Often you can just plunge ahead, note that it needs to be there and add it later, on the edit.
This wasn’t one of those.
It took me two WEEKS, but I finally got it.
Very small scene. Most people will never figure why it could give anybody trouble—but brother! Such a pain!
As a rule, the hardest scenes to write are the little ones that ‘direct’ a mood or opinion. This is why most people don’t understand the writerly rule “show, don’t tell.” What it really means is—take the reader on that mental trip: don’t just narrate it…TAKE him there.
So agree with you – yet even professional writers don’t always understand the need for emotional engagement in the reader to ‘feel’ a scene and thus understand it not just on an intellectual level but also on a gut level, to understand the multiplicity of half-unspoken things and the emotive reaction they produce – to make the reader live the scene.
In this respect, amateur writers who have just had a great idea to write a fic are often better than those who have literary pretentions. These writers have often thought about how they want to portray their characters and their motives, but then just tell us about it instead of dramatising it.
I picked up ‘Merchanter’s Luck’ yesterday and dipped into it for a quarter of an hour or so. I probably haven’t looked at it for at least 5 years and Sandor’s vulnerability and loneliness reduced me to tears, and it made me contrast your style with the novel I am currently reading – George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones.
This is an extremely well-crafted novel, vivid and well-thought out, and very easy to read once you pick it up, but oh, does it lack an emotional grip to make me want to pick it up again. It is not just the multiplicity of characters and the constantly shifting view point which makes it difficult to work out who is the emotional focus of the novel, but it is also because – and it took me a while to work this out – it is also a novelisation, of, at the time, an unfilmed television series. Each chapter takes 10-15 mins to read and is a complete description of each scene which, when filmed, would only be about 2 minutes long. Not only does this make the pace of the novel extremely slow, because it lacks emotional intensity, it is also relying on the (hypothetical) actors’ interpretation of the characters and the chemistry between them to create the emotional ‘show’ that will engage the reader’s heart rather than brain and eyes.
Apologies for going off at a tangent here, but someone (I don’t remember who) once said that a writer needs to be half in love with their characters to write effectively about them, to feel their experiences rather than just thinking about them.
CJ, So glad you’ve found that scene! I love long complex novels with vivid characterization, which is why I loved Cyteen and Regenesis, and the whole Foreigner series. I think Carole has the right of the matter, I tried reading George R.R. Martin a decade ago. Game of Thrones just didn’t capture my attention that well, although his shorter and one-off stories were enjoyable. Too many current writers rush their books once they have a “good” idea that will last through many volumes, so that they can turn them into money making endeavors. As impatient as I am to read your next novel (and the one after) I understand the need for you to craft your books. Keep up the good work!
CJ, I just had a thought… Is there any way you can sell advanced reading copies (ARCs) of your novels, similar to the Baen authors? Also, is there any way you can set up pre-release orders for your hardcover books, similar to Amazon or Barnes & Noble? I’m so impatient that I pre-order your books through Amazon, but I’d much rather purchase them through you even if I have to pay full price so long as I can receive them on release day. In fact if you could set it up so that we can pre-order both hardcover and ebook versions through your store I’d be a happy camper.
Wish it were possible, but DAW does as DAW does, and they’re hanging on to e-rights for the newer works. I have rights to my older stuff because nobody mentioned them in the old contracts, but with the current contracts, it ‘s not possible.
Oh yeah, that sounds so typical. Some stupid little piece that just isn’t doing what it should, and no matter how much you tweak it, it still sits there staring at you. I spent much of dinner at Red Robins tonight trying to explain an outline problem to Russ that is much the same. I haven’t even gotten to the novel yet, and I’m already hitting those problems. LOL
I have started a weekly serial on my blog called Surviving Elsewhere. It’s an urban fantasy and is fun to write (no more than 1k each week and now up to 4 weeks). I thought (fool that I am) that this wouldn’t be too hard. AAAAIIIEEE!
But I do like it so far. I had been writing a weekly flash fiction for the 52 weeks before that, so switching to a serial meant I would at least have a setting to work with and save some time there.
Right. (Pounding head on desk now.)
But it’s great fun to read the serial! And it feels as if you are having fun writing it.
Nice to hear that! Thank you. I don’t get a lot of feedback, though I do see the hit counts and know people are at least looking at them.
