Interpreting Conflicting Advice: Part II

      In my first post about interpreting conflicting advice, I talked about "Having an Open Mind vs. Stick to Your Guns". In that post, I mostly discussed receiving criticism and how to both understand and address the underlying problem and fix it in a way that stays consistent with your vision of the story. Recently, as I've been rereading and editing The Mark of Flight, one bit of conflicting advice has been coming up over and over in my head:

Be Passionate About Your Work vs. Have Distance

Now, I don't usually have issues being passionate about my work; a more apt description of my relationship to my writing would probably be "obsessed". I always think about at least one of the stories I'm working on, to the extent that I create specialized driving playlists so I can direct my attention-deficient brain toward thinking about my characters, envisioning new scenarios, and teasing new motivation possibilities from song-lyrics on my one-hour commute. But despite that passion, I sometimes lose that battle against my inner-critic.

Time for a trip to the anecdotal ward! Yippee!

In university, I joined a writing workshop that nearly made me quit writing. I won't go into the details, but after my humiliating first session, I set aside The Mark of Flight and started writing literary short stories, trying to prove to everyone in that class that I wrote genre fiction because I liked it, not because I was incapable of writing something else. The resulting stories were decent, I guess, but writing it didn't excite me, didn't set me dreaming, and didn't make me happy.

Best example.

So I stopped. I hid behind fan-fiction and RPGs, leaving the "real writing" for when it no longer hurt so much to face the opinions of my classmates. It took me a while to get over the feeling that The Mark of Flight was un-salvageable crap. Eventually, however, the gravity of my world and characters drew me back in. Getting a full-manuscript request from an agent was a good boost to the ego as well, especially when one of my classmates announced it to the teacher in class, and everyone made the *shock!face* (right).

There were a few things I did wrong. I mean, really, the first thing I did wrong was to submit a piece of my novel to a writing workshop rather than a short-story. It's really hard to critique independent chapters of something, but I hadn't written a short story since high school. The larger mistake was letting the opinions of my classmates make me embarrassed to write the genre I liked.

I'll let you in on a secret: writing is a lot of work.

We dream, write, rewrite, fret, brainstorm, edit, rewrite again, scrap, shred, cobble-back-together, and if we're lucky, we get something that's good enough to be looked at by a professional. That professional will then point out all the areas we still need to improve before that puppy can ever see the business-side of a printing press. Do you really want to waste all that time writing something you don't care about, just because you think it's more literary/marketable/socially-acceptable? I don't, and that's where "be passionate about your work" comes in. You'd better love it like that song you never stop playing, because you're going to be spending a lot of time with it.

HAVE DISTANCE

My second mistake in that workshop was submitting a piece of work I wasn't ready to receive criticism or opinions on. I address this a bit in my post about being ready to receive criticism, but I'd like to take it in a different direction now.

CRITIQUE POINT: criticism is a constructive analysis of what is and isn't working in your story; opinion is a subjective assessment of the quality of your work.

Criticism: "The motivation for your villain isn't clear"/"You have a very independent heroine"
Opinion: "Your villain sucks"/"I love your heroine!"

Negative opinion has no place in a workshop. The understanding is that the work being submitted is not perfect, and therefore is not ready to be judged. I would also argue that positive opinion does little good without being supplemented by an analysis. It would be like looking at a half-finished sculpture and saying "OMG it's so great don't change it you're so amazing!" Which is what I imagine happened with the Venus de Milo. Just think, if someone had offered a critique, we could have had this:

Not cool, people.

Anyway, I had assumed that the instructor of the workshop would try to mitigate opinions and direct my classmates toward making constructive critiques, but that turned out not to be true. The first comment I received on MoF in that workshop was: "I hated it". (Coincidentally, that was from the same classmate who later announced to the class that I had gotten a request for a full.)

But guess what? If I get published, no one is going to mitigate opinions on Amazon or book review blogs. They key here is to have enough distance from your work that you can let those negative opinions go without making you want to chuck your laptop out a window a la Psychopomp and Narfi.

My reason for submitting the chapter I did was because I had written it recently. I thought having a sample of my most recent writing would be better than a sample I had already edited, but I didn't have enough distance from the work to see it clearly. Writing is like getting a bad haircut. While you've still got it, you'll probably feel pretty sensitive about negative commentary. You don't want everyone to tell you it looks like crap, even if it does. But a few years later, you can look at those pictures of yourself, and when your friend points out that your bangs are uneven, you can laugh.

It's not that I've gotten loads better at taking negative opinions, I just realized that the very first draft is still too ugly and vulnerable for me. I need to realize some of my own mistakes and hack at the piece a bit more before I feel comfortable handing the sword to someone else.

PLAY WITH ME: When do you think it's necessary to have distance? What methods do you use to gain distance? 

Character Flaws - Make them Matter

Character flaws: those deficiencies and limitations we're supposed to give our characters to make them more human and accessible. We know we need them to avoid writing the dreaded Mary Sue, whose only flaw isn't really a flaw, because it never gets her in trouble or changes the course of her story. Seriously, y'all: how am I supposed to believe that clumsiness is negative when its only consequence is tipping her in the arms of Edward Cullen her love-interest?


A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on interpreting conflicting advice in which I discussed a story I had written and how I used a beta-reader's suggestion to root out the real problem in the story. That problem wasn't that the main character didn't have flaws, but that the flaw didn't matter enough to the story for the reader to feel satisfied. It was only really in writing that post that I understood what I had done. Lest I accidentally claim to having more genius than I actually possess, let me assure you that I didn't "get" the connection of flaw to textual evidence of it until I wrote it down. 


Aspiring writers hear all the time that their characters need to have flaws. What we don't hear so often - which is perhaps more the point - is that those flaws have to matter. What's the point of giving your main character a lightning-bolt scar if it doesn't get him recognized when he doesn't want to be, or twinge and burn when he's taking OWLs? So, how do we make the flaws we give our characters matter?


We give them consequences.


The flash-bulbs are going off in my head like two starlets are cat-fighting on my brain's red-carpet. I knew this about flaws already...sort of. All the components were floating around in my head, waiting for me to connect them. (Raven could probably wax awesome here and make a metaphor about molecules and covalent bonds in reference to this kind of discovery, but I'd have to wiki that sucker, and then she'd sneeze on my science-metaphor and knock it off its unstable little legs.)


