Tag Archives: writing

Shiny & New

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After weeks of brainstorming and pitching and waiting for the right idea to finally rise to the surface, I finally have a new project! Last week, I sent Agent Dan 4 pitches and he chose one. I now have to flesh it out a bit and send him some more info on it, but I’m so glad to have something to focus on again in earnest. It’s been awhile since I’ve worked on something new, so this is exciting!

And, if you read last week’s post about writing a list of everything that ”lights your mind on fire,” I actually get to write about something with almost everything on that list! Unreliable narrators, dueling POVs and, ok, there aren’t any serial killers, but there is a very gruesome murder, so I’ll be free to get all of my true crime love and knowledge out on the page.

Don’t you love this time where you can pretend that THIS will be the book that goes perfectly smoothly? I’m sure I’ll never get stuck once! The whole plot will fall into place! The characters will all make total sense to me!

Blissful ignorance…

Infinite Choices

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The Vlogbrothers once posted a video about growing up and how often teenagers (and ever adults) feel that they have to, like, choose this one Thing that they’re going to do with their whole entire life at the expensive of all other Things. Think doctor, lawyer, professor, whatever. And that once that choice was made the path was set. The other options seal off like that crazy cave door in Harry Potter 6. Anyway. Of course, Hank and John refuted this construct with the example of, yanno, their lives and whatnot. But John admits that options do, indeed, narrow with every choice made. In other words, it’d be pretty darn difficult at 70 to go back and decide you want to be a firefighter. [Cue someone emailing me an article about the grandpa fireman or whatever. Good for them.]

The idea is that before you make any choices, the possibilities are endless.

That’s kind of where I am now.

Recently, my agent and I had a little sit down phone chat in which we discussed my capital ‘C’ Career. Up until now, I’ve focused heavily on ghoswriting. That’s great. I’ve learned so much over the past few years and I regret nothing. But there seems to at last be a consensus that it’s time to focus solely on my own books. Let’s just say, it’s been a long time since I had free reign to pick any idea and/or ideas I wanted and work only on those! But there are, like, infinite ideas! And, okay, so they might not all occur to me at once. But they totally could. Except whenever you start to focus on one, the choices narrow. The other ideas begin to seal off while you work on The One. Granted, more so in writing, than in life, those ideas will always be there to pick up later. But it’s a choice nonetheless. And there’s this fear that you’re not picking the. best. idea. ever.

So, that’s my status. Playing with a bunch of ideas and not quite ready to narrow my options.

But if Nerdfighters taught us anything, it’s that not choosing is a choice as well. And it’s one that still significantly manages to significantly narrow your options.

 

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Please excuse this blog post, as I’m currently writing cross-eyed and with a forearm that feels like I’ve just played thirty matches of tennis…in a row. That’s right, you may have noticed it’s been blog-lite over here the past week or so, but for good reason. I’ve been finishing up revisions for my agent.

And I Just Turned Them In !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, this does not necessarily mean that I’m done for good, but I’m done for now. See, when I turned my manuscript into my agent last time, I thought it was as good as it possibly could be. My agent did, in fact, like it a lot. Happy words were tossed around. Lovely comp titles. Buuuuuuut (there’s always a but, isn’t there?), he thought I needed to “layer on the butter.” The plotting was all there. The writing in the beginning he loved. But he didn’t feel like I’d made the last half of the book my own. He thought I needed to dig deeper into a couple of the relationships. He thought that I needed more of my narrator’s inner commentary and her thoughts on her situation, which is what he felt made this, otherwise horror book, stand out.

So, he forced me to take a week away from the book, which I did and I even tried not to grumble too loudly about it. Originally, I’d thought I’d get the revisions done in a week, but I ended up taking three. And that was working all but 2-3 days out of those three weeks.

The manuscript grew by 13,00 words. I unearthed things about my MC that I didn’t know and thoughts I didn’t know she had. This is by far the most digging I’ve done on a project and I hope that my agent likes it. By the time I hit ‘Send’ I couldn’t bear to read the book one more time, which is usually how I know it’s time to go. So pray for my little book (and maybe a bit for my sanity, too).

