Writerly Wednesdays
The Addict’s Scorn
Since my students often borrow books from me (particularly books that the school library doesn’t have), they also share their opinions on those books. Sometimes it’s just a quick, “Yes, this was good!” or, “Eh, it was okay,” when they return it. They know that if I haven’t read it yet, I don’t want to know details. If I have read it, we’ll chat a little more about what they liked or didn’t.
Yesterday, one of my students walked in and declared, “I hate this book!”
I spotted the bookmark. She’s halfway through. And she’s still reading.
If she really loathed it, she’d have quit earlier and traded for another book. They do that all the time. Since it’s one I haven’t gotten to yet, she didn’t get specific. But from what I can gather, she’s frustrated with something about the course of the plot. And/or it’s not giving her what she wants when she wants it.
This particular book is part of a series. The same student has been very vocal in her opinions (both positive and negative) on earlier books in the series. Overall, she likes it. But that didn’t stop her from passing through my room on the way to lunch and shouting, “I hate the book even more now!”
There’s another series the same student has read. That one, she really hates for very particular reasons. But she’s said, “Will they just finish the stupid series so I know how the stupid thing ends?”
She hates it, but she’ll still finish it.
In both cases, the author has her hooked. She’s addicted, and she can’t let the stories go until she knows how they end. There’s a difference, though.
When the author of Series 1 begins a new series, my student will probably buy in and get hooked on that one, too. With Series 2, I don’t think my student will give that author more opportunities to torture her.
They have something in common—they’re both addictive.
They’re polar opposites—one makes you revel in the addiction while the other makes you curse the person who got you hooked.
I wish I could put my finger on the key to that addictive quality. I’d bottle it up and pour copious amounts on my manuscripts. My best guess is it’s some bit of magic balancing characters that feel real and a compelling plot.
So where do the two series diverge? I think it’s a matter of those qualities slipping away as the series goes on. The authenticity of characters is weakened when they make unrealistically stupid choices for the sake of plot. Consequently, the plot may start to feel obnoxious and contrived.
With Series 1, my student may not like some turns the characters and plot are taking, but those turns must still feel authentic. She still believes.
What do you think makes some novels so addictive? What pitfalls have you noted that make an initially addictive novel fall flat?
Speak up:
4 commentsYou Might Have a Bad Prologue If …
If you lurk around writing/publishing sites or follow such people on Twitter, you’ll see a couple (hundred) comments on the evils of prologues. And they can be evil. Quite often are, especially in unpublished manuscripts. I used to spend a lot of time on an online slushpile of a site. I’ve seen a lot of such manuscripts, and I think I only ever saw a couple of prologues where I said, “Oh, yeah. That works. That’s a keeper.”
People wiser than I have posted on the topic, but I never let that stop me. So here’s a Jeff Foxworthy-style (but probably not as entertaining) list. Read it over, take a good look at your prologue, and try to be honest about whether it fits into any of these clues that
YOU MIGHT HAVE A BAD PROLOGUE IF …
- … you only wrote the prologue because EVERY book in your genre has one. Every single one. Not one out there that doesn’t in the whole wide world. Well, except those over there. They don’t count.
- … you only wrote the prologue because you’re completely enamored with the idea of prologues. You love them. The books you worship most and aspire to be like have them, so clearly you must have a prologue so your books can be just like the oh-so-awesome works of [fill in the blank].
- … your reader feels like they were walking to an important appointment and got held up by a chatterbox in the hallway who won’t let them go until they’ve heard all about the stapler that keeps disappearing from the copy room. In other words, they feel like they’re being held up from the real story. (Even a prologue should feel like part of the ‘real’ story.)
- … your reader feels compelled to take notes on all the names of characters, their vital stats, and how they interrelate, only to find out none of them will show up again in the next 80,000 words.
- … your reader learns something through the prologue that the main character is ignorant of until the third-to-last page of the novel, and spends the whole novel screaming, “No, you idiot! He’s your FATHER!” (Or equivalent.) Letting the reader be in the know when the MC isn’t can be cool. It can also be seriously frustrating. Fine line to tread.
- … your reader gets annoyed because they already have a long-winded, boring history teacher, and it’s no fun in real life, so even worse during pleasure reading, thank you very much!
