27

It's my birthday today. I don't tend to make a big deal about these things. I expect my coworkers will take me out to eat today, and if they get ANYONE on staff to sing a SINGLE word to me, there will be blood.

I mention it here for a specific reason: the wish.

As I've grown older, I've come to realize that making a birthday wish is pointless if you don't make some effort towards that wish coming to fruition. I tend to treat these wishes more like New Year resolutions. For example, along with wishing to lose 20 lbs, I'd start an exercise regime. (This is a hypothetical situation, since at 130 lbs, I need a diet about as much as I need a life-sized replica of Colonel Sanders made out of toothpicks and gumdrops.)

Last year, I made two 'wishes'. Those two wishes were to get published, and to find a woman I could care deeply about. I only succeeded at one of those wishes (which I suppose serves me right, for making two of them), and I think you can all guess which of the two it was.

And no, I'm not going to tell you anything about her, because it's none of your business.

That said, I have made a lot of progress towards the other goal in the past year. I've been humbled by the publishing industry after sending my queries out last summer and receiving nothing but rejections. Since then, my work has improved significantly. Has it improved to the point of landing an agent? I guess I'll find out soon.

I'm taking next week off of my day job, in order to focus entirely on things I need to get done. Aside from various appointments and registrations, this mostly means finalizing (relatively) my query, and sending it out to more agents. My hope is that this summer, after much revision to the work, it will receive more interest. After all, I only have one wish to make this year.

Let's just hope I manage to blow out the candles.

The Name of the Wind

Some of you may be keen-eyed enough to notice that I have put an additional link on my list of blogs. If so, I pity you, because you must have no life to be examining my blog THAT closely.

But either way, there is a new link there to the blog of Patrick Rothfuss. Who is this guy? Well, he is a debut fantasy author whose book The Name of the Wind has just come out in paperback recently. (I'd post a link to the amazon page there except for the whole boycott on amazon thing.)

Apparently it has made #11 on the NYT Bestseller list. A few weeks ago, I bought this book, and I completed it yesterday. All I have to say is that he deserves it.

You'll find more information by going to his site, but I'll give my own summary here. It tells the story of Kvothe, who has become a living legend in his own world. He is both famous and infamous, and because of the laws of storytellering, his adventures have been exaggerated to the point of ridiculousness. When the premier historian in the world (named 'The Chronicler') finds the hero-in-hiding, he convinces him to tell his story. And what a story it is.

The book has a very 'Arabian Nights' feel to it, swapping back and forth between the present and Kvothe's past. When Kvothe tells the story, it is done in first person, in his own voice. Mr. Rothfuss has done a marvelous job of injecting a strong, witty, likable voice into a character that (outside the telling of his own story) is dark and brooding.

The story mostly details his childhood, ranging from his days in a wandering performance troupe, to his begging on the streets, to his exciting stay at the University, which is reminiscent of Hogwarts except it is much more realistic and much less suitable for children. Our 'hero' gets by through cleverness alone, which is a nice change from fantasy novels where the strongest or most skilled swordsman wins the day.

In fact, it kind of reminds me of my novel in that aspect, except he probably pulls it off better since he's published and all. And won a quill award. And is a best seller.

Okay, so I'm an insect next to him, and I shouldn't be mentioning my book in the same sentence as his, much less compare the two. But enough self-loathing, this isn't a teenage goth poetry site.

In any case, the book is long and intimidating (reaching almost 700 pages), but it's in paperback so it won't cost you an arm and a pancreas. It also starts out a wee bit slow, but that's mostly because it's filled with references that will make a lot more sense later. By the end of the book, the meaning of the beginning will hit you like a punch in the stomach. Except like an S&M enthusiast, you'll want more.

Unfortunately, this is only the first in the series. The other two books (even though he's already written them) won't come out until 2009 and 2010. So you'll have to wait to hear the ending of Kvothe's story.

Nevertheless, this is an excellent book, with vivid, sympathetic characters, and a wonderful narrative voice. The plot might not follow the typical pattern of most fantasy novels, but it will keep you interested all the way through nonetheless. I would highly recommend it to anyone who reads fantasy (and likely to people that don't.)

Plus, it's from a debut author, and even though he's hit the bestseller list, we newbies have to look out for each other, right?