Epiphany-moment: I can't just give characters flaws for the sake of having them; I have to make their flaws have consequences! The realization found me scrambling through my manuscripts to make sure there was evidence of the flaws I knew my characters had. And, holey-plots, Batman - there are some places I will need to make repercussions, which opens up a lot of new exciting story possibilities. 


The best part about this connection was the realization that I could follow it backwards, rooting through the text for consequences to flaws I hadn't realized were there. 


I knew that Bay was a recalcitrant busybody, but I never realized his itinerant ways stemmed from their own insecurities, from the grudge he holds against the town he grew up in, and the teacher who left him behind. Who knew Arianna was so impulsive, so rebellious, and that her resistance to taking suggestions from anyone she considers beneath her would land her in so much trouble? And Helena - the Magic-weilding Hellhound - I couldn't believe how fast her self confidence vanished when she wasn't kicking bounty-hunter butt. Boy, does that kick her legs right out from under her in regard to her relationship with her roommates. Then there's Procne - deluding herself about her brother's death because she secretly fears being alone.


Srsly. I could be here a while.


Another bonus about flaws with consequences is that they help me with another topic I really struggle with: theme. I rarely start out writing with a theme in mind, and if one manages to emerge from the text, it's watery and unfocused. But if I consider my characters' flaws...


Mark of Flight: Wisdom is not defined by class or appearance.
Hellhound: Overcoming insecurities to find one's humanity.
Beggar's Twin: Acting out of the fear of loneliness ultimately hurts more people.


I can change these into sentences that reflect major themes in my work! "A princess discovers that wisdom is not defined by class or appearance"; "a non-human girl overcomes finds confidence in her own humanity"; "a young woman defeats her fear of loneliness and puts her brother's soul to rest."

Wow. So, apparently my issues in finding the theme of my story had to do with that un-established connection between a flaw, and how it matters to the story.


*cue hard rock hallelujah*


Giving your characters flaws is not enough - they have to somehow impede your character from reaching his or her goal. Even if it's not part of the main plot, it's got to matter enough to the story that the reader can sympathize with overcoming their own drawbacks, even if they're not the same. Because people sympathize best with characters who have accessible flaws, it's important to showcase them by giving consequences to that flaw.


 Does your character have a scar? Have it cause insecurity, and have that insecurity make her angry. Have that anger make her use excessive force to dispatch an iddybiddy-bad-guy and draw the big bad closer. Sometimes it's useful to look at the plot, and tease out a flaw that might already be there, like an archaeologist unearths the skeletons-in-the-closet of ancient kings. Considering last week's post on character journeys, you can probably tell that I really like this "going backwards" method.


Your characters' flaws have to matter, and to matter, they have to have consequences that affect a plot or sub-plot of the story by hampering your character. Whether it's feeling unworthy of the love-interest, or having a fear of heights that keeps him from becoming a dragon-rider, these flaws have to mean something to the story.


What kinds of flaws have you given your characters and how do they show up in your story? Do you think of flaws before you start, or do they rise from the text as you write? How have your own flaws held you back or gotten in your way?


Image by Jeremy Brooks

Character Starting Points - Going Back

Photo by kevindooly

Sometimes I start writing with a great idea of who my character is, sometimes I start with just a name and a purpose. One of the most valuable things the writing process has taught me is that characters don't have to be perfect the first time around. I've talked a bit about my two books, The Mark of Flight and Hellhound, and as I mentioned in my post last week on characters that cry, I had totally different experiences writing Helena and Arianna.

I created Arianna when I was fifteen, and role-played her with my friends Adryn and Merilee in what I suppose you could consider a very early version of the first book's plot--kidnapped princess who gets help from a slave and a mage, and who risks her own life to save the slave when he is recaptured. I think there were dragons, demonic wolves, and lots of convenient way-houses/caves in some of those early RPs. I'm relieved no longer to have the files.

We moved on to other worlds and characters, but something of Arianna's essence stuck with me, her stubbornness and pride, her kindness and idealism, brewing in my head with her sweet, stuttering ex-slave of a love-interest, who inadvertently learns to use Magic. One day in my senior year of High School (when I was eager to write anything that wasn't a college application essay), I started The Mark of Flight. By then, I had a pretty good idea who Arianna was.

Helena, on the other hand, was little more than a name and a goal. I didn't know what she looked like, I didn't know who her family was or her background, and I knew nothing about her personality. I wrote a version of the opening scene as a writing prompt for one of Holly Lisle's mini workshops, and couldn't get it out of my head. The day before NaNoWriMo, I wrote an outline--at that time I was unemployed and feeling a little worse than useless, so I figured if I was going to be a jobless moocher, I might as well be a jobless moocher with a word-count.

Picture by mrhayata

While writing Arianna, I found there was a disconnect between the girl in my head and the girl on the page. It wans't until I was half-way though the book that I figured out why--Arianna was reacting to the plot, not driving it. I had no outline for the story, and I was still too immature as a writer to think about each scene, and how my character could work in it. I hadn't yet learned that scenes should be a collection of character choices given circumstances, not character reactions to circumstances. That shift in perspective happened only when it had to--when I needed Arianna to make the choice of whether to continue home, or to save the boy who had risked his life for her. After that, she drove each scene and started to become the stubborn, proud, kind, strong girl in my head.

Helena was a more active character to write from the beginning, and easier in many ways because she was modern, and had clear priorities. The problem was, I didn't know her. She was gray matter, condensing into something more concrete as my idea for the story expanded, evolved, and delineated specific requirements. By the time I'd gotten to the end...ohh, boy. All the characters were different, but Helena more than anyone. That spiraling mass of gray matter had finally condensed into a star, but her side-winding trail through the first draft of my story left a detritus of obsolete character actions and scenes.

Arianna, on the other hand, had come into her story almost as wise as she left it--definitely not what you want from a fourteen-year-old princess out in the wilds of her own country for the first time.

For both of these characters, I first had to find their ending-points before I could really decide their beginnings. When I was in school, I always wrote my essays straight through, and then pasted my conclusion into the beginning, so that it looked like my meandering path to the point was intentional. Sometimes, I'd even go back and fix the rest of the essay to more concisely reflect that. Thankfully, I'm a more diligent writer than I was a student.