- … you could avoid all of the above with three well-placed sentences rather than the prologue, but you can’t see that because you’re utterly certain that your novel REQUIRES a prologue to work.
This doesn’t mean all prologues are evil and bad and smelly and gross. Plenty of published books have them. They got past an editor’s desk that way for a reason. Are you sure you likewise qualify?
Really sure?
If so, go ahead. Just remember, every time you assume you’re one of the exceptions, you’re taking a risk.
Can anyone add to the You Might Have a Bad Prologue If… list? I’m sure there are things I missed.
Speak up:
4 commentsTelling Teens Reading Doesn’t Suck … Using Vomit
As mentioned previously (twice now), critique partner extraordinaire Mindy McGinnis joined me in the southwest for the weekend, including a set of presentations to my school.
The first two presentations were to younger students (grades 1-3 for the first, then 4-8 for the second). We broke the kids into three groups and had one come up with a character, one a setting, and one a “problem,” plus each group had to offer one random word. Then Mindy had to pull all that together and make up a story on the spot.
Ninjas are very popular this year. And Mindy managed to turn our school’s founder into a zombie ship captain on Mars.
The other presentation was a little more formal for the high school kids. Mindy talked about the idea of lots of stories having the same basic plot at their root, but weaving in specifics that make it interesting and new. She’d give several examples of a particular Big Idea, then offer a specific premise for the kids to guess.
For example, under “Boy and girl fall in love but can’t be together because ______,” she gave, “Pretty blonde with a perfect life falls for a Hispanic gang member from the wrong side of town.” Several of my female students jumped right in with the answer: Perfect Chemistry by Simone Elkeles.
I think many of the kids came away with the point Mindy wanted to make. The “sameness” of many stories is a good thing, because if you find one you really like, you can find others you’re likely to enjoy as well. (And librarians can help you with that!)
As writers, though, we need to remember the second part of that formula—bringing a fresh, new take to the same old story. Too often, we find ourselves just writing the same story with only superficial differences, and that’s just boring.
Oh, and the vomit? Yes, Mindy totally has a story that makes vomit relevant to reading. But you’ll have to hear her tell it sometime.
Speak up:
2 commentsPrescriptive vs. Descriptive Grammar
These are terms I learned in a linguistics class in grad school. If you’re not familiar, here are the quick-and-dirty definitions.
Prescriptive grammar is grammar according to the super-official grammar books.
Descriptive grammar is how people actually talk.
Of course, language is always evolving, and often the changes come because something in the realm of descriptive grammar becomes so common and pervasive, it overwrites the prior rule in the prescriptive grammar books.
In certain arenas, it’s appropriate to follow prescriptive grammar rules to the letter. When writing fiction, it’s not so clear-cut. There’s also voice to consider. Dialogue in particular gets a little more leeway when it comes to grammar.
Once in a while, though, something comes along that can’t be explained away by voice, and yet I can’t bring myself to write it the “proper” way because my gut says we’re on the verge of overwriting the rule. (Or at the least, my gut says people who talk that way in real life are a critically endangered species.)
For example, in my current project, I have a character say, “It is her.” (The sense is, “She is the one we’re looking for.”)
Gerty Grammarian says it should be, “It is she.” In the particular situation, it makes sense that the character would be fairly educated and would probably speak in a proper manner.
But I can’t bring myself to write it that way. It just feels too wrong.
In a situation later in the story, a similar line came up, and in that case I did change it. I wanted that particular character to be over-the-top formal, so it made sense to me. It felt right.
How about you? Do you have any little gems of grammar that you know are “correct” one way, but you just can’t bring yourself to write it that way?
Speak up:
8 commentsAn Undeserved Rant, Perhaps
Lots of people have been getting good news lately—yay, good news! But in the congratulations, I’ve seen the following phrase come up a lot:
You deserve it.
This kept standing out to me, and it got me thinking. What does it mean to “deserve” something?
Okay, I know what it means. Somehow by our character or actions, we qualify to receive whatever we’ve gotten. But it kept bugging me.
In ASL, we generally use the same sign for “deserve” and “earn,” and in a lot of cases, they feel pretty interchangeable. So why does something tell me they’re not the same thing this situation? Maybe it’s this:
What does not getting it mean?