Controlling Dialogue

I made this post in response to someone on the Litopia forums, but I figure it might be useful enough to post here. They asked how to organize and display dialogue between 4+ people in a scene without confusing the heck out of the reader.

Since the end of my book involves 4 people traveling together (and having conversations along the way), I have a bit of experience with this.

Four way dialogue is easier than you might think. In most cases, it's a series of two-way dialogues. You won't usually have a scene where the lines play out like this:

Joe: I say one thing.
Mike: I say something different.
Susan: I disagree.
Jane: I disagree with that disagreement.
Joe: It's my turn to speak again!

Usually, they will play out more like this:

Joe: I say one thing.
Mike: I say something different.
Joe: I disagree.
Susan: I hop in and agree with Joe's disagreement.
Joe: I reaffirm my disagreement.
Mike: I declare that you are both stupid.
Jane: I wonder why we can't all just get along.

As you can see, this conversation is mostly between Joe and Mike, with Susan and Jane interjecting occasionally. In this case, you can treat it like a normal two-person dialogue, but must make sure that whenever Susan or Jane speak, you make it clear that they are doing so, and then when you return to Joe/Mike, you say which one of them is responding first.

Another common form of dialogue goes like this:

Joe: I say one thing.
Mike: I say another thing.
Joe: I disagree.
Mike: I say you're an idiot.
Susan: I support Mike on his statement.
Mike: I say you have no right to be speaking, because I outrank you.
Susan: I argue that this isn't about rank, this is about doing the right thing.
Mike: I don't think you know the first thing about morals.
Susan: I'm offended.

As you can see, the conversation switched from one two-person dialogue between Joe and Mike to a two-person dialogue between Susan and Mike. This case is even easier to deal with -- just make sure you indicate who is speaking during the transition, and then go back to treating it like a two-person dialogue.

A third pattern for dialogue is the 'moderator' method, as follows:

Joe: I say one thing.
Mike: I say another thing.
Joe: What do you think, Susan?
Susan: I agree with you.
Mike: You would, you suck-up.
Susan: You shut up!
Joe: Now, now, calm down. Let's hear what Jane has to say.
Jane: I don't care either way, just stop arguing.
Joe: All right, well, I think we can agree that we either need to choose Mike's idea or mine...

In this case, Joe is clearly in control of the conversation, which gives YOU greater control of the conversation, particularly if it is your main character. The current speaker in this dialogue is usually whoever the moderator is paying attention to, so it's pretty clear who's speaking because the moderator usually spoke to them first.

Note that dialogues can quickly switch between these different modes, starting off with a moderator mode but devolving into a two-way conversation with interjections when two people get into a heated argument. The important part is knowing which pattern you're using at the time, and transitioning smoothly.

In fact, dialogues with 4+ people are all about transitions. If a new person is interjecting or taking over the conversation, you have to indicate that. The dialogue tags you use are up to your personal preference, but I recommend using action to display which character is talking, to avoid having 'he said/she said' on every other line. It also makes it less of a 'talking heads' scene. I also recommend you place tags BEFORE speech during a transition, and AFTER speech when you've settled down to two people. If Susan is jumping in on the conversation, don't use:

"I hop in and agree with Joe's statement," Susan interrupted.

Because the reader gets to the end of the line before they realize that someone jumped in at all. Instead, use:

Susan interrupted, "I hop in and agree with Joe's statement."

That way, it's immediately obvious that a new person is talking.

As I said, 4 person conversations really aren't that difficult unless you intentionally make them that way, by having each character alternate speaking in 4-line sequences. By examining what patterns you're using and using proper transitioning, you can make conversations of 4, 5, or even 100 people work out smoothly.

Picking Up the Pace (Without hurting your back)

Pacing is quite possibly the most important aspect of your book when it comes to keeping readers interested. Yes, vivid characters and a unique plot are necessary too, but pacing is the devil that will actually make readers put your book down and never pick it up again.

Most people don't read a book in one sitting. They stop reading during 'lulls', so that they aren't confused when they return to the book later. Ideally, they only do this during chapter breaks. Heck, that's pretty much why chapters were invented.