What I discovered for my characters was that, once I knew who they were when they exited the story, I could use that essence of character and take them backwards a few steps, logically, based on what happens in the story. I could decide for them a stage from which to grow, and change, and develop into that character I had finally come to know by the end. In short, I messed with the starting-point of their character-journey to make the road to their destination more poignant and noticeable.

What kind of things do you learn about your characters in a first-draft? How do your characters' personal journeys evolve and change as you write, and from draft-to-draft? Would you/have you made changes to a story because of a character's need to be dynamic?

Characters that Cry

An Artist in Excruciating Pain

(Wisdom of the day: NEVER Tweet the word iPad. You will get spammed into next week, even if you delete the tweets.)

Writing characters that cry is a tricky process. Every time a character of mine starts to get choked up, I ask myself not whether I would cry in that situation (If I wouldn't, there's something wrong), but whether I would want to read about a character who would. Secondary characters can get a lot more leeway than main characters in this regard--just look at how often Hermione bursts into tears, as opposed to Harry, whose life is unquestionably more difficult (ignore the part where he's a boy and therefore biologically not as prone to tears). I know it's really important for a main character to retain the respect of the reader by showing what they're made of.

So why do my characters cry so much in rough drafts?

In The Mark of Flight (MoF), my main character Arianna is a fourteen-year-old princess, who struggles to get home before her kidnapping incites a war. In Hellhound (HH), my MC is Helena--a shape-shifter, who grew up enslaved in a gang-like style of living until she freed herself with magic and started working to stop her ex-master. These two characters have very little in common, even their worlds: Arianna's world is High Fantasy, while Helena is from a contemporary alternate version of the US. If there was one thing I discovered through writing both of them, it was that they sniffled their way to the finish-line.

Pampered Princess or Badass Shapeshifter--it doesn't matter. They both wibbled at every moment of intense feeling. By the time I got to the end of the first drafts, I knew the faucets were leaking enough to daunt even the Mario brothers. 

I thought I knew Arianna pretty well when I started MoF, but no matter how well you know your MC before you start, you always know them much better once you finish. At first I thought it was okay for her to cry, since she was a spoiled princess, but when I finished MoF, I went back and removed almost all of Arianna's tears. I had learned so much about her character that I decided her pride and determination wouldn't let her cry until one key point--when she discovers she has fleas in her hair. Trivial, yes, but it's that triviality in the midst of the seriousness that finally gives her an outlet. It serves at least two other purposes, as well.

Writing Helena was a totally different experience.

As some of my older readers will recall, I came up with HH the day before NaNoWriMo started, based on a scene I did as a writing exercise. I had a strong outline, which I wrote in a day using Holly Lisle's note-carding method, but learning about Helena was "pantsing" all the way. There wasn't time to get to know her before I started writing--I had to get to 50,000 words by December 1st. I knew she was running, she had a secret, and she had a goal. I knew she was out of place, but not why, or how she felt about any of it. As the story progressed, I filled in her background, I learned her reactions. I think I got her right in the last two or three chapters, but she had about 20 breaking points scattered throughout the story.

I've chosen which one I think is the most important, and I'm trashing the rest. For the character I had established by the end of the story, her level of vulnerability at the beginning and middle of the story was way too high. That's what I love about writing, though. I can fix my mistakes, and only my beta-readers will ever know.

And everyone who reads this blog. Dammit.

It can't be productive to write this way, but I wonder if this isn't part of my learning process--to write characters weaker in the first draft, so I can decide their limits, and then go back and revise. Maybe in the next book or five, I'll learn to be a little more conservative with the waterworks, so my main characters don't start reading like Cho Chang.

Are you bothered by characters who cry a lot? Do your characters cry too much in rough drafts, or not enough? What other kinds of rough-draft tendencies do you have?

Interpreting Conflicting Advice: Part I

Confused Writer (patriziasoliani)

I've been reading a lot of blogs and author/agent interviews recently, and there is so much information out there that it seems impossible to internalize it all at once. As writers, we must: have an open mind, but stick to our guns; persevere, but give up easily; be passionate about our work, but have distance. We must also have thick skin, but be sensitive; have a brand, but be ourselves.

HOW AM I SUPPOSSED TO DO IT ALL AT ONCE? /capslock!Harry.

Then I realized something: we probably don't.

Today I want to talk about one set of  conflicting advice, and at what stage of the process I think that bit of advice is best implemented. I make these suggestions because they work for me, so if you have alternative suggestions and uses, please use them in the comments!

Have an Open Mind vs. Stick to Your Guns

It seems obvious that revising a manuscript means changing it, but you'd be surprised how many writers I know (including me, a few years ago) make the mistake of believing a revision is little more than line editing and "cutting fat".

As writers, we must be open to the idea that our worlds, our characters, and our plots might need to change. If a writer's magic system is causing problems, but he can't bear to revise it from his original idea (having the characters speak incantations in iambic pentameter kicks too much ass to take out), he's going to hit a wall. Then another wall. He will start sacrificing things that have the potential to really make his story stand out, just to rescue that one detail. Alas, the detail has to be revised (see what I did there?).

Critique partners might make suggestions that involve restructuring your plot, changing or removing characters, and they will probably point out a few things that you knew would be problems, but resisted changing just in case they worked. Good beta readers will see where you veered off track, and point it out. This is where you have to be open to changing what you've written.

Having an Open Mind is Hard

When I first started writing The Mark of Flight, I remember not wanting to change a detail about a character who only appeared once. "Her crows died" was what I had written, but I meant "She stopped squawking". I knew it read like she had a flock of crows that dropped dead like they just flew over Arkansas, but I didn't care. I had written that, and I wanted to keep it. I was at an early stage of "The Writer" then. I think we all have that stage. Some of you may still be there, and that's okay provided you gradually loosen your grip on your words and allow them room to change. (I think it's important to know what stage you're at before you ask for critiques, but that will be a different post.)

In contrast, last year I asked Raven to read the finished product of the Mark of Flight (already much revised since the "crow" incident). It only took her saying one phrase--"I think you can do better"--to prompt me to totally rewrite the book, which I had started as a less mature writer of 17-years-old.

So where does "sticking to your guns" come in? Beta readers can offer you invaluable outside perspectives, but not all critique partners are right; sometimes these suggestions would dramatically change your story in such a way that it no longer fits your vision of the tale you wanted to tell.