And this is how it all began…

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I remember this so well. I was on Penn’s campus walking across an intersection in front of the WaWa and talking to my best friend from high school, Emma Kate. We were saying that there were big things we wanted to do, big goals we’d like to at least try once in life. I told her I wanted to write a book, that I’d always wanted to but had probably never made it past writing the first page. I told her there was this thing called NaNoWriMo where a whole bunch of people got together and tried to write 50,000 words in one month. She wanted to run a marathon.

That November, I did dive in and I completed NaNoWriMo, all 50,000 words or it and just in the nick of time, on the last day of November. I really don’t even know what got me to want to finish the book. I didn’t like the idea. I didn’t like writing it. I remember very little about the book. I know there were times I was just writing to fill up space. But I finished and I guess that’s the thing that mattered because that was when I realized that I could write that much.  A whole book’s worth.

The sheer volume had been daunting–but look, I’d done it in a month! For awhile after that, writing still tended be an arduous process of slogging through, writing just to fill up space. But somewhere over the years, it became a more thoughtful process and ten times more enjoyable (most of the time…)

My best friend from high school (who was just a couple months ago my Maid of Honor!) ran a marathon that year. And she has run many more since. She’s fought through adversity, too–overcoming a severe blood clot in her lung just days before she was supposed to run the Chicago marathon.

It’s amazing to me that this little insignificant conversation between the two of us on a phone call during my junior year of college has spurned us both on to follow what has now become our greatest passions in life. I’m glad we took each other so seriously.

A visit to Sarasota, touring Ringling with EK

A visit to Sarasota, touring Ringling with EK

 

With Emma Kate before my wedding

With Emma Kate before my wedding

Random Thoughts on a Monday

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  • As I’m wrapping up revisions, I can’t help but swing wildly between unbridled optimism and crushing despair. I think it’s really fun for the people around me since it always keeps them guessing and really fun for me since it fosters a certain unpredictability of spirit that has heretofor eluded me. (That and the ice cream truck.)
  •  My house looks like William-Sonoma blew up inside of it. I’d take a picture of all the wedding presents we’re trying to fit into a teensy amount of cabinet space, but I’m too embarrassed. Also, my friend just called me out by email for having my Christmas tree still up. I’ve been officially shamed…yet not enough to take down the Christmas tree.
  • It’s January 7th, people. January 7th. Do you know what means? It means I’ve been patiently waiting for news for 7 whole days. That is 7 times the amount patience I had previously built up before Christmas. I’m either ready to hear things or to be committed. One or the other.
  • I’m almost finished reading Insurgent by Veronica Roth. Why do you people have such a problem with Shailene Woodley playing Tris in the movie? Am I the only one that has any respect for ABC Family anymore? I mean, really.
  • I wish elves would finish the rest of my revisions while I’m sleeping. Perhaps they’ll be tempted by my lingering Christmas spirit.

What are your thoughts this Monday?

It’s almost as if I was never gone…

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I’ve been keeping this blog since 2008

Yeah, that feels like a long freaking time. I vividly remember starting it. I was beginning my first year of law school and refreshing the Absolute Write “No news is no news” thread once every three minutes. Literally. I was obsessed with Miss Snark then and I mean, obsessed. And having a blog was, like, the most important part of writing ever because I needed to have an online presence. Everybody told me so.

And to some extent, it really was true. The blog helped tremendously. I met some of my best writing friends (to this day). I practiced writing daily. Shortly thereafter I signed with an awesome agent from Writers House. Editors contacted him based on my blog looking for my book. And I got to track this crazy writing journey. I mean, I still love going back and reading those old posts.

I kept it diligently and enjoyed receiving emails from readers of the blog and fellow writers. The blog was just something I did. Part of my almost daily routine. I imagined announcing that I’d signed with an agent (which I did and that was great fun) and announcing my first book deal here. I was sure I’d announce that I was engaged and that I’d gotten married. That’s how connected I’d become to the community and how much it meant to me.