But if you have a 'lull' in your manuscript, there is a greater chance that they will stop there. And because the book wasn't exciting when they left, they won't be excited to return. If someone doesn't finish a book, their most common excuse is, 'I just couldn't get through the whole thing' or, 'I guess I just never picked it back up again.' This is entirely because the pacing was bad, if even for a single scene.

Pacing is the speed at which events happen in your novel. When I say 'events', I mean the important ones. If you are describing your protagonist brush his teeth or find his keys, those aren't events. Those are actions. A story is composed of events, and if your book does not revolve around them, your pacing will suffer. Your book will be called slow or tedious. Books with a slow pacing tend to have an excess of description or (even worse) useless prose.

This isn't to say that your book should throw events at your reader at a machine gun's pace. Pace can be too fast as well. If things happen so quickly that the reader never has a time to reflect on the events, the pacing is too fast. Character development is stunted because nothing has any depth. You're glazing over everything because you don't have time to present anything but the action of the novel.

Think of it like fishing. (Note: this is likely the ONLY time you will see a fishing metaphor on this blog.) If you just let the hook sit there, unmoving, the fish won't be interested. You have to reel it in slightly, so the bait looks like it's alive. But you can't crank the line in rapidly (or worse, start the motorboat), because then the fish can't catch it. Without proper pacing, you won't hook the reader.

A common misconception is that pacing is directly proportional to length. People see a 1000-page novel and think, 'That doorstop is going to be so tedious to read.' However, a 1000-page novel with good pacing will read faster than a 200-page novel with bad pacing. I've fallen asleep during books that were less than 150 pages long. Consider the following two passages:

Passage 1:

Joseph glanced at his watch, a golden heirloom given to him by his father. It was a quarter past seven, and on Friday evenings like tonight, such a time was a valuable commodity. All around him, couples chatted over baskets of bread and gazed into each other's eyes. Perhaps they were in love. Perhaps they belonged to marriages that hung by a single heartstring. Or perhaps they were only one-night-stands, dressed up as something more in order to impress or deceive. Joseph should have been part of that social dance, but he wasn't. Not now. Not yet. She was late.

Passage 2:

Joseph rose from his table and stormed out of the restaurant. She was late, and he wasn't going to waste his evening waiting for her. He hailed a cab and gave the driver her address. He was at her front door within minutes. He didn’t bother knocking; he flung the door open and shouted for her, furious. He nearly slipped on the pool of blood oozing across the floor. She lay at the bottom of the stairs, unmoving. Looking up, Joseph saw a man in a ski mask pointing a gun at him. The muzzle flashed, and everything went black.

Each of these passages is exactly 100 words long, but clearly the first one has a slow pace, and the second one has a fast pace.

The trick is to find the right balance of pacing so that your reader is always interested, but never overwhelmed. Both slow pacing and fact pacing are exhausting to the reader. Paradoxically, if pacing is too fast, nothing carries any weight, and everything reads like a blunt description. As a result, readers might tell you that a portion of your book is too slow, when in reality it's too fast!

It's hard to figure out if your pacing is too fast or slow. The easiest way is to have someone else look at it. Failing that, though, here are things to look out for:

Slow pacing tends to occur during:

• Excessive description
• Flowery Prose
• Any time the characters are 'waiting' for something to happen
• During the setup of a scene
• Inner monologue
• 'Talking heads' dialogue

Fast pacing tends to occur during:

• Scenes with multiple 'events'
• Descriptions where the author hasn't done enough research
• Transitions from one 'important' scene to another
• The setup for a scene the writer really wanted to get to
• Any time a lot of concepts/characters are introduced at once

As I said, pacing tends to get overlooked by a lot of writers, but it is the primary reason readers will put your book down. Ensure that your book has proper pacing (especially in your opening chapters), and you'll hook the reader and keep them hooked.

Amazon Boycott?

So it appears that YouWriteOn has called for a boycott on Amazon.com, for trying to monopolize the book publishing industry. Follow the link to get more information, but what boils down to is Amazon forcing print-on-demand authors to forfeit over half their list price just to allow the book to be sold on Amazon. On top of that, the author has to use their POD publishing company and no one else's. It's a bit like the days of Microsoft saying that everyone HAD to use Internet Explorer if they wanted to use Windows. Amazon is trying to become the Wal-Mart of the publishing world, able to drive prices and take profits away from publishers, agents, and of course, the authors who actually write the books.

