig's side unexplained. But the deeper I got into Ryse's character, the more I wanted to explore what happened in those lost hours. And many of my early readers were clamoring to learn more about Litnig and Ryse, and to see the sweet side of their relationship before events that happen later on in the novel.
So I'm doing three major things in Chapter 5: I'm showing Litnig and Ryse's relationship to the reader, I'm deepening Ryse's character, and I'm furthering the mystery around Sherduan and setting up the next chapter. The first happens pretty naturally through the situation. Ryse comes to Litnig for help. That in itself says something about their relationship. So does Litnig's response, and Ryse's response to his response. She needs help. He offers it. She takes it. He offers more, and she turns it down. We see that he wants to be as close to her as possible, but that she has reservations and wants to keep her distance. Though she's comfortable relying on him, there's also a point beyond which she will not accept further aid. Importantly, that point is one at which he would put himself in significant danger for her.
But there's also a matter of atmosphere. I mentioned in my Chapter 4 craft post that I like to weave aspects of other genres into my writing when I can. I'm particularly proud of one short paragraph in Chapter 5 in that respect:
Romance, eat your heart out.
There are a couple of other places in the chapter where a few sentences accomplish a great deal (I hope). When Ryse explains why she left the Temple, Litnig responds, "So you left because of us," which vastly oversimplifies and misunderstands the situation. At that point, we start to see some of the problems with Litnig's relationship to Ryse. He overestimates his importance in her life, and he fails to understand a lot of the things she says and does.
The setup of the next chapter, on the other hand, takes two sentences. I struggled a bit in my latest draft to link Chapter 5 and Chapter 6, and I eventually had to look back at old drafts of Soulwoven, from before this chapter existed, to remember how to segue from Ryse's point of view into the point of view in the next chapter. I'll talk in the next craft blog about why that was so difficult, but I ended up recalling that I needed to set up a question in the reader's head that would provide an immediate answer for why the book goes where it does next (This is hard to explain without giving things away. My apologies, but Chapter 6 will be up soon, and then hopefully things will be a little clearer).
At any rate, in order for the next chapter's opening to seem connected to the story as a whole, I needed to make the reader wonder who was going to act on the destruction of the heart dragons. So at the very end of Chapter 5, I raise that question in Ryse's mind, which hopefully raises it in the reader's as well.
This is another chapter where I don't see too many weaknesses. It's got tension, it's got romance, it's got character development, it's got a beautiful setting for me to describe, and I think I execute it fairly well. I do worry a little about over- or under-doing the backstory on the legend of Sherduan (I'm feeding it to the reader in bits in pieces over several chapters), but my hope is that there are enough other things going on in the chapter that it feels seamless, and that readers who want the whole story on the dragon get enough to keep them satisfied while those who don't don't get fed up.
So that's Chapter 5! Chapters 6 and 7 are already up, with Chapter 8 to follow tomorrow. More craft blogs soon to come. Also, Soulwoven is notching about 100 reads and 5-8 votes per day this week, and I'm trying to remain calm about the whole thing while my imagination runs wild with possibilities.
Happy reading, dear friends!
Also, I built a deck that week. A deck!
Anyway, on to the craft breakdown for Soulwoven Chapter 5. Spoilers to follow! Read the chapter here first.
In Chapter 5, we shift back into Ryse's head. Only a little time has passed since we left her preparing to run away from the Temple. In the interim, she has torn like a bat out of hell through the city and ended up at the Jins' house. She enters Litnig and Cole's room through a window and finds Litnig awake and willing to help her. He then leads her up Sentinel Hill to a childhood hiding place of theirs where he thinks she'll be able to sleep safely.
This is another of my favorite chapters. It was a late addition--in most of the early drafts, I left the time between Ryse's departure from the Temple and her later reemergence at Litnig's side unexplained. But the deeper I got into Ryse's character, the more I wanted to explore what happened in those lost hours. And many of my early readers were clamoring to learn more about Litnig and Ryse, and to see the sweet side of their relationship before events that happen later on in the novel.
So I'm doing three major things in Chapter 5: I'm showing Litnig and Ryse's relationship to the reader, I'm deepening Ryse's character, and I'm furthering the mystery around Sherduan and setting up the next chapter. The first happens pretty naturally through the situation. Ryse comes to Litnig for help. That in itself says something about their relationship. So does Litnig's response, and Ryse's response to his response. She needs help. He offers it. She takes it. He offers more, and she turns it down. We see that he wants to be as close to her as possible, but that she has reservations and wants to keep her distance. Though she's comfortable relying on him, there's also a point beyond which she will not accept further aid. Importantly, that point is one at which he would put himself in significant danger for her.
But there's also a matter of atmosphere. I mentioned in my Chapter 4 craft post that I like to weave aspects of other genres into my writing when I can. I'm particularly proud of one short paragraph in Chapter 5 in that respect:
She looked up into the gray eyes of Litnig Jin. He was shirtless, his hair mussed at crazy angles. His grip was strong as iron.
Romance, eat your heart out.
There are a couple of other places in the chapter where a few sentences accomplish a great deal (I hope). When Ryse explains why she left the Temple, Litnig responds, "So you left because of us," which vastly oversimplifies and misunderstands the situation. At that point, we start to see some of the problems with Litnig's relationship to Ryse. He overestimates his importance in her life, and he fails to understand a lot of the things she says and does.
The setup of the next chapter, on the other hand, takes two sentences. I struggled a bit in my latest draft to link Chapter 5 and Chapter 6, and I eventually had to look back at old drafts of Soulwoven, from before this chapter existed, to remember how to segue from Ryse's point of view into the point of view in the next chapter. I'll talk in the next craft blog about why that was so difficult, but I ended up recalling that I needed to set up a question in the reader's head that would provide an immediate answer for why the book goes where it does next (This is hard to explain without giving things away. My apologies, but Chapter 6 will be up soon, and then hopefully things will be a little clearer).
At any rate, in order for the next chapter's opening to seem connected to the story as a whole, I needed to make the reader wonder who was going to act on the destruction of the heart dragons. So at the very end of Chapter 5, I raise that question in Ryse's mind, which hopefully raises it in the reader's as well.
This is another chapter where I don't see too many weaknesses. It's got tension, it's got romance, it's got character development, it's got a beautiful setting for me to describe, and I think I execute it fairly well. I do worry a little about over- or under-doing the backstory on the legend of Sherduan (I'm feeding it to the reader in bits in pieces over several chapters), but my hope is that there are enough other things going on in the chapter that it feels seamless, and that readers who want the whole story on the dragon get enough to keep them satisfied while those who don't don't get fed up.