For example:

When I was in university, I was part of a writing workshop. My friend Justin had written a vampire-hunter story, and it had the expected first-draft-itis, but one of the inflated literary [redact]s in the class took it upon himself to suggest a way Justin might improve on his story: by changing the setting to a tractor pull, and making everyone talk like professional wrestlers. I expect the new cast would look something like this:

Needless to say, Justin wasn't going to be taking that advice. Wisely, however, Justin got some distance from his piece and started looking at exactly what about his story had made the inflated literary [redact] want to change it. He was able to remove the suggestion from the problem it was (poorly) attempting to address, and found his own way to fix the problem. This ultimately resulted in a story he's much happier with (in theory, since he's still working on re-writing it).

Okay, so most people won't suggest something that wildly different, so let me give you an example from my own writing, where the suggested revision would have taken my story in a direction I didn't want it to go.

Back in my freshman year of university, I was taking my first fiction workshop (not yet high-level enough to have many IL[R]s). The time was rolling around for me to submit my second short-story, and what I had finished was not so much a short story as it was a 30,000-word space-opera novella called Perfect Sphere. My professor suggested I attach a $5 bill to each copy of the manuscript, which was about six times longer than anything else we'd gotten in class.

Luckily, the story was received well, and I was please with the professor's suggestion that I research the diamond trade for more inspiration, because it might be the framework for something publishable. Then, someone else in the class suggested that I make the MC, Hunter, an alcoholic.

Hunter is a classic example of the "flawed" character. He's actually one of Adryn's characters, whom I hijacked to satisfy a deadline, and whom I really love, probably because he's so flawed. He's abrasive, pessimistic, temperamental, and huge. More importantly, he's got the equivalent of an acid scar splashed across one side of his face, his shoulder, and over both hands--relic of an accident. Because of it, Hunter finds himself not only ugly, but monstrous. He reacts by being reclusive, to stave off the judgement of others, and when he can't be reclusive, he's grumpy, expecting rejection before it comes.

In my head, I tried the "alcoholic" hat on Hunter, and while it didn't look entirely wrong, it changed him. He slid a little farther across that line from "flawed" hero to "antihero", and I felt my own sympathy for him slip. Not because I think alcoholics make poor characters, but because I realized that the only reason a man with the military discipline of Hunter would ever let himself become an alcoholic is depression. Losing his faith in the world and his station in it.

And I couldn't let Hunter go there. He deals with his own trauma in a way that shows weakness--he runs away from people, and his default personality is grumpier than I am in the morning (ouch)--but still aims himself toward a positive goal (ridding the universe of real monsters).

So I chucked that advice, but I asked myself what that reader had been trying to say. Probably, I thought, it was because Hunter's flaws were only visible at that time in his grumpiness. I hadn't done very much to show his weaknesses, and I thought that was probably what she wanted--weaknesses. So I found some places in the story to work in the weaknesses he already had, and I liked it a lot better. I felt like Hunter's character potential increased.

Moral of the story: don't let a beta-reader pull you away from the story you want to tell. At the same time, try to find out why the reader is suggesting you change that portion of the story. Find out what isn't working for them so you can address that problem--your way.

What conflicting advice have you heard recently? Have you ever had to fight to keep an open mind, or stick to your guns when faced with a suggestion from a beta-reader?

When Should You Ask for a Critique?

I would want my badass pegacorn to look like this,

I've been writing my whole life. Recently, Raven asked me to rewrite the first story I ever did, and I was forced to inform her of the terrible truth: I wrote my first story when I was three years old, and it involved a white pegacorn rescuing a cart-load of orphans from the Care Bears villain. Pretty sure I drew a coal-cart. (If I ever rewrite, I'm thinking Steampunk.)

Needless to say, my experience has been drawn out since the tender age of three-ish, and I've picked up a couple of things about asking for critiques along the way...mostly through doing it wrong. Now let's be clear that I'm still in the learning process myself, but from my experience (doin' it wrong) so far, there are two major mistakes new/amateur writers make when asking for critiques:

1. NOT asking for critiques.

Obviously, it's hard to improve, and even harder to publish if you never ask for critiques. There are plenty of people who are shy about their work, and I totally understand that. You're making yourself very vulnerable by sharing something that you've created, and we as humans do our very best to avoid being vulnerable. Realizing that you are not ready for criticism puts you a step ahead...unless you never ask at all. Assuming that most people are writing with the intent to publish, the worst way to hinder yourself is never to let anyone see what you've written.

2. Asking for critiques too early.

I'm going to focus on this second mistake, because it's the one I've made time and again. I've never been shy about sharing my work, which has its own set of problems. Most writing problems are like sliding glass doors, and most writers are like cats perched on the back of the couch, rump wriggling. Until we sail head-first into that sliding door, we don't realize it's there, even if other people have pointed it out.

CLANG.

This was my process in learning to ask for critiques. When was I ready? Let's find out:

"I have a few chapters and I want to see if my idea is good enough to pursue."

-Not yet.

A. This isn't so much a question, as a neon sign saying: "VALIDATE ME"

If you're still at the beginning of your novel, it can be really tempting to seek validation, but you've got to be prepared for the possibility of a negative reaction. What happens if your beta-reader tells you your premise or characters are cliche? Will you stop writing?

• If you answered "yes", you're definitely not ready. The truth is, MOST first drafts read as cliched or hard to understand. A lot of writers don't really start understanding their own stories until at least half way through, and it's only in revision that the first three chapters reflect the real meat of the story.
• If you answered "no", why are you asking whether it's good enough to write if you're going to write it anyway? You don't need someone to tell you it's good. Trust your own passion for your work.

B. No one else can know what you have in your head.


How many books have you read that start the same way? Boy gets magic object. Evil somethingorother shows up and destroys his village. Boy flees with mentor, only to realize that magic object is....

Right. So everyone probably has their own idea of what "..." stands for, but the important point is this: you know how your story is going to unfold, and what makes it unique. You can't expect a beta-reader to be able to tell from the first few chapters how epically mind-blowing is your premise, or how endearing is your main character. /Shakespeare

"I just wrote this scene, and it's so awesome, and I sent it to my entire writing group! I just need to share it with someone so we can talk about how awesome it is!"

WHO LET THE FANGIRLS OUT?

-Not yet.

I'm still sometimes guilty of this, and there are a few reasons I discovered that made this a particularly bad time to ask for a critique.

