By John May
The education sessions at the SCWW Conference were interesting and helpful but, for me, the conference was mostly about the critiques. For those who did not attend or look at the website, let me explain the process. Writers could purchase critiques from the faculty (agents and editors). You submitted either 10 or 30 pages (for different prices) a few weeks in advance. On the first day of the conference, you met with the faculty person who presented a marked-up submission and then discussed it with you for twenty minutes.
I’m trying to finish my novel soon and I felt having some professional feedback would help in writing the last few scenes and in the final edits, so I purchased four critiques from four different faculty members. The other thing I wanted was at least one invitation to submit additional material to the reviewer for representation consideration. So, my conference goals were feedback and a bit of validation.
In her recent blog, Laura said she thought the agents knew just what they wanted in a story. In my critique meetings with agents, I got the same impression—laser focus on whatever they thought could sell in quantity, and absolutely no interest in anything else.
Then, at the Friday night dinner, I sat at a table with two agents. The novel The Hunger Games was discussed. They both agreed that, had Suzanne Collins not been a bestselling author already, she never would have gotten anyone to represent nor publish what became a mega bestseller and one of the best books I’ve read in recent memory. They thought it was just too “different” for an agent to understand the potential market. They also agreed agents have become extremely selective about which manuscripts they choose to read, much less represent.
This hyper-selectivity was certainly born out in my meetings. One agent who had a large pile of critiques had decided to request only one manuscript submission. Another reviewing agent indicated only a tiny percentage of critique submitters were going to be asked for manuscripts.
I did get some very useful edits and encouraging feedback from the agents. Also, I was fortunate enough to get four requests for manuscript submissions (I’d like to thank the group for the many improvement suggestions over the last few months which I’m sure helped).
Now, here’s where it gets interesting. Two of the agents said their interest was partially because my premise was marketable and also different enough to be interesting. They’re tired of seeing the same old plots and character types rehashed for the umpteenth time. So there’s the dilemma—if you want an agent, you need to be different, but not too different.
P.S. Some of you won’t be surprised to hear the most common edit request I got from the agents was to, earlier in the novel, round-out the villain character Francine (now where have I heard that before?). So, I’ll be reading some new “round-out” passages at future meetings.
Showing posts with label John May. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John May. Show all posts
Monday, November 14, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
What’s a Page-Turner?
By John May
When I first started writing a novel a few years back, I attended the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference in Seattle, Washington. The session I remember the most (thanks partially to good notes but mostly to content) was a Panel Discussion involving seven prominent agents and editors who dealt with all types of adult fiction. Someone asked the panel, “What’s THE number one thing that would entice you to represent or publish a fiction novel.” I was surprised when they all agreed they wanted the same thing, no exceptions:
Page-turners-—novels that compel the reader to read.
Naturally, the next question was, “What makes a novel a page-turner?” Here, it got even more surprising. I was certain there would be lots of different answers and that the answers would tend to vary based on category. After all, what works for science fiction can’t possibly work for a literary novel and vice-versa, right? Wrong. After much vigorous brainstorming, the panel came up with one consensus answer they felt applied across all adult fiction types:
In the typical page-turner, the reader experiences a story presented in a competent, suspenseful, and entertaining manner about interesting, strong characters who have important, clear goals and who must overcome significant resistance to their vigorous efforts to achieve those goals.
As part of the process, each of the individual attributes (experiences, story, competent, etc.) in the definition was discussed and defined precisely by the panel. The exact words and definitions are important— alternatives for each word were considered and discarded. For example, the reader is not “told a story,” she “experiences a story presented,” which is a very different animal.
In addition to exact wording, the panel felt strongly that all the many listed attributes should be present, not just a majority. They felt that if even one were missing, the likelihood the book would be a page-turner went down dramatically. And, with each additional missed attribute, come further dramatic drops in page-turner potential.
The above page-turner description was accepted unanimously by the panel but not by the audience. Some of the aspiring literary novelists felt it was “write-by-numbers” and that no one had the right to tell them how to achieve their artistic vision. The panel’s response to this went something like, “You’re correct. No one can tell you how to write. You only have to write this way if you want us to spend the time and money it takes to get you published.” The panel did admit there have been exceptions, but held they were few and far between. The odds of publication success (getting published and selling well) are enormously tilted in favor of the type of page-turner described.