Personally, I've only occasionally used Amazon, since I tend to buy most of my books at an independent bookstore down the street. But for those of you who rely on the site, it may be worth looking into whether or not you want to be supporting them with your business.

The Winding Road to Now : Part 2

So there I am, 16 years old, determined that someday I'll be published. Now, some might think I started working on my first book right then and there, but I knew there was no way in hell I had enough writing experience to complete a whole novel. So I started exploring other avenues of writing, in order to practice and acquire more skill.

I started getting involved with another set of forums where people were waiting for a game called Horizons to come out. (Sensing a pattern here?) This was to be an expansive MMORPG with over a dozen races, detailed lore, and a vast world. Because it was a roleplaying game (unlike Starcraft), the writing material on the forums was better in general, and involved characters that people hoped to play in the game someday.

Unlike CWAL, where each story was more or less contained by the author, these forums were play-by-post, which meant that each person wrote one scene, then let others take the wheel. It was an interesting way to write. You had to be true to the voices of characters that weren't yours (which I still have problems with), and make sure you didn't go overboard with your own characters ("OMG my character kills all the bad guys and takes over the world! LOL") Here I developed my skills at creating vivid scenes with a beginning, middle, and end, with tension throughout.

Of course, that game didn't end up being nearly as good as it claimed to be, so I eventually moved on to other hobbies. This is when I started getting involved in Dungeons and Dragons.

Dungeons and Dragons is all about character building. To the people only concerned with gameplay, this means developing new abilities and growing more powerful. But there are people like me who focus on the roleplaying aspect, and want to create realistic characters with their own motivations, emotions, and desires. Whereas others would spend hours drawing up stats for their character, I would spend hours writing my character’s background. From D&D, I learned how to make in-depth characters that were sympathetic but not necessarily perfect. After all, everybody rolls a natural 1 sometimes.

Jak, the main character of my novel, was actually born from D&D. I created him as a character, and played him in a campaign run by one of my best friends. He was even more paranoid and separated from the world there than he is in my novel (he had a charisma of 4, for crying out loud), but he had a similar mindset. When I wrote his character background, it ended up being over 40 pages long. Sadly, the campaign never came to a satisfying conclusion, and Jak was left by the wayside. But I’ll get back to that.

Now I was at the point where I wanted to write a novella-length work, as practice for my novel. I ended up choosing the Warcraft world as a base (I like Blizzard games, so sue me.) I ended up writing a novella entitled Passing of the Coronet and posting it on a fanfic forum, to much accolade. It didn’t seem too hard, so I figured now was the time to start my novel.

And that’s when I ran into the problem of setting.

Your average novel takes place on earth, in some city or town that the author is familiar with. Fantasy is different. In fantasy, the story takes place in a completely new world, often with new creatures or races, and always with new rules on how the world works (like magic.) Some authors get around this by writing urban fantasy or transporting a character from our world into this foreign place. But for the most part, when you’re talking about epic fantasies like those written by Tolkien, Jordan, etc., there is an entirely new world for the reader to explore.

Which means the author has to create that world. Up until now, I had been writing stories based off an existing world, so the setting was easy. It already existed. I had to create individual scene locations, but the world itself was concrete. Now, I had to create a world of my own.

I tried again and again to create a new story in a new world, but it was overwhelming. I had trouble creating both at once. I needed a setting to place my characters in, and it had to exist prior to the story taking place.

Once again, I turned to D&D. I began DMing (Dungeon Mastering) my own campaign. D&D campaigns, like books, take place in either new worlds or pre-existing ones. But in D&D, the DM creates the world piece by piece as the players need it. He can focus on the intricacies of the world and build out.

After years of DMing, I had manufactured a detailed world with geography, politics, and a plethora of characters. Now I had something to jump off of. Naturally, I had to tweak the world to make it my own and not something tailored for a pen & pencil game. But it’s easier to tweak than it is to build from scratch. Once I had a satisfactory setting, I just needed a story.

And here’s where we come back to Jak.

He had been abandoned years earlier, and has been gnawing at my gut ever since. His story wasn’t told. I had created him with a part of myself, and that part was screaming to be released. He was my favorite character, the person created by my imagination that I most wanted to know more about.

