Journey of the Scribe

Microsoft Word Fails

2008-10-04T13:31:00.002-04:00

Reason not to automatically obey Microsoft Word's grammar checker #587:

It just recommended I replace the phrase 'the most high-profile' with 'the high-profileest'.

Riiiiiiiiight.

All's well if you end Well

2008-09-28T23:20:00.002-04:00

The useless word of today is 'Well'.

Not in the context of "He performed that task well." but in the beginning of dialogue.

For example:

"Well, if you say so."

Notice how the sentence works perfectly fine as "If you say so."? This usage of the world is superfluous most of the time. It pops up a lot in dialogue, particularly if you're the kind of person who uses "Well..." in your everyday life to stall in speaking (as opposed to "Umm...")

This is fine if you have a character who is particularly nervous or hesitant. However, when you're using it in every character's speech, it not only increases your word count, but makes all your characters sound like they have the same voice.

I'm currently flipping through my manuscript, and there's far too many of these things. I love it when I find a repeated mistake in my work that is easily fixed once I know what to look out for. It means I'm improving, hopefully.

Infatuation

2008-09-18T15:33:00.003-04:00

So writing a book is like dating.

Okay, I'll admit that I'm not Casanova or Stephen King, so I'm not the most experienced person when it comes to either, but work with me here.

For some unknown reason, a lot of people get it in their heads that they want to write a book. The part of the brain responsible for this crazy phenomenon is likely the same one that leads people to jump out of airplanes for fun, buy lottery tickets, and try out for American Idol. Not even considering the near-impossibility of getting published, most people don't even manage to finish their book. Why is this?

Infatuation. The same thing that makes people ignore the obvious flaws in a new relationship keeps them from putting down the pen and realizing their writing sucks. They spend all their time thinking, "OMG, this book is going to be so cool and it's going to be unique and it's going to sell a gazillion copies once it's done!" without thinking about the short term of actually finishing the thing.

Even if their writing doesn't suck, when this infatuation goes away (usually about 1/3 of the way through their novel), they no longer have the drive to finish their masterpiece. It's no longer fresh, and while they may be looking forward to writing their exciting climax (if they haven't written it already), that big empty spot in the middle is so daunting that they just give up hope of ever finishing.

Things like NaNoWriMo exploit this infatuation by saying, "OMG if you can write 50,000 words in one month it'll be so cool and everyone will be here supporting you and once you've started your novel it's already half done!" Now, I don't know the statistics for how many of those books ever get completed, but I'd expect the number is less than half. That's not a bad thing -- I like the concept, and any excuse for the general public to become better at writing is beneficial. Otherwise, one day we'll be getting all our information through powerpoint slides and pop-up books (which, when you think about it, are pretty much the same thing.)

I'm currently in this infatuation stage with my second book. I've written the first three chapters, and it's going so well that I actually feel like writing over a thousand words every day. I'm taking advantage of this while I can, because I know at some point I'm going to hit that middle-slump and things will be slow-going once more.

The good thing about infatuation is that it means the author is excited about his/her work during the opening chapters. Readers can always tell when the author is bored, so having an exciting opening requires an excited writer typing out the words. When you put a book down somewhere in the middle, and never pick it back up, that's usually a case of the author's infatuation running out and making the transition between excitement and trudging along too obvious.

In any case, I should get back to chapter 4, instead of wasting all my words on this blog. Have to ration those out, ya know.

Change

2008-09-11T14:05:00.003-04:00

To quote Semisonic: "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."

Novels begin (ideally) when a change to the status quo forces the characters to advance the plot forward instead of just sitting around and watch TV for the next 300 pages. A dramatic shift introduces conflicts to be fought, obstacles to be overcome, and goals to be reached. Much like what happened on this day years ago, we can't go back to the way things were, all we can do is move forward and see what happens.

My life has taken a dramatic shift recently. I won't go into all the gory details, suffice to say both my dating and my work life have done an about-face and I'm looking into a future that is not quite as certain. I'm not too bad off, as I've put some money aside, but things are not the way they used to be, and I'm going to have to find a new way of living.

Some might chalk this up to 'life experience' and say I can use it in my future writing. I'd like to respectfully give those people the middle finger.

In any case, things are going to be in flux for me over the next couple months, so I'm not sure yet just how much this blog and my writing will suffer. All I can do is hope that I can turn things around and find a new beginning that is better than the old one.

Meeting Mr. Rothfuss

2008-08-31T13:48:00.007-04:00

So just got back from the Decatur Book Festival, where I got a chance to meet Patrick Rothfuss, author of the amazing fantasy novel The Name of the Wind, which I have already reviewed on this blog. He was speaking in a forum along with Peter S. Beagle, author of such books as The Last Unicorn. They discussed at length the purpose of the fantasy genre, and how important it is to say 'What if?' and look beyond reality into the vastness of fantasy.

They answered questions afterward, and I got a chance to ask Mr. Rothfuss the following question:

"Before you were published, you were just some crazy guy who worked on a book for 12 years without anything to show for it. How did you go on? How did you know that this book was meant to be published, and not just a piece of crap to stow away in a shelf so no one would ever see it?"

His response (paraphrased because I didn't have a tape recorder or anything) was something along these lines:

"You don't go into writing thinking that you're going to be published and become a bestseller and make a million dollars. If you do that, then if you reach any height less than that, you're going to be disappointed. I mean, I knew the statistics -- only this many people try to write a book, only this many people finish, only this many people get published, and of those people, only a few can make a living and even less get rich.

You write because of the joy you derive from the journey. I mean, it's like when I went through college. Most people go through college saying 'I want to get a degree', whereas when I went there, I said, 'Wow, you can really LEARN stuff here!' So I signed up for all these electives and I didn't go through saying, 'Hey, if I spend ten years in college I'll get a really good job!' No, I wasn't looking at the job, I was looking at the experience and the wonder of all these new things.

And to be honest, there was a point about 5 years in when I was writing the book, typing away..." Rothfuss makes keyboard-tapping motions on the table. "...and I just stopped and said, '...this is crap!' This was just pure and utter crap and no one will ever read it and what do I think I'm doing? And it wasn't just a thought, it was an epiphany. This was really complete crap!"

Rothfuss pauses for a good second or two, shrugs, then goes back to making typing motions on the table. Audience laughs.

"I just had to keep working on it, because of the joy I was getting out of it. You don't write for that publication or fame or whatever. You write for the joy of writing."

At this point, Peter Beagle jumped in and said how he found it so ironic that he hated The Last Unicorn when he wrote it, and wouldn't look at it for one and a half years after it was published. Yet it's cherished today by so many people.

In any case, what Pat said really struck me because, to be honest, I wrote my own novel not because I wanted to become famous or even published, but because I had to. I had written before, but with this work the characters were screaming at me to tell their whole story. If all I cared about was publishing, I would've researched the industry more, known what the limits were, and written something formulaic. But I didn't. I wrote this story, the whole story, because I needed to tell it, even if only to one person in the world. And to be honest, even if it never gets published, I had the joy of the journey I made in seeing it complete. I got to see the characters born, the world created, and the tale told.

It's so much easier to write when you see it as play, and not as work, you know?

So I'd just like to thank Mr. Rothfuss for his words, his inspiration, and for chatting it up with one of his fans afterward. He's a really down-to-earth guy, and I wish him much success with the rest of his career. He certainly deserves it.

Blogdust

2008-08-28T11:19:00.002-04:00

So I haven't posted in a while, obviously. There have been a few reasons for that.

First of all, there have been some changes outside my writing life that have demanded my attention, and those things have also distracted me from the blog.

Secondly, I did what I'm calling the final 'self-revision' of my book, where (barring opinions from others), I don't touch the book except to send it out to agents. Since that entailed trimming it down (again) to 159k, it took a while.

Lastly, I'm starting on my next book.

I have various reasons for this. First of all, it gets me back to writing, instead of endlessly revising. Secondly, it helps make waiting for responses to my queries easier. And of course, if I can't manage to sell my first book, I'll eventually have a second one to pitch, with evolved writing and a shorter word count.

Yeesh, I'm being listy today.

My first temptation was to start working on the sequel to the first book, but obviously selling a sequel requires my selling the first one, which isn't guaranteed. Besides, if I manage to sell this new book, it makes selling my original easier, since I won't be a first time author.

The new work currently sits at just over 4000 words, and things are going pretty well. What's the book about? Well, that's a secret, but I will say that it's a fantasy novel tentatively titled "The Spirit Shifter".

Guest Blog

2008-07-31T09:33:00.001-04:00

For those interested, I wrote a guest Blog for Writer Unboxed, which was posted today. Head over there if you'd like to check it out.

The New Opening

2008-07-14T11:35:00.003-04:00

As I have mentioned, I recently did a complete revision of my book, which among other things, completely changed my opening three chapters. Today, after having my first page posted on Flogging the Quill, I have decided to upload the first five pages (including an updated first page) of my novel for everyone to see. They can be found here, or from clicking the link on the left sidebar. Enjoy.

Gluttons For Punishment, Get Your Rejections Here!

2008-07-09T14:49:00.003-04:00

As posted over on Lit Soup, the L. Perkins Literary Agency is giving out personal rejection letters to queries received over the course of the next two weeks (until the 23rd). Naturally, if your query is good enough, they'll ask for a partial, but if you've ever griped about 'those lazy, insensitive agents sending nothing but form rejections', here's your chance to get an honest opinion on your work.

Oh, and please, if you do receive a rejection, take it like a man (or woman, as applicable), and don't send them hate-mail back. That sort of negative thinking is what makes personalized rejections such a rarity in the first place.

Time Goes By

2008-07-08T15:17:00.004-04:00

I apologize for not posting much lately, but I have been busy discussing my work with beta readers and critiquers, sending queries out, and other mundane, not-interesting-to-blog-about topics. That said, a few interesting things I learned in the past few weeks:

If you're looking for whether or not a word is appropriate for your fantasy novel, sites like this can give you a good estimate.

Posting your entire novel into sites like this tends to break them, particularly when your book is over 150k words.

The Cayman Islands seem obsessed with reptiles, be they turtles, iguanas, or various lizards. You can get all sorts of stuff there made out of turtles (for eating or otherwise), but can't ship them into the USA. Also, instead of squirrels, they just have lots of chickens, which is a lot more convenient when you think about it, because people look at you strange if you eat squirrel.

This looks like a pretty good summer for movies. I saw Wall-E and Wanted in the same weekend, and both were good. I'm looking forward to seeing Hancock.

Plugging a deep-fat-fryer and a griddle into the wall that holds your fridge and stove when you KNOW the wiring for the stove is funky... bad idea.

Having lived in the South for half my life, I decided to try sweet tea again. I still hate it.

Finalizing the Rewrite

2008-06-26T10:59:00.002-04:00

So after about two weeks, I'm making the last few revisions on this massive rewrite I've been working on. It may seem like I rushed through it, but in reality I was just that motivated to change the book into something new. When writing, it's easy to get blocked, or stare at the words so long that you can't figure out what's wrong with them anymore. These past two weeks, I haven't experienced that. It's a bit like NaNoWriMo, I suppose. If you have a goal and mind, and the dedication to follow through on it, you can accomplish things you'd otherwise consider impossible.

The hardest thing about a rewrite like this is consistency. Because I'm changing the order of things, and which characters know what information, I have to be extra careful not to refer to something that isn't known by the character/reader yet. Usually I can catch such mistakes with a read-through, from beginning to end, but I also have a few beta readers looking through it to ensure it all makes sense. I'll also be putting the (new) first three chapters up on various critique circles to ensure they are as enticing as my old opening chapters.

What I really like about this rewrite is that at least three of my characters have been shown in greater detail, allowing for more depth in the work as a whole. In particular, Retela is a much stronger, more sympathetic character. I now have two protagonists in my book, each with conflicting goals. While they face off against a number of antagonists, they eventually have to face each other as well, and the readers have no idea which one will 'win', because they're (hopefully) rooting for both.

Once I have the revisions done, I'll have to write up a new synopsis. I've already created a new pitch, though, which I hope to be stronger than my old one:

As an unwilling spy for her kingdom, Retela is used to gathering information – just not from 12-year-olds. Somehow, a boy named Jak managed to steal a powerful artifact from the Order – keepers of the laws of magic – and her superiors want to know how and why. At first, Retela thinks her task of interrogating the child is punishment for past failures, but she soon discovers that this boy not only holds a key to the fate of two kingdoms, but her own freedom as well.

As Retela gains Jak’s trust, he tells her his story of revenge, friendship, murder, and salvation. He also reveals the location of a secret that could bring about an apocalypse, whether it’s discovered by the Order or Retela’s own country. As Retela and Jak become pawns in a race for power that spans the continent, both must make a choice. Jak must choose to pursue the vengeance he so desperately wants, or the ideals he was raised to believe in. Meanwhile, Retela must choose between a life of freedom, or the conscience she thought she’d lost long ago.

When I first confirmed the changes I needed to write in order to make this book more marketable, I dreaded the amount of work I had to do. But now that it's almost over, I realize how much I enjoyed it, which only serves to remind me why I got into writing in the first place.

The Rewrite

2008-06-18T08:19:00.004-04:00

In the last four days, I've written 15-20k words.

No, these weren't for a new book, these words were for my current WIP, the one I've been working on getting published for the past year.

Considering how much I've talked about reducing my word count, some of you might find this surprising. However, it's important to note that I'm not adding these words to my novel, per say.

I'm starting over.

Allow me to explain. In recent months, there have been three things nagging away at me, things that I thought had the potential to keep my novel from being published. One of these was word count, so I did my damnedest to reduce it. The second was my writing style/ability, which I've been trying to improve as well.

Unfortunately, it was the third thing that bit me in the kiester.

As mentioned before, I won a professional editor's critique in an online auction. After sending my proposal to her, she went over it and told me that my writing was good, my pacing was excellent, and she liked a number of my characters. She was a little concerned about how long it would take me to 'get to the point' of the novel (she had my synopsis), but for the most part she thought I had a good story.

Then she told me it was unsellable.

My main character is a kid. This means every agent, editor, publisher, bookseller, librarian, and reader will assume that my book is a Young Adult novel. Now, other adult books have succeeded with young protagonists (Name of the Wind, Ender's Game, Lovely Bones, etc.), but in all these books, the protagonists were trapped in an adult world instead of working alongside it.

Jak is different. In the beginning of my novel, he kills the man that murdered his father. That's pretty adult thinking. And although it makes sense for his character, it's the sort of thing that makes booksellers squeamish. So basically, I had a book that most people would consider Young Adult, but is far too violent to be sold to kids (particularly since the child protagonist is responsible for a lot of the violence.) Now, Jak eventually learns that violence is wrong and tries to mend his ways, but by then it's too little too late for some readers.

So after conversing with this editor for a while, I came up with four options:

1. Ignore the editor, assume that she is letting her subjective tastes ruin my novel, and keep trying to pitch it to agents.
2. Give up on my novel (at least for now) and work on another one
3. Make Jak an adult
4. Make someone else the main/introductory character

Option #1 is just stubborn stupidity, and #2 is a last resort.

Option #3 is what most people who haven't read the whole book would suggest. There are a number of reasons why option #3 is nearly impossible to do. I made Jak young for a reason. He needs to be young in order to justify why he doesn't realize killing is wrong until after he's murdered some people. His relationships, particularly with the woman who teaches him right from wrong, are strongly based on his age compared to others. All of his actions are based on the fact that he's just a kid. His enemies often underestimate him because of his age. And finally, it makes him a sympathetic character instead of just a murderer. There's also the fact that I created Jak as a character before I even started writing the book. When you write a book about a character, and then change some fundamental fact about that character, it completely alters the entire novel.

So I'm going with option #4.

A lot of people might think this is crazy. How can I take a plot with one protagonist and then switch it to another protagonist? Isn't Jak my strongest character? Doesn't he have the most to lose? Isn't it his story?

To be honest, my book was always about two people. There's Jak, of course, and then there's Retela. Retela is a woman who works for Jak's enemies, and when he gets captured halfway through the novel, it's her job to interrogate him, and eventually work with him to accomplish her organization's goals. As Retela becomes more familiar with Jak, she begins to sympathize with his plight, and wonder if she's really doing the right thing. The book is about Jak's search for vengeance and self-discovery, but it's also about Retela learning to take control of her life and fight for something she believes in.

Currently, when she interrogates Jak, a short summary is given because the reader already knows what has happened to Jak. My plan is to completely alter the format of the book so that the interrogation is the focus of most of it. The reader meets Retela, learns about her, and then learns about Jak when she interrogates him.

This accomplishes a few important goals. First and foremost, it solidifies the fact that this is an adult fantasy novel -- the main character, Retela, is an adult. It also allows me to make Jak even more of a sympathetic character, because by the time the reader meets him, he has realized the error of his ways and is trying to atone for his sins. Finally, by making Retela the main character, I am forced to give her a lot more depth and personality than she already had.

Of course, changing the book like this will require a lot of work. I need to add scenes, remove scenes, revise scenes, reorder scenes, and change the point of view in a lot of places. But in the end, I think it will be worth it. I'll keep the integrity of my characters in my plot, while adding more depth and mass-market appeal.

So I guess the lesson here is, if there's something about your novel that you think might be an issue, seriously consider changing it. The road to publishing is a lot like chasing perfection, and you aren't going to make it if there's an elephant in the room.

Limbo

2008-06-11T14:24:00.004-04:00

My apologies for not posting much lately, but I've sort of been in a state of limbo, which has sapped my motivation for posting. Basically, I'm 'waiting' on a bunch of things:

A critique from an editor that I won at Brenda Novak's auction last month. Oddly enough, I'm not waiting to hear back from the editor, I'm waiting for my payment to be sent through, and for them to get back to me about contact info. Apparently they're a little swamped this year.
Feedback from a beta reader I am exchanging books with.
Feedback from YouWriteOn, which is usually a great site to get critiques... unless you are currently setting the record for the longest period of time without receiving a critique.
Replies to some queries I've sent out.

So what am I doing while waiting? Working on book two, mostly. Which, of course, I can't talk about until book one gets out there. Hence the silence.

More posts forthcoming, once the wait is over.

Update: (6-12-08) Hours after posting this, I got an email from the auction site, and they helped me expedite the process. I feel a bit like a squeaky wheel now, but everything is in place. And I also got a review on YWO, so things are going smoothly once again.

So just remember, kids, ranting solves everything!

Aki's Ears

2008-05-28T16:22:00.002-04:00

A number of blogs I frequent are discussing an interesting topic: cussing in books. It's a touchy subject, because on one hand most authors want to be free to say what they want (and have their characters say what they want), and feel that a cuss-free book is unrealistic. But if you include cuss words in your book, you risk alienating some of your audience.

Then again, sometimes holding off on swear words can make the rare times you use them more dramatic. I giggled a little when I read the B-word used in the 7th Harry Potter book, because it lent some credibility to an otherwise childish series.

We fantasy authors have it a bit easier. Because the standard modern cuss words probably wouldn't exist in our worlds, we get to make up new ones. Of course, these new cuss words have to make sense to the reader without much explanation.

For example, in Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series, the most commonly-uttered cuss word is "Crows". It's obvious that it's a cuss word in context, and by the end of the first book you realize why it's used as an expletive: because crows are seen as dispicable scavengers that always know when death is coming. It works well, and prevents him from worrying about offending anyone, except perhaps crow-lovers.

Another common fantasy tactic is to reference dieties. Since you're taking an imaginary god's name in vain, it's not so bad. "Ragookdabeep damn it!" is pretty tame.

The trick to these expletives is to make them realistic. Expletives are usually shouted in anger, pain, or dismay, which means they can't require much thought. They're usually composed of mono-syllabic words, and are rarely very long. If your character stubs a toe, you wouldn't realistically expect him to scream, "By the wrath of Chaanax and the Lords of Malevolence!" In general, it's better if you base your expletives on real-world ones. Jim Butcher's "Crows!" is a great example of something that can be inserted in place of a four-letter word.

Of course, there's also the cop-out of saying, "Joe cursed." But this is a mild example of telling vs. showing. Use it sparingly. After all, you'd be annoyed if you read a book and the author said, "Joe said something that made Mary fall madly in love with him, and kiss him for the first time right there." Well, that's great, but what did Joe say, exactly?

In my novel, I tend to stick to the tamer sword words like 'whore' and 'damn'. The S-word, C-word, and F-word are absent, because they don't really exist in this world. "Storm take it!" is a common curse (modeled after "G** damn it!"). 'Storm' is actually capitalized, and over the course of the book, the reader figures out that the Storm was actually a famous disaster, and referencing it is akin to wishing someone were killed in a particularly gruesome fashion. Another muttered phrase is "Aki's ears!" instead of "Holy @#@$!", with Aki being a particularly evil god that is recognized by his lynx-like ears. I don't explain this reference at all in the book, but it's pretty clear from context that Aki isn't perceived as a nice person.