So that's Chapter 5! Chapters 6 and 7 are already up, with Chapter 8 to follow tomorrow. More craft blogs soon to come. Also, Soulwoven is notching about 100 reads and 5-8 votes per day this week, and I'm trying to remain calm about the whole thing while my imagination runs wild with possibilities.
Happy reading, dear friends!
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Craft Breakdown! Soulwoven Ch. 4
I put up two chapters of Soulwoven this week, to make up for the fact that I'm going to be deep in the woods and out of Internet range next weekend. Unfortunately, Chapter 4 went up a little late, because I spent the weekend being chased off of mountains by thunderstorms and having adventures in automobile repair (if anyone knows what on earth a neutral switch does, other than cause your reverse lights to be on semi-permanently if you confuse it with your reverse light switch while replacing the latter, please let me know).
And with that out of the way, on to the craft breakdown for Soulwoven Chapter 4 (Spoilers to follow. Go read it here first!).
Chapter 4 is one of several of what I think of as "breather" chapters in Soulwoven. We've just had two chapters of pretty intense action, and I want to give the reader time to take a breath, put the book down (I mentioned I was going to break rules, right?) and go grab a cup of tea, walk the dog, do some math homework, talk to a family member--whatever--and process. I do this because a lot of my favorite books have these moments, and because I want my readers to be thinking. Dan Brown writes great page-turners, but I don't remember having a single productive thought while reading The Da Vinci Code. Neil Gaiman, on the other hand, writes books that I frequently put down, but I gain much more overall from reading them. Somewhere in the middle falls George R. R. Martin, who can keep seven or eight page-turning plots going in every book, but gives me time to take breaks between them as I switch from character to character.
So. Action is slower in Chapter 4. Litnig has his dream. It's weird, and then it's scary, and that's about it. The chapter is very short, even by my standards. In terms of plot, I'm working mainly on deepening the mysteries surrounding Litnig. We already know that he had a dream and it was weird. We then ran off on a big adventure through two other characters' heads. I want to remind the reader that Litnig had a dream, and it was important, so I bring them back to it in this chapter. Hopefully, the reader understands that Litnig's dream is not an ordinary dream, and will not be surprised when it keeps popping back up throughout the book. I'm not entirely sure if the repetition and positioning of the dream alone achieves this, but I hope that it does.
Because this chapter doesn't have a lot of action, it's also a bit of a litmus test for my writing. I mentioned Martin above. One of the reasons I think he's successful is because he has enough faith in his own abilities to do things like break the tension or kill off major characters and trust that he can keep the reader interested in other ways or develop new characters they'll love just as much. I aspire to that level of writing, and I figure the best way to learn how to get there is to attempt it. In this chapter, I'm counting on two things to keep the reader interested. One is the shock of horror Litnig gets once the dark statue starts moving, but that happens three-quarters of the way through. In the meantime, my writing has to carry the burden alone. For a few pages, my descriptions, my voice, my capability to generate a creepy and threatening atmosphere, are all I'm counting on to carry the reader forward. If I can pull that off, I'll know I'm in a good place as a writer, and the reader, hopefully, will respect the hell out of me. If I can't, the chapter will fail.
I don't think I've talked much yet about taking risks in these posts. But as a writer, as a reader, and as an editor, I love writers who take risks. They may (and in fact do, in my experience reading submissions) fail more often than not. But when they succeed, that's where the magic happens. So I do the same in my writing, and I do my best to make it work, and then I cross my fingers and hope for the best.
I want to make a brief mention as well that this chapter is more of a horror story than a fantasy story in my mind. I've structured it that way---I start with a character in a situation that he knows is wrong, then allow him to pull himself deeper and deeper into it against his instincts because he can't rationalize why it's wrong, and finally show him why it's wrong when it's too late for him to get out of it without being scarred. Another thing I respect in other writers is weaving multiple genres together, and I'm trying, briefly, to do that here as well.
So that's it for Chapter 4! As I said, it's a risk-taking, rule-breaking, genre-bending effort, and I'm more than a little nervous as to how well it works. I'd love to get some opinions on it.
And with that out of the way, on to the craft breakdown for Soulwoven Chapter 4 (Spoilers to follow. Go read it here first!).
Chapter 4 is one of several of what I think of as "breather" chapters in Soulwoven. We've just had two chapters of pretty intense action, and I want to give the reader time to take a breath, put the book down (I mentioned I was going to break rules, right?) and go grab a cup of tea, walk the dog, do some math homework, talk to a family member--whatever--and process. I do this because a lot of my favorite books have these moments, and because I want my readers to be thinking. Dan Brown writes great page-turners, but I don't remember having a single productive thought while reading The Da Vinci Code. Neil Gaiman, on the other hand, writes books that I frequently put down, but I gain much more overall from reading them. Somewhere in the middle falls George R. R. Martin, who can keep seven or eight page-turning plots going in every book, but gives me time to take breaks between them as I switch from character to character.
So. Action is slower in Chapter 4. Litnig has his dream. It's weird, and then it's scary, and that's about it. The chapter is very short, even by my standards. In terms of plot, I'm working mainly on deepening the mysteries surrounding Litnig. We already know that he had a dream and it was weird. We then ran off on a big adventure through two other characters' heads. I want to remind the reader that Litnig had a dream, and it was important, so I bring them back to it in this chapter. Hopefully, the reader understands that Litnig's dream is not an ordinary dream, and will not be surprised when it keeps popping back up throughout the book. I'm not entirely sure if the repetition and positioning of the dream alone achieves this, but I hope that it does.
Because this chapter doesn't have a lot of action, it's also a bit of a litmus test for my writing. I mentioned Martin above. One of the reasons I think he's successful is because he has enough faith in his own abilities to do things like break the tension or kill off major characters and trust that he can keep the reader interested in other ways or develop new characters they'll love just as much. I aspire to that level of writing, and I figure the best way to learn how to get there is to attempt it. In this chapter, I'm counting on two things to keep the reader interested. One is the shock of horror Litnig gets once the dark statue starts moving, but that happens three-quarters of the way through. In the meantime, my writing has to carry the burden alone. For a few pages, my descriptions, my voice, my capability to generate a creepy and threatening atmosphere, are all I'm counting on to carry the reader forward. If I can pull that off, I'll know I'm in a good place as a writer, and the reader, hopefully, will respect the hell out of me. If I can't, the chapter will fail.
