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Archive for the ‘editing’ Category

Lie To Me

Tell me it gets easier after the first one. Tell me that after the months of uphill slogging, the view will be spectacular and that it is all downhill from here.

I’m working my way through the 4th outline of Dangerous. I’m going to change some basic elements of the story. I’ve been reading a great deal now that I’m free and lately one common element of books bugs me. I  get a little annoyed at a story when there is a secret power or society or special character who knows a great deal and pulls the strings behind the scenes too much. It can be done well, but is done so often that it stands out to me as a glaring conceit. Wrapping everything up neatly due to someone coming in and waving some sort of magic wand is too nice, too tidy.  Human situations rarely resolve tidily.

I’m guilty of this. In my first draft there is a secret society that seems to only exist to wrap things up easily and provide loose and convenient motivation for the characters to be together. It reads more like a one shot RPG session than a tightly plotted story. The first couple of outline rewrites moved the society first into a more prominent role with more of a back story, and then the latest has them more understated. The new rewrite? Well, I’m going to get them out of the story entirely. Instead I plan to make some of the characters actually a part of their own group, doing exactly what the idea was for the secret group, only now with a lot more at stake because they’re really more like a sleeper cell of societal activists than just a few criminals who got hired by the right (wrong?) people. This is going to require a lot of intricate introduction and plotting.

I’m starting to both hate and love this novel. I feel like this rewrite will make it something real, a creature I’m proud to have given form instead of a misshapen foundling. I’m not sure how feasible my goal of having a draft down by the end of September really is, however. I’m not only revamping the plot, I’m changing how the city works, how people get around, what they eat, everything. It’s going to barely resemble draft 1. Which is terrifying.

It’s like the first time you run a whole mile. You feel wonderful. Then you realize that you “ran” that mile at a pace most people walk it. Not only that, but you are sore and tired now. And you still have to get up and run it again. And again.

I don’t want to believe that. I want lies. Filthy wonderful lies. I want to write a novel and have that be the end of things, not the beginning. I wrote this, here, take it. I want to run a 3 minute mile without any training. Without pain.

Well, maybe not. But, I’d like to believe in the possibility of it.

Which is probably why I’m a writer and not a runner.

Rewriting and Feedback

I’ve been collecting feedback on the short stories I want to submit places from both friends and the online writing workshop over at sff.com. So far the reviews of the work is positive, which is comforting. It isn’t the things that people like that I find most helpful, unsurprisingly. While I like hearing that people enjoy my stories, the things that don’t work are the things I’m most interested in.

Which brings in today’s topic. How do you know what criticism is worth taking and using? I’ve gotten a few suggestions for changing things up in all three stories that I’m currently editing. I think to best answer the question of how do you know, I’m going to just go through the crits and the process here for each story.

First, Monsters. This short story involves a man and his slightly odd wife and a monster and a mean prince. The feedback I’ve gotten is basically that the beginning feels too different from the second half and that the connection between the monster and prince isn’t clear enough. Also, the naming constrictions are weird and that I either need to remove all the names except the odd wife’s or name everyone. I feel all this criticism is valid. The story’s first half is different in feel than the second mostly because I wrote the first half years ago and my writing has evolved and frankly, gotten better. Since none of my readers seem to have picked up a clear connection between monster and prince, I think this is valid too. Clearly it isn’t a case of one person missing the obvious, it is more likely a case of me not showing things the way I mean them to be shown. As they say, if one person has a problem with you, it could be them. But if five people have a problem with you? It might not be them. So for this story, taking the crits and using them is fairly easy.

Next, Delilah. This story is a retelling of the Samson and Delilah story from the bible. I posted it on the writing workshop as well as sending it out to my usual victims. I’ve gotten fairly positive reactions to it, with one reviewer kindly going through and bolding awkward sentences, typos, and fixing my strange comma usage. This kind of nit picking crit is really useful if a story doesn’t have any major problems. It saves me tons of work in the revision process if I have the stuff pointed out for me. Another reviewer suggested that there was too much fate feeling in the story. I’m not sure I want to remove the fated feeling, since that is a part of what I like about the story. I am, however, going to add a little more active thinking and awareness on the part of the main characters since I think that will help keep them understandable.