In the end, it's all a matter of who your audience is. Obviously, if you write children's books, you can't have cuss words all over the place. If you know your book has adult material, the occasional swear word is probably okay. Just don't overdo it. My mother always said the same thing Behler's did: "Those who must resort to cussing just have a limited vocabulary."

Cuss-words are kind of like adverbs in that way.

The Return of the Masochistic Contest

2008-05-19T20:03:00.005-04:00

On a dark and stormy night...

Well, actually, it was afternoon, and since it was California, it was probably sunny out.

So much for a dramatic opening.

Anyway, Nathan Bransford is running another contest over at his blog. This time, instead of first pages, it is a contest to show some great dialogue. So all aspiring authors who think they can fit the meaning of life inside a pair of quotation marks, head over there by Wednesday and show your stuff.

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering, I am NOT giving out critiques. I learned my lesson last time!

Query Retentive

2008-05-14T16:49:00.002-04:00

Sorry I haven't updated much recently. I went on vacation for a bit, and then spent a week trimming down my novel by 6000 words. It's now down to 169,000 words, which is a slightly less intimidating number than 175,000.

I've also been nitpicking my query letter. As an example about some of the things I've been obsessing over, I seem to have created a debate over at a writer's forum over whether to use:

"This book will appeal to readers of other fantasy novels with..."

or:

"This book should appeal to readers of other fantasy novels with..."

Isn't obsessing over queries FUN!?!

(Speaking of obsessing over queries, go check out Query Shark if you're looking for input on yours.)

27

2008-05-01T09:58:00.004-04:00

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

2008-04-24T10:59:00.006-04:00

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

2008-04-24T10:03:00.003-04:00

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)

2008-04-17T09:15:00.010-04:00

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?

2008-04-09T13:55:00.002-04:00

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

2008-04-08T10:11:00.000-04:00

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

2008-04-02T08:54:00.002-04:00

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

2008-03-28T14:53:00.005-04:00

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

2008-03-21T11:22:00.002-04:00

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

2008-03-13T09:55:00.002-04:00

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.

YouWriteOn Update

2008-03-11T08:35:00.003-04:00

So as many of you know, I joined YouWriteOn.com at the advice of NickP. Having been there nearly a month, I can say with confidence that 90% of the reviews given there are constructive, honest, and will improve your work. Assuming it isn't already perfect, of course.

In addition, if your work is good enough, it will shoot up the rankings and reach the Top Ten list. The top five entries on this list each month will receive a professional critique of their work by an agent or publisher, which is incredibly valuable to authors. It's like getting a 3-page rejection letter detailing everything you need to fix to make your work perfect.

Which is why I'm excited to say that the first three chapters of Blades of the Fallen reached #7 last night, making me only two ranks away from getting a professional critique at the end of the month. Maintaining the ranking will be a challenge, of course, but it's very encouraging to even be in the Top Ten of a site that has so many good works available.

Cross your fingers for me! And tanks again to Nick for pointing the site out.

Prim and Trim

2008-03-03T11:07:00.004-05:00

So lately I've been using a technique I call 'Prim and Trim' to edit my writing. Its purpose is to greatly enhance how vivid the work is.

How it works:

First, take a section of the book (1-3 chapters in length) and write down the word count.

Go through the section and find any place that is lacking detail. Flesh out the characters, the setting, the actions, and everything else. Make the reader FEEL what is happening. Do additional research on the setting and what is going on, just to make everything more authentic. Escalate tension. Show instead of tell. All that good stuff.

When you're done, look at the word count. Since you've been adding details, it's probably gone up. In my case, I usually end up adding 100-200 words.

Go back through the section and trim those extra words, WITHOUT just reverting back to the way it used to be. Get rid of any excess phrases that don't contribute to the story and to the description of the scene. Standard 'word-count-trimming' techniques. Don't look at how many words you've removed until you've gone through the whole section. If you didn't remove enough words, do it again until you reach (or go below) your previous word count.

In the end, you've enhanced your scenes without increasing the word count. You've removed the unnecessary words while adding more detail. In essence, you've 'concentrated' the vividness of your work. If you add wine to water, you'll get watered-down wine. But if you remove the water afterwards, you'll get something delicious.

This is also a necessary technique if you ever submit entries to sites which require a strict maximum word count. ;)

Blades of the Writer

2008-02-28T08:57:00.002-05:00

I need to get myself a knife. It's not for self-defense or jungle-trekking, mind you. It's for research.

I recently had someone review one of my opening chapters. In it, Jak cuts off someone's hand with his kukri. The reader cried foul, saying it was impossible for a short knife to cut off someone's hand.

Now, a kukri is not a 'short knife'. It is designed and weighted for chopping and slashing strokes, whereas when most of us think of attacking someone with a knife, we think of stabbing. It's more like a mini-machete than a dagger. I have read a number of accounts of such a blade, wielded properly, cutting off a limb in a single blow. I've also heard rumors of it decapitating someone, though these I find less plausible.

So I think I need to get myself a kukri, to familiarize myself with the weapon. After all, if it's going to be a major object in my stories, I should be very comfortable with writing about it. Only question is, where am I going to get an object with the exact consistency of a human arm (without ACTUALLY being a human arm) to test it on?

Anyone have any recommendations for good weapon shops? (Outside of Final Fantasy games.)

Hurry Up and Wait!

2008-02-26T12:12:00.003-05:00

Writing is one of those 'hurry up and wait' industries. Everyone expects you to be prompt and efficient, and yet whenever you send anything out, it can be weeks or months before anything comes of it.

I'm currently in a number of waiting games: waiting for my work to be critiqued, waiting for opportunities to pan out, waiting for queries I've sent to be responded too. As such, I don't have much to say at the moment.

Of course, I suppose I'm just as bad, sometimes. I need to take my wisdom teeth out, and I've been delaying that for... oh... half a year. Perhaps getting doped up on painkillers would help pass the time...

Thoughts About... Erm... Thoughts

2008-02-20T12:07:00.002-05:00

So recently I've been changing around how my characters' thoughts are expressed. There are a few different ways to show thoughts, but two are the most common:

Within the text itself. Maintaining the voice of the narrator, you try to describe the thoughts a character is having, instead of stating exactly what's going through their head. On one hand, this is more restrictive, and might seem clunky depending on what thought you're trying to convert to prose. On the other hand, it ensures that your narrative voice is closer to the character's viewpoint, and doesn't interrupt the flow of the work.

Using inner monologue. Using 'thought tags' such as single quotes and/or italics, you treat thoughts as you would treat a quotation, except only the character hears their own words. On one hand, this lets you say exactly what the character is thinking. Unfortunately, this separates the prose a bit from the character's thoughts.

Here's an example of my opening paragraph(s), presented with each type of 'thought process'

Within the text:

In the back alleys of Spelin, between an orphanage and a bowyer’s workshop, Jak stared, entranced, at the knife in his hands. He could do this. He was ten. He was practically a man, just… shorter.

Jak ran a quivering finger along the blade’s edge to test its sharpness. It sliced a gash in his skin, proving its worth. He hissed and shoved his finger into his mouth. Damn it! He couldn’t cry. Crying was useless.

Inner Monologue:

In the back alleys of Spelin, between an orphanage and a bowyer’s workshop, Jak stared, entranced, at the knife in his hands. ‘You can do this,’ he reassured himself. ‘You’re ten. That’s practically a man, just… shorter.’

Jak ran a quivering finger along the blade’s edge to test its sharpness. It sliced a gash in his skin, proving its worth. He hissed and shoved his finger into his mouth. ‘Damn it! Don’t cry, don't cry... crying is useless...’

As you can see, the first entry flows better and maintains the same voice, but the second one gives a more accurate portrayal of what the character is thinking. It's mostly a matter of preference.

Personally, I'm leaning towards the first entry. If nothing else, it will help to keep the point of view closer to the main character. In cases where I really need to know exactly what the character is saying in his/her head (such as when they are silently praying), I'll use italics. Those who read this: do you agree or disagree?

YouWriteOn - A Review

2008-02-18T11:09:00.006-05:00

So last Wednesday, I received some recommendations to join YouWriteOn.com. Figuring more critiques are always good, I decided to at least give it a try. This post will detail my opinions after a little under a week at the site.

Most online critique groups (like litopia, of which I am a member), are really just forums with extended resources. You post excerpts of your story to the group, they give you feedback, and in return you give feedback on other stories. Questions are answered, articles are posted, etc. Offline critique groups work the same way, except you do the critiques in person, which means they're a little more likely to be 'nicer'.

YouWriteOn works differently in that you MUST write a critique of someone else's story before you receive a critique in return. To give a critique, you ask the system to give you a story, and it selects one at random for you. (You can also browse the site and give free-will critiques, but these don't count for your reading credits so most people don't do them unless they like the genre or if you critiqued their story and you want to return the favor.)

It's also more restrictive on what you can upload. Your entry MUST start at the beginning of the story, so you can't put up your fourth chapter, for example. Also, to be considered for their rankings, your submission must be between 6000-10000 words (for novels.)

Other side-benefits include a top ten list, where if your story is rated highly for that month, you will receive a free, detailed critique by an agent/publisher/editor. You have to meet certain requirements for this, such as a certain number of critiques per month, and the length restrictions mentioned above.

When I first saw this, my first thought was, "Wouldn't people break the system by hardly reading the entries, giving vague reviews, and getting lots of reading credits?" YouWriteOn prevents this by forcing readers to answer 5 multiple choice questions provided by the author about the excerpt. After having to read all 6000+ words, most reviewers would figure, "Well, I might as well give a decent critique of it."

So, now for my opinion on the site. The short version is: this is a useful tool, but you should still have a critique group on the side for more versatility and a quicker response time.

In theory, giving more critiques should mean you get more critiques, so you get as much out of the site as the work you put in. However, your reading credits are not guaranteed to provide you with a critique QUICKLY because of two options reviewers have: they can have up to three reviews in their inbox, and they can remove one of these once every 24 hours.

The site does not give out reviews based on genre (which is odd because it asks for your genre preferences when you join the site.) While in theory this is to prevent one obscure genre from having no critiquers, it has the side-effect of giving readers stories they don't particularly want to read. Because they can hold three stories in their queue, readers can request another story and hope for something more interesting. Once every 24 hours, they can remove a story they didn't want to read, or they can have it sit in their queue for a week and it's removed automatically.

Thrice already, I've watched as my story was randomly assigned to someone, sat in their queue for 2-3 days, and then was removed from their list and put back in the pool. Because most people would only receive a story when they requested to get it randomly, this means they glanced at the story, didn't like it (either because it wasn't their preferred genre, the writing sucked, or whatever), sat on it for a few days, and then tossed it.

This is incredibly frustrating. It basically ensures that the most-liked stories will get faster reviews, while the ones most in need of critiques are often 'passed off to the next guy'. If you posted your story in a critique group, not only could critiquers focus on the genre(s) they want to read, but they'd be able to read the first few pages, say "This really didn't work for me, and here's why...", and move on. Because of the multiple-choice questions, you can't do this on YouWriteOn unless you 'cheat' and search the story for the answers without reading it.

There are forums (which are visited by actual agents/publishers/editors) but they are a mixed bag. The reviews posted on them are done so only for the top five stories per month, which means that they will inherently focus more on what the author did right than on the few mistakes they made. Most of the advice seems to be excerpts of reviews that users gave to each other. This is all reasonably useful, but the biggest issue is not the content, but the availability. The forums are only up on a strict schedule, based on UK time. They are inaccessible on Mondays and Fridays, and availability for the rest of weekdays is spotty at best, particularly if you live in the US. They're open most of the day on Sat/Sun, but most people don't spend their weekends hanging out in forums.

I've received two critiques thus far (one of which was a free-will critique given by someone else whose work I reviewed.) For the most part, they were about as helpful as those I'd receive in a good critique group. I've already reviewed five works (at an average of 8000 words each, this means I've read about half a book just for this site), and I'm still waiting back for more critiques. Because my entry is a little under the 10k mark, this will probably take a while, but I expect that's the case with all but the most popular entries.

So, in the end, a standard critique group will give you more flexibility and a faster response time than this site. However, at least on this site you are guaranteed at least SOME critiques EVENTUALLY, and the reviews are of a reasonably high-standard. Plus, if you write well, you'll get your work looked at by professionals (though if you write that well, you're probably well on the road to publishing anyway.) So like most sites, this one is a tool, and not an answer to every author's prayers.

Things I Wish I Knew Earlier: -ing verbs

2008-02-13T11:58:00.004-05:00

Some writers know they are going to be writers, major in English or some sort of writing track in college, and go to MFA programs. Others, like me, have just spent years of their life writing for no reason other than that they love doing it.

While both are valid, the latter group has a disadvantage when it comes to 'knowing the rules of writing', so to speak. They write their first novel, have it critiqued, and learn about all the rules they've broken. For example, someone tells them they use too many adverbs, and their response is, "What's wrong with adverbs?" Ten minutes later, they're off sobbing in a corner.

I recently learned one of these 'rules' the hard way, when someone said I use too many -ing verbs. So at first I groaned, thinking that I needed to go through my book and eliminate every verb that ends with -ing. But after a little investigation, I learned it's a lot more complicated than that.

It turns out -ing verbs are only a symptom of the actual problem: participle phrases. While there's nothing inherently wrong with participle phrases, they are often used the in a manner that's inconsistent chronologically.

For example, consider the following sentence:

Joe walked up to his front door, turning the key in the lock, opening the door, and heading inside.

When using participle phrases, you are modifying the original action (walking up to the front door.) Because you are modifying this action, any -ing verb in the phrase is occurring simultaneously to it. Therefore, this sentence is saying that Joe walked up to his front door, turned the key, opened the door, and headed inside ALL AT THE SAME TIME. If you tried this at home, you'd end up defying the laws of space and time, and probably break your nose. Instead, it should be written:

Joe walked up to his front door, turned the key in the lock, opened the door, and then headed inside.

Makes a lot more sense, doesn't it?

If the actions ARE occuring simultaneously, you can use these phrases, like so:

Joe walked up to his front door, wondering if dinner was ready yet.

This works because it's perfectly possible to wonder something while you're walking. Good ting he's not trying to chew gum, though.

You can also, if you so choose, split the verbs up:

Joe walked up to the front door and wondered if dinner was ready yet.

Which one you use is mostly personal preference, and what flows better.

Another common way of misusing participle phrases is beginning your sentence with one. For example:

Wondering if dinner was ready yet, Joe walked up to the front door.

Even though this conveys the same information as the previous example, the reader has to read half the sentence before they are told who is doing what. The 'wondering' is modifying the action of 'walked', and thus 'walked' (and more importantly, the subject 'Joe') should show up first in the sentence. Fixing this is easy; just swap the sentence around or eliminate the phrase altogether.

So, the good news: my -ing verbs aren't inherently bad! Bad news: now I have to go back and find all the places I screwed up and actually rub rain cells together before making a change. Ah, the joys of editing.

Changes of Plans

2008-02-11T10:03:00.000-05:00

On Friday, I planned on finalizing my list of potential agents and start sending out query letters.

Well, things didn't exactly go as planned. On the bright side, my book is probably better as a result.

I received a critique back from someone at litopia.com, where I have been posting portions of my story. They didn't exactly write a scathing review, but they found my opening chapters to be 'ho-hum'. As with all critiques, I tried to see things from their viewpoint. Why didn't they find my first few pages interesting? Since they were looking at the original version of my prologue (before I made all the recent changes), I focused my efforts on chapter 1.

In the end, I decided there simply wasn't enough tension. Though the first chapter describes a tense situation and a meeting between two prominent characters, it didn't present any immediate danger to the reader. It took place within a tavern, a place of confort, where it was easy for one character to convince another character that they are safe.

So, I spent the weekend rewriting chapter one. Instead of taking place in a tavern (which is cliche for fantasy novels anyway), it takes place on the treacherous, rocky shores of Carwyt, with a violent storm assaulting the characters from every angle. Instead of briefly mentioning a shipwreck, it describes the sight of the vessel sinking and dozens of bodies floating in the water. Instead of occurring in an environment of warmth and safety, the scene becomes a race against time to save the main character, while also preventing him from doing something rash and violent.

I like the improvements, and hopefully potential agents will find my partials more enticing as a result. Besides, even though more 'happens' during the scene, it's almost 250 words shorter, which is always a plus.

So anyway, the query-sending is going to be delayed for a few days. At least I have a good excuse.

This is the Weekend

2008-02-08T14:11:00.000-05:00

So, after a six-month hiatus, it's time to get back into the querying arena.

I stopped querying six months ago in order to revise my work and improve it's saleability. As a result, it's been trimmed, tightened, deepened, and improved in any number of ways. But after months of tweaking, I think it's finally time to start pitching again.

Over the past six months, while I was revising my work, I also picked up names of agents: agents that sell in my genre, agents that sell books I'd like to read, agents that are highly recommended by their clients. I've also been scouring websites to see what agents might be interested in my work.

I've been recording these names in a file, along with any pertinent information, such as an agent website that is kept up to date. I put down what sort of materials they ask for (only a query, query + synopsis, query + 5 page sample, etc.) I've also jotted down notes on each agent, describing why I think they'd be a good fit.

This weekend, I'll be taking all this information, re-affirming that it's current, and writing up the query letters. In each query letter, I'll give my reasons for sending my query to that particular agent, so they know I'm not just spamming every agent in existence. I'll probably start with my top ten, and see where things go from there.

Monday morning, the queries go out.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Things I've Learned About Openings

2008-02-07T09:35:00.000-05:00

So as I mentioned earlier, I think we've all learned a lot from Nathan's first pages contest. I thought I'd try to list out all the things I learned about creating a great opening. If anyone else had any epiphanies, feel free to share yours:

Something should be happening. This doesn't mean explosions or burning flesh. It means that having paragraphs of internal monologue, or long, detailed explanations of the surrounding landscape, or extensive backstory, will not interest a reader. They want to know what is happening here and now, and while internal monologue, setting description, and backstory can all be useful in small amounts, they shouldn't dominate the entire page.
The reader needs to care. While a battle scene is obviously a 'dramatic' opening, the reader won't give a damn unless they know something about the characters involved. The first page is a small space, but the author needs to present a character the reader can identify or sympathize with in order to get them involved with the book. This is one reason why it's so hard to pull off having your main character be a jerk -- the reader has to care about him in some way or they generally won't keep reading.
A strong, interesting voice can be a hook. Whether you use humor or down-to-earth sensibility, showing your character's voice on the first page can be a great way to keep the reader interested. It shows off your style, and indicates that this book won't be your standard 'once upon a time'. While authors who write in first-person have an advantage here, even third-person viewpoints can be influenced strongly by the voice and mindset of the main character.
'Raising interesting story questions' does not mean 'confuse the reader'. Answering the questions of 'Who is this book about?', 'Where does this take place?', and 'What is going on?' are crucial questions that need to be quickly answered in most openings. Many authors submitted openings that were 'mysterious' or 'full of suspense', but in reality the authors were holding up a curtain to hide crucial information from the reader. While you don't need to show everything on your first page, hiding things that would help the reader to understand what is going on is almost never a good idea. They'll just get frustrated and put the book down. Hiding this information keeps us from being drawn into the world, because there are still holes in it. (Most common example: hiding the name(s) of your character(s) because you want the reader to find them 'mysterious'.)
Critiques are subjective. There was a huge controversy over on Nathan's blog about a published author who didn't get chosen as a winner. Writing isn't an exact science. People have different opinions. Within the past week, I've had one person look at my opening and say, "I love this line." while another person said "I hate this line." With the same line. This is why you query widely, and look for that agent who really loves your work -- because the best agent in the world won't be much help if they just don't feel enthused about what you're selling. This is also why whenever you receive a critique, do so with an open mind, but be open to the possibility that some suggestions just won't work.
Don't try too hard. We all think our first pages should be perfect, and as a result we tweak them more than any other page in our books. But sometimes, in the desire to make it more dramatic or clever, we reach a point of artificiality that turns readers off. It's like smiling because you're pumped up with botox and not because you're actually happy. We can all tell. The first page of your book should be an inticing preview of the rest of your book, not a pretty face that tries to shock and impress.
Don't trick the reader. Related to the last note, don't open with something that sounds impressive, shocking, or immersing when it has nothing to do with the rest of your book. If the first line is 'Help! I'm on fire!', you shouldn't have 'Just kidding.' two paragraphs down. You also shouldn't establish a conflict or tense situation and then resolve it within a few paragraphs. The reader will feel foolish and let down, and that insult will undoubtedly make them set the book down.