I don't think I've talked much yet about taking risks in these posts. But as a writer, as a reader, and as an editor, I love writers who take risks. They may (and in fact do, in my experience reading submissions) fail more often than not. But when they succeed, that's where the magic happens. So I do the same in my writing, and I do my best to make it work, and then I cross my fingers and hope for the best.
I want to make a brief mention as well that this chapter is more of a horror story than a fantasy story in my mind. I've structured it that way---I start with a character in a situation that he knows is wrong, then allow him to pull himself deeper and deeper into it against his instincts because he can't rationalize why it's wrong, and finally show him why it's wrong when it's too late for him to get out of it without being scarred. Another thing I respect in other writers is weaving multiple genres together, and I'm trying, briefly, to do that here as well.
So that's it for Chapter 4! As I said, it's a risk-taking, rule-breaking, genre-bending effort, and I'm more than a little nervous as to how well it works. I'd love to get some opinions on it.
Friday, July 20, 2012
Craft Breakdown! Soulwoven Chapter 3
Quick update on the cover situation: Cover variant #3 is leading variant #1 by a few votes, so it's most likely to be the one I put up on Sunday when the next chapter of Soulwoven goes up on Wattpad.
But for now, here's what I was trying to do with Chapter 3 (spoilers below! Go read it first!).
Chapter 3 starts off immediately after the events of Chapter 2, but it takes place in Ryse's head instead of Cole's. As it starts off, Ryse is recovering from and trying to remember what exactly happened to her before the brothers Jin arrived. Before she's really got her feet back under her, she starts trying to heal people and save lives, which leads to her seeing a vision of the dragon that's now in danger of being released. Eventually, she leaves the brothers and returns to the Temple, where she gets raked over the coals for seeing the broken heart dragons, lies to protect Litnig and Cole, and decides to run for her life.
The biggest thing I'm doing in Chapter 3 is expanding the narrative. There are other things going on as well (introducing Ryse, introducing soulweaving, continued worldbuilding), but Chapter 3 is the point where the story really starts to balloon in scope. In Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, we're following two brothers who are really only concerned with their own lives---they have no reason to be concerned about anything else. In Chapter 3 we get a third p.o.v. character, and we get a powerful one. Ryse is a magic user. She has access to the corridors of power in Eldan, and through that access she and we learn that some weird and dangerous things are happening in the world. Most importantly, Ryse is the type of person to do something about it. When she sees the heart dragons broken, she can't just keep quiet and hope that everything will be alright.
I want to talk briefly about how I introduce Ryse, because in my last revision I learned something about how to do it that might help others as well. The sympathy for Ryse (I hope) comes from two angles: her selflessness in helping people in the graveyard and her identity as an orphan who came from nothing. In the last draft of Chapter 3, neither of those things was apparent right away. Ryse spent the whole first page thinking about herself and what had happened to her in the graveyard, and we didn't learn about her past in the slums until close to the end of the chapter.
So I moved the revelation that she's an orphan up and combined it with her selflessness. It feels a little unsubtle to me, but I think it works---the reader has an immediate reason to care about Ryse. And the reader always needs a reason to care about a character. Without it, his or her interest will wane dramatically.
It's also worth talking about the introduction of soulweaving in the chapter, which was a little difficult to do as well. In my opinion, the easiest way to introduce magic is from the point of view of a character who's just learning it, because then he or she is experiencing everything for the first time. Because the sensations are new, it makes sense for him or her to describe them.
Unfortunately for me, nobody learns soulweaving for the first time in the first book of Soulwoven. So I was left to describe magic through Ryse's eyes. I was able to do that effectively (I hope) because she's in a calm, slow, introspective moment. She's just had a traumatic experience, and she feels a little skittish and nervous, so she moves slowly with her soulweaving and takes her time making sure everything feels okay with it. Then, after something goes wrong (she sees the dragon), she has extra reason to be wary of the magic, and because she distrusts it and there's tension coming from that (both she and the reader are wondering whether she's going to see the dragon again when she soulweaves), it again makes sense for her to be thinking about and describing the magic.
When I'm reading submissions as an editor, I often find that writers go bananas describing their magic as soon as it comes into play, but that doesn't always make sense. Someone in the middle of a fight for his or her life, for instance, is unlikely to have time and headspace to start spouting out elegant descriptions about how they feel. More on action scenes when we finally get to a proper one (Chapter 13, I believe), but for now, that's worth noting.
Finally, themes and tension. I mentioned in Chapter 1 that one thing that drives the tension in the first scene is that Litnig is worried and his father, who's the adult and should be the protector, isn't. The same dynamic comes into play again and again throughout the book, including in Chapter 3. Ryse is worried that the heart dragons are broken. The Twelve, who are supposed to be the responsible ones and the protectors, do not seem to be taking it seriously, and react threateningly when Ryse lets slip that she knows what happened. So that's tension from the same type of dramatic situation, which, I suppose, is one way of describing a theme.
The tension itself comes from several sources, each of which blends seamlessly into the next. First, it's "What happened, and is Ryse okay?" which is a holdover from the last chapter. Then, as that question is answered, it's "What's this dragon? What do these visions mean, and why are the characters so scared of them?" That question is answered as well, and then it's "What is Ryse going to do about this, and what is this Twelfthman going to do with her?" There's a brief interlude of "Will Ryse give up Litnig and Cole?" and the chapter ends with "How is Ryse going to escape? What will she do? Where will she go?"
There are plenty of things I'm not completely certain about in this chapter. The worldbuilding, in particular, I'm just sort of crossing my fingers on. I introduce a lot of new concepts and organizations (the Twelve, Twelfthmen, the heart dragons, the legend of Sherduan) and two antagonists (Aegelden Elpioni and Sherduan itself). Because of that, I run the risk of the reader getting lost, and I find as a writer that it's very hard to figure out where exactly to draw the line on how much information is too much. As a rule of thumb, I try not to do more than one new concept per page, but that's kind of an arbitrary choice and I still worry about how well it works.
But for now, here's what I was trying to do with Chapter 3 (spoilers below! Go read it first!).
Chapter 3 starts off immediately after the events of Chapter 2, but it takes place in Ryse's head instead of Cole's. As it starts off, Ryse is recovering from and trying to remember what exactly happened to her before the brothers Jin arrived. Before she's really got her feet back under her, she starts trying to heal people and save lives, which leads to her seeing a vision of the dragon that's now in danger of being released. Eventually, she leaves the brothers and returns to the Temple, where she gets raked over the coals for seeing the broken heart dragons, lies to protect Litnig and Cole, and decides to run for her life.