Then there was a crit on the story that I’m not going to go with. Mind you, it isn’t always this easy to see what doesn’t work for you about a suggestion. The crit in question was to change the story so that one of the Philistine leaders is a true villain in the tradition of Othello’s Iago. I can sort of see where the person is coming from, but to create a villain to fight against like that would completely change what I want to do with the story. This, I think, is the most important way of knowing what is good and useful criticism. It has to pass my “does this communicate what I want to communicate” test. If you don’t know what story you want to tell, then you probably aren’t ready for the feedback stage. Once I know the story I want to tell, I can use it as a meter to judge the feedback. Does this thing help me tell the story better? Am I getting across what I want to get across? If not, what are they suggesting might work better? It helps too if you can have a dialog with the readers so that you can point out what you were going for and ask them for what might help them get there as a reader.

The third story, Bladebearer, is the hardest one to figure out the good from the chaf.  The story is about a young alien who gets stranded on a planet and has to survive.  So far I’ve had two readers decide this would be a great first chapter of a novel (because I need another novel project like I need a bullet in the ass, really). My imagination is trying to run with that feedback. I found myself sitting in bed the other day outlining chapters in my head. I had to put a stop to that right quick, heh. Another reviewer said she got bored in the middle of the story. I’m not sure what to do with that crit. I’m filing it in the ‘reread and evaluate” drawer. The story is a bit longer than I usually write them at 5107 words. I could stand to trim a bit, though I’m also going to be adding a little on the advice of another reviewer. He wanted clarification on what was happening in the beginning of the story and I think I see a way to make things more understandable. Reviews have mostly been positive, which is comforting. The hardest part about this story, for me, is that I really like it. I wrote the whole thing in an insomniac rush at work one night after being inspired by George RR Martin’s Dreamsongs to try my hand at a little genre bending science fiction/fantasy. I also wanted to write something happy for a friend of mine who suffers through my writing even though she really doesn’t care for the subject matter, endings, or feel of it. (She’s the only friend to make it through my first novel attempt).

Maybe someday I’ll turn Bladebearer into a novel for her.

But because I really like the story, I find it harder to take criticism about Bladebearer.  I get a bit defensive and want to argue instead of listen.  This is a personality issue of mine as much as anything, I think.  But it is one of the obstacles I work with as a writer.

So, to sum up. For me a good crit is one that helps me see how I can make the story I want to tell come across clearly to the reader. It points out the things that work and the things that don’t work. Useful feedback shows me how to improve as a writer and a communicator.

Not very useful crits are the ones that suggest changes that don’t fit with the story I’m trying to tell, or ones that are clearly stemming from some sort of reader bias (these are hard to tell sometimes, sometimes not so much). Also in the not useful category are people who just say “oh, nice story.” Grr. Those people get no gold stars. Saying you liked it doesn’t help me as a writer. If my only goal was to write things and hear “I love you” from the reader, I’d hand them to my mother (who still, by the way, hasn’t gotten back to me on the last story I sent her). The whole point of rewriting is to make things better, clearer, stronger. My feedback readers are my coaches, my cheerleaders, and my workout partners all in one. I can run on my own, to stretch this metaphor a bit more, but I’ll go farther in less time with help. “Good job” or “stop running” aren’t help.

Accepting the Reality of Dangerous

It’s time.  Time to accept that no matter how many iron-on patches and crazyglue fixes I try with my first novel, it’s over.  This edit isn’t happening.  Yeah, I’m halfway through.  Sure, I’ve hit the 200 page mark. Woohoo.

It sucks. End of story.  My ears bleed when I read the text aloud.  The writing barely feels like it’s mine.  I don’t really care about the story, the characters are flat and noncommittal, the action without actual peril, the setting half-assed.  I can fix all these things.  But not if I’m stuck in the framework of the original novel.  It is time not to revise, but to rewrite.