Well, spoiler alert: I got engaged (although not to the guy I’d thought I would back in 2008!) and I’m  married now. In fact, my name isn’t even Chandler Craig anymore! Whoa. I’ve had 3 books that I wrote published. I’ve signed 5 writing contracts. All this happened and I didn’t even post it up here and, you know what, that made me kind of sad. And not because I needed some online presence for publishing (although I’ll get back to that in a second), but because it was always part of the story I’d imagined. One of the little mini celebrations that I’d enjoy once each of those things happened.

But I guess it’s not surprising that I didn’t celebrate exactly how I’d imagined, since basically nothing in my writing career has gone how I’d predicted. The book I signed with my agent for didn’t sell and then somehow (and very happily, I’ll add) I became a ghostwriter, an author like I wanted, but under different names. I didn’t really need any online presence for books that weren’t under my name in the first place and I had crazy deadlines and a more than full time job as a lawyer to contend with. So I’m happy to report that although I wasn’t blogging, I was writing, which is ultimately the point, right?

But I’ve still missed it. I’ve been sad that I haven’t documented this part of my journey. I haven’t posted since February and this year has been crazy! So much has happened–what was I thinking? what was I doing? Who knows.

But I think one reason this year has been the one that resulted in so much neglect to the ye olde blog is because I’ve been really focused on craft. I’ve stretched myself by doing samples from YA historical to Contemporary Tween to YA horror and Adult non-fiction. I even took a Mediabistro class to dig in in earnest. It’s also been a year filled with reading. Lots and lots of reading. All in the name of learning (and maybe an unhealthy love of, yanno, reading, too, but whatever) and I hope it’s started to pay off. My batting average for landing jobs is certainly improving. While rejection is still and always will be part of the publishing biz, I’m no longer terrified of the audition. I feel like I have about as good a shot as anyone, which is a huge improvement in my writing self-confidence. I can’t yet talk about everything that’s now in the works–though soon, soon, I hope. I’ve connected with some of THE most amazing people in show business and I can’t tell you how excited I am by certain projects on the horizon.

So there lies one third of my motivation in reviving the blog. See, one such amazing show business person who shall not be named googled me and stumbled upon this site and–eek!–it hadn’t been updated in forever! Of course, she was kind enough not to mention that.  Remember this call is with someone who I never in a million years would think would bother to look me up. Now, imagine my surprise in my first call with her when she says that she loves that I research serial killers and never leave the house without waterproof mascara. Well, after I ruled out the theory that she was stalking me and/or living in my spare bedroom, first my brain exploded and then I realized I had that info in my “About Me” section, which, yes, meant she’d clicked over to the sad abandoned carnival ride that is FWF.

The second third of my motivation comes from the fact that I have a book that is going on submission under my name sometime in the hopefully not-so-distant future. Yes, I’m freaking out. Yes, I’m excited. Yes, I’m tempted to hide under my bed. It’s been years since I’ve had a book under my own name ready to go out to editors. *flail* This book is YA and it’s a collaboration of sorts with a former ICM film agent-extraordinaire who has started a company that has paid me an advance and will be immediately marketing the film rights for said projects.

The last third is more touchy feely. I remember the angst and the worrying and the sheer anticipation that came form submitting to agents and then to editors and I would hate not to document that as I re-start down this path come January. So for now, I’m in the middle of edits with the team that’s bent on making this book as awesome as possible and then polishing up the synopsis and then reviewing pitch letters with my agent and nailing down a title and THEN it’ll be time to sacrifice a goat to the universe or something for good luck, because, as you know, you can never have too much of that.

Tips for Nailing Your Middle Grade Audition

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Here’s how it works: Typically, a book packager, literary development company, or publisher will have a concept or a series already in place. The editors have all sat around a table, throwing popcorn at each other and braiding one another’s hair and now have this idea that they are super proud of. One problem: They need someone to write it.