The biggest thing I'm doing in Chapter 3 is expanding the narrative. There are other things going on as well (introducing Ryse, introducing soulweaving, continued worldbuilding), but Chapter 3 is the point where the story really starts to balloon in scope. In Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, we're following two brothers who are really only concerned with their own lives---they have no reason to be concerned about anything else. In Chapter 3 we get a third p.o.v. character, and we get a powerful one. Ryse is a magic user. She has access to the corridors of power in Eldan, and through that access she and we learn that some weird and dangerous things are happening in the world. Most importantly, Ryse is the type of person to do something about it. When she sees the heart dragons broken, she can't just keep quiet and hope that everything will be alright.
I want to talk briefly about how I introduce Ryse, because in my last revision I learned something about how to do it that might help others as well. The sympathy for Ryse (I hope) comes from two angles: her selflessness in helping people in the graveyard and her identity as an orphan who came from nothing. In the last draft of Chapter 3, neither of those things was apparent right away. Ryse spent the whole first page thinking about herself and what had happened to her in the graveyard, and we didn't learn about her past in the slums until close to the end of the chapter.
So I moved the revelation that she's an orphan up and combined it with her selflessness. It feels a little unsubtle to me, but I think it works---the reader has an immediate reason to care about Ryse. And the reader always needs a reason to care about a character. Without it, his or her interest will wane dramatically.
It's also worth talking about the introduction of soulweaving in the chapter, which was a little difficult to do as well. In my opinion, the easiest way to introduce magic is from the point of view of a character who's just learning it, because then he or she is experiencing everything for the first time. Because the sensations are new, it makes sense for him or her to describe them.
Unfortunately for me, nobody learns soulweaving for the first time in the first book of Soulwoven. So I was left to describe magic through Ryse's eyes. I was able to do that effectively (I hope) because she's in a calm, slow, introspective moment. She's just had a traumatic experience, and she feels a little skittish and nervous, so she moves slowly with her soulweaving and takes her time making sure everything feels okay with it. Then, after something goes wrong (she sees the dragon), she has extra reason to be wary of the magic, and because she distrusts it and there's tension coming from that (both she and the reader are wondering whether she's going to see the dragon again when she soulweaves), it again makes sense for her to be thinking about and describing the magic.
When I'm reading submissions as an editor, I often find that writers go bananas describing their magic as soon as it comes into play, but that doesn't always make sense. Someone in the middle of a fight for his or her life, for instance, is unlikely to have time and headspace to start spouting out elegant descriptions about how they feel. More on action scenes when we finally get to a proper one (Chapter 13, I believe), but for now, that's worth noting.
Finally, themes and tension. I mentioned in Chapter 1 that one thing that drives the tension in the first scene is that Litnig is worried and his father, who's the adult and should be the protector, isn't. The same dynamic comes into play again and again throughout the book, including in Chapter 3. Ryse is worried that the heart dragons are broken. The Twelve, who are supposed to be the responsible ones and the protectors, do not seem to be taking it seriously, and react threateningly when Ryse lets slip that she knows what happened. So that's tension from the same type of dramatic situation, which, I suppose, is one way of describing a theme.
The tension itself comes from several sources, each of which blends seamlessly into the next. First, it's "What happened, and is Ryse okay?" which is a holdover from the last chapter. Then, as that question is answered, it's "What's this dragon? What do these visions mean, and why are the characters so scared of them?" That question is answered as well, and then it's "What is Ryse going to do about this, and what is this Twelfthman going to do with her?" There's a brief interlude of "Will Ryse give up Litnig and Cole?" and the chapter ends with "How is Ryse going to escape? What will she do? Where will she go?"
There are plenty of things I'm not completely certain about in this chapter. The worldbuilding, in particular, I'm just sort of crossing my fingers on. I introduce a lot of new concepts and organizations (the Twelve, Twelfthmen, the heart dragons, the legend of Sherduan) and two antagonists (Aegelden Elpioni and Sherduan itself). Because of that, I run the risk of the reader getting lost, and I find as a writer that it's very hard to figure out where exactly to draw the line on how much information is too much. As a rule of thumb, I try not to do more than one new concept per page, but that's kind of an arbitrary choice and I still worry about how well it works.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Craft Breakdown! Soulwoven Ch. 2
Exciting news! This blog, with 49 posts, has already surpassed my old blog, with 159 posts, in terms of total pageviews. That happened much more quickly than I expected it to. Also, Soulwoven is now RANKED on Wattpad (#94 in Fantasy and #134 in Adventure)! I would eat a gummy worm in celebration, but I decided to be good today and not buy the 3 lb. bag of them that I saw on sale.
Right. On to a breakdown of Chapter Two of Soulwoven, which has now been up on Wattpad for a week. If you missed it, you can find the breakdown of Chapter One here.
Chapter Two is one of my favorite chapters of Soulwoven, mostly because I get to describe Eldan City for the first time, and because we get into Cole's head, which is a place I really like to be.
Spoilers below the fold!
Unlike Chapter One, Chapter Two takes place in one, unbroken scene. We start off in Cole's head as he and Litnig are leaving their house and stick with him as they discover that the Old Temple has been broken into and there's been a slaughter in the graveyard behind it. The chapter ends when the brothers find Ryse lying untouched in the midst of all the grisliness.
I'm doing several important things at once in Chapter Two. First, and most importantly, I'm letting the reader get to know Cole, who shares main character status pretty equally with Litnig in the book. Second, I'm continuing to develop the world. Third, I'm introducing several new sources of tension. And fourth, I'm showing the reader the alternating point of view structure that will continue throughout the book.
The continuing introduction of Cole takes place mostly through his narration. The point of view is very limited third person, so the reader only sees the world through Cole's eyes. And because Cole has opinions about everything, the reader gets to see a lot of them through his internal monologue. This chapter also provides a bit of a crisis point for Cole. On the one hand, he wants to help people, like his brother does. On the other, he's much more realistic about his own capability to do so, and he knows it won't help anyone if he gets himself hurt or killed. The second part of his brain tells him that the chances of he and Litnig doing anything useful are low at best and that they should clear out and keep themselves safe. But that part of him is wrong. Nothing bad happens to them. And Litnig is able to help Ryse. So in the back of his mind, Cole knows that if he had gotten his way, his friend and a bunch of innocent people would be worse off, and he and his brother wouldn't be any better off. Characters being wrong about important things, in my experience, almost always makes for an interesting situation.