I'm sure there are more things I've forgotten, and I know I still probably can't create the perfect opening. But my knowledge of openings has certainly increased, and I have Nathan and 160+ openings to thank for it.

The Critiques Come to an End

2008-02-06T12:35:00.001-05:00

The following are critiques of first pages sent to Nathan Bransford's First Page Contest. All authors have stated that they do not mind being critiqued by a third party (namely, me).

This, I believe, should be the last set of entries. All in all, I wrote about 160 critiques, publicly and privately, not counting the ones I wrote, took down from the site, and didn't end up re-posting. That's about 1/4th of the people who entered the contest -- not a bad number, I think.

I'd like to thank you all for being brave enough not only to enter the contest, but also to subject yourself to my blunt criticism. I've never been one for mincing words or giving pity votes, so you can rest assured that any critique I gave was my honest opinion. I can only hope that I was helpful to those still on the quest of becoming published.

I'd also like to thank those who critiqued my own entry in response. It proved to me that my not being selected wasn't a fluke, that there were a lot of issues that still needed to be ironed out of my novel. Just goes to show that it's pretty much impossible to make your writing perfect -- there's always something you can learn from another opinion.

And finally, of course, I'd like to thank Nathan and Holly for hosting and judging this contest. Not only did it provide a great opportunity for authors to get their work critiqued (either professionally or by random schmucks like me), but it helped us all to learn, through a plethora of examples, what works and what doesn't work when we're reading the first page of a novel. I know I learned a few lessons that were stuck in my head, but didn't come out until I had so much material to read. By helping others, I helped myself, and that made all the work worthwhile.

If you sent in a request for critique and you haven't seen it, it may be that it got lost in the shuffle. If so, please respond to this post, and I'll send the rest of the critiques privately via email over the next week or so.

Thank you all for stopping by, and good luck with your writing. Though only 1% of us actually became finalists, I think we all ended up winners.

Good god, that last line sounded corny.

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141. Melinda - Untitled YA Paranormal Romance

So while this does a good job of being 'spooky', particularly in a YA sense, I think this author suffers from too much emphasis. When you put a single sentence in its own paragraph, it gives the sentence more weight. This is a good way to draw attention to it without using italics, bold, or exclamation points. However, if you do it too much, the 'weight' becomes a gimmick. Not to mention your publisher will get annoyed that you're filling so much paper with white space. Cut down a bit on the carriage returns, and only use these 'single-sentence paragraphs' for your most dramatic lines.

142. Miguelito - Symmetry

Even tough this was a very vivid scene, description-wise, I didn't care for the second paragraph. The words were too poetic and metaphorical, first of all. Secondly, if the girl is hiding under the covers, why would she describe the room she can't see? When you get into her fear of whatever is coming, that's where it gets interesting. If you don't completely cut the second paragraph, at least make note of the fact that your PoV character can't actually see what you're describing.

143. Pike - Frenzy

Well, let's see... I think this is the third 'from the eyes of a serial killer' story I've critiqued. More than the others, though, this one shows you exactly where his wires are crossed. It gives justification for his actions (albeit psychotic ones.) I'm creeped out, and I'm glad this is just a story. I wouldn't personally read such tales, but I'm sure there's a section of die-hard mystery readers who would find this right up their alley.

144. The Belle in Blue - Symmetry

This is a great example of complex relationships. It's so easy for your characters to love or hate one another, but here we have an MC that loathes her husband for his actions, but still finds herself attracted to him (much to her chagrin.) Not only is this a great recipe for conflict, it also ensures your characters aren't one-dimensional. Although this isn't my preferred genre, I'd be interested to see how this goes.

145. SherylAdairVv - Three Brothers in Yellowwood Forest

This opening starts off with serioius tense issues. The first paragraph is in present tense, the second paragraph is in half-present, half-past tense, and from there on it's past tense. That, in combination with using 'drug' instead of the correct verb of 'dragged', made the opening paragraphs of jumble to read, and turned me off before I got to anything really interesting in the story.

146. Stirling Editor - Untitled

I'm sort of confused about the whole 'eyes' thing. From my understanding, some tragic event occured with his family, and his eyes were changed as a result. Perhaps it's just me, but it's hard for me to grasp this concept, particularly with how vague the narrator treats the event. I'm not able to connect with the character until he sees the woman and sympathizes with her. Again, maybe it's just me, but the description of the eyes and their 'taunting' of him must've gone over my head.

147. Kissmequick - Untitled Fantasy

Hey look, more burning flesh!

Again, we have someone who suffers from the sin of not naming their main character in their opening pages. I did the same thing, and everyone kept telling me they felt distant from the character. You haven't stayed out of his head, which is good, but there is no harm in giving his name as well, as far as I can tell.

As for the fantasy-faust setup, you've clearly shown this guy's modivation, and pain he is suffering. Might be hard to sympathize with him though -- after all, he destroyed a town to kill one man, and he 'missed'.

148. Vinnie - Jersey Justice

So the problem with books like these is that the writing can be great, the story can be enthralling, but if the readers don't like the main character, they'll probably put it down. He's just hard to sympathize with. Particularly when he complains about traffic, then intentionally gives a car behind him a flat -- CREATING MORE TRAFFIC. Maybe it's just me, and I don't like reading about jerks. Maybe there's a big market for cynical books out there. But this just isn't my cup of tea.

Revenge of the Critiques #14

2008-02-05T08:58:00.000-05:00

The following are critiques of first pages sent to Nathan Bransford's First Page Contest. All authors have stated that they do not mind being critiqued by a third party (namely, me). If you wish to have your first pages critiqued, reply to this post or any of the previous critique posts and tell me if you want the critique sent to your email privately. Otherwise I will assume you want it public. Do NOT post your first pages -- I will only look at entries that are posted on Nathan's blog already. This is just intended to give an extra, impartial, random opinion on your work, particularly in the event that you're not one of the lucky runners-up.

Allen & Ogey asked a question about whether or not I could put my critique on his blog. To be honest, I have no problems with anyone copying anything from this blog (save my book/pitch/query excerpts), as long as you note that they are my words, and you post a link to this blog. Basically, site your source.

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131. samuraicat - Destiny 1.0

This needs some trimming. Example: "Unfortunately, the problem was that Nightfox wasn't lucky." Not only is this first sentence full of useless words, the following two paragraphs go on a tangent for too long, away from the main action. The author is describing things that aren't important istead of things that are. Also, the 'intro' sentences are only really appealing to gamers -- is this your only intended audience?

132. C.J. - Flakes Bloom

Well, I finished reading it, though I can't really explain why, since not much happens. The voice seems honest and realistic, and I think I read on because of the sympathetic main character. I expect that, inside the hospital, we'll learn more about her life and place in the world, and I'm surprisingly interested in that. Bottom line: stay true to your voice, and your readers have a better chance of staying interested.

133. Julianne Douglas - Still LIfe with Flowers (Ironically, I wrote this critique before it was selected as a finalist, took it down, and now I'm posting it after the finalists have been revealed. It is unmodified, and goes to show that opinions are by definition subjective, and not everyone will agree on what grabs them in an intro.)

I read it all, but probably wouldn't read more. The characters didn't jump out at me, and everyone sounds too polite and hoity-toity. Also, cut down on the metaphors in the first paragraph. I was very close to stopping and making fun of their prevelance right there.

134. Lotheus - No Good Deed

This has an interesting, honest voice, and I'd keep reading for a bit just for that reason. However, if something horrifically life-changing doesn't happen in the bathroom, it'd be sort of a let down at this point. My only issue is that the second sentence sounds kind of clunky.

135. Jessica - Repose

Very nice. I like how the description of the changing relationship between mother and daughter sets the rest of the scene on track. Minor details like her not even remembering the soldier's name reveal a lot about her without expressly saying them.

136. CC - Links

I've been told recently that 'blond' is reseved for males, while 'blonde' is reserved for females. Alon is also a strange name -- I've never heard it before. So I had the gender issue at the beginning, which would be solved by calling her blonde. This sounds like it will be interesting, particularly any examples of pain-by-blonde he has in store. I'd keep reading.

137. Karen L.K. - Other

I like this. It shows conflict straight off, as well as gives an insight into the main character's personality. I'm eager to she of she's a werewolf or something else, and I think most YA readers would be drawn into this quickly.

138. Catherine - hob an lam

While there's a good voice here, this piece suffers from 'unexplained world overload'. In the first few paragraph, there are a dozen references to things the reader has no concept of, like 'burning days', 'lam-filth', 'The Scrivver's Hole', and 'nilly-cart'. While there's no problem with having such references in your story, piling them all up at the beginning is a bad idea. Your opening should pull your reader into your world, not yank them in and confuse them. They can't visualise what they have no concept of. Spread out your references, and ease us into your fantasy realm a bit more gently.

139. E.M.Alexander - Strawberries for Susannah

This is great. It focuses on making us sympathize with the character, and does so wonderfully, particularly because we know she's set to be executed. The relationship between her and her jailor is also sweet. You've accomplished the difficult task of making us care about a character and putting them in a difficult situation, all on the first page.

140. Naomi - Hope

The sentences here are way too long. There's nothing wrong with long sentences, unless they are needlessly long or the vast majority of them are long. Putting this into a Flesch readability scale, it said that this is a college-grade reading level. While that may be your target audience, I still think you're trying to fit too much into each sentence. It doesn't help that you're determined to use an adjective (or two) before every single noun. Your imagery here is bogged down by rambling. Try to make this an easier read, so the reader doesn't get exhausted.

An Interlude and a Request

2008-02-04T16:09:00.001-05:00

So, after the finalists were selected for Nathan's contest, I thought back to what impressed me most on the pages I liked. Above all else, it was the author never losing the voice of the character telling the story. To that end, I went back to my first pages and made a few changes to ensure that my main character's voice stays true throughout.

As I plow through the rest of the critiques on my list, I'd like to ask a favor of those who have come to this blog and received (or will soon receive) a critique. To put it simply, I'd like a critique of my opening! I know there were other critiquers besides me back when the contest started, and I would've given permission to them, but I was a little... erm... busy at the time, as you can imagine. And now it seems some of them have cut off critiques. But, believing in the power of the common man, I would appreciate if at least a few people could give me insight on my opening page.

So, if you're willing (or bored) I have updated my Prologue and would greatly appreciate any comments. The whole thing is six pages, but the first page ends somewhere around the dialogue line starting with "Merideth..." for those who wouldn't mind looking at one more first page. This is purely voluntary, of course, but would be greatly appreciated.

Revenge of the Critiques #13

2008-02-04T11:12:00.000-05:00

The following are critiques of first pages sent to Nathan Bransford's First Page Contest. All authors have stated that they do not mind being critiqued by a third party (namely, me). If you wish to have your first pages critiqued, reply to this post or any of the previous critique posts and tell me if you want the critique sent to your email privately. Otherwise I will assume you want it public. Do NOT post your first pages -- I will only look at entries that are posted on Nathan's blog already. This is just intended to give an extra, impartial, random opinion on your work, particularly in the event that you're not one of the lucky runners-up.

Nathan has put up the finalists to his contest, and alas, like many of you, I don't find myself amongst the contenders. I actually started critiquing these entries because I knew how I'd feel at this exact moment: I wish I had some idea why I wasn't chosen. That isn't to say I think I'm better than the six finalists -- they all write amazingly well. However, it's hard for me to compare my prose to theirs and figure out what I'm lacking. I'll try, of course, but above all I wish I had a critique of my work. While I'm obviously not privy to Nathan's mindset, it's my hope that even a layman's opinion can give you all some insight into ways you can make your opening more attractive to the average reader.

In any case, I'll continue critiquing until I get to the end of the list of people who have specifically requested a critique on this blog or my email. Until I reach the end, I'll accept new entries, so you all have a few days yet to get your request in if you haven't already. That being said, congratulations to all of the finalists, and all those who had the courage to put their openings in the running. May you all find the eager audience you strive for.

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121. Laurie Ashton - Basement of the Universe

My one concern here is the extraneous material that doesn't really add anything.

For example, the whole mini-scene before the break is already covered by the rest of it, so why have it there? Instead, why not have the last thing Tracy said before disappearing, and then go on from there? Because I don't quite understand the 'black market' reference he makes. There are some excess metaphors too, like in the second to last paragraph, that don't really add much, in my mind. Finally, I'd say remove the sentence, "No, no, she couldn't have disappeared like hte others." It weakens the dramatic impact of your last sentence here.

122. Michelle - Untitled YA urban fantasy

My first thought at reading this was, "Oh look, another YA where the kid has to adjust to a move. Big whoop." Granted, maybe I'm jaded because, as an army brat, I moved at least 7 times during my childhood and got used to it.

However, I really liked her description of the daughter's relationship to her father. Not only it is full of actual references, it ends with a great line: "I miss that the most, the way he listened to me, like what I said was really important." The narrator doesn't have to say that no one ELSE listens to her -- that's implied, and it really makes us sympathize with her situation. Through the rest of the book, make sure her dead father stays a driving influence in her actions -- because unlike stepfathers, moves, and neighbors, her love for her father is part of her soul.

123. Andrew K. - Untitled

It's a fact that 'It's a fact' and 'the fact that' are useless phrases that can be deleted 95% of the time, particularly when they're part of your first line.

So I get that Baker is eccentric... but I still have no idea what his book is about. While it's good to have detailed characters, this intro just seems like the author cracking jokes. And I say 'the author' because I have absolutely no idea who the narrator is. His/her purpose, thus far, seems to only be describing Mr. Baker's weird traits. Get into a perspective, and get on with the story.

124. Kryianna - Tall, Dark, and Feathered

This looks interesting, but could use a bit of trimming. Mostly, remove the extraneous adverbs, and rambling phrases like "So, with the ability of those recently arrived in a foreign country to ignore that which doesn’t make sense". Other than that, I'm curious to see where this is going.

125. Lafreya - Act of Grace

I hate when someone ruins the ending for me... and it almost seems like this intro is doing that. If the entire book is going to be about her blocking a bullet for a racist... well then I already know the climactic scene and how it turns out, don't I? Usually when I see these 'preview' intros, it shows a dramatic scene that may be close to the ending, or before the ending is resolved. To me, it's like I don't need to read the book now, almost.

126. gg - Death Defying

Stopped reading somewhere in the fourth paragraph. To be perfectly honest, the third paragraph is useless, and the fourth one isn't much better. Get to the point, instead of trying to leave the reader in suspense by describing the desk.

127. Abi - Untitled

Stopped somewhere around the 'BOOM'. My improv troupe used to play a game called 'Holy adjective noun, Batman!', where every single noun spoken in a scene had to be preceded by two adjectives. This opening reminded me of that. Allowing the reader to see the scene is fine, but don't use adjectives or adverbs because you feel every noun has to have one. Use them to convey your meaning, not to bog the reader down. Also, is this a fantasy novel? Because I'm pretty sure wysiwyg is way too modern a term for a guy mixing in a cauldron.

128. DhonielleJ - The Memoirs of Shadows

This was intriguing, though I'm a bit confused as to so much time was spent with the grandmother when everything she said was summed up in the second paragraph. I'm also unsure as to why the author goes into 'script mode' for a second there when the grandmother speaks. I wanted to know about the shadow 'cracking open' when her mother arrived, and what the purpose of the shadows actually was.

129. Steve - Untitled

Another opening that suffers from not naming the main character to begin with. If it's from her perspective, she knows her own name, so there's no reason to hide it. All it does is put distance between us and the character. Other than that, I thought this was an easy read, and would keep following it at least for a while.

130. Hugh Ceratto - The Terrorist, the Telepath, and the Emperor

There's a reason so many stories about people with amazing powers start with childhood, or even early adulthood, before they know they have their powers. It's because starting them off with such abilities makes all their accomplishments really simplistic. Someone capable of manipulating the minds of anyone could do pretty much anything in this world, and as far as I can tell there are no limitations to his telepathy. A character with no weaknesses is, to use a video-game term, overpowered. How can I sympathize with someone who has no problems whatsoever?

Revenge of the Critiques #12

2008-02-03T10:03:00.000-05:00

The following are critiques of first pages sent to Nathan Bransford's First Page Contest. All authors have stated that they do not mind being critiqued by a third party (namely, me). If you wish to have your first pages critiqued, reply to this post or any of the previous critique posts and tell me if you want the critique sent to your email privately. Otherwise I will assume you want it public. Do NOT post your first pages -- I will only look at entries that are posted on Nathan's blog already. This is just intended to give an extra, impartial, random opinion on your work, particularly in the event that you're not one of the lucky runners-up.

Note: SherylAdairVv, I could not find your entry, either by your name or its title. Couldn't even find it on the MySpace page. Where is it?

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111. JKB - The Katsinam (This sounds like a broadway musical mixed with Apocalypse now. Get it? "Cats in 'Nam"? Nudge nudge? Yeah, I'll shut up now. Oh, and to answer your question, JKB, Wiesbaden and Heidelberg.)

This started off well, then sort of petered off. A threat that disappears before the end of the first page isn't a threat -- it's a manufactured conflict that disappears before you've hooked the reader. Also, why don't you tell us her name? As I've been told by people wiser than me, not telling us the name of the main character or narrator makes it harder for us to identify with them.

112. Tally - Ghosts of the Lowcountry

I was expecting the conflict to appear while reading this, but it didn't. It seems like the coroner is going to just call it 'unexplained natural causes' and be done with it, because that's what is done in these cases. A conflict would be if he notices something strange about the woman's body that leads him to believe that natural causes can't be the answer. This would make for a more interesting mystery on the first page, in my opinion.

113. Christina DeLorenzo - Truths About Dating and Mating

Not bad -- I think the AC dillemma is a bit of a sidetrack though. While it passes for conversation while they wait 30 seconds, I don't think you need to go into the fact that they're on the fifth floor and such. I can only assume they're going to get a call that is the inciting incident for the plot, which should be interesting. I'd read until then at least.

114. Chantal Fox - Fatman and the Dwarf

The references/metaphors here are kind of jarring, particularly when I don't know what they're referencing (like the first one). Also, using pop culture references in a book generally isn't a good idea, because ten years after the book is published, they're all dated. Also, the humor didn't quite catch me, but I suppose that could just be my personal tastes.

115. whitehead_d - The Approach of Darkness

I don't think I've ever tried to read a book where most of the first page is talking about the landscape. The fact that he's a prisoner with his hands lashed together doesn't come up until near the end, when I'd think that'd be the first topic on his mind instead of the surrounding mountains. Spend less time describing the topography and weather, and more time talking about his predicament.

116. Sophie W - Soul Threshers

I like the voice in this -- it's very down to earth and easy to read. I was disappointed that I didn't get to see Andrea's reaction to his last line, which is a good sign that I want to read on. Only thing I'd watch out for is the usage of useless words like 'practically'.

117. Cave Dweller - Shattered World

What gets me is that the first paragraph talks about a gouge in her desk, residual emotions, memories of a past, and a need to move around -- and then all of this is tossed aside and not used for the rest of it. If the first paragraph doesn't have anything to do with the rest of the page, why is it there? Also, you may want to make the note about Lissa and Stewart being her only living relatives more obvoius. The sentence seemed so unimportant at the time, I skimmed over it. As such, there was no emotional impact when I heard that Stewart died, because I had forgotten his name by that point.

118. Kami - Untitled Fantasy (Next time if your name isn't on it and it doesn't have a title, give me the first sentence verbatum so I can do a word search on it, please.)

Despite having a dream sequence, this opening says a lot on the first page, about who the woman is, how others perceive her, and how she perceives herself. It hints at both past and future events, and the kind of complex storyline that I like reading in fantasy novels. My only concern is that the author mentions that there's a helefrit straddling her, and since I have no concept of what that is, I can't envision it.

119. Debra Lee - Three Sisters Mystery featuring Faith, Grace, and Hope

I'm guessing Faith isn't the 'uptight older sister'.

The author seems to (on occasion) use clunky phrases just in order to have variety in their text. For example, the author calls the cell phone a mobile and a cellular, but also a 'communication device'. When was the last time you heard someone say, "Hold on, my communication device is ringing."? Just stick with words Grace would actually use to describe such things. Also, I think the last sentence of the second paragraph would have more impact with a second hyphen: "The thought also forced me to remember how long his mother had been gone from his life -- from mine -- as I went inside my sister’s house."