And yes, it has been fun to write. Poor Mark. He thought he was running to safety. LOL
Where’s the blog?
It’s on my Joyously Prolific Blog, and here is a link to the serial links, so you don’t have to search through other posts for them:
http://zette.blogspot.com/p/links-to-surviving-elsewhere-serial.html
I hope you enjoy it. I post every Friday to that story.
I like it. Wish there were more, already. I’ll keep an eye out every Friday.
Like it. I’ve added you to my blog feed.
Thanks everyone. I’m glad you’re enjoying it. It is a challenge to write, but fun so far.
You have 1 more reader. Ding.
The past few weeks, especially since the semester ended and I have evenings/weekends more under my own direction, I’ve been nose to the grindstone editing to finish a solid, second draft of my novel (and I must say, it’s been a blast!). This coming September 9th marks the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Flodden, probably the most wrenching defeat the Scots suffered at the hands of the English. My novel starts on that day and ends on its anniversary 17 years later. I’ve been at the writing for maybe 8 years and it seems time to produce a readable result.
I’ve been trying to show my character’s emotional reactions to the stresses of her life through her body language, word choices, non-sequiturs and drift of thoughts when she finally relaxes, contrasting with her unthinking decisiveness when crisis hits. A friend has commented on the 1st 3 sections of the novel and I find myself disagreeing often when he writes “why is she doing this?” and “So what did she think?” He also frequently doesn’t like my vivid language and tendency towards alliteration and animate objects. I’m too close to the writing right now to always know when he’s got a good point and when it’s a personal preference difference.
In the 1st Foreigner book, when they are fleeing Malguri and Jago is furious at Bren, I couldn’t easily figure out exactly why she slapped him. I read and reread the scene and loved doing so because I knew that in that whole, emotional disconnect that wasn’t explicitly explained, lay the exact conundrum which separates the two species. I must say I have kept that as a model of “it’s ok not to write overtly and obviously.”
Once I get the full, second draft of The Marginal Way done, I’m going to take a deep breath and let it out to more readers. If scenes, descriptions and phrasings repeatedly boggle folks, then I will know that that bit, much as I might love it as it, has to change. But, I don’t want a work which lays out exactly “why” characters feel and act as they do immediately upon the introduction of a plot point. I want my readers to puzzle, think and pick up more clues as they read along.
Raesean — I’d love to be one of your cold readers. I’ve done editing of medical reports for grammar and punctuation for years (25), but I’ve never been a cold reader before. In fact, the invitation is open to anybody who wants something read by someone who loves to read.
Er, modern romance set in Tokyo with a background supernatural element (yuki-onna/snow woman). ?? My sister likes it but, you know, she’s my sister. Perfectly cool if you don’t read romance. I sort of launched into the genre to get SOME sort of writing done after a six-week writing program that kneecapped my ability to write fantasy. I’m at the can’t-let-go-of-it stage. Or there’s the 1880’s romance set in Colorado with the bounty hunter, but I’m pretty sure I have to rewrite the last third of that. Either/both/neither…?. 🙂
How about 400 years in the future? The human race has been decimated by a 1000 year old mage harvesting lives to extend his own. He over-reaches, gets damaged by one of his own creations, and gets bumped off. He leaves a lot of nasty stuff behind, though, and some equally nasty wanna bees.
I had a really good reader who was between girlfriends and had a lot of time on his hands. He gave very useful feedback. An old flame appeared on the scene and, what do you know, all of his free time evaporated. 😉
Transmission?
@WOL: As in how do we get stuff to you? I see nothing on your website that suggests how to get private communications to you.
p.s. I suspect you wouldn’t be “cold reading” this. 😉
WOL, yes I will take you up on your offer (typing this, by the way, is accompanied by a gulp of fear: but I’m not going to either get to be a better writer or get my writing read if I don’t let others read and react to it). I’m chugging ahead with the “second, full draft” of the final three sections of novel and, as I said, aiming to have that completed come the 500th anniversary of Flodden (Sept 9th, or if I need to fudge the timing a bit I’ll take the calendar reform into consideration: 13 days later than our current dating of Sept. 9th=Sept. 22nd is the literal anniversary.) See below for a query I am about to post to the kind readership of CJ’s Wave w/out a Shore re. best way to format a draft set out for commentary.