At the same time I'm developing Cole, I'm continuing to work on Litnig. One of the reasons I chose the alternating point of view structure is because it offers incredible opportunities for character development. We've just had a chapter where we're in Litnig's head, seeing the world as he sees it. Now we get to see the world, including Litnig, from another point of view. Every time Cole describes Litnig, we learn a little more about both brothers, because we get to compare what we know is going on in Litnig's head with what Cole thinks is going on in Litnig's head, and we get to see what Litnig is doing without seeing his rationalizations on top of it.
The worldbuilding takes place primarily through Cole's descriptions of the city. The fact that Cole loves Eldan City helps with that. The city, and his relationship with it, are a big part of who he is. So it makes perfect sense for him to be thinking about what Temple Hill looks like, or how the River Eld smells, or the festivals and the Temples. Those are the things he thinks about every time he leaves his house. He's also among the smartest characters in the book. He connects old information with new information more readily than his brother, and he has more experience with violence, which makes him better equipped to describe the action in this chapter in particular. Trying to do the same descriptions through Litnig's point of view would be more difficult because he just doesn't see the world in the same way.
As for tension, right off the bat, we have the lingering question of why Cole decided to come with Litnig. That's resolved fairly quickly---we learn that he had a nightmare too, and he wants to get away from it. But he also feels less than convinced that it was a normal, run-of-the-mill nightmare, which continues to build tension around Litnig's dream and the events connected with it in the first chapter.
On the heels of that, the brothers see the murdered guards at the Old Temple, and the tension comes from a new angle, because we know that Ryse is inside and we suspect the brothers are going to go in after her. That question of, "Where is Ryse, and is she ok?" keeps tugging throughout the chapter, but there are other questions that start to crop up around it, like "Where did all these bodies come from?" "Will Litnig and Cole be able to help anyone?" "Are the people who did this gone?" and "Where did they come from and what did they want?" At the end of the chapter, the brothers find Ryse, but the question of whether she's really okay (Cole certainly thinks she isn't, but she and Litnig are acting like she is) remains unresolved, which I'm counting on to get the reader to turn the page again.
On top of all that, there's tension between the brothers. Cole doesn't want to be there, but he won't leave Litnig, and Litnig takes advantage of that to drag him into a dangerous situation. It's one thing to put your own life in danger. It's another thing entirely to feel like you've been dragged into it by someone else. That's a theme that will continue throughout the book.
To be honest, there isn't a lot I don't like about this chapter. On a sentence to sentence level, it's still not perfect. My writing isn't at the level of someone like China Mieville or Neil Gaiman. But the voice holds up okay, I think, and I'm reasonably certain I've done a good job of getting the big things right.
Chapter Three of Soulwoven, in which we get Ryse's point of view and the questions of "Is Ryse okay?" and "What did the people who did this want?" are resolved, goes up on Wattpad tomorrow! Check my Facebook page or Twitter feed for a link sometime in the afternoon.
Right. On to a breakdown of Chapter Two of Soulwoven, which has now been up on Wattpad for a week. If you missed it, you can find the breakdown of Chapter One here.
Chapter Two is one of my favorite chapters of Soulwoven, mostly because I get to describe Eldan City for the first time, and because we get into Cole's head, which is a place I really like to be.
Spoilers below the fold!
Unlike Chapter One, Chapter Two takes place in one, unbroken scene. We start off in Cole's head as he and Litnig are leaving their house and stick with him as they discover that the Old Temple has been broken into and there's been a slaughter in the graveyard behind it. The chapter ends when the brothers find Ryse lying untouched in the midst of all the grisliness.
I'm doing several important things at once in Chapter Two. First, and most importantly, I'm letting the reader get to know Cole, who shares main character status pretty equally with Litnig in the book. Second, I'm continuing to develop the world. Third, I'm introducing several new sources of tension. And fourth, I'm showing the reader the alternating point of view structure that will continue throughout the book.
The continuing introduction of Cole takes place mostly through his narration. The point of view is very limited third person, so the reader only sees the world through Cole's eyes. And because Cole has opinions about everything, the reader gets to see a lot of them through his internal monologue. This chapter also provides a bit of a crisis point for Cole. On the one hand, he wants to help people, like his brother does. On the other, he's much more realistic about his own capability to do so, and he knows it won't help anyone if he gets himself hurt or killed. The second part of his brain tells him that the chances of he and Litnig doing anything useful are low at best and that they should clear out and keep themselves safe. But that part of him is wrong. Nothing bad happens to them. And Litnig is able to help Ryse. So in the back of his mind, Cole knows that if he had gotten his way, his friend and a bunch of innocent people would be worse off, and he and his brother wouldn't be any better off. Characters being wrong about important things, in my experience, almost always makes for an interesting situation.
At the same time I'm developing Cole, I'm continuing to work on Litnig. One of the reasons I chose the alternating point of view structure is because it offers incredible opportunities for character development. We've just had a chapter where we're in Litnig's head, seeing the world as he sees it. Now we get to see the world, including Litnig, from another point of view. Every time Cole describes Litnig, we learn a little more about both brothers, because we get to compare what we know is going on in Litnig's head with what Cole thinks is going on in Litnig's head, and we get to see what Litnig is doing without seeing his rationalizations on top of it.
The worldbuilding takes place primarily through Cole's descriptions of the city. The fact that Cole loves Eldan City helps with that. The city, and his relationship with it, are a big part of who he is. So it makes perfect sense for him to be thinking about what Temple Hill looks like, or how the River Eld smells, or the festivals and the Temples. Those are the things he thinks about every time he leaves his house. He's also among the smartest characters in the book. He connects old information with new information more readily than his brother, and he has more experience with violence, which makes him better equipped to describe the action in this chapter in particular. Trying to do the same descriptions through Litnig's point of view would be more difficult because he just doesn't see the world in the same way.
As for tension, right off the bat, we have the lingering question of why Cole decided to come with Litnig. That's resolved fairly quickly---we learn that he had a nightmare too, and he wants to get away from it. But he also feels less than convinced that it was a normal, run-of-the-mill nightmare, which continues to build tension around Litnig's dream and the events connected with it in the first chapter.