A. I don't actually want criticism yet.

When I want to fangirl over something I've written, I'm not looking for someone to tell me that the character cries too much. I'm just looking for someone to squee with me. Maybe it's okay to send this to a really positive, fangirly supporter...but see the next point for why it's still not a good idea.

B. I can't concentrate on anything else but hearing back from my critique partners.

All the excitement and energy I've worked up by writing something I think is awesome turns to despair when no one has time to read or reply, and I stop writing until I get the validation I want. My suggestion? Turn that excitement into steam to write your next chapter. :)

"I'm not done with my book/story."

-Probably not yet.

I say "probably" here for a couple of reasons. Let's start with why you SHOULDN'T ask for someone to read an unfinished work, and then cite the exceptions.

A. You might not finish.

Did I just realize your nightmare? Fact is, your beta-readers will not thank you for sending them 30,000 words of a novel to read and critique, and then find that you've abandoned that story for something shinier, rendering their efforts pointless. Good beta readers are valuable, and you have to respect their time.

B. You'll probably have a lot of things you want to change by the time you get to the end.

I'll shoot out another anecdote here, because I'm guiltier of this than anyone else I know. I learn something with every novel, and I had to learn this advice in two stages.

With THE MARK OF FLIGHT, I started sending out one chapter at a time in 2003. I finished the novel in 2005, and sent it out again with revisions. Taking the suggestion of an agent, I cut out 50,000 words and sent it again. Then, in 2009, I rewrote 90% of it...and sent it out again. Now that I finally have a decent book, I've chopped off the beginning, and have planned out a set of six new scenes for the new opening. Guess what I'm going to do when I finish. Shocked my beta-readers haven't killed me yet? So am I.

With HELLHOUND, I wrote about 60,000 words in November, at which point I slapped the whole thing up on Google Docs and kept writing. After reaching the 106,000 word total, I had dropped a character, figured out my heroine's true "starting point" and come to realize that I was utterly embarrassed by the first 40,000 words or so, and wished no one else had read it.


The exceptions.
-You're a new writer, and you need a cheerleader. This is totally understandable, because most of us aren't confident when we do something for the first time, and those of us who are probably shouldn't be. The important part is to inform your reader that you are NOT looking for criticism, but the encouragement you need to finish the story.

-You're having plot trouble. It happens to all of us. Sometimes getting a fresh perspective, or even just talking out a problem at someone will help us to figure out where we went wrong and what we can do to get ourselves back on track. Often, this might be resolved by talking to another writer, but sometimes the problem is more elusive than that. I'm lucky enough to have a few really good beta readers.

-You're collaborating. Last week I wrote an entry about collaboration, and this is one situation in which I think it's absolutely essential to get critiques. You and your partner need to be on the same page (ha ha), and that means reading what the other person has written, and talking about where your visions diverged, or how a cool new idea might change the path of the plot in the future.

"I just finished my book!"

Shock! Amazement!

It might be ready.

Finishing a book is a huge accomplishment, but had I not already posted the first 50,000 words of HELLHOUND in Google Docs, I wouldn't have sent it out right away. Like I said before, you'll probably know a couple of things you want to change. If not, you'll probably spot them once the manuscript cools. It may not bother you to stare at your mistakes and know your beta readers will nail you for them, but it bothers me, because I'm lucky enough to have beta readers who won't be nice just because I know where they live.

I think it's all right to send it out at this stage, just know that you'll probably get critiques on things that you've already decided to change, and if you consistently tell your beta readers "I know, I'm doing *this* instead", they may feel less than necessary to your process, and a little resentful that they'll have to read it all again. (Sorry, Raven.)


I recommend you give your book a couple of weeks to marinate in its own awesome (or suck, if that's the case) before you pull it out and give it a good look. Make notes of what you'd like to change, and if you're not ready to revise, give your beta-readers these notes along with the manuscript.

To be clear, I haven't actually managed to do this myself, but I hope to take away the lessons I've learned this time around and work toward that goal.

"I finished my book/story, and I've let the manuscript cool. I'm okay with the thought of changing it."

Oh look, someone opened the sliding-glass door!

When do you ask for critiques? Have you ever asked for a critique too early? How do you know when you're ready? Answer in the comments!


photo by Basial

Collaboration, Hold the Drama

Skrybbi and I in High School

When the potential for creative rights and credit and--squirm in your seat with me, now--money is involved, it can be dangerous to collaborate with your friends, but my girls and I have managed to do it with no hurt feelings thus far. I did some thinking, and I came up with the five steps my friends and I always use to collaborate...without drama.

These steps are: Discover, develop, delegate, discuss, and decide. I'll go into them a little more in a moment, but first...

Adryn, Raven, Skrybbi, Mica? Sorry, guys: I'm blowing our secret.

CONFESSION: I AM A HUGE DORK, AND SO ARE MY FRIENDS.

Renfaire circa 2001

Our "misspent youth" happened in another world--okay, a BILLION other worlds--facilitated by single-minded collaborative storytelling with my friends. We created stories, which we wrote or role-played back and forth as our various characters (I know, I know, we never stopped pretending. Shut up).

Usually, one person came up with a character, world, or story idea and spilled their guts to at least one other, who obligingly made a character. Plot situations spun out from notebooks passed in hallways at school, or from evenings in Adryn's back yard, smacking each other with sticks.

Luckily, Adryn's parents found this perfectly normal. Bless.

SO WHAT ABOUT WRITING THEM?

Me, 15, dressed as a character.

We had an understanding that the original creator retained "first rights to write", even if other people contributed to plot and world-building. I don't think we actually considered collaborating on the writing (with intent to publish) until we were a bit older. Spinning a real story out of those scattered scenes, those million-and-five ways the characters could reach their goal, or have their first kiss, or fail to, is a lot more work than just tossing out another PWP iteration over gmail, but we've started doing just that.

This is how we served up collaborations--hold the drama.

We didn't set up these rules beforehand. Looking back, I just realized that this is how it panned out, every time.

1. DISCOVER

Whose brainchild was it? Who was the *first* one to discover the idea? IE, who feels the most ownership over the "concept"?

This doesn't always necessarily mean anything in the end, but if there's a disagreement later on, it's good to establish from the get-go who will walk away with the "rights to write" the idea. Also, if the story makes you as rich and famous as you think, people will ask you this anyway. Sometimes, there *isn't* one person whose idea a story originally was, or you can't remember. In those cases, I guess you'll have to battle to the death.