@CJ The feather touch of fingertips to cheekbone when parting… yeah, I know that some gestures carry much more weight than any number of words…
@Raesean I’m still trying to figure out why _I_ do things! Why shouldn’t a character have the same problem?
Just re-read Cyteen for the first time since it came out. I’m having a disconnect with Regenesis, due to Abban…
The four things I admire most in your writing, CJ, are these:
The characters have real languages and cultures. Whether human or alien, they always have a history, a background, a depth to them and their worlds.
Every character, major or minor, has his/her/its/one’s/gtst own motives, actions, emotions, reasons for doing anything, and they do not always agree, not even among allies and friends, nor are there strictly “good guys” and “bad guys.”
There’s a balance between dialogue and narrative, not too much of either, and you write always concisely. You “show” rather than “tell,” most typically through more dialogue, but the narrative that’s there is there for a reason.
Your writing has always struck me as very audio-visual. I get immersed in the story. This happened quickly for both Downbelow Station and Pride of Chanur, the first two books of yours I read. And if there’s a space battle in your books, it’s about the people, not the “things go boom real big an’ ‘splodey!”
—–
As someone still an amateur fiction writer, striking that “show don’t tell” balance, and narrative versus dialogue are proving tough. Getting the scenes in between, the “more stuff happens here,” bits can be tough. Figuring out what to keep and what to toss, doing rewriting, whew, that, for some reason, is hard for me. I can redraft. I don’t think I’ve learned yet how to merge things. I have one story idea that’s been through several partial drafts, and each is good, but something is missing, and my writer/editor side put the thing aside for awhile to gel.
Yet my three biggest newbie-writer problems are: (1) Carrying through, finding a full story, without getting distracted (ooh, shiny, look, a squirrel!) by another story idea. (2) Figuring out a full plot, story arc, and character arcs. I think that’s (maybe?) starting to gel lately. (3) I have finally decided I need to outline more than I have been. I have tried outlining. I have tried writing as the story comes, letting it flow. So far, neither quite gets it for me. But I need more planning to get where I want to go with a complete story. What drove this home for me was having new story ideas recently, writing scenes so as not to lose the ideas…and having minor characters just appear and insist, no, they are major characters…enough that they may need to be the main characters of something on their own.
I have gotten over one big hurdle, though: I can write now, regularly, several pages, without drawing a blank, losing steam. Heh, the problem is more like, now how can I keep going? I’m tired and there’s still more story trying to get out. But then I do reach a stopping point, or another idea wants attention. — I have no idea if this is how other writers work, but I’m still telling myself that if other ideas are coming, write down at least enough to pick them up later, before going back to something. Or pursue the new thing, if it feels right. I have to figure out some way to get that under control. But I’m happier with it now.
The other hurdle is, things have started coming together more, as to what belongs in a particular story universe, or what is a standalone idea. I have figured out, I think I’m headed towards novel-length instead of short stories, ultimately, but I’m still learning the craft. I knew it wasn’t as easy to write fiction as to edit well, but whew, there’s a lot to learn to get there. I do think it’s getting there, I just…I want it to be there already, with something for people to read, and (ahem) to sell.
But…dang, does this ever beat repetitive rote work or working for someone else. Only dang problem is, it’s feast or famine, like any of the work I’m trained for, and I need more quantity and steadiness in income. … Ah well, that’s what I get for leaning toward liberal arts in anything I like career-wise. 😉
—–
Sincere best wishes. You and other writers I like make it look easy. It isn’t easy. But oh, a good story is so worth it!
BCSh: You’ve spelt out well a writing challenge I worry I need to wrestle with in my novel drafts to come: “Getting the scenes in between, the “more stuff happens here,” bits can be tough. Figuring out what to keep and what to toss, doing rewriting,” I suspect that, amongst other things, I get wordy and potentially even over-indulgent in the “more stuff happens here” plot details between the hot points of heady action and plot hinge points. The quieter scenes often include main character self-reflection & worry as well as introduction of characters, info and what appear to be simply “everyday life happenings” which workout later as key plot or character motivations for the denoument. Thanks for articulating a component of the writing process that I’m not certain how well I carry out yet.
