Writerly Wednesdays

Why Casinos Aren’t Publishers

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, it’s another math-centric spiel on probability.

We all know why casinos work and make money, right? It’s because they know the odds are stacked in their favor. They go to great lengths to safeguard against cheating. As a player, some games have better odds than others, but the numbers are what they are. You can’t change them—all you can do is know the parameters, consider your choices within them, and take a chance.

As writers, we talk about trying to increase our odds of getting an agent, getting published, making a bestseller list, etc.

It seems a natural statement, but we can’t do it. There are no odds. Odds assume all things are equal—the dice aren’t loaded, the roulette wheel isn’t rigged. In the writing and publishing world, nothing is equal.

We’re all have different strengths and weaknesses. We’re all at different stages of progression. Some have a story agents/editors want right now; some have a story they might have wanted a year or two ago; some have a story agents/editors won’t want for a year or two (or five) yet.

Seriously, no probabilities or odds out there at all.

I can understand the urge to think of it that way, though. Just like the casino, much of what happens is out of our control. And like the casino, there is some luck involved, if only as far as timing—getting the right agent’s (or editor’s) attention at the right time with the right project.

When things aren’t within our control, we tend to think of them in terms of chance, odds, hoping the cards fall our way.

When we think that way, we may forget things that are within our control. Working hard to continually improve our craft. Looking ahead to the next project (and the next, and the next) when the stars don’t line up for one, rather than staying stuck on that one, never moving forward. Educating ourselves on the industry and our options within it.

There is no magic bullet or shortcut, no counting cards or rigging the machines. We can do everything right and still not “win.”

Because there are no numbers to work. There is only work to be done.

Well, there’s one number out there. If we quit—or never get out there in the first place—our “odds” of success are precisely zero. As long as we avoid that number, we’re on the right track.

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"But My Writing Teacher Said (or Asseverated) …"

Speaking of undoing what other teachers have done …

Did anyone else go to school and have a poster or handout with 75 or so alternatives to “said”? Bellowed, whispered, mumbled, hissed—ooh, that last one sparks fights. Can you actually hiss words?

Enter the world of aspiring novelist and you’re told to only use “said,” if you must use a dialogue tag at all. Maybe “asked” if you really think the question mark isn’t doing its job.

There’s another one I see all the time when students ask me to look at their writing assignments. I’m not sure what their English teacher’s stance is on it, which makes it hard to know what to say.

Descriptions. Extreme overuse of adjectives. Since I don’t teach English or creative writing, I don’t have a volume of teenage story samples, but from what I have seen, it’s near impossible for a character to enter a scene without making their hair and eye color known, at minimum.

Thing is, they’re kids. They’re learning. Maybe their teacher wants them to be more descriptive and develop that skill. If their own character/setting visualizations are too transparent on the page, maybe that’s all right for now. Maybe they need to lay it out there in black and white as they practice, working toward more nuanced ways of painting pictures with words.

Weaving description into a narrative is an art all its own—one I’m constantly working on improving myself. Getting characters to speak (or whisper or mumble or even hiss) for themselves is another one.

How do you take students (or writers in general, at any age) from these school-days practices to more seamless techniques?

How did any of us get there? Personally, I find it hard to pinpoint where/how I learned specific things about writing. I can tell you how I learned about differential equations. I can’t tell you how I learned about writing dialogue that works, creating multi-dimensional characters, or even most grammatical conventions.

That’s always made the idea of teaching something like language arts mind-boggling to me.

Any such teachers out there who can share how they approach teaching creative writing in their classrooms? When students decide they want the math teacher’s opinion (because word of her “other job” got out), what kind of feedback might I want to give?

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The Name Game: Go Anglocentric or Go Home?

Naming characters is something every writer has to deal with, and every writer has strategies. Some use baby name sites/books to find names with certain meanings, some draw from names in their own lives, and some (hello, fellow sci-fi/fantasy writers!) make up names from scratch, among other methods.

I want to talk about those character names today and ignore the making-it-up situation, assuming we’re in some kind of contemporary setting.

First, a day-job detour.

I’ve heard some people bemoan the lack of time-honored, long-standing names like John and David among YA characters. As I approached the start of this school year, I looked at my class lists. Out of about 200 kids, all around 14 years old, I have no one named John. No one named David. No Sue or Jane. I do have a couple of Josephs (one goes by his initials), and a handful of Annas-or-Anns. A couple of Nathans and Andrews.

You know what else I have repeats of? Braden (or Braeden). Cole. Hunter. Parker. Brianna. And all kinds of variations on McCall, McKenzie, McKayla and the like.

So we can conclude that these names were trendy fourteen years ago. Maybe that trendiness didn’t hold, so by the time our books are published, a teenager with that name may seem out of place. In that sense, the advice to use more “tried-and-true” names makes sense.

But here’s something else from the day job that happened just yesterday. We were discussing a couple of story problems in class. If you’re in education, you probably know that in the last 10-20 years, textbook writers have made a transparent effort to include more culturally diverse names in things like story problems.

One problem involved a girl named Pietra. A student said, “That’s not a real name!” I said it was (and a boy named Pieter in the class noted it’s the female version of his name). We moved on. Another problem involved a girl named Pilar. Someone said that wasn’t a real name, either.

The Hispanic kids in class weren’t very amused, and neither was I.

Let’s bring this back around to writing.