I’m making a list right now.  On the list go all the things I like about the original text.  These are things I’ll keep.  I might end up with a wholly different novel than I had before. I don’t know.  I’m going to keep the basics of the plot, the setting, and most of the characters.  I can rebuild it, better, faster, stronger.

If I can’t write a whole new novel, then I don’t belong writing novels.  This is going to be a lot more work than ironing on patches and debugging the original.  I think I’ll be lucky if I’m done by July (my tentative goal). I want the novel to feel like I wrote it though.  I want to write characters I’m interested in, and I want the time to find their voices, to weave their cares and conflicts into the story.

It also means that my other two novels are going on the back burner.  I think this is good.  They can percolate in my head for a while longer.

Good Times

Two awesome things happened in my writing life in the last two days.

One: wrote a short story I’d been wanting to write for a while now.  I managed to quiet down the excuse monkey and do it.  Amazing how after working on a 60k word + novel for a while makes writing up 3 to 5k words seem like so much less work than it used to.  I finished the entire first draft of the story in about 4 hours.  It’s a retelling of the Samson and Delilah story.  I’ve wanted to retell it ever since listening to Regina Spektor’s Samson song.  The original story is so stupid that I wanted to write a version that makes more sense (and involved more of a fantasy/sorcery bent to things rather than just stupid people).  It feels really good to get the story done.  I think I might take a chance and submit it to S&S depending on how my rewrites of the two other stories I’m considering go in the next week.  Though Samson drives some of the action, I feel that Delilah is truly the central part of it, so the strong central girl thing comes through well enough if subtly.

The second awesome is that I found out about grad school.  I’m in!  So now I have to figure out how to pay for it and what I’m going to do about that whole “sorta misrepresented the stuff I write” problem.  Though, to be fair, my two stories I sent in weren’t exactly mainstream normal either.  One is about a teenager heroin addict who kills her abusive ex (and has his ghost in the story) and the other is about a violin player from Hometown, Everywhere going to the Big City and finding herself (and falling for another girl). (And the final installment of that story, which I didn’t send them because I haven’t finished it yet reveals that the girl she’s in love with is actually a hermaphrodite with the bits of both sexes.  And I’m probably going to rewrite the whole thing and put a more high fantasy bent on it since as one reader pointed out it has that feel anyway).

I’m now brainstorming and taking all ideas for how to raise money for school.  So far on the maybe possible list (instead of the silly list) I’ve got bake sales and chapbook donation/sales.  It wouldn’t be that expensive to print up a little (maybe 40 page) chapbook of my poetry.  I’m not sure how many people I could convince to donate/buy them.  Anyone know how bake sales work?  Any other ideas?  I’m not expecting to raise all 25k, but it would be nice if I could get some monies to put towards books and such.  The more costs I can defray on the front end, the better it will be in the long run since I’m pretty much doomed to some sort of Federal loan.  (So much for having no debt. At least interest rates are low right now).

This does not affect the Ten in Ten plan, by the way.  I’m going to work my thesis into my novel plans and hopefully write a novel for it which will be that year’s novel.  Probably War Witches, but maybe the sequel to Dangerous depending if I get lucky and the whole sale thing happens.  I guess I’ll have to cross that whole “doesn’t like to write lit fic” bridge when I come to it, eh?  MFA programs do have a reputation for turning out writers who sound just like each other (and their profs), but I have my own fairly distinctive voice and thus this isn’t a huge concern.  I’m stubborn.

Well, now to wait for the paperwork machine that is the University proper to get around to processing that I’m admitted to the program and do the whole actual admission process so I can find out about aid.

Back to writing. Yay.

Humble Pies

I found a writing notebook from when I was 12.  I read over the stories in it and had a pretty good laugh at my poor baby self.  It isn’t exactly warming how far I’ve come as a writer, because hey, I was 12.  I wrote these stories to try to get published in Sword and Sorceress.  I’m glad now I didn’t send them in.  MZB has/had a bit of a reputation for being pretty harsh.  A friend of mine suggested I post some actual writing, so for your viewing pleasure, I’m going to post (without any editing at all) a short story from my 12 year old self as well as the letter I wrote to accompany it as a submission for S&S (S&S 9 or 10, it would have been).  No laughing. Well, ok, a little laughing is appropriate.  All comments of mine are in italics.

