At last year's Surrey International Writers Conference, I took a master class from well-known agent Donald Maass. Laptops and notebooks in hand, we rewrote a scene from our own work, adding tension to dialogue, looking for sensory details only our protagonists would notice, etc. The scene I worked on that day is, IMHO, by far the best-written scene in my WIP. (Unfortunately, it's not terribly relevant to my plot based on how the story developed in later scenes, and my critique partners are telling me I might need to kill this particular darling.)
The Fire in Fiction (2009) amounts to nine of those master classes. (And the exercises from ours are found in Ch. 3.) It's full of ideas for strengthening your fiction, along with examples from published novels, most of them recent, with exercises that strike me as actually useful. The copy I read belongs to the library, but I'm going to be getting my own for use in polishing the WIP for submission. I recommend it highly for writers who are ready to go beyond the usual writing guides with their lectures on how to outline and interview your characters and excise adverbs.
Showing posts with label writers conferences. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writers conferences. Show all posts
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
PNWC: Brenda Gurung on Dating, Evangelism, & Viruses: Marketing Your Book
The presenter at this workshop is a community relations manager from one of the local Barnes & Noble stores. She admitted at the outset that she was having a scatterbrained day, and that did show. She obviously knew her stuff, and I think she'd be a great person to have on your side when planning a signing or a launch party. But she didn't have an outline or a structure or any such thing beloved by logical, linear me. However, I did glean some useful tips:
- When interacting with people who can help promote your book, always consider THEIR perspective. Never forget to treat them as people, rather than tasks--and you'll be rewarded by them treating YOU as a person.
- To understand your target audience, think of its core, not its periphery. (e.g. for me it might be the intersection of Bernard Cornwell's and Naomi Novik's readership) Aim all your marketing efforts at finding those people.
- When planning an event like a book signing or a release party, consider the target audience for that particular event. What are you competing against for their attention? What reasons do they have to stay home or go elsewhere? To cite an obvious example, you wouldn't want to hold a signing for your baseball book during a World Series game.
- When interacting with people who can help promote your book, always consider THEIR perspective. Never forget to treat them as people, rather than tasks--and you'll be rewarded by them treating YOU as a person.
- To understand your target audience, think of its core, not its periphery. (e.g. for me it might be the intersection of Bernard Cornwell's and Naomi Novik's readership) Aim all your marketing efforts at finding those people.
- When planning an event like a book signing or a release party, consider the target audience for that particular event. What are you competing against for their attention? What reasons do they have to stay home or go elsewhere? To cite an obvious example, you wouldn't want to hold a signing for your baseball book during a World Series game.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
PNWC: Elizabeth Lyon on Manuscript Makeover
The next workshop I attended was presented by Elizabeth Lyon, a teacher/editor/writing coach who's written several books on the writing process. I'm trying to learn more about revision as I get ready to tackle the daunting task of smoothing out my extremely rough draft of Invasion, so choosing this workshop was a no-brainer for me.
Lyon breaks revision down to Style, Characterization, and Structure. Most guides to revision treat style as an afterthought, which she thinks is wrong because editors and agents say they're looking for fresh, original voices, and style is how you polish your voice so your uniqueness shines.
I see what she's saying, but I'm not sure it makes sense to revise for style first, which is what she seems to be advocating. If your story needs work on structure and/or characterization, you're probably going to be writing whole new scenes and doing radical surgery on existing ones. Why fine-tune your prose first when you're just going to have to go back and do it over again for your new sections? If you fix structural issues first, then you can do one big polishing sweep at the end when the story as a whole is in place. Which isn't to say I wouldn't fix an awkward wording or correct a typo at whatever point I happened to notice it, but still.
She started with a recommendation for how to free up your voice when your writing is tight in a bad way--i.e. when there's not enough emotion or richness of detail coming through in a scene. She calls it riff-writing. You take some piece of your WIP and allow yourself to free write, riffing like a jazz musician. Overwrite in order to capture everything that's there--emotion, details of setting, etc. You then have more there to edit down into what you need. I like this idea and intend to try it out as soon as I hit editing mode. I tend to underwrite, all the more so now that I'm writing a protagonist who controls his emotions with a curb rein at least 90% of the time.