Many of the attribute definitions and their subtle nuances are not self-evident. I’m thinking the next few times I’m up to bat in Blog Town, I’ll go over the definition in detail, discuss what each of the attributes meant to the panel and go over the nuances we discussed. I think there are some surprises here.
When I first started writing a novel a few years back, I attended the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference in Seattle, Washington. The session I remember the most (thanks partially to good notes but mostly to content) was a Panel Discussion involving seven prominent agents and editors who dealt with all types of adult fiction. Someone asked the panel, “What’s THE number one thing that would entice you to represent or publish a fiction novel.” I was surprised when they all agreed they wanted the same thing, no exceptions:
Page-turners-—novels that compel the reader to read.
Naturally, the next question was, “What makes a novel a page-turner?” Here, it got even more surprising. I was certain there would be lots of different answers and that the answers would tend to vary based on category. After all, what works for science fiction can’t possibly work for a literary novel and vice-versa, right? Wrong. After much vigorous brainstorming, the panel came up with one consensus answer they felt applied across all adult fiction types:
In the typical page-turner, the reader experiences a story presented in a competent, suspenseful, and entertaining manner about interesting, strong characters who have important, clear goals and who must overcome significant resistance to their vigorous efforts to achieve those goals.
As part of the process, each of the individual attributes (experiences, story, competent, etc.) in the definition was discussed and defined precisely by the panel. The exact words and definitions are important— alternatives for each word were considered and discarded. For example, the reader is not “told a story,” she “experiences a story presented,” which is a very different animal.
In addition to exact wording, the panel felt strongly that all the many listed attributes should be present, not just a majority. They felt that if even one were missing, the likelihood the book would be a page-turner went down dramatically. And, with each additional missed attribute, come further dramatic drops in page-turner potential.
The above page-turner description was accepted unanimously by the panel but not by the audience. Some of the aspiring literary novelists felt it was “write-by-numbers” and that no one had the right to tell them how to achieve their artistic vision. The panel’s response to this went something like, “You’re correct. No one can tell you how to write. You only have to write this way if you want us to spend the time and money it takes to get you published.” The panel did admit there have been exceptions, but held they were few and far between. The odds of publication success (getting published and selling well) are enormously tilted in favor of the type of page-turner described.
Many of the attribute definitions and their subtle nuances are not self-evident. I’m thinking the next few times I’m up to bat in Blog Town, I’ll go over the definition in detail, discuss what each of the attributes meant to the panel and go over the nuances we discussed. I think there are some surprises here.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
My was-were-had-as-ing-ly Edit, Part II
By John May
In this continuation, we’ll look at some other words and word types often worthy of slaughter.
As and ing: Two problems. One, hack writers love ‘em and sprinkle ‘em out with abandon—not exactly great company. Two, they weaken action. In Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, another widely acclaimed book on craft, Renni Browne and Dave King state, “…both of these constructions take a bit of action (She pulled off her gloves) and tuck it away in a dependent clause (Pulling off her gloves…). This tends to place your action at one remove from your reader, to make the action seem incidental, unimportant. And so if you use these constructions often, you weaken your writing.” They admit that some usage of ing and as are occasionally necessary to allow more structure variety and, sometimes, to avoid overly complex constructs but say, “… avoid the hack’s favorite construction unless you have a good reason for using them.”
While I sparingly use as and ing for variety or reduced complexity, I try to make sure they relate to the less important action in the sentence and use an active construct for the more important action. Example: As they made their way back to the helicopter, she ignored the deputy’s calls. The fact that she was ignoring the deputy is much more important and revealing of her state of mind than the simple act of returning somewhere.
Ly adverbs: The worst of the adverbs—as in: he said grimly. Again, from Browne and King, “Ly adverbs almost always catch the author in the act of explaining dialogue—smuggling emotions into speaker attributions that belong in the dialogue itself. If your dialogue doesn’t need props, putting the props in will make it seem weak even though it isn’t. There are a few exceptions to the principle—almost all of them adverbs that modify the verb 'said' such as he said softly or she said clearly. After all, you don’t say something grimly in the same sense as you say something softly. The grimness comes across by what you say and do—through word choice, body language, context—not by how you say it.”
I try to avoid as many adverbs (not just ly) and adjectives as possible. A noun that has a needed adjective built in is more vivid and reads faster than an adjective-noun combo (e.g., hovel vs. small, wretched home). This holds true for verbs with built-in adverbs (e.g., hurled vs. threw it hard). A wonderful tool for finding vivid words is Choose the Right Word by S.I. Hayakawa. A thesaurus on steroids. It doesn’t just provide a list of synonyms, it discusses in some depth the connotations and emotional and/or physical implications of each synonym—in essence, what are the built-in adverbs or adjectives?