120. espy - Untitled

While this looks like an interesting concept, I'm not sure if I agree with her approach. If she's used to being called crazy, I'd think she'd try a different tactic besides, "I dreamt about you last night." Threat of imminent danger would probably be more effective. Saying something more like, "Three guys are coming this way to beat the crap out of you. You might want to dog-ear that page." would attract more shock and attention and not sound quite as crazy.

Revenge of the Critiques #11

2008-02-03T00:14:00.001-05:00

The following are critiques of first pages sent to Nathan Bransford's First Page Contest. All authors have stated that they do not mind being critiqued by a third party (namely, me). If you wish to have your first pages critiqued, reply to this post or any of the previous critique posts and tell me if you want the critique sent to your email privately. Otherwise I will assume you want it public. Do NOT post your first pages -- I will only look at entries that are posted on Nathan's blog already. This is just intended to give an extra, impartial, random opinion on your work, particularly in the event that you're not one of the lucky runners-up.

Apologies for not doing any of these yesterday. We needed to buy a new TV, and figured Superbowl weekend would have the best sales. So of course that required setup and 'extensive testing'.

Tis pretty.

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101. jamr - Lucifer's Porsche

Reading the title, I said, "What, is Satan having a mid-life crisis?" After reading the entry, I said, "Yep."

Granted, 'mid-life' is only loosely applied since it's hard to halve eternity.

The only problem is it's hard to empathize/relate to the devil here, and it seems like he's going to be the main character. Perhaps this is meant to be a more amusing tale, but I didn't laugh much during the opening. 'The Devil is Bored' seems more like a gimmick than anything else, at least to me. Hopefully the plot goes beyond the gimmick.

102. wonderer - The Menorah, the Vampire, and the Velvet Elvis (Sounds like a custom game of Clue)

So I'm assuming the vampire and velvet elvis don't show up until page 2.

Not bad, if a little sitcom-y. I'm curious as to why he thinks he can hide his separation from his parents, particularly if he visits them every friday. Eventually they're going to realize Rachal is sick an awful lot. Perhaps he's hoping to have things resolved within a week. Nice twist of the knife there, with the mother assuming his wife is pregnant. In any case, I'm curious to see how the dinner goes, so I'd read on for at least the first chapter.

103. Ruth - Take Wing

This page dances around a lot of the conflict, but not in a way that's intentionally elusive. Instead, reading the MC's opinions on the birds of the lakefront reveals a lot about her, and I can imagine the osprey being a mirror to how she sees herself. It's a nice analogy, even though she doesn't come right out and say it. I also dislike her sister already.

In other words, this author accomplishes a lot without expressly saying anything. Whereas some authors try to urge me on by keeping one piece of the puzzle just beyond my reach, this opening outlines the pieces, so I know exactly what they look like, without inserting them completely. Which is a much better way to open a novel, in my opinion.

104. Susan Sundwall - The Last Watchman

I stopped reading at the following sentence:

"He believed that this letter alone, among thousands of other ancient war correspondences, was the key to finding and eliminating the last of the Notser, careful watchman, of which, over the last five thousand years, there had been twelve."

There are six commas in this sentence, all of them separating out their own clauses. This is confusing to the reader, which is a bad thing beacuse it's obviously the modivation for the main character and (probably) a driving force in the plot. If I can't read the sentence that explains your plot, I stop reading.

105. Elmore Hames - Untitled

So... I'm not sure where this is going. I doubt that any of the characters in this scene are the main character, since they're either nameless or decrepit. The closest thing I can find to conflict is the woman's blood pressure rising when the nurses talk about (I assume) illegal immigrants.

Perhaps this is going to be like the Notebook and be a reminicing of younger days. But if this is the case, I don't see why seeing the characters when they're older is important. Long story short, I feel (as a reader) like the first page isn't indicative of how the rest of the book is going to be, so I gain nothing from it and would put the book down.

106. shalanna - In the PUndit's Corner

For some reason I felt the author went on about guardian angels for a bit too long in the beginning. I think removing the fourth paragraph would help to bring the reader into the story quicker and allow them to connect with Kay.

107. rpressy - untitled

STopped during the third paragraph. This suffers from a lot of repetition and useless verbage -- in other words, it's in need of a good trimming. For example, the first two sentences could be conveyed in a much crisper way by something like, "Icy fingers coiled around my shoulder." Later on, the narrator says he's seen dead people 'since he could remember', and then two paragraphs later says, 'Since I was a child I'd always had someone around, and by someone, I mean a ghost.' More repetition.

Also, with a first-person account like this, the author needs to draw the reader closer to the narrator's mind. That means when he's talking about himself, and not something he's done in the past, it should be present tense. Example: "I've dealt with my share of demons over the years..." and "I have my share of tricks up my sleeve..." Hmm, more repetition there, now that I think about it. The author only does this half of the time -- like in the jarring sentence, "I may be small, 5'2" to be exact, but I packed a powerful punch."

108. ERic - Tweed & Scissors

I read the whole thing, and would keep reading, at least for a little bit. Only thing that worries me is that no hint of a plot has developed. I'm learning about two characters, but not what's currently happening. I'll wait for that, but not too long.

109. Alexandra - Shadoweave

The story and world of this sound great, but I got hung up on the writing. The first sentence doesn't seem to serve any purpose but to throw the reader into the deep end of the fantasy pool. Also strange was the third paragraph, when the narrator sees nothing, but then sees '...the Weave in the street and stalls and buildingsi vibrated and pulsed, pulling tight and loosening again.' This looks inconsistant, as does Falcoun dying in some gutter but not being dead. Basically, the writing is confusing -- something that only someone besides the author would notice.

110. brittanimae - Max and Merlin

Usually analogies are part of a sentence. Sometimes, they can go on for a few sentences, if they require extra explanation.

They usually don't go on for five paragraphs.

At the beginning of a book.

Now granted, I've written in this tangential style before, when I wrote a film-noirish character. But I didn't start off like this. The reader has to get their feet on the ground first before you tell them the ground has a texture of silly putty on the floor of a barber shop.

At least in my opinion. (Which, by the way, is like your needle-in-the-butt situation: painful, but hopefully useful.)

Revenge of the Critiques #10

2008-02-01T10:09:00.000-05:00

The following are critiques of first pages sent to Nathan Bransford's First Page Contest. All authors have stated that they do not mind being critiqued by a third party (namely, me). If you wish to have your first pages critiqued, reply to this post or any of the previous critique posts and tell me if you want the critique sent to your email privately. Otherwise I will assume you want it public. Do NOT post your first pages -- I will only look at entries that are posted on Nathan's blog already. This is just intended to give an extra, impartial, random opinion on your work, particularly in the event that you're not one of the lucky runners-up.

And we hit 100! (Not counting the ones I took down.) Since a good portion of the comments seem to be the authors commenting on my comments, this won't take as long as I thought. In theory.

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91. JC Coy - Untitled

Creepy. Although it does get a little repetitive in spots (since the narrator repeats the same sense of unease for most of the opening), it definately sends shivers down the spine when he finally does see the prowler. I'd keep reading to see how this turns out, even though I think the opening could use just a wee bit of trimming.

92. Jennifer Walker - Flying Leaps

I'm not sure if the author is trying to make us empathize with the main character here, or think she's being a little over the top (like her best friend does.) Either way works, just as long as the author knows that I, at least, felt the latter. Only issue I had was Kathryn referring to Maggie as 'a beagle' at first. I think she'd think of her dog by name first and foremost. In my opinion, it'd read better like this:

"On the floor, Maggie lay sleeping, seemingly unconcerned as to the noise going on above her. The beagle had been an active participant in the proceedings at first..."

93. E.A. West - Untitled

I think the author could go into more detail about the girl's feelings of isolation here. The author describes how she only has two 'sort of' friends, but not how she feels about her situation. I felt a bit of sympathy for her, but I'm sure I'd have more if I knew whether she actually felt down about it.

Oh, also, trim some of your useless phrases. "There were even a few who were obvoiusly scared of her" could easily be shortened to "Some were even scared of her." or something like that.

94. Diana Metz - Javan and the Dragons of Tor Akkra

While I thought this was interesting, I had a few minor hitches:

1. Typically a female wizard is called a witch, a sorceress, or some other female-specific title.
2. I wouldn't put him 'inches' below the apples, because if I was in his situation, I'd take my shirt off, throw it over the tree branch, and pull myself up. Granted, he might not be smart enough to think that, but after being put up there so many times, I would've thought he'd figure that out by now. Put him feet below the lowest branch instead.

95. CDR - Sunshine Kids Make Monkey... erm... Money

I love this voice, and read the whole thing because of it. I'm worried about the stream of consciousness, though. Is this scene going to go anywhere, or is it just going to be the narrator cynicism? If the author could infuse a plot into this rambling, I'd probably love it. Though a little less peeing would be nice. Too much of that never ends well.

96. Christopher - Untitled (Note, if you have a common name and an untitled entry, tell me the first line, please. Usually searching for the name works fine, but not when other entries have a character named Christopher.)

Another instance of 'false conflict' in the beginning of a novel. Starts off with one guy punching another, but it's soon shown to be no big deal, and a few paragraphs later we're starting the actual story. The voice is good here, so you really don't need to have the 'falsely shocking' opening. Nathan's put up a post about this, I believe.

97. Val L. - Seekers and Solutions

The first line here just confused me, particularly because of the 'new born'. I was trying to figure out if a baby was being born, or what. In fact, I was confused at other lines as well, such as, "...and more than grateful Your Calling came before Father decided to..." Had to reread that a few times to make sense of it. In other words, your prose is hard to read, and gets muddled inside a reader's brain (or at least it does in my brain.) Try having someone else read it aloud, and take a long, hard look at any places they trip up.

98. Scott - Mirra Discovered

Not a bad opening, but nothing jumps out at me. I got a little hung up on one line, though, "On the other hand, I was under no such illusions about you, but it gained me nothing to kill you then." That line just sounds clunky to me, not to mention vague.

99. Niki - Samurai Secrets

Read the whole thing, and liked the voice, but I think you spend a little too much time on the 'grandparents'. You create a lot of tension (because we, as readers, know that if the protagonist feels like soemthing is wrong, 99% of the time, something IS wrong and we're going to find out soon what it is), but you don't reveal its source. We don't care about the old people, we care about what's going to happen when this woman steps out in the parking lot.

100. scottie199 - The Refugee

Your first paragraph read like a promo or summary of what was going to happen over the course of the rest of the book. Some of it sounded interesting. Then you mentioned it was tea time, and I stopped reading. I'm sure something is going to happen during tea which will shack the foundations of the earth. I'm just wondering why you aren't starting at that moment, and are instead providing summaries and detailing how mundane the day was destined to be otherwise.

Revenge of the Critiques #9

2008-01-31T21:32:00.000-05:00

The following are critiques of first pages sent to Nathan Bransford's First Page Contest. All authors have stated that they do not mind being critiqued by a third party (namely, me). If you wish to have your first pages critiqued, reply to this post or any of the previous critique posts and tell me if you want the critique sent to your email privately. Otherwise I will assume you want it public. Do NOT post your first pages -- I will only look at entries that are posted on Nathan's blog already. This is just intended to give an extra, impartial, random opinion on your work, particularly in the event that you're not one of the lucky runners-up.

So I apologize in advance for these ten. I don't know why, but looking back I was either extremely nice or extremely mean -- there wasn't much middle ground. But hey, I only promised I'd be honest.

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81. Andrew Carmichael - Pumpkin Patch Kids

I think this is my favorite of the YA entries thus far. Not only is the voice great, but it gets right into a conflict that seriously affects these kids. Plus the dialogue is great, and exactly what I'd expect out of a classroom. It even makes fun of the no-tolerance policies sweeping our nation, so I can really empathize with them. The only YA novels I've read in years are Harry Potter, but I'd read this.

82. David Wisehart - Red Wedding

Another good example of escalating conflict. Wedding + storm + isolation + chance of power failing = interest and empathy. I also like the little hints of issues yet to come -- like her father not being there. Not my usual taste in novels, but I'd read on.

83. burgy61 - Dr. Whitcomb's Last Days

I stopped reading halfway through for two reasons:

1. I was eating dinner at the time.
2. The writing was lifeless and methodical. Granted, this is probably due to the fact that the PoV character is an emotionless killer, but it still made the text dull to read. Every sentence was either a description of some object, or an action in the form of, "He does this. He does that." Granted, I prefer past tense as opposed to present tense, but this page just didn't come alive for me at all.

84. Luc2 - Untitled

Stopped reading in the third paragraph. First off, you misspelled curious. Secondly: small, reddish, polished, little, blue, delicately, large, high, long, straight. Two sentences with a total of 10 adjectives and adverbs. Not only is that too many, but they're not even very interesting words. Small, little, large, and long are all subjective adjectives, not to mention weak. Prune your prose, please.

85. Dimitry Papkov - The Gathering Clouds

This has to be one of the most peaceful battle scenes I've ever seen. Sadly, peaceful doesn't sell books. There's just no tension here. Even the arrows in our protagonist's body seem like minor inconveniences. Every sentence in this sounds like it could start with, "Oh, by the way..." Battle should be viceral, not lazidazical. Particularly in an opening.

86. mlh - 623 Brenner Lane

I kept reading in expectation for something to happen, particularly to the wheelchair-bound woman, but it didn't. Worse, I don't give a damn about your protagonist. In fact, he sounds like a jerk. So I'd probably stop reading at right about the end of this exercept.

87. Mystery Robin - Murder on a Moonlit Sea

"Anya did not see the two figures as they approached her door."

Then why the heck do you write that they do so? If she's your PoV, and she can't see it, you don't write it. Better to start with her noticing the darkness, turning around, and seeing two men at her door.

Secondly, you need more variety in your sentence structure. In most of our non-dialogue sentences, the verb seems like an afterthought as you describe everything with clauses and commas. Concentrate more on what's going on and less on hair and toxic breath.

88. Sumit - Untitled

The one major issue I have with this is tense problems. You switch from past tense to present tense on the fly, sometimes in the same sentence. (Ex: Standing in front of the mirror, Melissa wondered if she still believes in what mom and dad told her.) I'm curious as to what the birthmarks are, but the switching tenses would just make this too painful to read for long.

89. E. Lynd - Kick Punch Breathe

For a genre I don't like, I like this. The conversation sounds genuine, and I like both of the characters already (even though I'm a bit jealous of Mac's ability to pick up women.) Also, her perception of a guy she's attracted to are sincere but to the point, unlike a lot of romances.

90. Yr Fshn - Gravel and Paint

This is meticulously detailed, and I would say to trim it, but I get the impression it's that way because the PoV character is meticulously detailed and notices EVERYTHING. Then again, I think if I read this for too long, I'd get exhausted. This just seems like the kind of person that could write 50 pages about her day, every single day.

Revenge of the Critiques #8

2008-01-31T19:22:00.000-05:00

The following are critiques of first pages sent to Nathan Bransford's First Page Contest. All authors have stated that they do not mind being critiqued by a third party (namely, me). If you wish to have your first pages critiqued, reply to this post or any of the previous critique posts and tell me if you want the critique sent to your email privately. Otherwise I will assume you want it public. Do NOT post your first pages -- I will only look at entries that are posted on Nathan's blog already. This is just intended to give an extra, impartial, random opinion on your work, particularly in the event that you're not one of the lucky runners-up.

Phew, done with the first post worth of comments! Now I'm reading through my emails and the rest of the posts. Then I'll move on to people who gave critique permissions on Nathan's blogs. By the time I'm done with that, perhaps the contest finalists will be announced. If not, maybe I can look around to see if anyone viciously critiqued MY entry. ;)

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71. Odo (Myspace) - A Simple Courier Assignment

Earlier I commented that a lone person driving around in a car isn't usually a very exciting opening (unless they crash into something.) Well, this is the fantasy equivilent, with a horse instead of a car. I actually lost a bit of interest when I found out Lily was a horse and not a woman, because it meant there was only one true character in the scene. As expected, it devolved into a lot of scenic description and introspection. While the scenic landscape might be a good dramatic opening for a movie, in a book it just delays the plot from occuring.

72. debiwrites - Summoning

Hey, another YA magic user casting a spell... at least this one knows what he/she is doing. What I like about this is that the author shows that the caster is vulnerable, while still making him/her capable and intelligent. I kind of wish I knew more about the MC (if nothing else, what their gender is), but for the most part I think this is a good opening, and makes me want to read more.

73. Anonymous - For Sparta

While this isn't perfect (I'm not sure why she keeps giving herself mental commands), it's an excellent example of how to escalate conflict. A game of hide and seek is pretty harmless, but winning the game is obviously important to her. But the author then adds to this conflict by having a scorpion show up. This gives her two conflicting dangers, which makes both of them exponentially more important. As such, I'd probably keep reading, at least to the end of the scene, to see the outcome of both conflicts.

74. Allen - Ghost Machine

Well, this certainly makes me want to see if it'll work! I like how you get us on the MC's side right from the beginning, so that we're rooting for him. I am a little confused by the friend's reluctance to say anything, though. After six months you'd think he would've stated his opinions.

75. haggis - Untitled

In books like this, I can't help but wonder WHY the main character listens to anything their 'friend' says, when it always gets them in trouble. I had the same problem with the Big Lebowski. While I'm sure other aspects of this book are amusing, the 'friendship' between the MC and his ghost would just annoy me to the point of putting down the book. Personal preference.

76. austexgrl - True Fiction

This is just so... mellow and methodical. I mean, I realize why -- she's a nurse, so she's seen dead bodies before. But because of her lack of surprise and shock, I wasn't surprised or shocked either, and so I'm not enthused to keep reading. This isn't a 'keep me up late reading' novel. There's a dead body, but no tension, and without tension, there's not much to keep me from skimming.

77. lizr - Finders Keepers

So I don't know music -- which means I didn't have a clue what a Fender Stratocaster was. That, and my not knowing what the discordant vibration was about, forced me to go back and reread the opening after I realized what was going on. I recommend not making the reader do that. When you drop us into a scene, make sure we land on our feet or we'll stumble and stop reading.

78. Missy Lyons - Paris Bites

First off, watch your cliches. Having 'more than they bargained for' on your first page will make most any agent groan. Secondly, watch your repetition. The boy wilted under his gaze, then withered. Lastly, as soon as I saw 'vampire romance', I groaned inwardly. This is a crowded market, so you're going to have to do something unique in order to stand out.

79. achap54 - Savannah Oak

Unfortunately, as a member of a younger generation, I feel like I'm in the wrong viewpoint. I wish I could be seeing this from the daughter's eyes, instead I'm seeing it from the mom's. It is a bit of a startling contrast, and I feel a bit sorry for the mother, but it's hard for me to empathize since I'm not a parent. I"m a bit confused as to why Haylee's full name is given twice -- since it's from her viewpoint, does she always refer to herself by her full name?

80. Chris - Good King Wendell

While this is somewhat amusing to read, it drones on a bit long before getting to the point. While the succession of kings and their titles sets the scene well, I'm thinking you need to present the information either in a different way or later in the story. For example, this could all be easily converted to a dialogue, with some noble lamenting (perhaps to the king himself) how Wendell doesn't live up to his name. Otherwise, these paragraphs end up being one very long-winded 'once upon a time'.

Revenge of the Critiques #7

2008-01-31T17:21:00.000-05:00

The following are critiques of first pages sent to Nathan Bransford's First Page Contest. All authors have stated that they do not mind being critiqued by a third party (namely, me). If you wish to have your first pages critiqued, reply to this post or any of the previous critique posts and tell me if you want the critique sent to your email privately. Otherwise I will assume you want it public. Do NOT post your first pages -- I will only look at entries that are posted on Nathan's blog already. This is just intended to give an extra, impartial, random opinion on your work, particularly in the event that you're not one of the lucky runners-up.

Someone posted that their entry was on Nathan's myspage page. I don't know where that is, but I'll figure it out and do that person's entry first thing next post.

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61. althrasher - Untitled

This is another opening that dances around the issue, whatever that issue happens to be. Sometimes that can work by building up suspense, but here it doesn't, not entirely. I mean, I am curious about what happened (and what's going to happen), but it's too vague to drive me onward. The narrator keeps talking about 'fighting' and 'the necessary end'. So many stories could start like this -- to make it different, you have to show me something concrete.

62. J.K. Mahal - Walking the Dark

You know, usually I find dream sequence openings to be cliche, but this one is vivid enough to be chilling. You really don't realize it's a dream until the very end, and it punches you in the gut when it does. This is much more effective than the 'wake up screaming' opening page, because it makes us sympathize with the character first before twisting the nightmare's knife. And that's what's important -- making us care about the character right off the bat.