2. DEVELOP

How did the concept take shape? Was one person facilitating the development? Did you develop the story equally, or mostly-equally? Decide how that affects your perceptions of ownership, credit, and your expectations.

3. DELEGATE

Decide what work is going to be done by whom. Are you outlining together? Are you taking turns on chapters, or character POVs? Is one person writing the rough draft, and the other revising and fleshing out weak areas? Again, decide how that affects credit and expectations.

4. DISCUSS

This is the sticky conversation, the one you will probably avoid until the fun world-building part is over and it's time to get to the grind. This is the time when doubt sets in and you wonder, "just how is this going to pan out?" It's important to honestly discuss your expectations, desires, and, yes, your feelings. Your feelings are important, because they will reflect on your collaborator.

Be honest--if it's your brain-child and you want the credit, say so. If you're writing the rough draft, but are uncomfortable with the collaborator changing any of a certain character's actions or dialog, mention it. If you feel like you're doing the lion's share of the work, and therefore would want more of the income (after all, it's your hours going into the page), you can't be shy in expressing this. If you have doubts about the other person's reliability in keeping up their end, you have to bring it up as a legitimate fear.

The alternative is getting to the query stage and realizing that you both had wildly different expectations of work, credit, and cash. Now, everyone hates to be petty and bring money into it, especially if you're collaborating with a friend, but it's important to have a discussion early on about what you intend to do, even if that discussion only comes down to: we will see who put what into the story when it's ready to submit, and then decide what's fair.

5. DECIDE

Given the discussion, now is the time to decide whether or not you feel all right with the terms of the collaboration. I will give you two examples of collaborations, the feelings I had when developing and discussing, and how we made our decisions.

EXAMPLE ONE

In Which We Collaborated

Me with Adryn, Japan 2008

Steam Kids ( with Adryn)

• Discover: The original concept came from a dream Adryn had.

• Develop: We developed it in almost 50/50, but I deferred to her because the original concept was hers, and I owe it to her to stay true to that.

(Adryn and I recorded ourselves developing a world from her concept, and you can listen here:Pendragon Variety Xtra: Worldbuilding_)

• Delegate: I am under oath not to describe the exact delegation of work, but it actually created a bit of an expectation difference when got to the discussion point. But to be brief, I felt uneasy about the relative balance of work to compensation and accreditation.

• Discuss: I expressed my concerns to Adryn. She expressed her feelings and fears to me. Yes, the discussion was hard, and we both felt petty at times. There were many projections of "If this happened, I would feel this". Our expectations were not the same, but we got on the same page with each other, at least. We deferred credit and payment decisions until the work was ready for submission, so we could ensure that both of us felt we got the amounts we deserved.

• Decide: I decided to go ahead with this collaboration because the story has such potential, and because I love working with Adryn, and ultimately, I trusted that she would do everything she could to make the story awesome. I think it was the same for her. I honestly am not unhappy with the delegation of work. I think the biggest tension comes from us both being unpublished writers who are looking for that first publication credit to slap into our query letters.

*In the event that Adryn and I had decided to halt the collaboration, I'm sure we would have come to an agreement--I could let her have the story, since it was mostly her idea. Or, she might decide to let me write it, since I'm the more prolific.

EXAMPLE TWO

In Which We Declined to Collaborate

Me with Raven, Japan 2009

Children of Zero (Raven)

• Discover - The original idea was Raven's. (Yes, I do come up with ideas, I swear. I just never want to share them. Bwahahahaahaha.)

• Develop - Raven had a VERY specific image of what she wanted for the story, so she did most of the development. Raven's stories are usually like this, so it was an expectation. I developed one POV character and one secondary (but very important) character, and made a lot of suggestions that helped shape the world.

• Delegate - We'd talked about doing a back-and-forth writing exercise, she writes a scene, then I write a scene.

• Discuss - as we were discussing credit, Raven confessed that she didn't want to share credit for the story, which I understand completely considering that it was her idea, her vision, and she developed most of it. I suggested a byline that read "By Raven Wei, with Lauren Harris". For various reasons, mostly involving her dislike for double-authored books (esp. when she knows neither author), she really didn't want that either. She wanted to know if I was okay with her completely rewriting my parts, since she saw our online collaboration less like writing a book together, and more like a brainstorm that paralleled her real writing. We do a lot of text-based RPGs, and I think the communication broke down because I assumed we were writing with intent to publish, and I guess Raven assumed we were writing as an RPG, but trying to get through a full story plot to help her figure it out. While I am happy for her to use my characters, I didn't want to get tied to an RPG that required me to write a full scene a week if my scenes were going to be rewritten into her story, and I wasn't going to get more than an acknowledgement. Of course, Raven totally understood this...because apparently, she had thought I was just being insanely generous before. *lol* This is why discussion is important.

• Decide: I decided to bow out of the collaboration and let Raven have her story, which is what I think she really wanted anyway. The reason I had stepped in in the first place was as an accountability partner--scene for scene. There were no hard feelings at all with this collaboration.

What do you do when you decide not to collaborate?

I love collaborating with my friends, and Raven and I both want to come up with something we can collaborate on, because we've always wanted to write together. If in the end, the two of you can't come to a happy agreement, remember that it's better to walk away from a story idea than to cause drama over it.

One key thing to remember, which might let you walk away with a lighter heart, is: THERE ARE ALWAYS MORE STORIES. :D

Don't let a flirty little story skirt cause a fight between you and a good friend or colleague. You will have more great ideas. You will write more stories, and so will they. If you want to collaborate with them, you will--when you find the right balance or the right story, which makes you both happy.

Have you ever collaborated with a friend? How did it go? What were the problems you faced, and the rewards?

Blog Bus! Great Blogs from This Week

Okay, so I had planned on doing this blog round-up thing once a week, but it turns out my WIP wasn't the only thing in need of revision. It's now been eleven days. I suck, and I'm sorry.

But rather than jumping onto the Fail!Bus, let's take a short-cut and hop straight onto the vastly more scenic route of the Blog!Bus.

On our Route today: Stop 1 - Craft; Stop 2 - Industry/Self-Pub

To start out, how about a little sing-a-long?