Regarding one of my early stories, several people commented that I was trying too hard to make “unique” names for my MCs. I wasn’t—at least, I didn’t think I was. I’d chosen one Hispanic name, and one somewhat related to a Hispanic name. Not quite as straightforward as Rosa or Carmen, but Hispanic readers didn’t bat an eye. Both were names I’ve encountered in real life, so I didn’t think of them as rare.

The thing is, I didn’t state anything else in the book about the characters having any Hispanic heritage. It wasn’t the focus of the story. I’m clarifying some of that in a rewrite, but here’s my question:

Should we only use ethnically/culturally diverse names in stories deeply rooted in cultural identity or discovery? Do we stick to Tom, Dick, and Harry otherwise because that’s more “comfortable” for the caucasian majority?

Back to those sci-fi and fantasy writers. We have to be careful not to create names that are a reading-roadblock … the kinds of names that make our readers desperate to either buy or sell some vowels. Similarly, in contemporary settings, we probably don’t want to pick names that are difficult for the mental reading voice to get a pronunciation for. It interrupts the flow of the story, and no one wants that.

But is there anything wrong with a character named Pilar? Or Dai-Ling? Or Tiave?

Because those are real names.

(Of course, if we create such characters, making them culturally authentic is another matter entirely … but maybe one we should think about challenging ourselves with. Myself included.)

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The Real Teens of YA County

Hopefully this is preaching to the choir. A lot of YA writers are great about having textured, nuanced teen characters. Still, sometimes the cast is filled with an overabundance of “the regulars.”

The jock. The cheerleader. The nerd. The nondescript average teen.

Wait, there’s no such thing as that last one. Never in all my classrooms have I come across one of those. They show up in novels, though. Weird, that. It got me thinking about what I have seen. Here’s a sampling of students I have taught or am teaching.

Students who weren’t supposed to live past the night they were born.

Students whose parent is world-famous.

Students whose entire family is deaf (and sometimes that student is the most hearing among them).

Students who excel in a sport and qualify as a “geek” in another area (math, music, theater, …).

Students with such a mix of half- and step-siblings, there are six or seven different last names in their household.

Students whose bodies could break all too easily.

Students with the most spectacular cases of ADHD.

Students who are in foster care because their parents are in jail.

Students who aren’t supposed to have much of a life expectancy.

Students who are quiet for a reason … and very NOT quiet when you get them going. (By the way, this group is never, EVER boring.)

I could go on if I let myself, but you get the idea.

Some of those I see in novels. Some not so much. (Of course, I’m not as super-wide-read in some genres of YA as I’d like to be.) Some only when it’s the “issue” of the story. Maybe some things could be incidental to the plot. The MC’s best friend is in a foster family, but that’s not the point of the story.

Or maybe that’s just me and my preferences. Maybe some people would read that and keep waiting and waiting for that fact to become relevant.

What do you think? Are there certain types of teens you’d like to see pop up more in YA literature?

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Is There Such a Thing as "Bad"?

From the Department of Uncomfortable Questions:

Is there such a thing as bad writing?

Let’s assume we’re not talking about misspellings galore, egregious grammar gaffes, and other such technical things that make it about as comprehensible as the typings of Pika the kitten. Let’s say we’re talking only about manuscripts that have been through the world’s best spelling and grammar checks.

Then, is there such a thing as “bad”? When discussing things like voice, style, plotting, character, and all that makes fiction worth reading, is there a minimal level of competence? Some magic line below which is an auto-reject and above which is a “well, it depends”?

Do we do ourselves damage when we assume it’s all just subjectivity, rather than making the effort to improve our craft?

Do we do ourselves damage when we assume our writing is crap, rather than acknowledging our strengths and the fact that we can’t please everyone?

If there is a line, even a murky one, how do we find it? Our gut? Honest critique partners? I’m guessing “murky” is a key word there. Really excellent writing seems easy enough to identify, whether it’s our thing or not. I know I’ve had the experience of reading something and thinking, “Wow, this is so well-written. I’m just not into (insert genre here).” Likewise, writing that’s super-far off the mark is easy to spot.

But that pesky gray area in the middle … what about that?

Lots of questions and no real answers this time around. What are your thoughts?

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Not My Job … Or Is It?

With a change in location and employment comes the return of an old idea. It’s not universal among math teachers—I hope it’s not common for even a majority of teachers. But every once in a while, I hear something along these lines:

“It’s math class. I don’t do English.”

I just came from a school with the philosophy that every teacher is a language arts teacher. (Honestly, to such a degree that it could be a pain sometimes … but a necessary pain.) Other schools likely feel the same way to one degree or another. But not all teachers buy into that.

Does it mean docking points when the math is all correct but there are spelling or grammar errors? No, I don’t think so. What, then?

As writers (and particularly YA writers), many of us have considered how our books might be read and used in schools. Visions of curriculum guides, worksheets, projects, discussions … almost all in English class, right?

How could other teachers use our books? Historical fiction could tie into social studies classes. Science fiction might work in some science classes, at least in portions. But what could teachers do beyond straight-up reading assignments to encourage both interest and skill in reading and writing?

A few things I’ve done:

• When a new, strange word comes up, take a few seconds to discuss it … even if it’s not a “vocabulary” word for my unit.
• Have students do small writing assignments to explain their thinking. I encourage clarity and completeness, and while I don’t mark off for grammar errors, I give little nudges.
• TALK ABOUT BOOKS. Just because it’s math class doesn’t mean I don’t have moments here and there to talk about what I’m reading, what students are reading, what they think of the last book in one trilogy or another, etc.

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