63. Kelly Maher - Luck of the Draw

Chunk-o-backstory. Granted, at least it's somewhat active backstory, but it's still backstory, something you don't want heaps of on your first page. Besides, this is the sort of backstory that would naturally come out over the course of the first chapter -- it's not exactly hidden. In my opinion, it would be better to get on with your story and throw snippets of this in over time.

64. Chris - The Chaser

I read the whole thing, but I don't think I'd continue reading. Rane seems the stereotypical arrogant villain, and I prefer more complex characters. Even the fact that he's there to kill someone doesn't seem exciting -- because it's routine in his 'line of work'.

65. Michele Lee - Rot

In the words of internet forums:

1. Die
2. Raise yourself as a zombie
3. ???
4. Profit!!!

The author came right out and showed how his story takes place in a different world (or at least our world with one important difference). Readers will either like that and keep reading, or put the book down with disinterest. It's polarizing, in a way. Anyway, this is short and sweet, and easy to read. I'd probably continue on for at least a while.

66. Jordan - The Incredible Blanco Brothers

Who has a bathroom in their attic? Just wondering.

I like the voice, and this opening obviously takes the route of 'I'm going to spend time introducing my MC to you before I show anything happening'. Sometimes this works, sometimes this doesn't. All depends on if readers can identify with the character.

67. Vanessa Concannon - Savage Glee

Hmm -- interesting perspective. That alone makes it intriguing enough for me to read on. I'm not sure if the emotions and fear of the people drawing the harpy downward are a metaphor or actual truth, but I suppose I'll find out eventually. The author does a good job of making us sympathize with a 'monster'. Would read on.

68. Kandybar - Broken Mirrors

Hmm... another story about a young witch unable to perform a simple spell. I sense another pattern here. Now if we just had a story about a young witch that accidentally creates the smell of burnt flesh...

I liked the cockotiel named Igor -- that was amusing. The rest of it was a lot of world-building though. I know in fantasy it's tempting to describe the world straight off, but it's really not as necessary as you think. I'm more interested in the witch herself than how witchcraft works in this world. But that's just me.

69. fish - Untitled

Well... it's certainly not what I'm used to. Stream of consciousness is risky, because people have to want to go along for the ride for it to work. Unfortunately, for me, this doesn't. I don't learn anything, nothing seems to happen, and I don't really empathize with the character. Sorry.

70. fabulousfrock - My Dear Leslie

I like this. Makes me sympathize with the MC, shows some of her desires, and has her make a strong decision, all in the first page. My only issue is that he lets her go, and she stays close enough for him to grab her a second time. I'd think she would've backed away at least. Anyway, I'd keep reading, at least to see where this was going.

Revenge of the Critiques #6

2008-01-31T14:38:00.000-05:00

The following are critiques of first pages sent to Nathan Bransford's First Page Contest. All authors have stated that they do not mind being critiqued by a third party (namely, me). If you wish to have your first pages critiqued, reply to this post or any of the previous critique posts and tell me if you want the critique sent to your email privately. Otherwise I will assume you want it public. Do NOT post your first pages -- I will only look at entries that are posted on Nathan's blog already. This is just intended to give an extra, impartial, random opinion on your work, particularly in the event that you're not one of the lucky runners-up.

So when you're using a crappy computer to do these, and a webpage with 600+ replies keeps crashing your browser, it makes you glad that you use firefox and can use the 'Restore Session' button without much hassle.

A note: I'm starting to see people say 'Oh, I'm sorry, I posted on the wrong thread.' No, you didn't. I'm going to check all the threads eventually. Sure, you can try to post on every thread to get 'first' in line, but it's seriously not going to take me long to get to you, and if you piss me off I might not critique you after all, so just be patient. Posting a comment on ANY of these threads is fine, trust me.

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51. Colorado Writer - Meat Market

Starting with 'I had six zits. Big, old oozy ones' is about as attractive as a first line as it is on a first date. Other than that, this wasn't too bad. However, I think some people are confusing Nathan's contest with Flogging the Quill. The latter is about forcing the reader to turn the page, and putting the most interesting sentence at the very end of the page often accomplishes this. But here, the whole page needs to be good, and showing us WHO the voice is would be a lot more effective (and less artificial) at developing true interest.

52. Jennifer Hendren - Untitled

First off, you can't pee your parts if you're wearing a skirt.

I like the voice here, and obviously you've brought plenty of conflict to your opening page. I'm not well-versed on police procedure, but I wonder if police are allowed to search where he did with every female suspect. Might want to double-check that. Good, though. I'd keep reading.

53. ros - Untitled

Praying for 1/4th of each month for 11 years, just for a Y chromosome? Seems excessive. Then again, people have thought differently throughout history. It would take extreme faith to keep praying after 11 years without results. What keeps him faithful? You've shown what he wants, but not why he thinks this is the best solution.

54. Writerperson - Rosalita

A common 'mistake' in openings is saying things for the benefit of the reader that the PoV characters would never say/think. For example, introducing characters by their first and last name. Luis would not think of his last name every time he referred to himself, and the same goes for his boss.

I'm just hoping the wet spot isn't due to the gutters, because building construction isn't really interesting to me.

55. bria - Markbearer

Curiously, this author goes to great lengths to explain the marks and why the MC is different, but she doesn't explain what the heck the marks are FOR, which is the question every reader would like answered. Not knowing that, this is a bit like watching a movie with your eyes closed. You have some vague sense of what's going on, but a huge, important piece is missing that prevents you from fully experiencing the story.

56. BernardL - Untitled

Stopped after the first paragraph. I'm sure people will disagree with me on this, but there are to many verbs ending with 'ing' in this paragraph. This is indicative of the author trying to fit too many verbs into each sentence. By doing so, they force the reader to keep track of multiple actions occuring at once, which can eventually become a burden. Worse, this is done during a battle scene, where short, direct sentnces better convey the speed and violent danger of battle. Read up on how sentence structure can affect your pacing, and then try rewriting this battle scene. I think you'll find a lot of your 'ing' verbs disappear as a result.

57. Anonymous - Untitled Paranormal Thriller (Didn't I just read an opening about the smell of burnt flesh? I'm sensing a pattern here.)

For some reason, I didn't catch on quickly that the first paragraph was a daydream. Even though the second paragraph states that she sakes her head until the waiting room comes back into view, it doesn't specify that the 'burned victims' from the previous paragraph were just figments of her imagination. Might help to avoid confusion.

58. Marva - Bad Spelling

This sounds fun, but at the end it looks like it's going deep into 'backstory territory'. Also, I'm worried that someone might look at this and think it's a Harry Potter ripoff. Make sure that this book has a unique presence, and isn't just 'child witches and warlocks' all over again.

59. Lyz - The Lost Girls

MAJOR PoV shift halfway through. We're going along as Ted for a while, and then all of a sudden thrust into Lana. I stopped around there. These shifts are very disorienting to the reader, which is why (unless you're some expert literary novelist) you should limit yourself to one point of view per scene. Switching between them on your first page without a break is a sure way to get yourself rejected by both agents and readers.

60. Cindy - Untitled Romance

Stopped at the modest log house. Nothing is really happening here. All we see is a woman driving, irritated at any number of things. What's the most boring aspect of most people's day? Driving to/from work by themselves. Having your book start off with one character driving a car isn't going to whet a lot of appetites.

Revenge of the Critiques #5

2008-01-31T13:10:00.000-05:00

The following are critiques of first pages sent to Nathan Bransford's First Page Contest. All authors have stated that they do not mind being critiqued by a third party (namely, me). If you wish to have your first pages critiqued, reply to this post or any of the previous critique posts and tell me if you want the critique sent to your email privately. Otherwise I will assume you want it public. Do NOT post your first pages -- I will only look at entries that are posted on Nathan's blog already. This is just intended to give an extra, impartial, random opinion on your work, particularly in the event that you're not one of the lucky runners-up.

Well, the contest has been cut off at 600+ entries, but it looks like only about 150 people have commented here giving permission. Then again, there's all the people who posted on Nathan's site 'I don't mind if anyone critiques me' without coming directly here. In any case, considering I'm at 50 critiques now (not counting the ones I already took down and haven't re-posted), this doesn't look like it will be too bad.

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41. suzelle - No Ghosts are Out Tonight

Stopped at 'Can you imagine what it would be like if you...?' This piece has a great voice, but that voice rambles and goes off on tangents a lot. This indicates to me that it'll be a while before this story gets anywhere, and when it does, it's just as likely to get sidetracked as it is to go somewhere pertinent.

42. Christy - VIVA!

Well, you do a good job of making us sympathize with her, but how are you going to get out of this initial scene? I assume that something is going to change her status quo (hopefully for the better), but there's no hint of it in this first page, obviously. The question is, how long are you going to make the reader wait? Uniqueness sells books, not your typical 'trapped selling sex' or 'cancer survivor' story.

43. joey - Billy & Betsy

What irks me about this one is that it goes on and on about how Billy tortures the narrator (whom we know nothing about), but we're never given a concrete example. Examples are far more vivid than angst. We realize the narriator is feeling tortured, but we're never told why, except that Billy knows 'just what buttons to push'. Wish we knew what those buttons were.

44. linda - Brighter Than Bright

One thing confused me with this -- if he thinks his shrink session is a waste of time, why does he care if he's late. I detest being late, but only when it's a responsibility I care about. When I think it's a waste of time, I'm not heartbroken if I show up late. So why does he? There some modivation you're not mentioning here, that makes him fear being late almost as much as confined spaces?

45. Emily Rose - Sincerely, Me

I don't really find the reactions here to be realistic. If she can kick butt, why is she still on the ground taunting him? Why suffer when she can get up, fight back, and gloat over his prone body? And why does he pull out the knife if he 'obviously' overpowers her, as far as he can tell? I'm also curious as to what the heck they're fighting over.

46. sunny - untitled LitFic

Stopped at 'mutually-beneficial'. There are some PoV problems here. First off, it starts off with saying that the police didn't consider her a suspect. Jamie wouldn't know anything about this, as she doesn't even know there is anything to suspect her of. And, obviously, an 8-year-old would not use the phrase 'mutually-beneficial'. If you're going to use an 8-year-old's PoV (and I assume you want to with phrases like, 'made her tummy feel funny'), you need to stick with it.

47. Chad - Westworld

The dialogue here sounded... off. I don't think real people (even in this world) would talk like this. Examples:

"It's yer move, Cole." -- Assuming Cole is new to town, people probably wouldn't call him by name, they'd give him some derogatory nickname, like "Boy." Since it's Cole's viewpoint, you really don't need someone to say his name before you introduce it in prose.

"I raise, Willum. Don't worry, though, I'll use my winnings to buy you a nice tombstone if you die during the next hand, old man." This insult just sounds too 'clever', plus it has too many additions: Don't worry, though, and old man. Maybe change it to "Don't worry, old man, if you croak before the hand's done, I'll use my winnings to buy you a nice tombstone. I raise."

"Shut yer trap, ye upstart!" - Unnecessary and just sounds out of place, particularly the last half.

Hopefully you get my point. This is all probably subjective, but if I read this out loud, the dialogue sounds corny, particularly for a tough bar.

48. Andrhia - Midsummer

Note: when looking for an exciting first page, don't focus on apathy. The writing was fine, but I'm not enthused to continue reading. You tried to start with something intriguing, but one of the characters discounted it within a paragraph. This page just doesn't have any oomph.

49. brian ohio - The Haunting Department

Finished it. Interesting setup. You've shown us what kind of character this is through action, and even though it is technically backstory, it's not dull. I'm curious how someone that huge could remain invisible, but I suppose 'curious' is good. I'd keep reading, at least for a bit.

50. Tiffany Aller - DNA

Stopped at the first break. First, I didn't read your explanation before the prologue -- because I shouldn't need it. Your reader won't have it. Secondly, there's too much buildup here, not enough substance. You go on to describe every detail of whe environment, interspersed with sweeping, zen-like statements from the narrator. But what happens? Guy walks into an alley, and someone meets him there. I just described in ten words what took you hundreds to convey. Do some trimming, and try not to sound so dramatic.

Revenge of the Critiques #4

2008-01-30T19:46:00.000-05:00

Revenge of the Critiques #3

2008-01-30T17:39:00.000-05:00

The following are critiques of first pages sent to Nathan Bransford's First Page Contest. All authors have stated that they do not mind being critiqued by a third party (namely, me). If you wish to have your first pages critiqued, reply to this post or any of the previous critique posts and tell me if you want the critique sent to your email privately. Otherwise I will assume you want it public. Do NOT post your first pages -- I will only look at entries that are posted on Nathan's blog already. This is just intended to give an extra, impartial, random opinion on your work, particularly in the event that you're not one of the lucky runners-up.

Two interesting tidbits about me: I don't drink coffee, and I don't drink alcohol. So I guess I've given myself a handicap at plowing through these, huh?

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21. Julie Weathers - Paladin's Pride (How is something 'kind of' 140,000 words? Can I say my 177k word novel is 'kind of 150k words'?)

Stopped reading when 'Papa leaned his head into the milk cow's flank', because I didn't have a clue who papa was. You've introduced somewhere between 3 and 6 characters in this opening, but I can't say for certain how many because you call them all by their names, their titles, their relationship with others, pronouns, etc. Try not to do this in your intros -- you risk confusing the reader. Also, is there a time shift in the middle here? There's no indication of one, and maybe that's my problem.

22. Spartezda - Crime-Fighting Zookeeper Chronicles (I'm Spartezda! No, I'M Spartezda!)

I liked this. Then again I read fantasy. I was a bit confused at first at a cat being a zookeeper, but that was explained soon enough. Plenty of tension, action, and effortless explanation. I was half-expecting a cat joke about how much the werecat hated water, though. And the end left me at a 'Princess Bride' moment: "The werejaguar doesn't get eaten at this time. I say this because you look worried."

23. RoboticLunch - You Are Here

This does a good job of establishing and describing two characters without being obvious about it. How they interact with each other, interact with their surroundings, and what they say all do a great job of revealing who they are without resorting to dull description. I'd keep reading.

24. Bobbie - Angel Girl

Interesting. With the addition from revelations you mentioned, I assume that this is a mirror to the beginning of war between God and Lucifer. Discounting that background, though, I'm not sure how much more I'd read. There's a lot of people 'dancing around each other', if you catch my meaning. How long is the strutting going to last before things get really hairy? If all the conflict is going to be subdued like this, I might tire of it after a while. But that's just me.

25. Sage - AFTRLYF

Not bad, but this is another case where the author creates a startling image, then releases all tension by making it not such a big deal. While it made for some great opening lines, where do we go from here? The protagonist doesn't have to worry about getting killed, or even getting discovered at this point, so we're back to a mellow beginning that could easily lose the reader.

26. dave f - The Donegal Manuscript

Stopped reading at "Turlough Ua-Tuathail of Caislean Ui-Dornhnaill". Wasn't particularly interested in 'chasing a diary in africa', and when I got to these names it was just a roadblock I didn't feel like hopping over. After all, I've got plenty of openings still to read.

27. JJ Cooper - Untitled

Read it, and I'm wondering if Prometheus is the protagonist. Typically your first viewpoint is of the protagonist, and it might be hard for readers to empathize with someone who keeps girls trapped in their basement. Also, you might want to name the German Shephard, so you don't have to keep calling it 'the German Shephard'.

28. ~grace~ - Untitled

Just this week, I was told that a woman being assaulted by three men but being saved by a male hero is a very cliche opening that perpetuates the image of women being helpless. So maybe you should make this more original by having her attacked by badgers.

Seriously, though, there's nothing (yet) driving me to read this over anything off the shelf, so that shattering glass better have something unique in it to make me keep reading.

29. Anonymous - Untitled (First Line: "I'd heard stories about Highway 101 all my life.")

I'm not sure why this author mentions highway 101, then immediately switches to the conflict of a kid being forced to move. Unless highway 101 is an immediate threat, don't bother with it. Also, we know that the kid isn't going to change his mother's mind, which makes the argument nothing more than a device for learning backstory. Millions of YA stories have started with a kid saying "Why do we have to move?!" or "Why did we have to move?!" If yours is going to stand out, skip to the part where something more unique happens.

30. Megan - Shakespeare Jones

Stopped at 'His mind flicks away unconsciousness like a cockroach from bare skin.'

...what does that MEAN?

Anyway, I found the opening here clunky at times (particularly the first sentence) and it went off on tangents. Why is it important who was once or is presently sixteen? I don't know, this opening just sounds like the author trying to be clever and the story is sacrificed as a result.

Revenge of the Critiques #2

2008-01-30T09:18:00.000-05:00

The following are critiques of first pages sent to Nathan Bransford's First Page Contest. All authors have stated that they do not mind being critiqued by a third party (namely, me). If you wish to have your first pages critiqued, reply to this post or any of the previous critique posts and tell me if you want the critique sent to your email privately. Otherwise I will assume you want it public. Do NOT post your first pages -- I will only look at entries that are posted on Nathan's blog already. This is just intended to give an extra, impartial, random opinion on your work, particularly in the event that you're not one of the lucky runners-up.

Noticed that some of the first 70 people on Nathan's blog are asking for crits, which makes it easy for me since I already have them saved!

1. lynne - Chained

Aside from the missing word(s) in one paragraph ("Last the rains flooded the river"), this wasn't half bad. The narrator is more of a spectator here, but still has emotional investment, obviously. I'd read for a bit longer to see if the narrator is going to do anything to help the situation. After all, I don't want to spend a lot of time watching someone watching.

2. Erik - Authenticity

Stopped somewhere in the description of how wonderful she was. While I'm sure it's important for us to see him go all googly-eyed over a girl, this is a little over the top, particularly for a first page. Some voices can carry this sort of rambling description, but this guy's voice is pretty 'standard' and thus the author is going to have to get to the point before readers get bored.

3. nadine - Love Undelivered

Stopped in the third paragraph. I don't know, I'm just not interested in building demolition. If I was more nostalgic, I'd care about the destruction of a historic monument, but I'm 26, plus I lived in Europe and found the sights kind of 'eh'. Just not my taste, I guess.

4. Klazart - Ramayana

The word 'fasciculations' is going to trip up most people that read this, which means it's not doing you any favors. I'm not saying you have to limit yourself to words of two syllables or less, but try not to use obscure words like this if you can help it, particularly in your opening paragraph. In fact, the rest of it sounds over the top as well. 'Unadulterated inebriation of boundless conviction'? Come on. Average novels should have about a 9th-grade reading level. Any 9th grader would think this book is an SAT preparation quiz.

5. idea man - Ride Along

See now, this is how you write an 'evil' main character. He justifies his actions, and even though we can guess he's going to do something drastic and violent to this cop, we aren't completely repulsed by him. I'd keep reading, to see whether or not he goes through with it. Now the question is if the author can make us root for him.

6. travis erwin - Plundered Booty

Stopped reading when greenhouse gases are mentioned. First off, the industries around making paper and transporting books do emit greenhouse gasses, technically. But anyway, if a book has to tell me to be patient, there's something wrong. By staying away from the story and breaking the fourth wall, you are relying ENTIRELY on your humor to keep the reader reading. At least if you had a story going, you could rely on both. Humor is very subjective, so if you don't provide plot to go along with your humor, you'll lose anyone who isn't laughing constantly. I recommend you intersperse humor in your story, instead of going off on multiple-paragraph tangents in the beginning.

7. kol - Shift (Sounds like a scientific term. "Today, we will be studying the kol shift and its affect on particles...")

Interesting. I'm curious as to what he's up to, which is good. Also, his nervousness makes everything seem more dangerous -- even the guy who slammed into him, I assumed was a pickpocket. I also like the character -- calling your inhaler a 'talisman' is quirky. One detail you left out -- he did pay the taxi, right?

8. allen b. ogey - Overboard

I read the whole thing, but the voice irks me. How old is the narrator? He sounds like he's at least in his 20s. I mean, who uses the word 'bestir'? For that matter, why would he pinch his own sister's behind? That's like kissing your sister, but worse. Maybe it's just a very unique character, but all of his actions and mannerisms seemed 'off' to me.

9. paprikapink - Thistle and Slime (For some reason, when I read this, I muttered to myself, "Parsley, sage, rosemary and slime...")

Read it, although I'm not sure how interesting paperwork can be. I also didn't find the reactions entirely realistic. IF someone's in a rage, it's not as simple as flipping a switch for them to 'get down to business'. Even if they did think rationally, they'd still be stressed out.

10. madison - This Brief Freedom

Very nice -- you do a great job of establishing tension. So much so that the prospect of bankruptcy seems pale by comparision to what I was expecting (a serial killer of some sort.) It gets a little slow in places, but the tension keeps it aloft.