She then gave a lot of examples of wordsmithing techniques to enhance style. I won't go into them all, just the ones that were especially striking or new to me:
- Make use of "power positions," i.e. the beginnings and endings of chapters, scenes, paragraphs, even sentences.
- Figure out what you overuse and edit it out.
- Watch for inadequate specificity of detail. You want to put your reader in a world like no other.
On characterization, Lyon said the goal is to make your protagonist so believable and memorable that he will outlive you. Which made me think about my mortality maybe more than I really want to while enjoying a writers conference, but it's a powerful point--and one with resonance for me because at least one of my characters feels compelled to seek fame to gain a measure of immortality.
The components of a memorable character are attitude and passions. Your character should have strong opinions and unbridled desire and energy for what matters most to him. Writers tend to understate rather than overstate, so look for ways to bump up attitude and passion.
At the very end of the workshop, Lyon moved on to structure, especially scene structure:
- The POV character in each scene should be that scene's protagonist.
- Each scene should have a clear goal.
- The end of a scene needs to have some disaster or surprise to hook the reader into the next scene.
- You can foreshadow a big scene by a small scene of a similar nature.
- You can also use reverse emotions--a fight before lovemaking, a bonding scene before battle, etc.
She didn't have time to get to story structure, which disappointed me, because that's what I'm trying to focus on the most. Fixing scene-sized units of text is easy-peasy compared to making sure the entire structure of a 110,000-word manuscript is unified, coherent, and engrossing. Which is why I bought a copy of The Writer's Journey to replace my old one that I lost. I like the Hero's Journey approach.
Lyon breaks revision down to Style, Characterization, and Structure. Most guides to revision treat style as an afterthought, which she thinks is wrong because editors and agents say they're looking for fresh, original voices, and style is how you polish your voice so your uniqueness shines.
I see what she's saying, but I'm not sure it makes sense to revise for style first, which is what she seems to be advocating. If your story needs work on structure and/or characterization, you're probably going to be writing whole new scenes and doing radical surgery on existing ones. Why fine-tune your prose first when you're just going to have to go back and do it over again for your new sections? If you fix structural issues first, then you can do one big polishing sweep at the end when the story as a whole is in place. Which isn't to say I wouldn't fix an awkward wording or correct a typo at whatever point I happened to notice it, but still.
She started with a recommendation for how to free up your voice when your writing is tight in a bad way--i.e. when there's not enough emotion or richness of detail coming through in a scene. She calls it riff-writing. You take some piece of your WIP and allow yourself to free write, riffing like a jazz musician. Overwrite in order to capture everything that's there--emotion, details of setting, etc. You then have more there to edit down into what you need. I like this idea and intend to try it out as soon as I hit editing mode. I tend to underwrite, all the more so now that I'm writing a protagonist who controls his emotions with a curb rein at least 90% of the time.
She then gave a lot of examples of wordsmithing techniques to enhance style. I won't go into them all, just the ones that were especially striking or new to me:
- Make use of "power positions," i.e. the beginnings and endings of chapters, scenes, paragraphs, even sentences.
- Figure out what you overuse and edit it out.
- Watch for inadequate specificity of detail. You want to put your reader in a world like no other.
On characterization, Lyon said the goal is to make your protagonist so believable and memorable that he will outlive you. Which made me think about my mortality maybe more than I really want to while enjoying a writers conference, but it's a powerful point--and one with resonance for me because at least one of my characters feels compelled to seek fame to gain a measure of immortality.
The components of a memorable character are attitude and passions. Your character should have strong opinions and unbridled desire and energy for what matters most to him. Writers tend to understate rather than overstate, so look for ways to bump up attitude and passion.
At the very end of the workshop, Lyon moved on to structure, especially scene structure:
- The POV character in each scene should be that scene's protagonist.