Raesean, thank you. I’d tend to say, if what you have is working, you’ll feel it. If it bothers you, revise it. But don’t stress over it so much you overwork it.
I’ve found that editing experience (and perfectionism) don’t work much for me during the writing process: I have to turn those off and get into the “let’s pretend” of the story itself, or I’ll bog down in self-criticism. In online posts, emails, letters offline, I have a terrible problem being concise, succinct. I’m not yet sure if I have this right in fiction writing.
But as an editor for other people’s work, I generally know when it feels right to me, when the story and characters make sense and flow right. I get an editorial sense, when I put on that editor’s cap. But when reading for entertainment or information, I likewise tell that internal editor he’s off the clock, so I can enjoy reading and learn something.
From your academic background, you may be having some trouble with those and with getting the historical and technical and social / language details right. I tend to think you’ll do fine on that.
I’m with y’all here. But I tend to leave the “in between” bits as “notes to self” (see below) if I have ideas about what goes there, and go for the scenes I can really “see”. But even those need a bit of introduction, “setting the scene”, which isn’t part of what I see. That can be hard to write, whether I start with the setting, or the scene and come back to the setting. Neither seems to solve the problem.
OTOH, I’m writing a lot of stuff that might be described as scene setting or character development, when that’s what I see, even if I suspect might not make a final cut. But I think it’s important for that all to be in the draft because it supports the whole story–even if it becomes invisible background in the end.
Adult human female character and alien intelligent octopoid character seek partnership type story.
It’s floating out there just out of reach. Maybe if I’m really still, it will come close enough to let me pet it. . .
Lol! Pet it—that describes the phase…
WOL
May I suggest a title: “Sucker Bait”
Blurb – Suckers the reader right in….
You could say you really got wrapped up in the story, it grabs you and draws you in….
OK, WOL, you already have potential fans, go for the story. We may be having a little fun with it, but there’s room for fun and serious and whatever else.
Note: Just from that description, I might expect one type of story, but a fuller description might show me it’s another. Now I’m curious to see what you’d come up with. There’s always room for good stories.
…Ah, my feline management claims it’s time to go Outside into the Yard, since it was rainy yesterday they didn’t get to. So, taking a notepad and sketchpad out there for a bit and communing with… OK, all that’s really in my yard now are roses, aloe vera, and half-hearted grass, but at least it’s growing and… somewhat green. 🙂
I don’t mind so much the individual scenes I can skip over and return to. It’s when my mental flight-of-fancy vehicle gets bogged down on the muddy runway and won’t let me go *anywhere.* Glad you got off the runway! 🙂 P.S. really liked Invitations. Very disappointed when I flipped the last virtual page and there was nothing more!! Waah!!
Writing is so hard.
(Far off voice) How hard?
Thank you.
So hard that I couldn’t make this joke work by writing it out.
I’ve tried writing on and off through the years. I know, rookie mistake 1. What i have to show are a bunch of columns on bicycling and motorcycling, a half finished mystery novel and a half hour sitcom that didn’t sell even though it’s really funny.
I so admire someone who can sit down and do the job every day.
And to top off those darned characters do what they want no matter what you want.
It’s fun to see others talking about their writing. Working on stories is what I love most to do. I have an outline that’s finally falling together properly and the rewrite of a 10k novelette (previously published by Yard Dog Press) that will probably go live at Smashwords later today.
People seem to think I’m crazy because I write so much and don’t take vacations from it. I love the challenges, though. And every story is a new challenge and a chance to do better.
Writers are people who write because they can’t not write.
Got anything going on “Procrastinator” yet? 😉
Query to the crowd at large and experienced readers of drafts in particular: is there a specific format or set of specifications I or other novice writers should put a draft into so that beta readers can read and comment on it best?
Does one leave it in “Word” (the word processing program I and many, but not CJ, use)? Put it into an “untouchable” PDF? Post on Google Docs (sigh, I suppose I could learn to do that, although the formatting and font always seem small and squinty to me).
Does one include a feedback form? Include a series of questions to be answered or leave the reader entirely up to their own interpretations and devices? An editor friend of mine once commented that you don’t pose any feedback questions in advance so the reader forms their own impressions of the work first. After they read it through, then you can fretsomely ask “did you get it that my character does X in Y scene because…?” or “Does it work when I…?”