Revenge of the Critiques #1

2008-01-29T23:48:00.000-05:00

The following are critiques of first pages sent to Nathan Bransford's First Page Contest. All authors have stated that they do not mind being critiqued by a third party (namely, me). If you wish to have your first pages critiqued, reply to this post or any of the previous critique posts and tell me if you want the critique sent to your email privately. Otherwise I will assume you want it public. Do NOT post your first pages -- I will only look at entries that are posted on Nathan's blog already. This is just intended to give an extra, impartial, random opinion on your work, particularly in the event that you're not one of the lucky runners-up.

And yes, I'm posting these in the order I was given permission, not in the order they went up on Nathan's blog.

On a side note, either I feel guilty about being mean to people who gave me express permission to critique their work, or (more likely) this first batch just had a lot of good entries in it. I finished almost all of them.

I sleep now -- and dread how many of these things I have to do when I wake up.

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1. hannah - These Humans All Suck

Somehow I always have this problem of assuming people are the wrong gender. Took me half a page to realize the narrator was a guy. Anyway, I really like the dialogue here. That alone keeps me reading towards the end. I also like the relationship depicted: "We're not close, but sometimes we get along so well that I forget." I'm not DYING to read more, but I would definitely continue, and likely would get eased into a good story.

2. jordyn - Unfinished YA novel

Finished this. I think the author dances around the issue just a smidge too much, but nevertheless does a good job of conveying the central conflict: sibling jealousy. Usually it's the younger sibling idolizing the older one, so this sounds like an interesting read -- assuming I read YA. Trim it a bit, fix the minor tense issues, and this should develop into something good.

3. lindabudz - The Potato Baby Project

What happened to eggs? Hell, you can drop-kick a potato, and no one would know unless it landed on asphalt. Anyway, the voice was good, though the storyline sounds a little cliche. Half of the made-for-tv movies about high school involve the school geek being teamed up with the popular girl. Just from what I've read, I feel like I can predict the plot from a mile away. If I'm wrong, the author needs to show me that earlier.

4. kaige - Revealed

The contrast here between her opinion of masquerades and her memory of her first one is startling, and does a good job of creating mystery. Why does she hate masquerades so much if she passionately kissed a man at one? Though I don't care much for this genre, I can see how this would intrigue those that do. (P.S. : Damn you for getting that Phantom of the Opera song stuck in my head.)

5. DeadlyAccurate - Untitled based on Grimm

Finished. From the sheriff's response, I assume that this is meant to be a 'comedy of absurdity'. I smiled a few times, which is a good sign. I also like the squirrel, but I'm a sucker for talking animals as comic relief.

6. kimberley griffiths little - The Death of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun

You know, I usually hate reading excess gore, but this wasn't too bad. Then again, it concentrates on the characters against the backdrop of a 'mummy workshop', which is good. I don't recall the Egyptians mummifying this many people, but I'll defer to the author here as I didn't study ancient Egypt much. My only concern here is that this scene (while grotesque to us) is routine to the protagonist. What is going to change his status quo? The new body? I hope so, because currently we're lacking any conflict or tension here.

7. languagelover - The Prince

I stopped reading in the second paragraph. This author suffers from the same thing I suffered from months ago (and if anyone wants proof, go look up MY first pages on Flogging the Quill from last year.) He attempts to make his protagonist mysterious, and as a consequence, refuses to let us connect with him/her/it.

To be frank, we've all seen dozens of movies where thieves and spies do sneaky things, so none of what is described in this exercept is amazing to us. Actions don't have depth or consequence if all of the characters involved are nameless. I know the temptation to make such characters 'shadowy and mysterious' is strong, but consider taking us into his mind and letting us see more of who he is instead of just what he does.

8. A Paperback Writer - Up

I REFUSE TO CRITIQUE THIS BECAUSE IT'S EIGHT WORDS OVER!

Just kidding. The first three sentences kind of confused me. The narrator (once again, I'm unsure of gender, but I assumed female after the 'guys' comment) claims she didn't make 'it' happen, and then affirms that it happened. This is like saying, "I didn't trip you, but you can't tell me you didn't trip and fall!" Sounds odd, doesn't it?

Anyway, this has a strong voice that takes some getting used to, but looks interesting. The author is slow to let us know exactly what's going on, but it's due to meandering in the protag's mind instead of deliberately holding information back. I can deal with that for about a chapter or so. So I'd keep reading, at least for a little while.

9. jamiethornton - Rhinoceros Summer

I'm a bit confused as to why they didn't shoot the rhino while it was unaware of them. Seems silly. I've also never heard the F-word used as a synonym for 'cop-out'. I will warn the author about one thing though: I get the feeling that these two aren't the main characters in the novel. After all, it's labeled as 'Women's Adventure Fiction'. So my question is, why are we starting with them? I know what poachers and rhinos can do, so why are we with them instead of with the protagonist?

10. terryd - Jerry Sharpe

Finished it -- the author does a good job of describing the setting, the characters, and what's going on as briefly as possible. I'd read on to see what was in the package. I think the first paragraph could be split into two so as not to 'run on' for two long, but that's just my personal preference. Overall a good read.

Well, I Screwed THAT Up, Didn't I?

2008-01-29T21:50:00.001-05:00

So it has recently come to my attention that some people might be offended by my critiquing their work without permission. They posted their work to get it critiqued by Nathan, and not by some random opinionated schmuck. Because that's really all I am -- a reader who thought people might appreciate a third opinion. Having commented on pitches at Bookends, first pages at Flogging the Quill, and all manner of things at the Crapometer and Evil Editor sites, I was under the impression that every author who posted material online wanted their material looked at by other people online. Silly me.

To the people who do not wish me to critique your work, worry not, I won't be posting any more random critiques. However, let me say this. Grow a spine. If you are a writer, and you cannot handle anyone, ANYONE critiquing your work, including the harshest, most inconsiderate nobody, then you're going to be eaten up by the publishing world and spat back out. Writing is not for those who can't take criticism. Criticism is how you get better. It's how you learn. The people who refuse to heed or take criticism are the ones who pitch the same manuscript for 43 years and never make revisions. I'm sure you disagree with me on this point, but we are both welcome to our opinions.

Now, I could be like one of those teachers I hated growing up that punishes the whole class because one person acted out. But, contrary to popular belief, I am not a prick looking to hurt people. I'll give critiques to those that want them. That being said, I'm not going to ask everyone who wants critiques to repost their pages here, because I don't want to steal Nathan's thunder. It's his contest, and I always intended to be a spectator. I just figured, 'Hey, I'm reading them, I might as well do something nice for my fellow authors and offer a 3rd-party opinion.'

So here's what I'll do. First, I'm going to delete all my previous critiques from the blog. If you do want a critique, make a comment to THIS POST saying so (even if you made a comment earlier.) Indicate if you want the critique to be private (make sure I have your email, if so), otherwise I will assume you want it public. Do not post the first page on this thread. I'll cross-reference your name with Nathan's blog. If you didn't leave your name, give me your title or first line, whichever one you deem easier for me to find. I don't care what number it is, I go by word searching.

DISCLAIMER: I am a random nobody. I have no credentials. My opinions are not guaranteed to be right, or even close to accurate. Ask me for a critique at your own risk. Oh, and I apologize if I'm more harsh than I would otherwise be. Cause I'm kind of irked right now.

Time to Stab Myself in the Eyes

2008-01-29T12:10:00.001-05:00

So after reading about Nathan Bransford's contest, I saw one flaw in it. Those people who really needed help, the ones who DIDN'T have spectacular openings, would receive no input on their work.

So, masochistic soul that I am, I've decided to change that.

UPDATE: But, apparently I went about it the wrong way, and pissed some people off. Please read this post if you still want a short critique of your first page that you already entered in Nathan's contest.

My Lack of Posts and a Contest

2008-01-28T17:04:00.000-05:00

Sorry about not posting lately, but I had a busy weekend. Also, as some may have noticed, I've been posting almost daily for the past month. So, in order to prevent myself from running out of things to say, I'm going to limit myself to posting around 4 times a week.

On an entirely different note, literary agent Nathan Bransford is having a contest over on his blog. Submit your first page (up to 500 words) and you could win a free book, query critique, or partial critique. But you only have until this Wednesday to submit, so better get over there!

Or don't, so I have a better chance of winning...

Novel Trimming 5: Things Better Left Unsaid

2008-01-23T10:39:00.000-05:00

When you meet up with a friend, what are the first things you say to each other? I'd wager the conversation goes something like this:

You: {Standard greeting such as 'Hi' or 'Hello'.}
Them: {Return greeting, initiate conversation by asking 'How are you?' or 'How have you been?'}
You: {Reply with uninformative statement, such as 'Fine.', or describe a recent event in your life.}
Them: {Either comment on their own life or relate to the event described.}

In your novel, this is mostly useless.

Readers don't care for the formalities. If you ever do use 'Hi' or 'Hello' in your dialogue, it should be seeped with so much emotion that it carries weight far beyond the simple word being used. Small talk is the same way. If your characters ask about how Aunt Susan is doing, Aunt Susan better be a major character in the plot or you're going to bore your reader.

Just like every scene in your book must have a purpose, everything your characters say must similarly have a purpose. If they're discussing something, it should be a major plot point. If they're having a cordial conversation, it should be laced with subtext and intrigue. If the words aren't advancing the plot, why are they there?

Even worse is when only one character in a conversation is important. If your character is buying something, don't go into great detail about what the cashier says to them, unless the conversation is going to lead to a major revelation.

This isn't to say such trivial conversations don't occur in your world -- you just don't have to write them out. How do you avoid boring your readers with small talk? Well, you have a few options:

Start the scene after the small talk. Beginning a scene in the middle of a conversation is a great way to avoid not only small talk, but excess description leading into the scene. If you cut right to the chase and start with a vivid line like, "He did WHAT?!" or "You have ten seconds to explain before I beat you to a pulp." or "It's your baby.", the reader will be hooked and you don't have to go through those silly small-talk motions.
Summarize what is said. Instead of going into the individual lines of "What can I get you to drink, sir?" "I'll have a coke please, no ice." "And are you ready to order?" "What's your soup of the day?" "The lemon chicken, sir." "All right, I think I'll have a bowl of that along with your chicken fried steak." You could sum the whole thing up by just saying, "He ordered a bowl of lemon chicken and the chicken fried steak." This is usually your best option whenever the character is talking to a waiter, merchant, or salesman who has nothing to do with the plot.
Have the character stop listening. Quite often, conversation occurs between people you don't really care about. In these cases, remember that your story is typically told through the eyes of one person. If that person doesn't care and stops listening, then there's no reason the reader should have to listen to the conversation either. Give the character a paragraph of introspection, and then have them snap back to the conversation when someone asks them a question directly or something else interesting happens.
Avoid such situations. If you know every restaurant scene is going to devolve into meaningless drivel, don't have your dialogue in a restaurant. Have it occur as the characters are caught in a car chase, or snuggling up to each other, or any other scene where other action is happening. This way, the action is so stimulating that the dialogue becomes more focused on the plot and less focused on drivel.

If you ever find yourself 'going through the motions' with dialogue, stop immediately. No one ever won a literary award based on how their characters said hi to one another. Get to the meat of your story, and leave the small talk to others. Your book will be much crisper and tightened as a result.

Everybody Wants to Rule the World

2008-01-21T17:09:00.000-05:00

The best books, in my opinion, have no villains.

Oh sure, they have antagonists, people who oppose the main character, often times directly. They may even be cruel or heartless. I may hate these people, as a reader. But I don't always consider them 'villains'.

In my mind, the stereotypical villain is the kind of antagonist you see on Saturday morning cartoons. He wants POWER. He wants to RULE THE WORLD (or, if he's particularly malicious, DESTROY it.) And he won't let ANYTHING stand is his way, especially not that goody-two-shoes hero!

But what does he want that power for? Why does he want to rule/destroy the world? And no, being abused or bullied as a child isn't a good enough excuse. Antagonists, just like protagonists, have goals. They do whatever will benefit THEM most, particularly since they aren't usually the type for empathy or self-sacrifice. There must be a reason for their actions.

If they want to rule the world (or a country), they must think they'll rule it better than those currently in charge. No one stages a coup because they think it'd be cool to wear a crown. They must have strong disagreements with the current policies of the ruling party. Perhaps they want to resolve one issue in the way they see fit, such as supremacy of a race or war on a neighboring country. They often think they have noble goals. Usually they are misguided, but sometimes they actually DO have noble goals, they just use methods the hero doesn't agree with.

Imagine your antagonist wants peace. A noble goal, to be sure. However, his method might be to mind control the entire world into being docile. This isn't quite so noble*. But at least he's working towards an ideal, instead of just cackling maniacally and being evil for evil's sake.

Always make your antagonist think he's in the right, that he is doing what's best for himself and those around him. Perhaps his actions are completely logical, but lacking in empathy. Perhaps his sense of justice is closer to bloody, misplaced vengeance. Perhaps he is simply a zealot, thinking the ends justify his means. Unless you've set up your antagonist to be completely insane, don't make his mindset, "Yes, this will make things worse for me and everyone else, but I DON'T CARE!" Make him care, or we won't either.

Sometimes, an antagonist is actually redeemable. If done well, this can be dramatic and extremely satisfying to the reader -- the protagonist's goals are so true and just that even the antagonist recognizes them and changes his ways. Unfortunately, if done wrong*, it just looks corny. If anyone has played the Dark Cloud series for PS2, you know what I'm talking about. All of the antagonists in these games (except for perhaps the final bosses) act like your standard cackling mastermind until you defeat them in battle, and then all of a sudden they repent, ask for forgiveness, tell their sad tale, and either die or join your party. It's ridiculous.

Overall, antagonists need to be true to themselves and have depth, just like your protagonists do. And just like heroes that fight for 'truth, justice, and cute kitties' have become passe, so have villains who use the phrase 'MWA HA HA HA HA!' So come up with something better. Your protagonist needs a worthy opponent.

It's also cliche. This 'I know what's best!' mentality is so overused nowadays, whenever I see a mind-control plot I just assume the bad guy wants to have 'peace on earth'. (back)

Read: Most of the time. (back)

Welcome to High School

2008-01-20T09:35:00.000-05:00

I browsed over to liosis' blog and saw a post on reading level, so I searched around for a site that would test this site's reading level. I ended up here.

The results?

They recommend you aim for a Gunning Fog Index of 8-10 in novels, which means an 8th-10th grade reading level. They also recommend a Flesch Reading Ease Index of 60-70.

My Gunning Fog Index: 9.49
My Flesch Reading Ease Index: 65.46

Good to know at least my blog is on the right track!

A Very Special Episode

2008-01-19T21:29:00.000-05:00

Tension is the bread and butter of any good book. Bestselling novels never release tension, and thus the reader never has a chance to take a break. This is what makes them page-turners.

So clearly the best way of keeping tension up is to come up with new conflicts every step of the way, and as soon as the protagonist gets out of one, we throw him into another, right?

Not exactly.

If your protagonist is only facing new conflicts as he solves old ones, your book becomes episodic. By episodic, I mean all your problems occur in their own mini-episodes, where conflict rises, comes to a peak, and falls with the resolution. It's just like episodes in a sitcom or other non-contiguous TV show. Episodic books look like the graph on the left.

As you can see, our author creates 5 conflicts of varying sizes, and each one has its ups and downs. One by one, each conflict is resolved, and tension stays relatively low. The reader has a nice breather between each conflict, because new conflicts need time to be introduced.

One example of an episodic plot many people have read is the first Harry Potter book. Although there is an overreaching plot, many of the conflicts rise and fall very quickly. A troll appears! Knocked out within a scene. Someone tries to hurt Harry during Quiddich! Resolved by the end of the game. Harry gets too absorbed in that mirror that shows his parents. That gets resolved rather quickly too. I will say, JK gets a lot better interweaving her conflicts in later books, but her debut novel, intended for kids, stays simplistic.

Episodic books are easy to stop reading. As soon as a conflict is resolved, the reader puts the book down, because there is no reason to be worried about the characters. They only start reading again when they feel like seeing what the next conflict is. Sometimes, they don't pick the book back up at all. This is why so many sitcoms fail. Their episodes aren't interconnected, so all you're doing is watching lame jokes in connived situations set up specifically for that episode.

Recently, television writers have shunned the episodic format for long-running series, where conflicts appear in one episode, and are not resolved until many episodes later. Lost, Heroes, and 24 are all great examples of shows where tension is never released. Though they have episodes, the whole story runs together, and most episodes end in some sort of cliffhanger, leaving conflicts unresolved.

When you don't resolve conflicts before starting the next one, the tension stacks, as shown on the graph to the right. Here, we have the same five conflicts, but we don't let one completely resolve before starting the next one. All of a sudden, the characters (and readers) have to worry about two problems instead of one! The stakes are exponentially higher! Even minor hitches turn into horrible setbacks that could have dire ramifications!

I'm reading a book now by a bestselling author, where some teenager gets stopped by two bullies in a dark alley. This is bad enough. But he was on his way to save his aunt from possible assassination by political enemies. Oh, and in the back of his mind, he has to worry about his part in a conspiracy to protect the kingdom. Suddenly those two bullies are threatening the life of a family member, along with the security of the realm!

You'll also notice there are no lulls in the graph. Because there are always more conflicts in the background, there is never a point with no tension, where the reader is tempted to put the book down.

Notice how the graph is shorter? Merging conflicts can also shorten a book, by not wasting time on the lulls between plot points.

Surely you've read a book where something exciting is happening, and all of a sudden the chapter ends, and the book goes to another viewpoint. You scream in frustration. You want to know what happens to those characters you left behind! And you keep reading, because the conflict is left hanging. You might be frustrated, but you don't put the book down, do you?

In a book like this, the reader can forget a conflict even exists. When it rears its ugly head again, things get ten times worse. The reader can't help but turn pages until the end, when the resolution of all conflicts gives a sense of relief and satisfaction. They don't put the book down until the last page.

Make your conflicts complex, and don't resolve them too quickly. Allow your readers to get overwhelmed by tension. That's what keeps them up at night, reading your book despite the late hour. And that's what will keep them coming back for your other books.

Prologue Update

2008-01-18T20:25:00.000-05:00

Made some significant changes to the prologue, in order to add more tension. Also cut down on the Maylee/Merideth conversation, since everyone apparently hates listening to those two talk. ;)

Roleplaying your Characters

2008-01-18T10:54:00.000-05:00

So, for those not yet aware, I am a geek. One of my favorite past times is playing Dungeons and Dragons. For the uninitiated, D&D revolves around designing a character, then putting yourself into their shoes as you battle monsters, complete quests, and accomplish the impossible.

If you are a writer, I highly recommend you try playing roleplaying games at some point. They are a fabulous exercise in creating deep, meaningful characters, and then staying true to them. While it's true that some people focus more on the stats and strategy of the game itself (we tend to call them munchkins or rollplayers), writers and other creative types usually find the most enjoyment from getting into their character's head and becoming a different person.

Writers often suffer from their characters 'sounding too much like them'. Roleplaying prevents this by forcing you to do the opposite: you strive to sound and act more like your character. Your character is constantly put in stressful situations, and you must figure out how they would react. With enough practice, you don't even think about what a character would do -- you know for certain, because you are familiar with the character.

Gaining this familiarity while playing D&D is easy -- whenever you play that character, you attune yourself with their mindset. When writing, it's harder. You often have multiple characters in the same scene, and switching back and forth can be confusing. If you only gain familiarity with your characters as you write, those characters won't be vivid and realistic until you reach the end of your novel, or you revise like crazy later.

Whenever I make a new character, I go through a specific process. I lie down, close my eyes, and think about that character. What do they look like? What do they sound like? What did they look and sound like when they were a teenager? A child? A toddler? What were their parents like? What are their goals? Desires? Fears? What dramatic incidents have occurred in their life? How did these incidents affect them?

What does the world look like to this character? Are they tall, seeing the world from above, or short, having to stare up at everything? Everyone experiences emotions in different ways -- how do they? What tastes and smells draw their attention? For a moment, I imagine I am that character, experiencing life as only they do.

Then I put this developed character into various situations. They often aren't even situations I'd have in my novel. Walking down the street, they see someone get hit by a car. What do they do? They're my roommate, and there's no more milk in the fridge. What do they do? They suddenly get teleported to a completely foreign place. What do they do? How do they react to children? To dogs? To foul-mouthed drivers? To their friends? To their enemies? To me?

At no point do I write any of this stuff down. Writing it down ruins the visualization process. If I'm using this character in my novel, I don't want to refer to notes while I'm writing. I want to 'become' that character at a moment's notice.