If some particular good-thing hasn’t happened for me, does that mean I don’t deserve it? (And of course, this doesn’t just go for me, but anyone who hasn’t gotten whatever that good-thing is.) Please don’t say that’s true, because I’m plenty good at beating up on myself already. 😉
Or then there’s this:
What if someone doesn’t deserve it but gets it anyway?
Clearly if there’s any real meaning to “deserving” anything, it’s possible to be undeserving. So if there are people who deserve but don’t get, there are likely people who get but don’t deserve.
But what does any of that mean? And how does anyone decide? What is it based on?
What’s the point of saying it? Maybe everyone deserves everything, or no one deserves anything. Either way, the statement feels empty to me.
Personally, I’m going to stick to the following:
Congratulations.
Or something along those lines. Because maybe they deserve it, maybe they don’t, but it doesn’t matter. They got it.
Whatever “it” is. 🙂
Speak up:
4 commentsAccepting When You’re the Buck-Stopper
You know the saying—the buck stops here. A simple phrase, easily understood. It means recognizing when the responsibility for something lands squarely on ourselves.
In the realm of the aspiring writer, rejection is the norm. We’ll all experience more rejection than acceptance (although hopefully, the magnitude of the acceptance makes up for the sheer number of rejections). There are also a lot of possible reasons for the rejections. Some are within our control. Some aren’t.
When we’re not getting any nibbles, we need to consider all the possible reasons. Here are some that we may like telling ourselves to feel better, and they may even be true.
It’s all subjective. Yes, it is, to a large degree. What one person loves, another may hate. (Just ask my sister.) Maybe the agents you’ve tried so far just aren’t into your premise, but if you keep trying, you’ll find one who feels that resonance.
The agent’s not really looking for new clients. Well, maybe. Kind of. Personally, I think most agents who are open to queries really are hoping to find new clients. BUT … a modified version of this may apply if the agent already has a manuscript to shop that’s in a similar vein to yours.
The agent was in a bad mood when going through hundreds of queries. Possible, I suppose. Call me an optimist, but I like to think most agents are professional enough to keep moods out of it. But they’re human, they’re not perfect, so it could happen. Perhaps more likely is unfortunate timing. If an agent is seeing several queries in a row with similar premises—most of them badly done—and then comes across your similarly-themed query, they might be too burned out on the concept to recognize your fresh take.
All those reasons shift the responsibility away from us. That’s kind of appealing, right? “It’s not MY fault I’m not getting nibbles.” Appealing, but dangerous, because here’s the thing:
The Buck Stops HERE.
Let’s face it. It’s WAY more likely that the reason we’re not getting nibbles is our fault in some way. Here are a few candidates to consider:
The query sucks. This is even more basic than not finding that magical, evasive, perfect query. Glaring errors. Weak writing. Newbie mistakes. Do your homework, get your rear-end kicked by knowledgeable people (such as those over at AgentQuery Connect), and get the basics right.
The premise is stale. Maybe the actual premise isn’t stale, but in the query, it might come across as a tired old rehash of something that’s been done. The query needs to highlight what’s fresh and awesome in your story.
The un-sucky query isn’t doing its job. Getting a well-written query that follows the rules is only the baseline. A query’s job is to COMPEL. It must compel the recipient to read more. That’s probably what I see lacking most often in queries I critique. The writing and set-up are okay, but it leaves me flat. It doesn’t grab me and say, “You must read this!”
The sample pages are letting you down. This is a tricky one, because it can overlap with the idea of subjectivity a LOT. But this is where it all has to come together. Your voice, your technique, your style, your plotting choices, your characters … they all need to sing in gorgeous harmony. One piece off-key can mean a quick rejection.
That last one can be the hardest. It’s easy to say queries are hard. Figuring them out is a whole new learning curve from writing a novel. But it can come down to something as simple and frightening as this:
It might be the writing.
Maybe we’re not ready. Maybe our skills need a touch more development.
We have to be open to this. If we’re not, we won’t take the next step—working harder to improve.
Maybe it’s one of the other reasons—the reasons that are out of our control. Personally, I choose to assume I need to make my work better, because in the end, that attitude will do my writing the most good.