Meanwhile, you’ve been pounding your head against the keyboard, drinking copious amounts of coffee and applying for every writing job you’ve ever seen posted on your most frequented and beloved message boards. You’re a YA writer? Who cares! Throw caution to the wind! Apply for that middle grade series! Oh wait? They wrote you back? Damn. You’ve never even read a middle grade book before? And they want a sample in a month?

Of course, not like this was ME when I decided to apply for my first work-for-hire. I’m just saying…in case anyone was interested…

Here’s the deal. A book packager is typically going to want a 4,000-ish word audition based on an outline or a spark. The packager will generally want close third person, which for many writers can feel like a huge leap from the way they write their own work. Here are a few starting tips on how to nail your Middle Grade Audition:

1.  Vary your sentence structure. A lot of people aren’t used to writing from a close, third person point of view. I know I wasn’t. It can feel like you are typing, “Main character does this. Main character does that,” over and and over gain. So remember that you can use many of the same “tricks” from your first person writing. Use questions to show what the protagonist is thinking. Add shorter punchy sentences that sound voicey but could actually work from either point of view. (i.e. “This was not good.”– works for first, works for third).

2.  You can use direct thought. For instance, a sentence in your character’s words can be a fun, easy way to jazz up the page. Slap italics on it and voila!

3. Watch your word choices. Just because you are writing from third doesn’t mean you can go around using all those fancy words from your Webster’s Dictionary desk calendar. Third person still has voice and you want to choose words that are as close to your protagonist’s voice as possible. But good news: That opens up a whole bottle of fun, new words that your protagonist would say…like…loop-the-loop or curly-cue or icky. See? Way better.

4. Have fun with the details. Is a character typing an email? Write it out and use that space to showcase the protagonist’s voice. Is the character listening to a song by a fictional band? Give me some of the lyrics. What’s the band’s name? Is there something silly going on in the background of your scene? Play with a few lines of dialogue for a comedic interlude.

5. Remember your audience. For instance, if it’s middle grade girls, don’t skimp on the description of clothes and fun accessories.

6. The publisher’s outline is both a blessing and a curse. You’re never left wondering what to do next, but it can be hard to distance yourself from the outline enough to add your own flavor. It may be helpful to get the bare bones of the story down first and then go back without the outline to embellish. This means you have to…

7. …Leave enough time. Something I’m bad at, but I know I always do a better job when I have a bit of distance. It’s tempting to say you can churn out 4k words in 24 hours, but don’t. Still leave time for your beta readers’ imput because even though you won’t have as much commentary about plot from them, this is an exercise that focuses on the actual word-by-word, sentence-by-sentence craft of writing. Tell your critique partner the feel of the book that you are striving for. Share the pitch with them if you can. That way that reader understands the effect you are trying to create.

8. If you get the opportunity, ask questions. Sometimes this isn’t appropriate. But I have worked for editors with which I was able to chat before I began. I find it helpful to ask what they would compare this work to. X Meets X. This gives a better idea of the voice which they envision. This is their baby, too, after all. Then ask them to describe the book with a few adjectives. Is it campy? Snarky? Melodramatic? Anything to help give you direction. It can be tough when you are working off someone else’s concept.

Weekday Warrioring Day 3

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I have not been much of a warrior today. Okay, fine, I’ve actually been getting my tan on by the pool while reading Rachel Vincent’s My Soul To Take.

But, I’m back in my apartment and I feel certain the UV rays have brought some sort of latent inspiration to the surface, right?

So, I followed through with my plan that I came up with while blogging yesterday. I rewrote a chapter into first person and made changes to fit with the new plot. I wrote a little over 1k in new words yesterday and 3.2k in rewrites. I’m working very hard at never feeling disappointed in myself so long as I’m making foward progress.

It’s crazy to think that I’ve written close to 50k on this story and yet 16,500 words are in my current draft. I’ve switched from 1st person, to 3rd, and back to 1st again. I have a completely different plot. I’ve nixed characters I liked. I’ve changed the main character’s name. But you know what? I consider this all progress for me as a writer because a year ago, I would never have been willing to scrap so much. I’d try to make it work the way it was.