Sometimes I go back and write a scene with that character in it, which may or may not end up in my novel. This scene shows an important incident in their life (usually when they're young) that shapes them in the present. It's something of a 'warm up' for writing that character.

I go through this process with every one of my characters -- every person in my book I deign to give a name to. Sometimes I go back and add new traits and features to my characters, but I make sure I have this firm foundation first.

Even if no one finds out my character loves peanut butter, that insignificant fact will be there, in the back of my mind, whenever I write.

Without deep characters, your entire book will be shallow. The best way to make characters real to your readers is by making them real to you, and that means seeing the world through their eyes, if even for a short time.

Novel Trimming 4: Adverbs and the People that Hate Them

2008-01-17T09:32:00.000-05:00

The first thing aspiring writers are told is to 'show, don't tell'. The second thing is 'Adverbs said your mother is a slut, they ruined your credit rating, and they are solely responsible for all the starving kids in Africa. GET RID OF THEM!'

So why does everyone hate adverbs? When you took English in grade school, your teachers didn't turn red in the face and give you detention whenever you used one, did they? Why now, when you're trimming your novel, does everyone think they are the spawn of the devil?

Adverbs aren't 'bad', per say, they are just commonly misused/overused. Sometimes, they're necessary. Sometimes. But most newbie writers sprinkle their whole text with them, thinking they're giving the reader more 'vivid detail'. In actuality, they're just being lazy.

Adverbs modify a verb, making it more specific. But 90% of the time, you can simply make the verb itself more specific, and not only save yourself excess words, but make the action even more vivid than it was with the adverb! For example, instead of saying, "He walked slowly and quietly..." you could write "He crept..."

This is why every writer should keep a thesaurus handy: to replace weak verbs with stronger ones that don't require extra description. Also, some of the more common weak verbs (and the stronger verbs that could replace them) are listed here.

Adverbs are commonly interspersed with dialogue, because there are so many ways a piece of dialogue can be said. But in most cases, it's better to either express the speaker's voice patterns with a stronger verb, with action, or through their actual words:

Written with an adverb:
"I didn't say that!" He said angrily.

Written with a better verb:
"I didn't say that!" He screamed.

Written with action:
He grabbed her by the collar. "I didn't say that!"

Written with stronger dialogue:
"I did NOT say that, you lying little whore!"

As you can see, the last three all convey that the speaker is angry without using an adverb, and yet they're far more vivid than the first.

Adverbs aren't alone in their misuse. Adjectives are often unnecessary, too. As mentioned in my previous post, sprinkling descriptive adjectives all over your text doesn't always make sense, particularly if the current PoV character wouldn't use that adjective at the time. If I'm grabbing some guy's hair so I can punch him in the face, I might note that I grab onto his 'curls', or even that his hair feels grimy between my fingers. But I certainly wouldn't mention that his hair is dirt-brown, shoulder-length, parted down the middle, wavy, healthy, neatly-trimmed, or 'framing his face'.

If your story wouldn't make sense without the adverb there, and there is no better way to convey the verb in its entirety, then sure, keep the adverb. Just be aware that in most cases, this oft-maligned modifier is unnecessary, and is adding useless bulk to your manuscript.

Status

2008-01-16T15:47:00.001-05:00

Still going through my novel random page by random page. I'm 2/3rds of the way through. Since I've started, I've added a major conflict and three minor conflicts, and yet trimmed my book by 4000 words. Not bad.

At the rate I'm going, it looks like my final count is going to be around 175,000 words. Still a huge book, but about 1/6th shorter than it was originally.

I guess I'll have to wait and see if that's enough.

Things I Learned From Improv

2008-01-15T09:35:00.001-05:00

I used to do Improvisational Comedy (or improv for short) in college. Improv is a unique entertainment medium: you get up on stage with absolutely no idea what you're going to do, trusting on your fellow 'players' to help you create hilarious scenes. The ABC show 'Whose Line is It Anyway?' is one example of improv comedy (though the British version is better.) The show 'Thank god you're here!' is only improv in the VERY loosest sense of the word, since they break all of the primary tenets of improv by screwing with the one person who doesn't know what's going to happen.

Performing improv (or other aspects of drama) can help your writing by teaching you common principles of storytelling. There a number of lessons I've learned in improv that convert over to writing:

Every scene needs conflict.
Once you have conflict, escalate it!
When telling a story, avoid thought words such as 'decided', 'pondered', 'considered', etc.
Avoid 'talking heads' scenes. Characters should at least be doing something while they talk.
Fart jokes and scenes about gynecologists make most people groan or cringe, unless your audience is 5-year olds or horny teenagers.
In each scene, try to ask yourself, 'What is my character trying to accomplish this scene?'
Characters all have unique mannerisms and ways of speaking. Try to avoid defaulting to your own voice.
If you're not enjoying a scene, chances are no one else is either.
Subtext is amazing when you can pull it off.
Make every scene and every character larger than life, but still believable.

There are probably dozens more lessons I've learned from improv, but those are just the ones I could think of off the top of my head. At it's core, both writing and improv are all about storytelling. At least with writing I get to revise, though! I suppose I should consider myself lucky!

Query Revisions

2008-01-14T10:01:00.000-05:00

So I can't really say what makes the perfect query, because I haven't been published yet. However, I can pinpoint the most common mistake in writing a query. In fact, every failed query suffers from this problem!

The author thinks it's done.

With your book, you revise, tweak, adjust, snip, and work to death. But most authors, when they're ready to send their book out, spend maybe a week on getting their query letter ready. It's obvious why: they're anxious to get their book out there to agents.

But honestly, there's no point on sending anything but your best query letter to an agent. Most agents, if they aren't impressed by your query, aren't going to read your sample pages at all, much less request a partial or full.

So how do you make sure your query is done before you send it out? You pay as much attention to revising it as you do your novel. Like so:

1. Write your query. Spend hours on it, make it pristine and perfect.
2. Wait a day.
3. Look at it again, trying to find ANYTHING wrong with it. Make changes.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until, for three days in a row, you can't find anything wrong with it.
5. Let someone else look at it. This must be an honest critiquer (in other words, not your mom.) Have this person tell you if they can find anything wrong with it.
6. Revise your query. Spend hours on it, implementing suggestions given to you by your critiquer.
7. Repeat steps 2-6 until at least three different critiquers can't find anything wrong with it.

Now you can start thinking about sending it out.

If you don't know a lot of honest critiquers, there are a number of sites that specialize in looking at your query and telling you how much it sucks. Evil Editor is an actual editor who will look at your query, and his minions will help as well. Crapometer looks at queries, pitches, first paragraphs, etc., which are critiqued by those who frequent the site. And Bookends is doing the equivalent to a giant 'pitch session' periodically, though the line for that site is a bit long at the moment.

Yes, this process will take months, but your query will be so much stronger for it, and that gives your book a fighting chance. While you're waiting for your query to be finished, consider this as extra revision time for your novel, particularly your opening pages. Trust me, you'll be wasting a lot less time in the end.

Novel Trimming 3: Scene Ease-ins and Other Excess Descriptions

2008-01-12T11:45:00.000-05:00

Say you're watching a movie opening. A sunset sets the sky on fire. An eagle soars away from the screen (those birds are such camera hogs.) The camera slowly pans downward, eventually revealing a beach, with waves lapping calmly against the shore. A lone man stares out into the ocean, and as the camera slowly rotates around him and draws in, we see his tear-soaked face.

Audience: Oooh, pretty. Deep.

Now say you're reading a novel opening. A sunset sets the sky on fire. An eagle soars in the sky, with--

Readers: GET ON WITH IT!

Excessive description not only lengthens your novel, it tends to bore the reader. My roommate finishes most books in record time. I asked him how he reads so fast, and he says he just skips all the descriptions. He figures he has his own interpretation of what each setting and character looks like, so as long as he knows the general area and who's in the scene, he doesn't need all that flavor-text.

The most common place for authors to insert excessive description is the beginning of scenes. They feel they have to ease their readers into a scene, panning the camera slowly so the readers have time to adjust to their surroundings. This is hogwash.

It's perfectly acceptable to start a scene in the middle of action, with only passing comments to where the characters are. Interspersing your descriptions between actions and dialogue is far more effective than writing huge chunks of text that intimidate your readers.

Above all, always remember that your story is (typically) being told through the eyes of a single character. If that character is seeing a place for the first time, or remarking on some aspect of it, then a description makes sense. But if your character is having a bar brawl with someone, he's not going to comment on how the bottle he's smashing into someone's face is a 'greenish, almost turquoise sculpture of glass, emblazoned with the red and white logo of bud light and moistened only slightly by the remnants of cheap domestic beer within.'

Every description you give needs a reason to be there. If the character wouldn't care one lick about how something looks, sounds, or whatever, then don't spend time describing it. If you must describe something, then make it affect that character in some meaningful way. Have that bar brawler pick up a beer bottle, notice that it's a brand he likes, and have him set it back down to choose a less respected brand. This is actually somewhat amusing, and shows the character to be a picky, principled sort, even in the face of an oncoming battle. In short, your descriptions should reveal as much about the character making them as the object/person/place being described.

When looking for places to trim your novel, pay special attention to scene openings. Do you spend a page describing the setting before any action or dialogue occurs? If so, you may want to intersperse that setting description into the action instead of shoving it all up front. Secondly, whenever you describe something, make sure it's pertinent to the character telling the story, because otherwise your readers will see it for what it truly is: fluff.

Handwriting: Bane of My Existence

2008-01-11T14:13:00.001-05:00

So if you've ever wondered why agents and publishers require you type out your work of art, allow me to share with you how bad handwriting ruined the days of two people.

I rear-ended someone with my car back in December. It was a blind curve on the interstate, everyone stopped suddenly due to a previous accident, and my breaks locked up on the wet road. As required by Georgia laws, got a ticket for it. (For 'following too close'.)

I didn't agree with the charge on principle, because there was very little I could have done. I also didn't want points on my license, so I decided to plead nolo contendre. This means I pay the fine, but don't plead guilty, and thus don't get points on my license*.

While you can avoid going to court by paying the fine via mail/phone, you can't plead nolo while doing this, so I had to go to court. My ticket said my court date was January 11th at 1pm, and since I didn't feel like driving to work, driving to court, driving back to work, and then drive home over the course of the day (a total of about 2-3 hours driving) I just burned a sick day.

So I show up to court (I swear, with all the no parking signs and one way streets, they probably cite half a dozen people a week in their own parking lot.) The metal-detector-lady asks me why I'm there and I say for a traffic violation. She says that isn't until 2pm. I show her my ticket. She says, "Oh, I guess it does say 1pm. I guess they're moving child neglect back to 2 today."

The astute among you may see where this is going.

The next 25 minutes are spent waiting* outside a courtroom with juvenile delinquents, alcoholics, and single mothers with babies. The bailiff announces that the court is finally open for child neglect cases, and everyone files in. I tell him I'm there for a traffic violation, and he says that they aren't until 2, in the next courtroom. I show him my ticket, and he says, "I guess that 1pm kind of looks like it could be a 2pm. You're an hour early, sorry."

So back to waiting! As I'm sitting there, a woman comes up, sobbing and looking very frazzled and distraught. She pleads with the bailiff to tell her if she's in the right place, he looks at her papers, and says that yes she is. She goes into a long, tear-filled tirade about how the women at the metal detectors were horribly rude to her and wouldn't let her in because child neglect cases weren't until 2 and she was there too early. There's a whole lot of apologizing, and a supervisor heads downstairs to go yell at someone, presumably.

During this time, I kept my head down and played Brick Breaker on my blackberry.

Finally, the traffic court opens (15 minutes early! Wow!) and naturally I'm the first in line. I show the clerk my ticket, and she tries to look it up in the system. For some reason she can't find it.

Remember how my ticket said 2pm but looked like 1pm? Well, it also looked like it said January 11 was my court date.

Dammit.

So I spend 2 hours driving, parking, and/or waiting to pay a BS fine on January 11th, when I'm not supposed to be there until the 22nd. And in the process, I make some poor woman cry.

All because some policeman can't differentiate between his 1's and 2's*.

There is a happy ending to all this, at least. The clerk was very nice, and gave me her work phone number so that when my ticket was entered into the system, I could call her up, pay the fine, and she would enter it as nolo for me. So at least I don't have to go through all this again in 11 days.

OR IS THAT 22 DAYS!?

--------------------------------

For those who think this is too good to be true, note that you can only do this once every 5 years, and it doesn't apply to all traffic violations, such as running over the judge's dog. (back)

I always show up early to things. Government workers always show up late. (back)

I would blame myself for reading it wrong, except that 100% of the people I've shown it to say it looks like January 11, 2007 at 1pm. Did I mention his 8's look like 7's? (back)

Novel Trimming: Part 2

2008-01-10T09:11:00.000-05:00

All right, so you've gone through your novel, and removed all your extraneous scenes. But your novel is still too long, and your readers tell you that it 'needs tightening'. So what do you do now? Well, this is the point where you get to go back and read through your entire novel again. Yes, I know, you're probably already read and revised it two and a half million times, but you get to do it again.

The important thing about trimming is that you need to have a goal in mind. You can exceed this goal if you wish, but it should be the minimum required trimming for you to be satisfied. If you do not have a goal, you'll go through all the pages you love and cherish and say 'I can't possibly trim this! It's perfect!' And then you'll end up like me, reading through a 700 page manuscript and only getting rid of 600 words.

Once you have this goal, you need to split it up. It's easy to say 'I'll remove ten thousand words from my novel!' But when you get halfway through, and realize you've only trimmed a thousand, you'll think it's impossible. This is why you divide and conquer.

You can split your goal up by chapters, scenes, or pages. Divide the number of words you want to get rid of by your chapters/scenes/pages, and note the result. For example, let's say you want to trim 10k words from a 500-page novel, and want to break it up by pages. This means you'll need to trim 20 words per page. Not a bad goal -- I recommend a goal of removing 10-25 words per page. Obviously, you can trim more than that, but 10-25 words per page is a good goal because EVERY page you write could stand to lose a sentence or two. It's an attainable goal that won't frustrate you. (Oh, if you do trim by page, I highly recommend you read the pages in a random order, as explained in my earlier post.)

Oh, and don't cheat. Don't say, "Wow, I removed 50 words from that page, so I don't have to remove any words from the next page!" Just because you over-tipped one waiter doesn't mean you can stiff the next one. If you remove extra words in a chapter/scene/page, then those are just bonus words that will make your final trim count higher.

Now that you have your goal, the question becomes: what words do I remove? Well, I'll go into more detail in later posts, but here is a quick rundown of things to look out for:

Extraneous adverbs
Extraneous adjectives
Extraneous description
Extraneous repetition (get it?)
Useless phrases/words
Obvious/implied actions
Filler dialogue
Scene ease-ins
Excessive inner monologue

Yes, this will take a long time, and yes, it will be painful. But if you wanted an easy job, you should have gone into video game testing or wine tasting instead of writing.

Forsooth, I am Floored!

2008-01-09T15:38:00.000-05:00

So I was reading through my favorite blogs today, and read the latest post at Writer Unboxed. As usual, they posted a plethora of useful information and links. They also celebrated being nominated for the Shameless Lion Award, which is designed to promote powerful writing on internet blogs. Grats to them.

And then they nominated this tiny, insignificant blog for the same award.

Thankfully, I had swallowed my mouthful of sprite 1.6 seconds earlier, and thus I didn't have to clean my monitor.

I'm honored by their praise, and absolutely SHOCKED by their attention. I started this blog more as a promise to myself than as something I expected others to read. I figured that after frequenting my favorite blogs and commenting for a few months, I might get noticed by a handful of people.

Instead, a week later, I have three comments already and I get linked to by a site that (I assume) gets thousands of hits a month. It's amazing how small something as huge as the internet can feel sometimes.

In my lifetime, I've attempted starting three journals, and all of them got tucked away and forgotten after a month or two. If I can receive this much attention after just a week's worth of posting my thoughts, well then maybe this one is here to stay.

Of course, now I REALLY have to get this book of mine published, or I'm going to spend the next year looking really pathetic.

In any case, as is customary for this award, I will share what I think makes for powerful writing in a blog, and make my own nominations.

Insight: Everyone has something to say. However, the best writing has something USEFUL to say. Good writing is helpful, giving advice in a non-condescending way that teaches something to those who read it, even if they don't realize it at first. Whether it is describing how to succeed, revealing the inner turmoils of the human race, or helping someone to get over emotional trauma, writing provides more than just escape. It provides knowledge.
Humor: Similar to humanism, I think good writing can't take itself too seriously. If I wanted to read writing that was without any sort of personal voice, I'd go read an instruction manual (and I'm a guy, so you KNOW how little I read those.) A good writer has a unique outlook on the world that is entertaining to read. And who knows, with enough wit, that writer just might give you a perspective you've never seen before, and make you laugh at the same time.
Immortality: This sounds like a strange one, but allow me to explain. Good writing involves swords and decapitation -- wait, no. Good writing goes beyond the writer. Good writing sticks in the minds of those reading it, refusing to let go. Even after the writer is dead and gone, his words live on, both on the page and in the minds of those whose lives he touched. I've always maintained that the secret of life is to contribute to the world in a lasting way that goes beyond your own pitiful lifespan. Only then can you become truly immortal.

So now that I've listed out what I think makes for good writing, allow me to share 5 blogs that I think provide insight, show humor, and will live on far beyond their creators:

Bookends : Not many agents and publishers care about the unnamed authors they don't represent, but these people do.
Evil Editor : There's no better place to get reamed by an editor and enjoy it.
Pub Rants : Another site that gives a friendly face to the publishing industry, and mounds of useful advice.
The Rejector : For someone who cruelly smashes the hopes of so many authors, she really does have a heart and a message.
Level Up : What, you thought I only read publishing blogs? I have other hobbies too, y'know. N'Gai is a respected games journalist, and really doesn't need my attention, but the work he puts into the newsweek gaming blog is phenomenal and a lot more honest than any other gaming site I've been to.

Conflict of Misunderstanding

2008-01-09T09:27:00.000-05:00

There are many kinds of conflict, and utilizing a variety of them will make your novel a thrilling read. But there's one kind of conflict that I personally can't stand, and that's the conflict of misunderstanding.

Conflicts of misunderstanding occur when one character misunderstands the words or intentions of another character. For example, in The Lion King (I figure everyone's seen that at some point), Nara wants Simba to return and take his rightful place as king. But he refuses, claiming he 'doesn't want the responsibility', when the real reason is because he feels responsible for his father's death. Nara think he's a lazy slacker, when in actuality he has a guilt complex. If he was honest with her, they could work through the problem. Instead they get to mope about and be angsty.

Such conflicts happen in romances a LOT. Because romances are all about emotions and the connection between two people, threatening that connection with a misunderstanding is an easy way to keep the two lovers apart until the end. Even Romeo and Juliet, which starts out as a conflict between families, ends up as a huge misunderstanding when Romeo kills himself because he thinks Juliet is dead. The last two books I've read involved a romance where the woman decided that maintaining the relationship would cause the man undue pain or hardship. Instead of discussing this with their lovers, both women decided they would treat the guy like crap in hopes he would dump her, and the problem would be resolved. I can only hope I never date someone who 'loves' me that much.

Another common conflict of misunderstanding is the corrupt/misguided authority figure. For 'good guys', protagonists have a nasty habit of getting arrested, because they either get blamed for the antagonist's sins or the antagonist is respected enough to be listened to when he accuses the protagonist of a crime. This puts protagonists in a nasty spot because they have to fight back against people who, while idiots, only have the best of intentions.

So why do I hate such conflicts? Because they don't have any actual SUBSTANCE to them. Often, there are no physical obstacles or danger involved. The conflict is entirely fabricated by two people's inability to communicate with one another. If you're like me, you've often read a book or seen a movie where you wanted to grab one of the characters by the collar and shout, "STOP BEING AN IDIOT AND LISTEN TO WHAT'S ACTUALLY GOING ON!" and then explain that the conflict is all in their head.

Because I can't do that, I get frustrated. I stop cheering for the heroes because I see them as idiots who can't be honest with each other or themselves. I start seeing the story as 'sitcomy', because these sorts of conflicts are extremely common in sitcoms. At least with sitcoms the problem gets resolved within 30-60 minutes. Misunderstandings in books can last hundreds of pages.

Conflicts of misunderstanding are a perfectly valid literary device, and are here to stay. But I'm going to do my damnedest to avoid using them as central comments to my books. For one thing, I don't want to be a hypocrite, and for another, too many of my characters would end up strangled.