Now that I had a setting and character, the rest came easily. The plot developed out of a combination of the setting and how Jak would find himself becoming a key player in it. I knew who he would meet, what he would do, and what he would accomplish. 18 months and one wiped hard drive later, I had my story.

I had other lessons to learn still, and revisions to make, but those have been (and will be) detailed on the rest of the site. This was the story of how I became a writer.

I can only hope that this blog will eventually tell the story of how I became an author.

The Line

Yesterday, I was tempted to get into the April Fool's spirit and fake the second half of my mini-biography. It was going to be a winding plot involving my parents betraying me, my father dying, and an assignation plot by the mafia using a pre-teen boy named Jack. It was also going to include ninjas. It would be quite a stretch for anyone to believe, by the end, that it was real.

And yet, about halfway through, I had to stop writing. I had gotten to the point where I portrayed my father as a cruel, ignorant fool that had his own beliefs I couldn't change. I described him dying as well.

Even though I knew it was a work of fiction, and knew that everyone else would see that too, I couldn't write it. I just felt wrong, showing my father in a bad light like that. This wasn't entirely fiction, where all the characters were made up. I was being cruel to a person that actually exists, albeit in a fictional way.

My father is great guy. He's a retired colonel, and he learned how to deal with people in his military career. He didn't take the 'my way or the highway' attitude of some officers. He made people want to follow him, like a true leader does. He hardly ever raised his voice at his four kids, and certainly didn't hit any of us (frankly, at 6' tall and a military build, he could've snapped us in half.) He cared for his family above everything else. He set an example of integrity, resilience, and honor that I've not seen in anyone else in all my time on this earth.

Portraying him as anything else felt like a betrayal I wasn't willing to make.

There's a line every author has that they won't cross. Some place where they won't go in their stories. Perhaps they refuse to write sex scenes, or put swear words into their writing. Perhaps they refuse to show kids getting hurt or molested.

Apparently, my line is making false statements about those I know personally, particularly my parents, since they are both wonderful people.

Authors are always told 'write what you know'. Jak has an extremely bad childhood, and his birth parents are less than affectionate towards him. But I definitely had to extrapolate for that, because even though Jak is based loosely off me as a child, I was luckier than he was. I had two supportive parents who would always be proud of me no matter what.

And I wouldn't have it go any differently, even in fiction.

The Winding Road to Now : Part 1

My first piece of writing was a blatant ripoff of my sister.

I was in second grade, and we were assigned with writing a story. Having read my older sister's story from years earlier, I mimiced her plot in every way. I even copied her lame jokes (I remember one involving a man-eating bush and some girl saying, "The president ate my daddy?!" This was during the non-W's presidency.) I was called into the office and given a firm lecture on plagarism.

Not exactly a promising first start for an aspiring writer.

In fifth grade, we had another class project where we wrote a 'book', but this time they went all out, making us hardback covers for our stories and everything. I didn't copy off anyone else this time, though it was somewhat reminiscent of Indiana Jones, since it involved an adventurer exploring a pyramid. I recall making up my own language and then putting translations for the sidekick's lines in the back. Boy, that would've been annoying to read.

It was around this time that my sister started reading fantasy novels. Because we were army brats and she was near my age, I sort of idolized her, so clearly I had to start reading fantasy novels too. I tended to read anything with the word 'dragon' on the cover, because dragons were cool. I'm pretty sure most fantasy authors picked up on this trend in child reading habits, because 75% of fantasy books at the time had the word 'dragon' on the cover. Some even went all out and had a PICTURE of a dragon on the front, which of course made these books bestsellers.

I didn't really start writing until a copule of years later, though. Warcraft II was my subject of choice. It was one of the most popular video games of that time, and it came with a map editor so you could create your own levels. Being an aspiring programmer, I dove into this with gusto. But I wanted my maps to have plot, a story, characters, etc. Unfortunately, technology was limited at the time, and while you could name specific characters in your maps, you couldn't get them to talk.