Advice please! I suspect more than just I on this blog would welcome it.
My best suggestion is to do a ‘save as’ and find .rtf on the list. This is Rich Text Format, which will hold most of the formatting, but is readable in almost any type of word processing program, like Word and Open Office. This is the format we tell people to use on Forward Motion if they are exchanging manuscripts.
It’s best to let the person tell you what they found in the story that struck them, for good or bad. If you give out a list, they may not think to add other things.
However, at FM we also have a list for those who had not done critiques so they can get an idea of what they should look for. This list was originally started by Holly Lisle when she owned the site:
My first impressions of your story:
The plot:
The characters:
The action:
The dialogue:
The background:
The overall story:
The theme:
The technical details (spelling, grammar, scientific or historical details), etc.:
What I loved about this work, and why:
What caused me problems, and why:
Final comments:
I can also suggest anyone giving or getting critiques might want to look at the section in Vision: A Resource for Writers that covers this field:
http://visionforwriters.com/vision/index.php/categories/28-critiques
This category is woefully light right now because I still have to copy about 600 articles from the much older version into the new set up. Yeah, like I have time.
I hope this helps!
Dunno about anyone else, but as a graphic designer, I have the professional version of Acrobat. I turn submitted manuscripts into pdfs and use the annotation, highlighting and pen tools to mark up the files. Reader appears to have the sticky notes and highlighter built into the latest version, (I’m looking at their website), but perhaps not the pen tool. I have no need for Reader, and I get enough of the dang “update me!” messages from Acrobat as it is so I’m not going to download it to test it, but that might be a format everyone could access. Plus, Reader is free.
As for questions, I would recommend leaving them for the end. The story is supposed to stand on its own, after all. One of the advantages of marking a pdf as you read is that you can treat it like a piece of paper and make note of things that don’t make sense to you at the time. (Manuscripts I critique are covered in notes, and having the pen tool and a Wacom tablet means I can draw little confused faces in the margins too.) 🙂
I have Adobe Professional Acrobat, too. Like you, I don’t have any reason to use it. I’ve also had people protest doing the Adobe stuff, though I’m not sure why. It’s a perfectly fine tool, and free. However, a lot of people are more comfortable working in their normal word processor program.
For those people, still suggest RTF. You can also set your font color to red and larger than the print size of the manuscript. Then write notes below the paragraphs that might have problems. They’ll be noticed. I’ve done this for over a decade with articles for Vision and when I read submissions for a small press for a while.
For users on Windows OS, there are several options for PDF, although I am told that a lot of people dislike PDF formats, I like them to prevent editing.
CutePDF, it acts as a printer driver and lets you print directly to a PDF file.
Last few versions of Microsoft Office will allow Save As to PDF.
And for anyone–
Documents authored on Google Drive can be downloaded as PDF.
If the manuscript is in Word, which I have and have used, there is a “Track Changes” setting where revisions/corrections show up as such. Very useful for a reader to make comments and corrections this way. A Word document attached to an email works for me unless it’s a gigunga file that will hang up on my end in my spam filter or hang up on your end because your email program won’t send it.
This is from a novice and probably WAY too simple, but I attach the draft to an email to my regular reader, my son, and he reads it either on his computer or downloads it to his Kindle. Seems to work, so far. I use Open Office for my wp program, which is fine as long as I don’t want to do anything too technical, but I save to Word when I save my work.
And I just let my reader read it and comment, and we argue a bit back and forth and I ask questions. And sometimes he asks questions. It all helps, getting that feedback from a fresh pair of eyes. It’s too easy to read what you thought you wrote, rather than what you really did. But he’s starting a new job now,and has less time. So it goes!
@ Raesean et al. re drafts and alpha/beta reader comments:
Like WOL, I have pro experience proofing and editing various kinds of writing. I’ve edited amateur / web fiction too.)
For simplest proofing and comments, I recommend:
* Keep (or convert) to Word .doc format, rather than .docx . If a reader prefers WordPerfect format or Open Document Format (.odt) such as for OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice.org, that’s fine, but most people still save into .doc format.
* Turn ON Track Changes (or the equivalent in your word processor) to track your author content and any commenters’ remarks. If a reader is unfamiliar, he or she should use something clear, such as colored text, to make it clear what’s been noted.