The Opening Pages

2008-01-08T19:33:00.019-05:00

To give anyone who reads this a taste of my book, I present my first five pages. These are also the sample pages I would send out to an agent or publisher.

Last Updated: September 11th, 2008

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Some days, Retela hated being the better swimmer.

As she dove deeper into the waters off the Carwyt coast, water surged through her neck as if she had gills, courtesy of the spell-woven leather collar she wore. While she appreciated the ability to breathe, she could have done without the tickling sensation, or the need to inhale saltwater that tasted like soup made from seaweed and fish excrement. Meanwhile, her partner Taeryl stayed ashore, breathing air like a normal person. Jerk.

No moonlight reached this deep, but Collan, her guide, had the foresight to bring a shinestone, which pireced the darkness with blue light. The lanky dockhand had been more than willing to show her Carwyt’s underwater secrets after a few drinks, a handful of coins, and an implied favor or two. Nevertheless, she knew not to trust him. Honest men in Carwyt couldn’t afford spell-woven trinkets like shinestones and water-collars. Besides, only one group of people knew the locations of sunken ships and how to get to them: plunderers.

As the two of them swam further down, the light revealed shadows jutting up from below. The twisted shapes soon merged into one enormous whole. Retela grinned.

On the sand of the ocean floor, the carcass of the Ashaflana lay waiting for her.

They approached the sunken vessel’s… aft? Stern? Aki’s ears, she didn’t know boats – the front, right side. Seaweed blanketed the ship like mold, but the wood hadn’t rotted much in two years – she could still make out the ship’s name emblazoned on the side. Ashaflana probably meant something in Aquas, but only sailors and superstitious fools learned the language of the sea goddess. Retela was neither.

Collan swam closer to the sand, where a jagged hole pierced the ship’s hull, twice as long as he was tall. He shone his light inside, gestured for her to follow, and swam in.

Retela entered after him, and found herself in the cargo hold. Empty crates had settled against the walls, leaving the center of the hold clear and open. Nothing of value remained. She suspected Collan had something to do with that.

Collan gave her a silent tour, staring at her more than the ship itself. She feigned wide-eyed innocence and awe while secretly clenching her fists in frustration. What did her superiors expect her to find down here, if thieves had already stolen everything?

Something finally perked her interest in the rear of the ship. Deep, jagged gouges, like the claw marks of a wild animal, marred the door of a storage room. Had some exotic animal escaped mid-transport and nearly torn the door to shreds?

She glanced at Collan questioningly. He shrugged with a smile, apparently not interested in any part of the ship he couldn’t sell for money. Retela smiled back, while at the same time wishing she’d chosen someone less worthless.

After an extensive search, they found no more oddities below decks. Their exploration of the upper deck also proved fruitless. When they reached the door to the captain’s quarters, Retela wasn’t expecting much.

In particular, she wasn’t expecting it to be locked.

She frowned at the handle. No rust, no deterioration, and no thieves had broken the lock. When she tried peeking through the keyhole, she realized why.

It had no keyhole. A spell-woven door. Who would put such an expensive lock on a trading vessel?

“Unlock!” she shouted, the water distorting her voice to a muffled hum. A tick emanated from the door. She groaned. Down here, fooling a voice-activated door would be impossible. She’d have to destroy it. Luckily, she knew an easy – if expensive -- way to disrupt a weave: by unleashing the trapped energies of a stronger weave upon it.

Destroying her collar was out of the question, and they needed the shinestone to see down here. Though tempted to steal Collan’s collar, she wasn’t quite bloodthirsty enough to kill someone just for incompetence. That left only one option. She removed from her wrist the last spell-woven item her guide had leant her: a bracelet of braided candle wicks, woven to provide warmth in all but the coldest of environments.

She had heard the Shivering Seas were abysmally cold – hence the name – but the water down here felt as if it should have turned to ice. She shivered, and it took all her willpower not to slip the bracelet back on.

Collan asked her something incomprehensible, but she ignored him.

She drew the two daggers sheathed at her belt. She would’ve been carrying more, but it was hard to play the innocent traveler while heavily armed. Retela stretched the bracelet between the blades and held it against the lock, as far from herself as possible.
Collan grabbed her arm just as she then jerked her daggers apart.

The bracelet snapped, releasing its magic in an explosion of bubbles and scalding heat. Retela hissed and yanked her hands back.

Collan spun her to face him and started yelling. She couldn’t understand him, but she wagered his anger had something to do with her destroying a woven object worth at least a hundred falcons. She pressed one of her daggers into his stomach, reminding him she was still armed. He let go, startled, but continued shouting. She ignored him and turned back to the door. Sheathing one of her daggers, she turned the handle.

Something pushed the door open from the other side. From the shadows of the next room, a pale-faced man lunged for Retela, reaching for her throat.

She screamed and jerked to one side, twisting away from his grasp. She slashed her dagger in her attacker’s general direction.

The man floated through the water – limp, unmoving, and long-since dead. He had drifted towards her, not lunged, and her initial assessment of ‘pale’ skin had been an understatement – a waxy film covered his blue-gray flesh.

Even underwater, she could make out the sound of Collan laughing at her.

She sheathed her knife, her face turning hot despite the chill of the sea. “A Seeker of the Slanted Eye, yet I’m afraid of a bloated corpse. Next I’ll be jumping at kittens.”

Meanwhile, Collan peeked into the doorway. His eyes went wide for a moment, but he soon regained his composure and gestured for her to enter, as if chivalry could make up for his shouts and laughter. She shot him a glare, then swam inside.

The captain’s quarters, left untouched since the ship sank, sparkled. Expensive souvenirs adorned the walls and floated through the water. Jewelry, dining utensils, fine clothing – even with the water damage, the objects in this room were worth a fortune. This certainly explained why the captain had put such an expensive lock on the door.

However, it didn’t explain why a thief like Collan had allowed her to enter first.

She spun around just in time to press herself against the doorframe and avoid his short sword jabbing through her ribs. She grabbed his wrist with both hands and slammed it against the other side of the frame. He threw a clumsy punch with his other hand, still holding the shinestone. She twisted aside and grabbed that wrist too.

Unfortunately, there was the little problem of him being twice as strong as her.

He ripped his hands from her grasp. She kicked against the doorframe, pushing herself into the room and off to the side before he could try to gut her again. He reached around to stab at her, but his blade was unwieldly in the water. She grabbed his wrist again, drew one of her daggers, and stabbed it through both his hand and the wall.

His blood flowed into the water like a dirty red mist, and he screamed in agony. Retela drew her other blade and stabbed at his face, but the stubborn brute blocked and gripped her arm with his other hand.

With one free hand up on him, she easily gripped his water-collar, yanked open the clasp, and tore the woven collar away from his throat.

He gasped in horror – precisely the wrong thing to do – and lunged for her with such desperation that he tore his hand free from the wall. She kicked him in the chest and swam backwards into the darkness of the room. The bubbles he created with his wild, panicked movements almost blocked out the expression of terror on his face. Almost.

She shuddered and turned away until the sounds of his thrashing finally ceased.

After seven years, she figured she’d be used to killing by now. It never got easier.

Novel Trimming: Part 1

2008-01-07T09:46:00.000-05:00

So as a long-winded author, I thought I'd share what I've learned about trimming. There are a number of reasons why you'd want to trim your novel. Perhaps your readers tell you it's too slow, or your word count is way above the 100k range of most novels. Whatever the reason, many writers see this process as equivalent to hacking off pieces of their 'baby', and are reluctant to do it. But the fact is, if you don't do that amputation, your 'baby' is just going to get gangrene and die.

You know, I really shouldn't have used that analogy while eating.

Anyway, the first thing you sould do when trimming your novel is considering the possibility of cutting entire scenes. Yes, this is scary and sometimes heartbreaking, but often necessary. What scenes are eligible for deletion?

Excessive Backstory Scenes: Backstory should only be revealed as necessary. You might think that showing backstory will better explain character motivations, but what it really does is kill any sense of mystery.

Let's say your character refuses to become romantically involved with anyone because his high-school girlfriend was raped and murdered the night he was supposed to pick her up. Guilt central. It's far more powerful for us to see the ramifications of this event, and maybe allusions to it, LONG before we know about the actual event.

The character motivations are still there, even if you NEVER reveal them in your book. If you do want to reveal them, there are a number of ways to do so out of chronological order: dreams, flashbacks, dialogue, and so on.

If it doesn't move the plot forward, either save it till later or don't delve into it at all. In my book, the first 4.5 chapters were backstory -- stuff that was important to Jak, but not the plot. So what did I do? I cut it all out. One scene will be saved for a later book (since I'm writing a series), three scenes are shown as flashbacks/dreams/dialogue later in this book, and the rest of it was cut completely, and only alluded to on occasion These changes eliminated about 15,000 words from my story.

Scenes that Don't Progress the Plot: Every scene in your novel should have a reason for being there. For the most part, this means it's part of the book's conflict, and progresses the book towards the climax. If you have a scene where your characters discuss meaningless drivel, or recap things that have already happened, or have a minor experience that doesn't contribute to the plot, it's probably not doing you any good.

In my book, I had a scene that revealed a hidden secret of the aurulean race. This was important! Or at least, it would be important... in the next book. So I asked myself, "Why not just reveal this secret in the next book?" I couldn't come up with a good reason not to, so I cut the scene because it was useless to my current novel. It didn't contribute to my current conflict.

By cutting out a few useless scenes from my novel, I cut out about a chapter's worth of text. Yes, the scenes were, in my mind, interesting to read, but they didn't accomplish anything at all so they were jettisoned into the 'deleted scenes' pile. I'm sure if my books get made into movies with special-edition DVDs, I can shove them back in for novelty's sake. But for now, they're out of the novel.

Scenes that Could be Combined: Scenes are like sentences. You can have a simple scene, where only one thing happens, or you can combine numerous events and discussions into one scene. For example, you can't have two dialogues going on at once, but you can have one logically follow the other, or you could have a dialogue during a fight scene, or combine compatible events in other ways. In almost all cases, the merged scene will be much shorter than the two separate scenes you combined.

For example, in my book I had one scene where the group is given a foreboding hint at what monsters await them in a swamp. In a separate scene, one of the characters has become infected with a disease (akin to rabies) that slowly takes over their mind. Both scenes were a little slow, so I combined them into one: a scene where the group gets attacked by a 'monster', and at the same time, that diseased character loses control for a moment, and realizes that they are losing their mind. Not only did I shorten the scenes into one, but the single scene was now a fast-paced, traumatic event instead of a bunch of dialogue and worrying.

Scenes Where Nothing Happens: You'd think that no writer would write a scene where no actions occur, but you'd be surprised. Sometimes, a character is experiencing such strong emotions and thoughts that they spend the entire scene thinking to themselves while performing mundane tasks.

Yes, as readers, we want to know your character's motivations. No, we don't want to spend a chapter doing it. If we did, we'd go read books of teenage angst poetry. Slip your inner monologues into scenes where stuff is actually happening, preferably scenes where the character's thoughts have some effect on what they're doing.

While I didn't have whole scenes composed of internal thoughts, I did have a few areas where the 'thinking' went on for over a page. This is like having a 'talking heads' dialogue scene, except there's only one character. This ain't Shakespeare, so stop with the soliloquies.

There are other ways to shorten a novel besides cutting whole scenes, which I'll get into later. But you want to cut whole scenes first so that you don't waste time tweaking them later. Plus, with each removed chunk, you'll be taking huge steps towards shortening your novel.

One thing to remember while cutting scenes though: save the cut scenes in a separate file. This will accomplish two things. First, you'll be more willing to cut the scene, because you'll reassure yourself that you'll shove it back in if necessary to make the novel better. Secondly, if you decide to use the scene later in a different place, you can do so.

So get to cutting. Not only will it make your novel shorter, but most of the time it makes the novel better as well.

Reading and Writing.... Screw the 'Rithmatic.

2008-01-06T01:55:00.000-05:00

One of the my most oft-received pieces of advice (right after 'You should buy a house now that prices are low!' and 'Get out of writing now, before it's too late!') is that as a writer, I should read constantly, particularly in my genre so I can 'know the market'. So what am I reading now?

Well, my roommate got me onto Jim Butcher, a fantasy bestselling author best known for his Dresden Files. When I first started reading his books, I was amused by the fact that he never gave his characters a chance to breathe. They'd spend a whole chapter performing a death-defying escape, and before they can even say 'Phew, that was close!' they get abducted by gangsters are something. Unrealistic? Maybe. Suspicious timing? Perhaps.

But did it make me want to keep reading? Well, duh. This goes back to that whole 'tension on every page' I mentioned earlier.

So I highly recommend him, naturally. I'm on the second book of his Codex Alera series, Academ's Fury right now, and 8 chapters in, there's already half a dozen conflicts brewing.

My biggest problem with reading fantasy novels is that whenever I finish reading a particularly good scene, my self-loathing, poetry-reading, black-wearing side pops up and says, "How could you POSSIBLY think you'll ever write as well as that?"

In response to this, I just remind myself* that there's really not much 'innate talent' to writing. It's not like music where some people have an ear for it and some don't. The only difference between the authors and the illiterate is how much time and effort they've put into learning the craft, improving their writing, and telling a really great story.

So I'll just keep on writing, because if I do, I can only get better.

It's easy to talk to yourself when you have the voices of half a dozen characters in your head! (back)

The Hurdle

2008-01-04T10:49:00.000-05:00

Six months ago, I sent out about a dozen query letters for my book, and received nothing but form rejections in return. Since then, I've done significant revisions, but I'm still not done. My book can't just be 'good' or even 'great', it has to be 'spectacular' for me to have a chance. Why? Well, aside from the already high standards of the publishing industry, I need to overcome an obstacle that most writers don't have.

My book is too long.

Now, the phrase 'too long' is subjective of course. Hell, they said J.K. Rowling's books were too long, but that didn't stop her. I write in the fantasy genre, where books are typically 100 pages longer than your average novel, at least.

But these are exceptions to the rule.

The 'rule' is that a typical novel is 75k-100k words in length. Fantasy is a bit higher than that, around 100k-125k. Each page of a book holds about 250 words, which makes the typical fantasy 400-500 pages long.

When I wrote my book, I didn't know all this. All I knew was that fantasy books tended to be longer, so I didn't limit myself to a short book. Unfortunately, my writing has always been a bit long-winded (perhaps because I can type reasonably fast), and my concept was not simple, so my novel turned into a gargantuan monster. In the end, it clocked in at 210k words (or 840 pages.) Since then, I've reduced it to about 180k words (720 pages), but that's still pretty large compared to most books.

When an agent is sorting through the slush pile, they intend to quickly assess the value of a work so they can keep it or trash it within a minute or so. One red flag that always stands out is the word count. If they perceive a novel as too long or too short (by their personal standards), they'll often throw it out without giving it a chance.

To get my foot in the door, I need to wow the agent with my query, and make them overlook (at least temporarily) the word count. Then I need to wow them with my sample pages. Once I get a request for a full, my book needs to be as concise as possible, so they realize the book is long because the STORY is long, not because the text is rambling.

Improving my pitch and sample pages are subjects on their own. So how do I make my book concise, and lower my overall word count? I'll go into that in my next post. Because I'd hate for my blog posts to get too long, too.

What it's All About

2008-01-03T09:13:00.014-05:00

Well, I said I'd go into what my book is about, and what better way than to show my pitch?

The pitch is what we give every time someone asks us to describe a movie or tv show we saw, or a book we read. It's the short summary of what it's about, and why everyone needs to check it out (or avoid it).

An author's pitch in a query letter is slightly longer, but not by much. My pitch used to take up most of a page, but I've trimmed it down since then at the advice of others. So without further ado, here it is*:

As an unwilling spy for her kingdom, Retela is used to gathering information – just not from 12-year-olds. Somehow, a boy named Jak managed to steal a powerful artifact from the Order – keepers of the laws of magic – and her superiors want to know how and why. At first, Retela thinks her task of interrogating the child is punishment for past failures, but she soon discovers that this boy not only holds a key to the fate of two kingdoms, but her own freedom as well.

As Retela gains Jak’s trust, he tells her his story of revenge, friendship, murder, and salvation. He also reveals the location of a secret that could bring about an apocalypse, whether it’s discovered by the Order or Retela’s own country. As Retela and Jak become pawns in a race for power that spans the continent, both must make a choice. Jak must choose to pursue the vengeance he so desperately wants, or the ideals he was raised to believe in. Meanwhile, Retela must choose between a life of freedom, or the conscience she thought she’d lost long ago.

What makes pitches so stressful is that they are our first chance to stick our foot in an agent's door. They have to knock the socks off of those that read it, and make them yearn to read the book. As such, I go back to my pitch every couple days to see if there are any tweaks I'd like to make. Hopefully when I start querying agents again, it will be up to par.

Last updated 6-26-08. Pitch subject to change should I come up with a better one.(back)

One Page at a Time

2008-01-02T12:38:00.000-05:00

For Christmas, I got Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass, one of the top literary agents in the industry. I asked for it, not only because he represents the kind of authors I like (Terry Goodkind, for example), but because the rare advice I've heard from him all makes sense.

In a recent interview on Writer Unboxed (see my sidebar links), he said that you should have tension on every page. In order to ensure you focus on each page individually, he recommended going through each page in your manuscript IN A RANDOM ORDER. By jolting your brain into a new section every 250 words or so, you focus more on editing and less on reading. Plus, if that particular page is missing that special 'oomph', you can tell right away. He went over this concept in more detail in the book (which I recommend to everyone who isn't already a bestseller.)

I've extended this 'random pages' concept for my own work. Instead of just adding tension to every page, I have a checklist of what to do for each page:

Ensure there is tension and conflict. This doesn't mean explosions, but obstacles, doubts, disagreements, and anything else that takes the reader out of 'relax' mode. Readers put the book down when they're relaxed, and if you don't excite them enough, they won't pick it back up again.
Ensure that point of view is consistent and true to the current narrator. This means not switching PoVs mid-scene, and also ensuring that the character's unique 'voice' shines through. We hear all the time to 'show, don't tell', but what that really means is 'show through the eyes of a character, don't tell through descriptive words'. If you're 'showing' what happens but the current character's mindset and opinions have no bearing on what is seen, then you're not maintaining your point of view.
On a similar note, ensure your characters are true to themselves when it comes to dialogue. Everyone talks differently. I'm not just talking about accents and language, but actual word choice. For example, you'd never find a southerner referring to soda as 'pop', because that's a Yankee term.
Finally, remove the unnecessary. I'll go into this more in later posts (since being long-winded is a problem of mine), but in short, get rid of excess adjectives, adverbs, phrases, backstory, and repetition.

Some pages, I find that there isn't much to change. Other times, I add or remove whole paragraphs. Yes, this is a long, tedious process (even more so if your book is as long as mine), but in the end, the whole will be greatly enhanced by the sum of its heavily edited parts.

It Begins...

2008-01-01T23:26:00.000-05:00

...or to be more accurate, it picks up at the interesting part, leaving the dull backstory for later.

So, on the dawn of 2008, I have made a resolution to do whatever it takes* to get a publishing contract. I've made this resolution for a number of reasons:

It has been my dream since I first started writing.
I have a story that needs to be told.
I only weigh 126 lbs, and as a 5'10" adult male, resolving to lose weight is out of the question.

As part of this journey, I will be chronicling my triumphs, hardships, and rambling monologues on this blog. Not only will this keep my writing fresh, but will also (hopefully) establish some sort of web presence for me, in the event that I do land a contract (or at the very least an agent) and I need to network.

Fortunately, I've already taken the first step in getting published: I've written a book. The steps after this are a bit hazier. They involve a lot of editing, proofing, critiquing, advice-receiving, querying, mailing, receiving rejection letters, complaining about every rejection letter being a form letter, resolving not to slit my wrists after receiving dozens of said form rejection letters, partials-sending, praying, agent-landing, and so on.

So what is the book about? Well, I'll get into that in another post (after I'm a bit more comfortable with this blogging format.) For now, I'll say that it is a fantasy novel about a boy named Jak, entitled BLADES OF THE FALLEN.

And no, it's not a Harry Potter ripoff. Because frankly, Jak existed in my mind before Rowling's first book came out, and Harry Potter doesn't kill people. Usually.

More info later. For now, time to kick start this thing.

'Whatever it takes' does not include: killing myself or others, selling my body, becoming a contestant on a reality show, becoming that guy in that movie where the writer stalks a publisher for rejecting him, titling my book: 'The Way to Get Rich Quick... No, Really!', or legally changing my name to OJ Simpson, Paris Hilton, or Princess Di. (back)