Dear Marion Zimmer Bradly,  (I’m sure misspelling her name would have gone over well)

I have written many stories but never tried before to have one published.  If you don’t like my story, could you please send me a list of you’re guidelines so that I can do better next time! (I was apparently in love with exclamation points at this time in my life, they are everywhere).

Thankyou,

my name

Lessons (even then I loved one word titles for my stories, so some things don’t change I guess)

I have to keep going. I must keep going. I will not fall. I will not fall. I must keep going. I will… not…fall.  I… will…not..stop. I must…move, must…run. I will not…stop. I…must…keep…going.  I… will…

I looked up. A big leafy branch met my vision. I was bound securely to a tree.  This was fun! Forcing my throbbing head to move I looked around.  Where was Rumor?  Then I remembered being dragged.  How far? How long?  I thought about that great black oaf!  I would skin her with a dull knife if… Stop, I told myself sharply.  For all I knew she might have been killed by this pack of rat eaters, that, until recently, I had been hunting.  Oh Rumor, please live. Please live. (I also still loved commas too!)

I must run. I must race. Hurry. Oh my sister, I come! (No, seriously, the exclamation point!)

Rumor, I thought bitterly.  This was my fault. Sure we had needed the money, but we’d lived through leaner times.  Oh goddess why?  My Rumor. Rumor.

“It’s awake.” Three rather uncleanced and unshaven men approached me.  Great!  “So kid, ya going to tell us what ya were doin’ near our camp, eh?”

I sighed. This had better be good.

Run, plunge. Stop. Wait. Liston. (I couldn’t spell listen, apparently, but I was consistent in using an o, that’s something right?) I will come. I must run. I will not fall. I must… go…on… I COME…

“Well?”  They looked at me.  Ok, I thought, take it slow, don’t say anything you’ll regret.

“I was lost, I am trying to get to the city of Sarket.  Do you know the way?”  Well, that wasn’t to bad.  A knife leveled at my throat.

“How did you get so near our camp?”

I tried again.  “I was lost.” I said perplexedly (I hope!).  (yes, I couldn’t spell listen but I could spell perplexed, mmm private school education)

The knife dug in a little. “How did you find our camp?”

“Aw, come on Jerrik, maybe the kids tellin’ the truth, let him go and send him to Sarket.”  On of the men pleaded. Yes! I thought, liston to him. He’s right! And I’m not a boy!

“Shut up, Kellis, Now kid do you want to live?” Jerrik glared at me.

“Mmhmm.” I nodded meekly. I was just about fed up with them.

“Good, then, tell me how you found our camp.”

Fine, if they insisted, I would, “My nose,” I snapped.  Their looks darkened. Whoops!

Easy, keep to the shadows. Sweet sister I come, look how I come. Slink, crouch, wait, wait, wait, now!

Two things happened at once. The first was I kicked Jerrik in the knee.  At that moment the other two crashed into him proppeled by, by, by Rumor!  They fell to the ground, stunned.

“Quick, untie me!” I hissed at her.  She grinned, her pink tongue hanging out.  “You’re drooling” I remarked politely as she began tearing apart my bonds.  As soon as I was free I checked the stunned bandits.  “Uh, Rumor, be a little more gentle next time, please?”

“Why?” She asked.

“Their dead” I replied.  (their, they’re, oh well. I know plenty of adults who can’t keep those straight, sigh)

“Ohf, really?” She said with some difficulty.  I turned to see her dragging our gear out of the bushes.

“You’re wonderful.” I laughed.