* Proofer’s or copyeditor’s corrections (or suggestions) on individual words or phrases may go in the text, marked.
* However, anything more extensive belongs in a Reader Comments section as endnotes, or perhaps better, in a separate file. So if a reader asserts, suggests, a sentence should be reworded, he/she enters a number or letter code such as A-01, in the text, corresponding to the note in the comments section.
* If a reader thinks a paragraph, block, or section is unclear, then that certainly belongs in a comment. An editor should not rewrite the author’s text. A reader may say, for example, “A-02. Chapter 04, Page 127. Char. X, Scene Y. It was unclear to me why X did so-and-so in scene Y.” The reader may comment, question, suggest whatever seems needed or wasn’t clear there. Maybe there was a continuity problem. Or X did something the reader didn’t understand. Or the scene didn’t track somehow.
* As an editor, I say if it’s beyond a sentence or two, the beta reader or editor should say what he or she didn’t follow, and let the writer rewrite as he or she sees fit, and not (ever) try to rewrite more than a sentence or two in a spot. It’s OK for an editor or reader to suggest how a sentence or phrase might be rewritten, but it should be up to the writer whether to accept the suggestion or choose something else, or rewrite the block / section. (A book editor or news editor is similarly not likely to do more than that, or, to my mind, shouldn’t.)
* A good fiction or poetry editor needs to have some feel for a writer’s style for a piece, in order to suggest how to improve it. This is especially important for SF&F and historical fiction. This includes narrative prose as well as dialogue.
* Notes or suggested changes within the text as well as endnote reader comments should then be easy for you as the writer to follow and decide what to do. Naturally, you may have back-and-forth with readers to find out more about some points. As a writer, you’re not obliged to follow every suggestion a beta reader or editor makes. Heck, you’re not obliged to do everything a pro editor says, aside from getting into shape they’ll publish and pay you for. 😉 …I’m an editor and writer, I do have an ego and some strong opinions, but I generally think the editor should trust the writer’s story instincts, or darn well write his/her own story and not be a back seat author. 😉 Writing’s an art, a craft, not a science. There are guidelines, but few rules. A good writer (and a good editor) should know when it’s OK to bend or break the textbook rules to best effect for the story. (Heh, sorry, philosophical digression, there.)
* I agree with the guideline, do not ask your readers / commenters beforehand about X, Y, or Z. If yuu want to know about those, then make sure the reader / commenter sees them only after reading the story, not before, so as to avoid preconceptions.
* It helps to have a range of people reading and commenting. When it’s a historical novel or some technical topic is concerned, try to find someone who knows the subject matter, but most readers of fiction are not going to be experts in that area. So get both ends and the middle.
* Have the reader / commenter email back the marked up manuscript and any other files.
* For goodness sakes, keep your original, untouched manuscript in a separate folder, and consider a subfolder for commenters or for each commenter, to save your sanity! Oh, yes, the pro editor, proofer, artists, publication designers had better keep an untouched original for their own sanity too! (Back when I did this professionally, I had more than one client who didn’t think they needed to do that. It was a mistake each time. Ahem, as were the (few) times I saved the wrong file in the wrong folder.)
I hope that helps. — A book length manuscript? Are you soliciting beta readers? What timeframe would we get the MS and what deadline for beta comments? — If it’s something I could do, now I’m intrigued.
Background: Some pro experience as noted. Began as an English major, tested out of a lot of French, possibly should’ve switched to a language / linguistics major, normal core curriculum two semesters of American history, sought transfer to computer science. In life, ended up with a good mix of this in editing and design and then the web. So I’d be somewhere toward “newbie” regarding Scots and English history, but with possibly a better background than, say, the average undergrad. The subject sounds like a good read to me.
Raesean, you and others here at WWAS are welcome to email me. 🙂
I love Track Changes and use it for my own work and for editing material that isn’t going anywhere else. However, when I worked for Double Dragon, at least half the people (no matter what program they used or how we tried to set it up) could not get it to work properly. There was nothing more frustrating than doing an entire edit and then finding that the other person could do nothing with it.
So if you are going to use Track Changes, do a small test version first. It is a wonderful tool if it works for you.