Alright, so I have two main things to share for today:

1. I’ve been perusing some online writing workshops and online classes. I read through one on characterization recently that I liked. Admittedly, I didn’t make it through the whole class transcript, but still. I felt like it made intuitive sense to me. So much advice on characterization deals with discovering your characters’ favorite food, favorite color, favorite TV show, signature drink…and that’s all well and good but I rarely define my best friends by those things. In fact, I don’t even know those things about my best friends. So, for me, the best way to get to know a character is the same way I’d get to know anyone else. Except in fiction, it’s by writing them. You might be surprised when you look below and see that just yesterday after 50k written in this story, I sat down to think about who my characters are as people, but hey, that’s how I did it. I’ve also only written down the barebones of who each one is. I’ll continue to learn, but as I go back and read through I want to continue to flesh out these main fenceposts about the characters, if that makes sense. I want to tie them back to these descriptive pinpoints. The other piece of advice I read that I sometimes forget about it adding character flaws. I want to try to add a fault for almost every good trait I give. But the good/bad traits have to make sense. I can’t say Character X has a really sweet spirit, but also kills turtles for fun. The fault usually needs to stem from the positive trait. Now, that I’ve outlined some of my characters’ faults, I’m hoping that I can use character flaws to create more conflict.

2. Below, I’ve pasted what I worked on yesterday. I’ve redacted a lot for spoilers and also because I’m not ready to give away the main concept. This format for organization is new for me, but it made sense at the time and might help somebody. Like I said, I’ve written out of order, so this was my attempt at de-cluttering my brain.

CHARACTER PROFILES:

Ronny Becker – bright, high-spirited, Punky Brewster, spunky, candid

Faults: pig-headed, stubborn, can-do attitude can get her in trouble, feisty like her mother, spring-it-and-wing-it as she dubs herself, hotheaded, curiosity killed the cat

Arabeth Rose – proper, ballerina-esque, unwavering devotion to manners & etiquette, proper, sweet-spirited, kind

Faults: timidity to a fault, adheres blindly to convention & to what she is familiar with, gets her feelings hurt easily

Canterbelle – mature, super student, adult, beautiful, strong sense of self

Faults: likes to feel superior & feels she’s earned it

Mrs. Becker – strong mom, crazy grey-tinged hair, thin, loves her children intensely, conventional mom, takes her job as a mother seriously, a feisty woman, but methodical

Faults: feels the ends justify the means

Madam Lycus – olive-skinned, dark hair, thin, flowing robes, one of the 16

Faults: devotion to her students; to hell with the rest

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Chapter 1-Find burnt up version of [redacted]; hatch plan for Ronny to take her place (Revision notes: need to make less graphic; change to statue of ash; add in Thomas medicine/[redacted]; clarify motives; need to convey that Thomas will be in on the scheme—how old is he?)
Chapter 2-Ronny arrives at Bellaron; falls in w/ girls; blows off Arabeth; intro Canterbelle
Chapter 3-Girls paired together; Ronny doesn’t know new name “Gabrielle;” attention hog (Revision notes: Sophia maybe shouldn’t room with Lucia? Change Lucia’s name to Olivia)
Chapter 4-Madam Lycus speech about Bellaron; room assignments; Ronny lets Arabeth choose beds; wake up & Ronny has fashion crisis & just crisis in general before going down to breakfast (Revision notes: make it more believable that Arabeth goes so quickly from yay! Gabrielle let me choose the bed to lights off total cold shoulder)
Chapter 5-Breakfast scene; intro Canterbelle & friends; [redacted] debate; Ronny almost spills the beans when she gets upset about the girls not believing her; run late to class
Chapter 6-[unwritten] classroom scene/Madam Lycus’s class
Chapter 7-The Assignment; [redacted] (Revision notes: introduce the concept of class rank possibly earlier? Maybe Ronny just notices a board in the lunchroom)