John Anealio's Sci-Fi Songs Blog! rocked this week with "New Releases"

And just as a little food for thought, check out Livia Blackburne's post about Psychology as Inspiration for Writers. It seems Adryn is not alone in studying psychology to make people worse...accurately. In fiction.

STOP 1: CRAFT

Three Integral Parts of a Story's Beginning : Author KM Weiland guest posts on the StoryFix.com blog, and talks about how character, action, and setting drive the first scene of a story. Hitler Invades Poland, indeed!

The next three posts illustrate why Magical Words Bloggers are Awesome!

Descriptive Passages Part II: Setting : Magical Words Blogger David B Coe continues his series on descriptive passages, this time focusing on using descriptive passages of setting to help further plot, character, or background. Will be applying this to my own work, most definitely!

Descriptive Passages Part III: Action: Because I suck, David B Coe had time to publish the third in the description series while I was filing my teeth against my manuscript.

Setting, POV, Backstory & Characterizatin (Part II): Another Magical Words blogger, Edmund Schubert, gives some good advice about characters interacting with setting to provide backstory and characterization.

The Trouble With With : I just recently found this blog, Flogging the Quill, and I already love it. In this post, novelist Ray Rhamy talks about techniques for avoiding using "with" in dialog tags, thereby creating stronger writing. No more saying "I did it," with satisfaction.

The Successful Solo Novelist: Possible or Not? Very interesting article from Writer Unboxed, which highlights the importance of editors. He uses Anne Rice as an example, showing how her early work was great, and later, when she fought never to have her prose "mutilated" by editorial hands again, how it spun out of control. Well, we all knew Anne Rice had issues.

I NEED A PIT-STOP!

Howtobescene's 10 Minute Twitter Challenge Song!

STOP 2 : Publishing Industry, E-Publishing, and Self-Publishing
From Draft to Hardback : YA Author Scott Westerfield takes us on the journey of what he, as a writer, does in the process of transforming a draft into a hardback book.
The next three posts focus on the future of the publishing industry when it comes to e-publishing.

Speakin' My Language / The Order of Go : From the Confessions From Suite 500 blog, assistant at the Fine Print Literary Agency, Meredith Barnes, gives her take on why ebooks are NOT going to ruin the publishing industry.
The Future of Story: This post over at Editorrent talks about how we can try to harness the idea of hard and soft trends to help predict the future of story, and figure out it's place in an expanding internet world.
The next two posts from StoryFix.com discuss Self-Publishing, why you might want to do it, and when you probably shouldn't.
Should You Self Publish? One Writer's Take / A Self Publishing Reality Check


And Just Because I'm Shamelessly Self-Promotional:
Go listen to the newest episode of Pendragon Variety, the audio lit mag and round table discussion podcast for genre fiction writers. This week's topic is "Research for Fantasy"

Do Daily Word-Count Goals Hurt Your Writing?

Last year, a writer friend named Munsi wrote one story a day for an entire year.

Boy is mad as a gong farmer, if you ask me, but I was inspired, so here goes.

At the beginning of the year, I set myself a daily word-count goal of 500 words a day, six days a week, or the equivalent of 3,000 words per week. It's not much more than two pages a day, which I thought was fair enough, given that I was working 40 hours every week, with an additional 10 hours of driving on top of that. I didn't want to discourage myself with a goal I couldn't meet, so I set the bar lower than I thought I could achieve.

After two weeks, I had consistently hit the weekly goal, but there was a problem: I still wasn't writing every day, and what I was writing wasn't very good.

I came to the realization that my daily word-count goal was not too much for me to handle--it was actually too little.

The writing process is different for everyone, and it changes for me depending on the story. I can drop into just about any part of THE MARKMASTERS TRILOGY by reading the previous paragraph, but it takes me couple pages to warm up to HELLHOUND, which is still an infant story compared to the 9-year-toil that has been MM3. At the moment, I'm working on HELLHOUND, so getting back into the story takes me a good fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes during which I can have no interruptions, including those I make myself.

At first, I tried to write 500 words every day, even days when I was dead tired. I would sit down and scowl and bang out 543 words and call it a night. The next day, I would do the same thing. The result was a single scene in which the writing was disjointed and the characters' moods veered drastically.

It stopped being worth making myself write every day just to get 500 measly little words I'd probably end up erasing, especially when I could spend 15 minutes picking up the threads tomorrow and write 1000 instead. :D (<--The face I make when I can rationalize procrastinating.)

Then I realized something.

I hate spreading out work. If you read my post about pressure, you already know that I never started on papers until the deadline was imminent. Part of that is because I hate spreading the work out. I'm all for outlining. I'm all for portioning things out in chunks that make sense, but I need to really throw myself into it. I fail at organized spurts the same way I fail at naps (<--which is like failing at life, but on a first-grade level).

In short, I am a marathoner (<--like hot-stuff over here).

Why should I expend the energy it takes to get into a piece for a short spat of work, when I could work more, get better cohesion, and feel much less cranky about writing by doing more in a single sitting. I like knowing that, when I sit down to write, I'm going to accomplish something big.

I decided to kick the daily-word-count goal out like I was Jayne and word-count was tact and discretion and set a weekly goal that was higher than my current pace of 40,000 words.

So, in keeping with my pressure and accountability strategy, I told Raven that I would write 5,000 words by the following Sunday. She stipulated that, if I didn't, I had to buy her dinner.

Well, sorry, Raven. I was the early bird this time. No food for you, because I GOT THE WORd-count. <--FAIL (But also win.)

I wrote 5,500 words in a weekend. The following week, I wrote over 10,000. And this week?

I'm going to FINISH HELLHOUND (or there will be dire consequences).

So here's my suggestion. As my friend Shauna often says, it's only worth what you paid for (which is nothing):

Make sure your word-count goals reflect the kind of writer you are.

If you're a marathoner, like me, set your goals over the course of a week.

If you're a sprinter, set the word-count goal at shorter intervals.

So here's my question to you: Are you a marathoner or a sprinter? Have you ever found yourself in a slump because of low expectations? What kind of word-count goals do you set for yourself?

Beating the Loss of NaNoWriMomentum

Cross-posted from Double Shot of Lauren

We writers seem to be forever forcing ourselves to the page. Actually, I think it's more a matter of forcing the page to bend to our will and coming up bruised, bloodied, and over-caffinated. Not to mention, having only an unsatisfying draft full of stubborn sentences, dripping with adverbs, to show for it. Last week, I posted about how pressure and accountability help me write. What I failed to mention in is that the output of forcing myself to write is not always my best work. It's often horrible.