So I opened up Word Perfect and started writing. I wrote the plot for a sprawling campaign that traversed about 30 maps. The player would read about a chapter's worth of prose, and then play the level associated with that chapter. This epic tale was called the Aramond Saga, and detailed the exploits of a militiaman embroiled in the war between orcs and humans that dominated the Warcraft world. Naturally, it had dragons. Also naturally, it ended up being around 100,000 words long. I have no idea how many people actually played it or read the text, but at that point I think I was just trying to prove to myself that I could create something worthwhile.

When Blizzard Entertainment (creators of Warcraft) announced their latest game, Starcraft, I couldn't wait to try it. Others couldn't either. When Blizzard repeatedly delayed the game and pushed back the release date, the Blizzard forums became filled with frothing geeks waiting impatiently for the chance to play the equivilent of 'orcs in space'. Someone jokingly said that the game was CLEARLY finished already, and Blizzard was just holding out to create publicity. This dissenter proposed that gamers create a (bumbling) black ops team with the mission of infiltrating the Blizzard stronghold and stealing the mystical 'Starcraft CD' so it could be copied and released to the world. This group was called Operation Can't Wait Any Longer (CWAL), and their adventures became amusing stories that passed the time while we all waited for the game to come out.

Naturally, I joined right in, along with dozens of other people. The stories were chaotic and amateur, but they were fun. Because I was the competitive sort, I obviously had to write the longest, most in-depth, most cinematic stories possible. I developed a reputation for putting way too much work into my writing. In the end, when Starcraft finally came out, I wrote the CWAL Finale, where we claimed responsibility for getting the game out to the world.

In the end, Blizzard was so amused by our antics that they thanked us in the game's credits, and named a cheat code after us (type 'Operation CWAL' into Starcraft and all your upgrades and units will be built instantly.) That was pretty cool, and showed me that when you put enough work into your writing, people took notice.

It was then, at around age 16, that I swore to myself that I would one day get published.

Sympathy

Sympathy. No, I'm not asking for it. I'm going to talk about it. In particular, I'm going to talk sympathetic characters.

One of the most important tasks an author has is creating sympathetic characters. In particular, the main character must be sympathetic, or readers will not enjoy the story and likely won't finish it. When I say 'sympathetic character', I don't mean some philanthropist that cares about everyone else. I'm talking about a character that every reader will care about.

When a character is sympathetic, the reader worries about their welfare, and is forced to read on to make sure they end up okay. The reader can empathize with the character and can better imagine what they are going through.

Even side-characters should be sympathetic, as that enhances the story as well. In fact, even your villains should be sympathetic, otherwise they are perceived as a two-dimensional evil entity that no one gives a damn about. The best villains are those that the reader (and perhaps your characters) can understand the motives of, but nevertheless ends up on an opposing side.

So how does one make a character sympathetic?

Sympathy is a combination of two things: compassion and empathy. Compassion is caring about others. Empathy is understanding and feeling what another person is experiencing. Therefore, to make a character sympathetic, you must make the reader understand and care about the character's experiences and feelings.

Understanding (providing empathy), is the easier part. You simply have to describe how the character is being affected by their situation. When you show events, also show what that character thinks about them. If they are your point-of-view character, you can delve into their thoughts and inner emotions. Otherwise, you will have to show their feelings externally, with either body language or dialogue.

For example, consider the following passage:

Susan stumbled back against the wall as the bullet hit her. Blood oozed through her fingers. She slid to the ground, life slowly fading from her eyes.

Obviously this is a deadly situation. But you know nothing about Susan, especially not how she's feeling about being shot. You could assume she isn't happy about the situation, but that's your own mind doing the work, not the writer. Consider the passage after more care is given to dig at the reader's empathy.

Susan stumbled back against the wall, pain surging through her abdomen, a stabbing pain beyond anything she could have imagined. She clutched her side and whimpered, too agonized even to scream. Looking down, she saw blood -- her blood -- trickling through her fingers. Her legs felt heavy and distant, and she crumpled on her side before she even realized she was falling. Tears came to her eyes. She was going to die, and there was nothing she could do about it.

Now you know how Susan feels, and can (hopefully) imagine what it feels like to be her. But you still might not care, unless you're a particularly compassionate person. In order to make you care, the author has to give weight to the situation. There have to be consequences for Susan's death. If the author has developed the character over time, and shown her to be a decent person, that may be enough. We care about decent people, and hope they turn out okay, because they make the world a better place.