- Each scene should have a clear goal.
- The end of a scene needs to have some disaster or surprise to hook the reader into the next scene.
- You can foreshadow a big scene by a small scene of a similar nature.
- You can also use reverse emotions--a fight before lovemaking, a bonding scene before battle, etc.
She didn't have time to get to story structure, which disappointed me, because that's what I'm trying to focus on the most. Fixing scene-sized units of text is easy-peasy compared to making sure the entire structure of a 110,000-word manuscript is unified, coherent, and engrossing. Which is why I bought a copy of The Writer's Journey to replace my old one that I lost. I like the Hero's Journey approach.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
PNWC: Bob Mayer on Who Dares Wins
Friday morning at PNWC was devoted to an editors and agents forum. I didn't take many notes because in my opinion it wasn't all that informative. It was way too general, complete with the standard lines. All editors and agents are looking for "fresh, original voices." Really. They are. They all say that at every conference.
The most interesting industry tidbit was a Scholastic editor saying that YA as a genre is really tight now. When YA got huge a few years ago, publishers who didn't have YA lines rushed to start them, so now you've got too many books competing for too little shelf space. It's not dying out, but it's a harder sell than it was in '06 or '07.
In the afternoon it was workshop time again. I went to another Bob Mayer talk--"Who Dares Wins," which applies lessons from his Green Beret background to the writing life.
He started with a digression on working with agents. He's on his fourth agent, and he says he's happy with her because she's selling his career, while the previous three were just interested in selling his current book.
Other opening remarks:
- What stops most people from getting published is themselves.
- You need to ACT, not REACT.
- One power you have as a writer is the power to say no.
- 10% of first novels succeed. The other 90% fail to earn out.
Then he moved into the nine tools of "Who Dares Wins":
1. What. What do you want to win? What is your goal? You should have goals for both your current book and your career as a whole, and you should be able to state each in one sentence.
2. Why. What is your intent? What do you want readers to feel? Again, this applies to your career as well as to an individual book. What's the payoff of your book (the last scene)? Does it fit your intent?
3. Where. Walk the terrain of your story. (Me: You gonna pay for my tickets to England and arrange for me to take two months off work, Bob? Until then I'm stuck with Google Earth.) But note: fiction is not wholly authentic. It has to have internal logic, but not necessarily external.
Dissect books that are like yours. You can do this in an Excel spreadsheet. Set up three columns for each scene: 1) What's in the scene? 2) What's the purpose of the scene? 3) What can I do in my story?
When you finish reading a novel, go back to the beginning and look for what you didn't know before. You'll notice foreshadowing and themes that resound throughout the story.
4. Character. Consider your characters' goals and motivation--what they want and why.
Also, know yourself. Your characters will come out of your life whether you like it or not. (Me: This is so true. I've met several of my favorite authors since starting to write and hang out at conferences, and I've yet to be surprised by an author's personality. Authors match their books. Even those of us who would never write an autobiographical novel, who set all our stories in worlds past, future, or fantastical, leave our spiritual fingerprints all over our work.)
Templates can be useful in character development. Consider profiling. 99% of what we do is habit, not conscious decision. Look at behavior patterns and what they tell you about a person. Other resources include Jungian archetypes, Myers-Briggs, etc. (Me: Working with chaplains, I have a professional resource for this sort of thing. I've done enneagrams for my major characters, and once my boss and I spent half of our weekly touchbase session discussing birth order dynamics in large families.)
5. Courage. Most people's primary motivation is fear. Fear isn't about actual events, it's about the expectation of events. Fear isn't always bad, and you need to acknowledge its existence. If you have no fear at all, you're a sociopath (though it's possible to be a sociopath without being evil).
One way to combat fear is to develop a catastrophe plan. If you plan for the worst, you don't have to fear it and can focus your energy on working toward your goals. And think ahead--one book ahead, even one series ahead.