“And you’re dead.” Said a voice behind me. I moved, dropping into a spin kick that connected sharply with his chest as he fell I jammed my dagger into his throat.  Twisting to the side I ducked under a sword stroke and thrust up into his ribs.  I then dove for the sword and lept to my feet, armed!  Standing, sword in guard position I awaited the next attack.  It never came.  “Demons!” The two remaining men fled.  I turned to my companion.

“Well, let’s retire back and plan that attack on the camp.” I grinned broadly.

“Yes,” agreed Rumor. “Let’s and this time, please, make sure that the sentry you ‘killed’ is actually dead!”

*********

And that is the story.  Pretty improbable fight scene at the end, isn’t it?  Not entirely sure what I was thinking there.  Where did those guys come from?  All sorts of questions raised there.  Also, what is Rumor? I think I meant it to be a large cat, based on a Terry Brooks’ character of the same name that is a Moor Cat.  Poor little me. At least I never sent one in. I’m nearly 27 and I can barely handle rejection.  I can only imagine the pain I would have been in after inflicting that story on the S&S slushpile.

Perspective. I has it now.  Time to go work on something a little more current. Enjoy!

This Week In Writing

I’m putting the novel edit on hold this week in favor of finishing the edit on one of my short stories.  The reason for this?  It’s here.  This anthology was the whole reason my little 12 year old self started writing fantasy short stories.   I’m not sure the story I’ve got that is closest to being done is really exactly suited for this.  I’m going to rework the beginning and see how I feel about it.  I have a couple others that are nowhere near as polished that I could possibly rework also.  The reading period doesn’t begin for almost two weeks, so we’ll see what I can accomplish in that time frame.

So the plan for this week: rewrite the beginning of Monsters, look over my other short pieces and see what I have that might work, and just basically get back into the writing every day groove now that my uberlong work week is over.  2 hours a day, whether I need it or not.

On Series

Today over at John Scalzi’s blog there was a reader post about diminishing returns in series. The part of Scalzi’s answer that I’m going to talk about is specifically the world-building.

I’ve always enjoyed series. I thought it was mainly due to the characters. Once you get to know someone, even in a book, you want more of them. You want to know what happens to them, you want to hear their jokes and fight through their issues with them. I think that familiarity and interest in a character or set of characters has something to do with why people love series and why authors like to write them.

It wasn’t until I wrote my first novel that I understood the point that Scalzi brings up about worldbuilding. Now, as an avid roleplayer and sometime GM, I understand the difficulties of building worlds. I’d never understood it from a writing perspective, however, because until a couple years ago, I only wrote short stories.  Each story is a tiny world, and I didn’t have to worry too much about over-arching consistencies or taking things out of the small perspective.

Novels have no such protection.  For my first book I built a city, then a world.  I started small, thinking only about the characters and the immediate world around them.  But in order to bring length, richness, and consistency into things, I had to form a history and from there a whole bunch of layers, rules, reasons, and description took shape by necessity .  I’m still working on it.  Every time I sit down to edit I find things I haven’t completely thought out that need tuning and details that I either need to explain further or change to something more in line with the world as a whole.

I wrote this first novel as a dare.  It was sort of a joke novel.  Now I’ve got about 15 pages of the sequel (the first chapter basically) also on my computer.  I didn’t mean to do a sequel.  I have other novel ideas, other worlds I want to build and explore.  But since I’m spending so much time building the world of the first novel, it almost seems a waste not to explore the world further.  There is much left unsaid, undone.  The second book will have barely any of the main characters from the first, though as I outline and plan it they speak up more and more.   I’ve spent so many hours inside their heads, so many hours imagining their planet, their cities.  I want to do more in that universe.  I feel like if I’m putting in all the effort, I want to reap a little of the fun too.

I think series jump the shark when the Author stops caring about the characters or starts just following a formula to churn things out.  As with anything, there is a time to let a world go.  To relate it back to gaming, would you run the same dungeon ten times in a row just with slightly different monsters?  No, of course not (hopefully anyway, cause damn that is lazy!).  Your players are going to get bored since they’ve already fought through the same corridors.  Returning to the dungeon once or twice could be interesting to them.  Familiarity can leave room for surprises if you change things a little and upset expectations in good, reasonable ways.  Too much familiarity (haven’t we fought this dire rat before in this room? Or… yeah, we know the grick is about to pop out from behind that suspicious black shrubbery) just breeds contempt.  The key is not to let things get stale.  The key is to care.  Care about your players (or readers), care about your world, your characters.  If the Author has something invested in the work (besides the money…), it shows.