But there are other ways to make us care, without touching the character we've already developed. We can escalate the conflict, and raise the stakes. For example, imagine if Susan was pregnant. All of a sudden a bullet in the abdomen is even more terrifying, because an additional innocent life is in danger. Or perhaps Susan is the only person who can stop a catastrophe from occuring. Maybe she not only has to live, she somehow has to drag her bleeding body two blocks to give police the evidence they need to catch a murderer.

Evoking emotion is one of the most powerful things a writer can do, and the most important emotions a writer can bring out in readers is sympathy. Surely we've all read books where we didn't care about the main character. Often times, we didn't finish that book or struggled to read it. Whereas our favorite books tend to revolve around characters we care about. Perhaps we feel they are 'just like us', or even 'just like how we'd like to be'. And so we read on, not for the author's sake, but for the character's sake, and perhaps our own.

Taking Critiques Slevin-Style

Critiques are a blessing. They allow an objective reader (as in, not your mother) to give you an honest opinion on your work. These readers see things that you tend to gloss over because you've read your book so many times you could recite it by memory. Critiques tend to make your book better.

I say 'tend to' because every honest opinion is just that -- an opinion. One person's 'brilliant turn of phrase' could be another person's 'clunky collection of words'. Figuring out what suggestions to take can be an excruciating problem. After all, they're criticizing your baby!

Individual suggestions tend to take one of three forms. The first form is easy: the pointing out of an obvious mistake. Perhaps you misspelled surprise (because you're like me and you can never get your S's and Z's straight) or you completely forgot to describe a character that just entered the scene. In these cases, you note the mistake, fix it, and are glad you got this critique before sending out sample pages to an agent. You DID get this critique before sending out your sample pages, right?

The second form of suggestion is the alternate opinion. Someone comments on your word choice, or how the scene evolves, or how the voice just didn't do it for them -- any number of things. You don't agree or disagree with them. In most cases, you'll be tempted to say, "Well, I don't care either way, so I'll go with their opinion and make one person happy." Be wary when doing this. That is still only one person's opinion. If you honestly can't see any drawbacks with their suggestion, go ahead and try it out. But keep the old version of your MS saved somewhere, in case others tell you to change it back.

The third form of suggestion is the CRUEL, MALICIOUS INSULT THAT WOULD RUIN YOUR BOOK IF YOU IMPLEMENTED IT. Actually, that's how you'll envision it. It's actually an honest suggestion that happens to run contrary to your particular views. Particularly stubborn writers will see almost all suggestions in this light. These writers don't last long in critique groups, because they envision everyone that reads their work kissing the ground they walk on instead of giving actual advice.

So how do you know if an alternate opinion is actually an improvement? How do you know when an idiotic suggestion is actually a valid one? Well, allow me to quote a line from the movie 'Lucky Number Slevin':

"The first time someone calls you a horse, you punch him on the nose. The second time someone calls you a horse you call him a jerk. But the third time someone calls you a horse, well then perhaps it's time to go shopping for a saddle."

When multiple critiquers are telling you that a particular portion of your MS needs work, it's time to start listening. If you were on the fence before, go ahead and take the path suggested. If you were vehemently opposed to the suggestion, then it's time to start considering compromises. While the suggestions they give might be totally off-base, they are indicators of an underlying problem that needs to be fixed.

For example, I avoided long-winded descriptions in my prologue for two reasons. One: I was told early on that I was overwriting, and trimmed it down. Secondly: I hate reading prologues where half of the text is describing the world instead of describing what's happening. However, after a handful of people told me they couldn't envision the environment, I realized that I had to shove some setting description in there somewhere. I only added a little over a paragraph, but that was enough to set the scene and give readers a solid picture of where the events took place.

In another example, I was told to cut my book into two books. I knew this wouldn't work, so I vehemently opposed such an action. But the suggestion pointed at an underlying problem: the book was too long. So I set about trimming it in ways that I could accept. It's still longer than the average novel now, but at least it's shorter than the works of most of my favorite authors.

In the end, critiques and beta readers are the best way to improve your work once you think it's perfect. After all, no one is going to read your book the same way you do, and only by appeasing the general public is your novel going to become a success. So bear down and take those malicious suggestions with a 'thank you', and get to work on improving your writing.