Summary: It’s easier to write using lots of was-were-had-as-ing-ly words. Replacing them requires better writing—which is harder—and a larger vocabulary. Personally, I feel the edit is worth the effort.
In this continuation, we’ll look at some other words and word types often worthy of slaughter.
As and ing: Two problems. One, hack writers love ‘em and sprinkle ‘em out with abandon—not exactly great company. Two, they weaken action. In Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, another widely acclaimed book on craft, Renni Browne and Dave King state, “…both of these constructions take a bit of action (She pulled off her gloves) and tuck it away in a dependent clause (Pulling off her gloves…). This tends to place your action at one remove from your reader, to make the action seem incidental, unimportant. And so if you use these constructions often, you weaken your writing.” They admit that some usage of ing and as are occasionally necessary to allow more structure variety and, sometimes, to avoid overly complex constructs but say, “… avoid the hack’s favorite construction unless you have a good reason for using them.”
While I sparingly use as and ing for variety or reduced complexity, I try to make sure they relate to the less important action in the sentence and use an active construct for the more important action. Example: As they made their way back to the helicopter, she ignored the deputy’s calls. The fact that she was ignoring the deputy is much more important and revealing of her state of mind than the simple act of returning somewhere.
Ly adverbs: The worst of the adverbs—as in: he said grimly. Again, from Browne and King, “Ly adverbs almost always catch the author in the act of explaining dialogue—smuggling emotions into speaker attributions that belong in the dialogue itself. If your dialogue doesn’t need props, putting the props in will make it seem weak even though it isn’t. There are a few exceptions to the principle—almost all of them adverbs that modify the verb 'said' such as he said softly or she said clearly. After all, you don’t say something grimly in the same sense as you say something softly. The grimness comes across by what you say and do—through word choice, body language, context—not by how you say it.”
I try to avoid as many adverbs (not just ly) and adjectives as possible. A noun that has a needed adjective built in is more vivid and reads faster than an adjective-noun combo (e.g., hovel vs. small, wretched home). This holds true for verbs with built-in adverbs (e.g., hurled vs. threw it hard). A wonderful tool for finding vivid words is Choose the Right Word by S.I. Hayakawa. A thesaurus on steroids. It doesn’t just provide a list of synonyms, it discusses in some depth the connotations and emotional and/or physical implications of each synonym—in essence, what are the built-in adverbs or adjectives?
Summary: It’s easier to write using lots of was-were-had-as-ing-ly words. Replacing them requires better writing—which is harder—and a larger vocabulary. Personally, I feel the edit is worth the effort.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
The Latest Addition
Meet a New Blogger
JOHN MAY
I spend mornings trading currencies on-line, afternoons working on my medical suspense thriller.
In addition to writing, I enjoy being a student of writing. You either have talent or you don’t, but craft can be taught; and it can be the difference that determines which talented writers are published (or sell a lot if self-published) and get to share their art and which don’t. It always amazes me when I hear some writers say studying craft stifles their creativity. Yes, it’s an art, but it seems to be the only art where practitioners expect to simply start doing it and somehow become expert. True, every few hundred years or so a Mozart level genius in some art is born but I believe the rest of us have to pay our dues.
So, I read a lot of books on the craft of writing. And, a while back, I hired a very good professional editor to line edit a few chapters of an earlier version of my book. I ended up taking the book in a slightly different direction and none of those chapters survived, but the experience was still well worth the effort. While at times painful and humbling, I believe I learned as much from that exercise as I did from all the many craft books I’ve read. Also, after the blood-letting was over, she gave me a document I’ve found invaluable in my self-editing sessions. It’s a multipoint Editor’s Checklist of ways to increase your manuscript’s chance to be published—in essence, a professional editor’s succinct list of to-do’s and not-to-do’s. The edits I describe in my first two blogs come from just a small portion of that Checklist.
I grew up in New Orleans, have an MBA from the University of Houston, and have lived in many parts of the country ranging from Seattle to the Columbia area. My work background is varied also. Among other occupations, I’ve been a hospital administrator, management consultant, and computer software product manager. Two of these occupations required extensive travel and I’ve been to every state in the Union and a host of foreign countries.