On the heels of that, the brothers see the murdered guards at the Old Temple, and the tension comes from a new angle, because we know that Ryse is inside and we suspect the brothers are going to go in after her. That question of, "Where is Ryse, and is she ok?" keeps tugging throughout the chapter, but there are other questions that start to crop up around it, like "Where did all these bodies come from?" "Will Litnig and Cole be able to help anyone?" "Are the people who did this gone?" and "Where did they come from and what did they want?" At the end of the chapter, the brothers find Ryse, but the question of whether she's really okay (Cole certainly thinks she isn't, but she and Litnig are acting like she is) remains unresolved, which I'm counting on to get the reader to turn the page again.
On top of all that, there's tension between the brothers. Cole doesn't want to be there, but he won't leave Litnig, and Litnig takes advantage of that to drag him into a dangerous situation. It's one thing to put your own life in danger. It's another thing entirely to feel like you've been dragged into it by someone else. That's a theme that will continue throughout the book.
To be honest, there isn't a lot I don't like about this chapter. On a sentence to sentence level, it's still not perfect. My writing isn't at the level of someone like China Mieville or Neil Gaiman. But the voice holds up okay, I think, and I'm reasonably certain I've done a good job of getting the big things right.
Chapter Three of Soulwoven, in which we get Ryse's point of view and the questions of "Is Ryse okay?" and "What did the people who did this want?" are resolved, goes up on Wattpad tomorrow! Check my Facebook page or Twitter feed for a link sometime in the afternoon.
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Craft Breakdown! Soulwoven Ch. 1
Greetings gentle readers. For a while now, I've been kicking around the idea of doing blog posts about Soulwoven, and breaking it down structurally in terms of what happens when, why it does, and what I'm trying to do as a writer in any given chapter. The big problem with the idea has always been that most visitors to this blog probably haven't read Soulwoven, and certainly don't have it front of them to take a look at.
Well, now that I'm posting chapters of it on Wattpad, that's not a problem anymore.
So without further ado, I'd like to inaugurate a series of craft posts about my writing and what I'm trying to do with it. Spoilers and technical writing bits to follow, so be forewarned. :-)
We'll start with Soulwoven Chapter One.
Opening chapters of novels are, I think, the most difficult thing to write in the whole world. I have rewritten this chapter more times than any other piece of writing I have ever produced. It's probably on its 20th or 30th iteration, if you go all the way back to when I started writing the book ten years ago. To be totally honest, I'm still not entirely comfortable with it, and I probably never will be.
So! Big points. There are three sections in Chapter One of Soulwoven, each containing its own scene with its own little arc. I'll break them, and what I'm trying to do in each of them, down below:
Scene One: Litnig, Cole, and their father are delivering groceries. There's someone watching them as they do it, which is weird and makes Litnig uncomfortable.
This scene has to do a lot of heavy lifting. It needs to establish the world, the main character, the voice, and immediate tension. And it needs to hook the reader along into going on to the next scene. To handle the first and the second, I drop us into the middle of a typical day in Litnig's life. He and his family are out delivering groceries, which is what they do. Litnig is curious but a little slow, Cole is sleepy and bored, and their father is grumpy and borderline violent. To handle the tension, I introduce something mildly creepy. There's a person watching Litnig. He's a kind of person Litnig has never seen before. He doesn't stop watching him throughout the whole scene. Litnig's father is dismissive of Litnig's worries. And the person watching has sharp, yellow teeth.
To establish the voice, I break rules. I open with a sentence that falls under several "thou shalt nots" of writing: it's got a cliche ("Once upon a time"), and it's got nothing particularly unique going on in it ("a young man opened his eyes"). It could be (and very well might be) the first sentence in any number of stories.
But it's also a one-sentence summary of this story, and one of my goals with it is to offer the reader the following information: I am going to try to do unusual and difficult things here. I am not going to follow all of the rules. If you're interested in that, and you think I can pull it off, then come along for the ride.
To get the reader to do that, I rely on the tension, and I end with a creepy image of the person watching Litnig smiling at him as he passes by.
Scene Two: Litnig, Cole, and their father return home. Their father starts beating Cole, and Litnig stops him.
By the time we reach this scene, things are hopefully flowing a little easier for the reader. They've made the decision to stick with me to this point, but I still need to hook them. This is the big sympathy scene in the first chapter. Cole does nothing wrong, and his father flies off the handle and starts pounding him. Litnig saves him. We learn a lot about both brothers in this scene---how they handle explosive situations (Litnig tries to defuse them, Cole sticks a firecracker into them), what they're capable of physically (Litnig is big and strong, Cole is not), and how much they think about what they're doing (Cole has a purpose, even when he's goading his father into hitting him. Litnig often just acts). Hopefully, by the end of it, the reader cares about both of them, and finds them interesting enough to continue.
Scene Three: Litnig has the first dream of his life. Something weird happens with the air and there's a scream. Litnig and Cole decide to try to find Ryse.
This scene is where we really start to dig into Litnig's head. I'm still trying to develop sympathy for Litnig, but I'm also sending him on his adventure. In the first scene, there's something weird going on, but it's unclear whether it's going to affect his life. In the third scene, there's something really weird going on, both for Litnig (the dream) and for the world he lives in (the scream), and it affects his life immediately. There's also additional world-building and a brief introduction of Ryse. And at the end, I try to set up a shift to Cole's point-of-view in the next chapter by moving the focus of the narrative from Litnig's actions to Cole's.
There are several things that I don't really like about this chapter. I don't like that it's split up into three scenes, because we won't see that again for another eight or nine chapters, and one thing I feel it's important to do in an initial chapter is to establish the type of structure the reader is going to see. The scenes are short, as well, and the whole just feels a little choppier than I want it to be. But there are distinct arcs to every scene. Combining them just wouldn't work because of that. I also thought at one point about breaking the chapter after scene two and starting Chapter Two with the events of scene three told in Cole's point of view, but Chapter Two feels pretty tight to me the way it is and I don't want to disturb it.
So that's it for Chapter One, really. I want to emphasize that I don't think much about these things when I'm writing. I don't plan this stuff out like this, and this is the first time I've ever written it down (That's one reason, actually, that I'm doing this at all. It's good exercise). When I write, I follow the story. I put characters in a situation, and then I let them react to it.
But when a chapter isn't working, I do think about things like this. It's an editing tool. "What am I trying to do here?" and "What do I need to do here?" are two of the most important questions you can ask yourself, and I'm never comfortable with a chapter until I can answer them.
Chapter Two of Soulwoven goes up on Wattpad tomorrow. I'll break that one down as well a little later on in the week.