Chapter ( ) – Pop Quiz; cookie prank
Chapter ( ) – Ronny had been so preoccupied with pranks and sneaking out that she hadn’t done her essay; she is cranky b/c she’s so tired; discovers Sophia has hidden all the books she needed for her project; Ronny yells at her friends; list of things she’s not proud of; shimmies down the column; mom beckons her in b/c not safe outside; Ada Brackett has gone missing; hear scuffling; see a pair of eyes at the window (Revision notes: a lot happens, if more scene setting, etc. might break this into two chapters; up suspense, but shorten sequence when she is going down column; try to make believable)
Chapter ( ) – Three options (A), (B), (C); Mom brings butter knife; kettle whistles & falls; find huge [redacted]; find Arabeth & bring her inside; Arabeth can’t put manners on pause & meets Ronny’s mom (Revision notes: this needs lots of fleshing out; why doesn’t Thomas hear & wake up; make the first meeting between Arabeth & Ronny believable; give the [redacted] enough weight & remember how close they are to the house)
Chapter ( ) – Arabeth, mom, Ronny sit around kitchen table; at first Arabeth seems nice, then Ronny gets defensive & they get in huge fight with each other; devolves into catfight, pulling hair, etc.; Thomas comes out (Revision notes: this scene isn’t done or fleshed out; clarify motives and address rising emotions, allow emotions to evolve & escalate naturally; don’t let mother just be a prop; same with Thomas)

NECESSARY EVENTS:

  • [redacted]events (2-3)
    • Rules of games
    • Scrimmage
    • [redacted] scare incident with Ronny
  • Forest fires
  • [redacted] reports
  • Ronny sneaking out to see family
  • Ronny’s dropping class rank; starts out 1st then drops way down

GENERAL REVISION NOTES:

  • World-building right away; what does this world have in it/what does it not? How is it different than our world? Where is it in time? How can I convey this to the reader right away?
    • What role do the [redacted] play? What is the importance of the [redacted]?
  • What does Ronny and her family stand to gain by attending [redacted]?
  • What becomes of the real Gabrielle? What does Ronny’s mom plan to do with her?
  • This is a [redacted] Book; make [redacted] more prominent
  • From the get-go, need stronger characterizations of Ronny, Thomas, Arabeth, Canterbelle
  • Strong hook at the end of chapter; strong hook at the beginning of the next; try to be clever
  • Every sentence in the quickly written scenes needs to be more interestingly written
  • Stronger sense of place; every scene needs to have a sense of setting; a couple well-placed details

The Hopefuls Day 4: Expectations (Guest Blog)

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Hi, Everyone. Happy Friday! Please welcome our next anonymous guestblogger.  Behind her mask, she’s a very cool author, so I’m so thankful she’s agreed to come on and share her experience. Here you go…

Expectations

You’re finished your WIP, and it is a marvel. Beautiful. You’ve had it beta’d. It’s fantastic. You really feel like, patience notwithstanding, that you’ve waited and made this WIP as strong as you can. You work out your query letter, and you carefully research your agents, and you send out your first queries.

This is the book.

Within a month, you have five offers of representation. Your brain is spinning, you can’t sleep and can hardly eat. What do you do now?

In my case, I could easily discount three of them after speaking with them on the phone. They were okay there was just … something not right. It was my turn to say I really thank you for offering, but…The other two were far harder. Agent A was with a big agency. Huge agency for my genre. Agent B was just starting her own but was super prompt and blew my mind when I spoke to her. Agent A called me crying on the phone right after she finished my book and gushed on my answering machine for five minutes. How could I decide?

I knew them both. I’d spoken to them both. They both had sales. They both were what I was looking for in an agent. And I was stuck.

What would you do?

In my case, I went for the small. I knew that probably a larger agency had ties to the movies, audio, what have you. I knew the bigger agency would probably add cachet to my submission where ever I was at. But you see, when it came down to it, I wanted the comfort and assurance of an agent who was just like me – starting out on their own, big ideas about my book, and a belief in me that somehow I could believe more than a huge agency. I haven’t been sorry one moment since, which is how I know I made the right choice.