My beautiful and wonderfully understanding wife and I currently live in Elgin with our two dogs and my elderly mom who recently came to live with us.
My was-were-had-as-ing-ly Edit, Part I
By John May
Whenever I finish a chapter, I hunt for certain words and types of words with my word processor and then try to kill as many of the varmints as I can. In this installment, we’ll look at the first three, was, were, and had:
Was and were: In Techniques of the Selling Writer, one of the most acclaimed and bestselling books on craft ever, Dwight Swain holds that to be verbs, which describe a static state of existence, rob a story of vividness and action. “Your story stands still in any sentence that hangs on such a verb. Nothing happens. The situation just is, and, for its duration your reader must in effect mark time, shifting wearily from one foot to the other while he waits for the story to get back under way. ‘She was unhappy’ may be true enough but where does it go? What’s ‘she’ doing? Active verbs are what you need, verbs that show something happening.”
Had: Again from Swain, “Worst of all the to be’s forms is the past perfect tense. You can recognize it by the word had—a red flag of danger in your story every time. For had describes not just a static state, but a static state in the past. Each had makes your story jerk, because it jars your reader out of the present action and throws him into past history. …eliminate as many as possible, within the bounds of common sense.”
I agree wholeheartedly with Swain that to be verbs suck the life out of passages that involve immediate action or dialogue. I once hired a professional editor to look a couple of chapters in a much earlier version of my novel. She claims extensive use of passive voice is an excellent way to get a manuscript rejected. I know I invariably like my action and dialogue scenes better after I round up the to be varmints and slaughter them.
However, when writing introspection, scene setting, or historical exposition, I believe to be’s, while mostly undesirable, are not always life suckers. In this group, to be verbs are a bit less intrusive (there’s no immediate action to interrupt) and, since the purpose can be to give history, sometimes even necessary. So, while I try hard to avoid to be verbs wherever possible, when writing a passage that involves any kind of immediate action or dialogue, I really really really really really try hard to avoid them.
Of course, if some reason, you want your story or a particular passage to feel sleepy and meandering, then passive verbs are the ones of choice (note how much faster and stronger the last clause reads in the active form: “then choose passive verbs”). As I’m currently writing a work of commercial fiction I hope to publish, I can’t afford to sound sleepy and meandering very often.
In the next installment, we’ll look at some other less than desirable words or word types.
Whenever I finish a chapter, I hunt for certain words and types of words with my word processor and then try to kill as many of the varmints as I can. In this installment, we’ll look at the first three, was, were, and had:
Was and were: In Techniques of the Selling Writer, one of the most acclaimed and bestselling books on craft ever, Dwight Swain holds that to be verbs, which describe a static state of existence, rob a story of vividness and action. “Your story stands still in any sentence that hangs on such a verb. Nothing happens. The situation just is, and, for its duration your reader must in effect mark time, shifting wearily from one foot to the other while he waits for the story to get back under way. ‘She was unhappy’ may be true enough but where does it go? What’s ‘she’ doing? Active verbs are what you need, verbs that show something happening.”
Had: Again from Swain, “Worst of all the to be’s forms is the past perfect tense. You can recognize it by the word had—a red flag of danger in your story every time. For had describes not just a static state, but a static state in the past. Each had makes your story jerk, because it jars your reader out of the present action and throws him into past history. …eliminate as many as possible, within the bounds of common sense.”
I agree wholeheartedly with Swain that to be verbs suck the life out of passages that involve immediate action or dialogue. I once hired a professional editor to look a couple of chapters in a much earlier version of my novel. She claims extensive use of passive voice is an excellent way to get a manuscript rejected. I know I invariably like my action and dialogue scenes better after I round up the to be varmints and slaughter them.
However, when writing introspection, scene setting, or historical exposition, I believe to be’s, while mostly undesirable, are not always life suckers. In this group, to be verbs are a bit less intrusive (there’s no immediate action to interrupt) and, since the purpose can be to give history, sometimes even necessary. So, while I try hard to avoid to be verbs wherever possible, when writing a passage that involves any kind of immediate action or dialogue, I really really really really really try hard to avoid them.
Of course, if some reason, you want your story or a particular passage to feel sleepy and meandering, then passive verbs are the ones of choice (note how much faster and stronger the last clause reads in the active form: “then choose passive verbs”). As I’m currently writing a work of commercial fiction I hope to publish, I can’t afford to sound sleepy and meandering very often.
In the next installment, we’ll look at some other less than desirable words or word types.
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