Well, now that I'm posting chapters of it on Wattpad, that's not a problem anymore.
So without further ado, I'd like to inaugurate a series of craft posts about my writing and what I'm trying to do with it. Spoilers and technical writing bits to follow, so be forewarned. :-)
We'll start with Soulwoven Chapter One.
Opening chapters of novels are, I think, the most difficult thing to write in the whole world. I have rewritten this chapter more times than any other piece of writing I have ever produced. It's probably on its 20th or 30th iteration, if you go all the way back to when I started writing the book ten years ago. To be totally honest, I'm still not entirely comfortable with it, and I probably never will be.
So! Big points. There are three sections in Chapter One of Soulwoven, each containing its own scene with its own little arc. I'll break them, and what I'm trying to do in each of them, down below:
Scene One: Litnig, Cole, and their father are delivering groceries. There's someone watching them as they do it, which is weird and makes Litnig uncomfortable.
This scene has to do a lot of heavy lifting. It needs to establish the world, the main character, the voice, and immediate tension. And it needs to hook the reader along into going on to the next scene. To handle the first and the second, I drop us into the middle of a typical day in Litnig's life. He and his family are out delivering groceries, which is what they do. Litnig is curious but a little slow, Cole is sleepy and bored, and their father is grumpy and borderline violent. To handle the tension, I introduce something mildly creepy. There's a person watching Litnig. He's a kind of person Litnig has never seen before. He doesn't stop watching him throughout the whole scene. Litnig's father is dismissive of Litnig's worries. And the person watching has sharp, yellow teeth.
To establish the voice, I break rules. I open with a sentence that falls under several "thou shalt nots" of writing: it's got a cliche ("Once upon a time"), and it's got nothing particularly unique going on in it ("a young man opened his eyes"). It could be (and very well might be) the first sentence in any number of stories.
But it's also a one-sentence summary of this story, and one of my goals with it is to offer the reader the following information: I am going to try to do unusual and difficult things here. I am not going to follow all of the rules. If you're interested in that, and you think I can pull it off, then come along for the ride.
To get the reader to do that, I rely on the tension, and I end with a creepy image of the person watching Litnig smiling at him as he passes by.
Scene Two: Litnig, Cole, and their father return home. Their father starts beating Cole, and Litnig stops him.
By the time we reach this scene, things are hopefully flowing a little easier for the reader. They've made the decision to stick with me to this point, but I still need to hook them. This is the big sympathy scene in the first chapter. Cole does nothing wrong, and his father flies off the handle and starts pounding him. Litnig saves him. We learn a lot about both brothers in this scene---how they handle explosive situations (Litnig tries to defuse them, Cole sticks a firecracker into them), what they're capable of physically (Litnig is big and strong, Cole is not), and how much they think about what they're doing (Cole has a purpose, even when he's goading his father into hitting him. Litnig often just acts). Hopefully, by the end of it, the reader cares about both of them, and finds them interesting enough to continue.
Scene Three: Litnig has the first dream of his life. Something weird happens with the air and there's a scream. Litnig and Cole decide to try to find Ryse.
This scene is where we really start to dig into Litnig's head. I'm still trying to develop sympathy for Litnig, but I'm also sending him on his adventure. In the first scene, there's something weird going on, but it's unclear whether it's going to affect his life. In the third scene, there's something really weird going on, both for Litnig (the dream) and for the world he lives in (the scream), and it affects his life immediately. There's also additional world-building and a brief introduction of Ryse. And at the end, I try to set up a shift to Cole's point-of-view in the next chapter by moving the focus of the narrative from Litnig's actions to Cole's.
There are several things that I don't really like about this chapter. I don't like that it's split up into three scenes, because we won't see that again for another eight or nine chapters, and one thing I feel it's important to do in an initial chapter is to establish the type of structure the reader is going to see. The scenes are short, as well, and the whole just feels a little choppier than I want it to be. But there are distinct arcs to every scene. Combining them just wouldn't work because of that. I also thought at one point about breaking the chapter after scene two and starting Chapter Two with the events of scene three told in Cole's point of view, but Chapter Two feels pretty tight to me the way it is and I don't want to disturb it.
So that's it for Chapter One, really. I want to emphasize that I don't think much about these things when I'm writing. I don't plan this stuff out like this, and this is the first time I've ever written it down (That's one reason, actually, that I'm doing this at all. It's good exercise). When I write, I follow the story. I put characters in a situation, and then I let them react to it.
But when a chapter isn't working, I do think about things like this. It's an editing tool. "What am I trying to do here?" and "What do I need to do here?" are two of the most important questions you can ask yourself, and I'm never comfortable with a chapter until I can answer them.
Chapter Two of Soulwoven goes up on Wattpad tomorrow. I'll break that one down as well a little later on in the week.
Friday, June 15, 2012
Cultural Learnings from Agent Meetings for Make Benefit of My Books
Yesterday, I met with two agents at the Lighthouse Writer's Workshop's Litfest 2012 in Denver. The meetings were a part of their business weekend pass, which at $220 was a steal (I also get to hit up seminars on marketing, freelancing, the small press/magazine market, and other things I could stand to learn more about).
Anyway, I was reminded of a very interesting thing right off the bat:
There are several different subcategories of fantasy reader, and agents fall into them too.
I met with two agents, both of whom rep fantasy. One of the great things about the meetings (and the reason I signed up for the conference, actually), was that they were 15 minutes long and included a critique of the first 15 pages of a manuscript (For reference, a similar critique I recently donated to the Brenda Novak diabetes auction went for $81). My two agents gave me very different feedback. One of them wanted more worldbuilding in the opening pages. The other told me she just hadn't connected with the characters.
I took good things away from both meetings, but they were also a reminder that some people read fantasy for the world-as-a-character, while others are more interested in the characters themselves. As a writer, I gravitate a little more towards the second group, and it's there that I think I should be concentrating my efforts.
Last night, I revamped Chapter 1 of Soulwoven. I do not know whether the changes will stick. I am very confident that they make the book more marketable, and fairly confident that they make the opening more interesting.
But they also place focus on elements of the story I had not intended to focus upon. How far the ripple effect of that will reach, I'm not yet sure.
...and now it's time to shower, eat, and hop in the car to go find more cultural learnings for make benefit of my books.
Anyway, I was reminded of a very interesting thing right off the bat:
There are several different subcategories of fantasy reader, and agents fall into them too.