I know that if this book can be sold, My Agent is the one that will sell it.

What about you? How did you decide on your agent?

Up Your Critique Technique

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Tomorrow, I’ll post an addendum to yesterday’s post on Total Immersion. Can y’all guess what that addendum will be?

Today’s Thursday Post, is once again inspired by my evening spent at the DFW Writers Workshop. It was a pretty crazy last night. We were locked out of the building and tornado sirens were blaring, but the few and the brave lasted until someone arrived with a key.

I was cowering in my car and just happened to last that long on account of having nowhere to go. 

Anyway, this was my second workshop. Again, totally worth the $25 to participate for the summer. But what I want to talk about is the skill of critiquing. Because yes, it is a skill. And it is really amazing to see how talented the longtime members of the Workshop are at critting. 

So, you might be saying to yourself, Why should I care about critiquing? I want my work critiqu*ed* and if I give okay critiques back then great. 

Just kidding. I know none of y’all would say that. But even if you did, I think it’s a worthwhile exercise to really look at the skill of critiquing, not only so that you can be a good critter, but also so that you can direct the person that critiques you.

When I crit, it’s often unguided. But it is so helpful if the person whose work I’m reading asks me a few specific questions, so that I can think about those while reading or make sure that I’m giving back the most useful response for them. 

When my work is being critiqued, I know the responses could be more useful if certain aspects were touched on. So, here are some of the things I think make for an effective critique (of your own work, of others, or for others critiquing your own work):

 

The CheckList:

-word echoes

-too many metaphors/similes

-What was your favorite part? (It’s just as important to hear what is working the best because, as writers, it’s so easy to second guess. We need to know which parts to keep and feel good about it!)

-How did each of the main characters come across?

-voice consistency/strength

-What didn’t you like? (A lot of critters don’t want to say “I didn’t like that part at all.” But let me tell you. Some of the most helpful critiques last night were ones where people were like “No, that’s not any good.” Saying you don’t like something doesn’t have to be mean. That’s the whole point of critiquing, though, so don’t be afraid to use it!)

-weird character or object emphasis (sometimes authors will zero in on something or someone sort of random and the reader is thinking, Ok, this must play a major role–>it’s always odd when it turns out just to be a self-indulgent description instead)

-varied sentence structure

-forward motion (are you both creating and answering questions in your passages so that the reader is compelled to move on?)

-rising and falling tension (the reader needs to catch her breath, too)

-extra words, especially adjectives (Do you consistently have one adjective or one word too many?)

-gaps in logic

-clear character motivations 

-Is the story told in scenes?

-check for info dumps/authorial intrusions/and “explain-y” language

-Along the same line, in an attempt to avoid an info dump, are you making the dialogue too contrived in trying to get the characters to give up the information? In other words, would your characters really be saying those things to one another right then?

-Enough description? (all five senses touched where possible?)

-Do the descriptions match the perspective and worldview of the pov character?

-Scenes have premises, too. Is the premise of the scene interesting? 

-Too much narrative in action sequence?

 

AND THE #1, ABSOLUTE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS: SUGGESTIONS. 

There is nothing more valuable to me than suggestions. To some extent, if a writer knew how to make something better, she would. So if a critter can bring fresh eyes and try to come up with a *solution* that is awesome and oh-so-appreciated. Don’t be afraid to get in there and say, “Oh, yanno what? This might work.” Because even if that idea doesn’t make it into the cut, you never know what will spark the next idea and the next and so on. 

Remember the author has been looking at these pages forever. And what do I always say about editing? It’s hardest to see what’s not already on the page. Critters can more easily separate themselves from the words and, thus, can sometimes more easily help solve. 

 

These are a sampling of the ideas I got by listening to people critique last night. I hope they are helpful and I will continue to post as I attend my Wednesday meetings. 

 

Happy (almost) Friday, Everyone!