I don’t think there is a “law of diminishing returns” so to speak in writing.  I believe it is fully possible to just get better and better as one goes.  Keep caring, keep writing, keep exploring the crazy ideas or the areas of a world that are still shrouded in darkness.  It’s a lot of work to build a world.  Might as well enjoy the bounding about inside it finding problems to solve and dusty corners to explore.  As for my writing personally, well, frankly this is the first novel I’ve ever written.  Because I’m learning and growing my craft, if I’m doing it right any other books I write in the series will be better than the first.  And that’s just as it should be.  If everything went according to some law, thereby, I would say it would be a law of compounding returns. (Invest early and often kids).  The more you write, the more you explore and grow and evolve as both a writer and a person, the better your writing should be.  So it follows that the final book in any series should be worlds better than the first.

If it isn’t, maybe, in the words of the internets:  Writing, UR Doin’ it Rong.

Writing, I Choose You!

Well, I made my decision.  I am not taking the new job.  I know I wouldn’t have time for writing, not writing anything substantial anyway like a novel.   Thus do I go forward into the unknown.  I can’t succeed if I don’t try, right? Hopefully that thought won’t be a thin blanket in the years to come.

This week I’ve gotten exactly nothing done.  I was on quite the roll with my novel edit last week.  This week I’m working 11 nights in a row (I have 6 days left) which means I have zero energy or brains for anything.  At least I’m getting lots of reading done.

Next week I plan to get cracking.  I want the novel edit finished by the end of April.  I have two more chapters to add that need to be written from whole cloth and about ten more chapters that I have to go over with the proverbial fine tooth comb for errors, inconsistencies, and stupidity. Everywhere in my hard copy notes I’ve written “More Peril”!  While amusing me, it also means more work.  Fortunately, I have the new Dresden Files novel to inspire me.  If Jim Butcher can do one thing perfectly, it is creating peril.  Poor Harry never gets to sleep or eat or prop his feet up.   There are plenty of scenes in my novel where I give my characters a break or gloss over parts where they could be in a lot more danger.  Just one of the many things I’m slowly fixing.  It is mild comfort that authors I enjoy like Jim Butcher or Elizabeth Bear go through multiple drafts that apparently often number in the double digits.  Comparisons can only go so far, however.  Every writer is different, every writing process is the same.  I think this is one of the places where writing lots really does help a writer get better.  We learn about ourselves this way, we learn the HOW of what we’re doing.  Every time I try something I haven’t before with my process, I’m growing as a writer.  Just as every time I continue to do things that work, I still refine the why and how of what’s working.  Maybe in ten years I’ll have more concrete answers. Maybe things will be wildly different.

Also, I joined the Online Writers Workshop, http://sff.onlinewritingworkshop.com .   I haven’t posted any writing yet.  I will likely post a short story for review once I’ve finished rewriting the first half.  I have reviewed a few stories.  The quality of work on the site is higher than on the random forums I’ve been trolling.  There are still the gems of the “oh my god, why do you even bother thinking you can write a coherent or interesting story?”  I had the entire house in stitches over one such piece (the melodramatic live reading probably amped up the badness factor).  The quality of the criticism is pretty good, so I’m using my 4 week trial to see how helpful it could be for me.  We’ll see.

That about wraps it up for this week.  I’ve been getting about 5-6 views a day, strangely enough.  So if anyone reading this has fiction writing topic  posts they are interested in me writing about, let me know.  I’m trying to think of some more craft related things to write about since as long as all I’m working on is my novel edit, it makes my posts here rather dry.  I do intend to write up a post about writing for comics and how I do it. That’s all for now.

The ten in ten project continues!

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