I met with two agents, both of whom rep fantasy. One of the great things about the meetings (and the reason I signed up for the conference, actually), was that they were 15 minutes long and included a critique of the first 15 pages of a manuscript (For reference, a similar critique I recently donated to the Brenda Novak diabetes auction went for $81). My two agents gave me very different feedback. One of them wanted more worldbuilding in the opening pages. The other told me she just hadn't connected with the characters.
I took good things away from both meetings, but they were also a reminder that some people read fantasy for the world-as-a-character, while others are more interested in the characters themselves. As a writer, I gravitate a little more towards the second group, and it's there that I think I should be concentrating my efforts.
Last night, I revamped Chapter 1 of Soulwoven. I do not know whether the changes will stick. I am very confident that they make the book more marketable, and fairly confident that they make the opening more interesting.
But they also place focus on elements of the story I had not intended to focus upon. How far the ripple effect of that will reach, I'm not yet sure.
...and now it's time to shower, eat, and hop in the car to go find more cultural learnings for make benefit of my books.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Bad Signs in Query Letters
The other week I was rolling through some submissions and noticed the following bad signs in query letters (details fudged to protect the guilty). None of them is enough to make me reject a submission alone, but they're indicative of likely problems in the writing to follow. If you find any of these items in your query, you may want to get a second opinion on your novel from a critical reader before submitting.
1.) "This book can be released as (insert number) books or as one." I want to know that you've thought hard about the structure of your novel and picked the best one for it. This does not convince me of that.
2.) Random punctuation. Learning where colons, commas, semicolons, and other marks go is part of your job.
3.) Boldface. If you don't trust me to find the important elements in your query on my own, how will you trust your reader to do it in your novel?
4.) Repetition ("Dripping with power and wealth, Malcolm has a lot of money and isn't afraid to use it."). Doesn't bode well for same in your novel.
5.) Excessive passive voice. I don't hate passive voice as much as most how-to-write books do, but it has a time and a place, and every sentence in the first paragraph of your query is not it.
6.) "My book is great because it's full of great characters who do great things and have great relationships." If you tell me this rather than show it to me, it bodes poorly for the show vs. tell ratio in your novel.
1.) "This book can be released as (insert number) books or as one." I want to know that you've thought hard about the structure of your novel and picked the best one for it. This does not convince me of that.
2.) Random punctuation. Learning where colons, commas, semicolons, and other marks go is part of your job.
3.) Boldface. If you don't trust me to find the important elements in your query on my own, how will you trust your reader to do it in your novel?
4.) Repetition ("Dripping with power and wealth, Malcolm has a lot of money and isn't afraid to use it."). Doesn't bode well for same in your novel.
5.) Excessive passive voice. I don't hate passive voice as much as most how-to-write books do, but it has a time and a place, and every sentence in the first paragraph of your query is not it.
6.) "My book is great because it's full of great characters who do great things and have great relationships." If you tell me this rather than show it to me, it bodes poorly for the show vs. tell ratio in your novel.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Writing Wednesday: Confidence
On a Thursday! Those of you who have known me for a while will understand that I live in a sort of bubble that moves back and forth irregularly through the timestream. Sometimes Wednesdays happen on Thursdays. Sometimes Thursdays happen on Fridays. Very occasionally, Tuesdays happen on Mondays, but I do my best to avoid that whenever possible.
Anyway. Writing Wednesday! And confidence!
As I sit on the cozy side of the submissions desk again, one of the things that grabs my eye more often than not is confidence. Meaning, more than anything else, a willingness to be intentionally different. The Internet, the shelves of your local bookstore, and the mouths of your fellow writers are all full of advice on how to write an opening. In medias res! Start with action! Do this! Pull that! Twist here! Add a drop of lemon juice, set to 450, and cook for 25 minutes!
When you see the same elements in an opening over and over again, they get stale. I imagine that most writers-as-readers would agree. The kind of confidence I'm talking about it is a combination of the daring and the skill to say, "There's a lot of good advice out there suggesting I should jump left here. I'm going to try a misty flip instead." When I write, I try to think of it as approaching a scene from an unusual camera angle.
That's not to say that you should ignore the advice out there. It's like grammar. Learn it, then decide when and where to deviate from it for a particular purpose. But do, please, deviate from it. Imagination and beauty live in the spaces outside the normal, and experimentation is what will make you great.
Not every author who attempts a misty flip lands it. Most of them don't. Even writers who can string two or three together often don't make it to the end of a book without falling on their head a few times. But that's okay. The only way to learn how is to try, over and over again, until you get it right.
And as an editor: I notice. Even if I reject a book because the author's attempt at a double-cork 1080 takes him or her flying wildly off a cliff from which there can be no recovery, I respect the effort. It's the bold and the brash who will write the next great story.
Anyway. Writing Wednesday! And confidence!
As I sit on the cozy side of the submissions desk again, one of the things that grabs my eye more often than not is confidence. Meaning, more than anything else, a willingness to be intentionally different. The Internet, the shelves of your local bookstore, and the mouths of your fellow writers are all full of advice on how to write an opening. In medias res! Start with action! Do this! Pull that! Twist here! Add a drop of lemon juice, set to 450, and cook for 25 minutes!
When you see the same elements in an opening over and over again, they get stale. I imagine that most writers-as-readers would agree. The kind of confidence I'm talking about it is a combination of the daring and the skill to say, "There's a lot of good advice out there suggesting I should jump left here. I'm going to try a misty flip instead." When I write, I try to think of it as approaching a scene from an unusual camera angle.
That's not to say that you should ignore the advice out there. It's like grammar. Learn it, then decide when and where to deviate from it for a particular purpose. But do, please, deviate from it. Imagination and beauty live in the spaces outside the normal, and experimentation is what will make you great.
Not every author who attempts a misty flip lands it. Most of them don't. Even writers who can string two or three together often don't make it to the end of a book without falling on their head a few times. But that's okay. The only way to learn how is to try, over and over again, until you get it right.
And as an editor: I notice. Even if I reject a book because the author's attempt at a double-cork 1080 takes him or her flying wildly off a cliff from which there can be no recovery, I respect the effort. It's the bold and the brash who will write the next great story.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
For the Locker: A Writer on Suffering
From the Guardian: an article on suffering in art, and why it isn't necessary.
I have a hunch I may someday have cause to refer someone to this, rather than trying to paraphrase it off the top of my head. So into the locker it goes!
I have a hunch I may someday have cause to refer someone to this, rather than trying to paraphrase it off the top of my head. So into the locker it goes!
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