But that's okay.

The beauty of writing is that we always have the power to erase and pretend like that awful scene where the two MCs end up in a cave, soaking wet, and have to dry their clothes by the fire never happened. Our inner perfectionists may cringe, our inner hipster may scream that the method is inauthentic. You know what? They can get a room. They can have lots of OCD, skinny-jeans-wearing babies who complain about authenticity (or lack thereof) and never get as far as submitting. Like sketches and mock-ups, a first draft is a place to make mistakes. Stories don't spill from our pens in well-edited prose, pre-sifted for all those little golden nuggets of perfect, poignant detail.

And if yours does, get the hell out of my webspace.

The point is, I need to write those bad scenes, because I need something to get me to the good ones. You know how NBC used to air "Friends" and then some other show, and then "Seinfeld"? Those awful scenes are my "some other show" between the good ones--the scenes that are going to need a lot more attention and work before they're able to stand on their own. The scenes that might just never work at all.

But it's hard to get through something when you know it sucks more than Mega Maid.

Momentum

You might notice another post I linked in a later entry, where an author on the Writer on Fire blog discussed writing without inspiration. His post was a well-written and succinct explanation of the practices necessary to keep ourselves going during inspiration's bleak winter season. There was a point, however, where I thought a little expansion would have been helpful, and that was where he spoke about "Momentum".

"While inspiration is strong, the experienced writer gets to work creating outline or summary. Once you have all of the main points down on 'paper' you can complete the work whether you're inspired or not."

As any first-year physics student knows, momentum is mass*velocity. In writing terms, that roughly equates to idea*wordcount. Basically, it's our ability to get words on the page at a certain rate. Sometimes, we've got to push to get a scene started, but that push gives us the start we need to carry on until the scene catches, and we're golden. Sometimes that's because it's a day of inspiration and creative clarity. Other days, it's sheer momentum. Those days when creative clarity and writing momentum work in tandem are the double-rainbow of writing, as glorious as they are rare. Those are the 7,000-word days, the days when writing makes me forget to eat or sleep.

But building momentum is something that I think must be learned for someone to be successful as a writer. It's why a lot of authors have daily word-count goals. Sometimes, it's the starting that's hard. It's slogging through a desert, heading for that next little oasis of a plot-point shimmering in the distance. I tend to hit my stride somewhere between 300 and 500 words, before the scene takes hold.

NaNoWriMomentum

NaNoWriMo offers the pressure necessary to get to the 50,000 word goal. One thing I've noticed, however, is that a lot of people get to the 50,000 word goal and lose momentum almost immediately after that goal is reached. The pressure, competition, and companionship of NaNoWriMo are invigorating, because you can see the thousands of people racing through the sands along with you, and they make it fun. They make it fierce. They egg you on.

Then, on December 1st, they all disappear.

Some of them have accomplished what they set out to do--finished their own personal races. If you, however, are one of those people who is 50,000ish words through a more-than-likely-130,000-word manuscript, that desert can get to looking pretty lonely and intimidating. Fast.

Especially when the 50,000 word-point tends to be where plotting gets tricky, where you have to start juggling geese and playing with fire while singing the alphabet backwards to get everything to that shining ending (which you may not even have planned yet).

It was like that for me. I'd spent November in a topsy-turvy writing state, and as soon as December 1st hit, I closed my laptop and gave myself a well-deserved break. I watched Korean Dramas all week and didn't even open the word document. Which is fine. Everyone needs a break once in a while, to give their brains time to cool off. But then there were the holidays; time spent with family; then all the shopping, cleaning, and loosing all that weight after the holidays. Then a wedding...

It's was so easy to get distracted by the mirage of busyness, to knowingly let it trick me away from the page, once that NaNoWriMomentum was gone.

It's February 9th, and I'm one of the lucky ones. I didn't stop writing entirely. I'm at 80,000 words (I was at 60,000 by the end of NaNoWriMo). My speed has diminished to a sixth of what it was when I had that NaNoWriMomentum, but maybe that's okay too. I know the point of NaNoWriMo is to get as many words on the page as possible, even if they're not amazing. Even if they're tangential. Even if they suck.

So how do you get that momentum back?

I'm still coming to the page almost every day and getting words down. Not every day, and I don't always write a lot of words. Since the end of January, I've been doing it a lot better. I wrote over 55,000 words last week, and I hope to write at least 50,000 more this week.

How? I don't pretend to have the definitive answer to that, but I can at least tell you what I've done.

I've made sure that other people know what my goals are. If you don't keep your goals private, I believe the likelihood that you will reach them increases. Speaking your desires out loud brings results, whether it's because it helps you visualize them clearly, because it helps your inner competitor to know that people are watching (or at least aware of) your goals, or because you believe that if you ask, you shall receive.

Another good way to bring freshness to a work you're probably convinced is falling apart is to revise your outline. This is why I love the notecarding method Holly Lisle teaches on her blog, because it allows my outline flexibility. By the time I get to 70,000 words, I've usually figure out what the hell I'm writing about. I've usually planned some revisions for earlier parts of the story. I usually stare at my outline, thinking--this isn't going to work how I thought it would. With notecards, revising is easy. I needed to take out a perspective and make what I had a lot shorter. (The pace of the story doesn't lend itself to 120,000 words) So I took out a perspective and ended up combining most of the scenes with other ones to give me a tighter story focusing on my heroine. I also, suddenly, got some insight on the main character's love interest. He finally opened up to me, reticent as he is, and spilled his guts and rather sad--though isn't everybody's, from some angle--backstory.

The next important step for me was not to go back and revise yet. I know all the new info on Lover Boy is going to change the depth of his character, the meaning behind some of his actions, and how he feels about them. I need to go back and change the perspective of all the scenes that aren't from my heroine's POV. But I need to wait until the draft is finished. If I start going back now, I could get caught in the quicksand of the endless revise.

So there you have it. Advice, from someone who knows only what works for me.

1. Tell other people your goals, so they can hold you accountable.

2. Revise your outline to incorporate all the things you know, now that you know what you're writing about.

3. DO NOT start revising the beginning. Keep going forward. You can revise later, when you will probably have thought of several more things you'll need to change anyway.