6. Change. 95% of people don't. Only 5% can change through internal motivation. If you want to succeed as a writer, you must be part of that 5%. Perseverance is more important than talent.
7. Command. As a writer, you will put together a team (agent, editor, publicist, etc.). You must be the leader of this team because you care more about your book than anyone else does.
When approaching an editor or agent, look at it from their POV. What do they want? How will they receive your pitch? How do you want them to perceive you and your work?
Learn from any source. Be open-minded and able to admit when you're wrong. And have patience and self-discipline.
8. Communication. We're writers. We create words on a page that come alive in someone else's head. That reader is the most important person. Think about whether/why the reader would be excited about a story.
9. Complete. Break the rules. Be different. But know the rule, have a good reason for breaking it, and take responsibility for it. (Me: I don't remember why that connects to "Complete." It's been over a week now.)
Two final thoughts:
If you're not where you want to be, you need to do something different. What will your sustained action to bring about a change be?
Fiction marketing is tough. Oprah is NOT the talk show host who moves the most books--Jon Stewart is, with his nonfiction author guests.
The most interesting industry tidbit was a Scholastic editor saying that YA as a genre is really tight now. When YA got huge a few years ago, publishers who didn't have YA lines rushed to start them, so now you've got too many books competing for too little shelf space. It's not dying out, but it's a harder sell than it was in '06 or '07.
In the afternoon it was workshop time again. I went to another Bob Mayer talk--"Who Dares Wins," which applies lessons from his Green Beret background to the writing life.
He started with a digression on working with agents. He's on his fourth agent, and he says he's happy with her because she's selling his career, while the previous three were just interested in selling his current book.
Other opening remarks:
- What stops most people from getting published is themselves.
- You need to ACT, not REACT.
- One power you have as a writer is the power to say no.
- 10% of first novels succeed. The other 90% fail to earn out.
Then he moved into the nine tools of "Who Dares Wins":
1. What. What do you want to win? What is your goal? You should have goals for both your current book and your career as a whole, and you should be able to state each in one sentence.
2. Why. What is your intent? What do you want readers to feel? Again, this applies to your career as well as to an individual book. What's the payoff of your book (the last scene)? Does it fit your intent?
3. Where. Walk the terrain of your story. (Me: You gonna pay for my tickets to England and arrange for me to take two months off work, Bob? Until then I'm stuck with Google Earth.) But note: fiction is not wholly authentic. It has to have internal logic, but not necessarily external.
Dissect books that are like yours. You can do this in an Excel spreadsheet. Set up three columns for each scene: 1) What's in the scene? 2) What's the purpose of the scene? 3) What can I do in my story?
When you finish reading a novel, go back to the beginning and look for what you didn't know before. You'll notice foreshadowing and themes that resound throughout the story.
4. Character. Consider your characters' goals and motivation--what they want and why.
Also, know yourself. Your characters will come out of your life whether you like it or not. (Me: This is so true. I've met several of my favorite authors since starting to write and hang out at conferences, and I've yet to be surprised by an author's personality. Authors match their books. Even those of us who would never write an autobiographical novel, who set all our stories in worlds past, future, or fantastical, leave our spiritual fingerprints all over our work.)
Templates can be useful in character development. Consider profiling. 99% of what we do is habit, not conscious decision. Look at behavior patterns and what they tell you about a person. Other resources include Jungian archetypes, Myers-Briggs, etc. (Me: Working with chaplains, I have a professional resource for this sort of thing. I've done enneagrams for my major characters, and once my boss and I spent half of our weekly touchbase session discussing birth order dynamics in large families.)
5. Courage. Most people's primary motivation is fear. Fear isn't about actual events, it's about the expectation of events. Fear isn't always bad, and you need to acknowledge its existence. If you have no fear at all, you're a sociopath (though it's possible to be a sociopath without being evil).
One way to combat fear is to develop a catastrophe plan. If you plan for the worst, you don't have to fear it and can focus your energy on working toward your goals. And think ahead--one book ahead, even one series ahead.
6. Change. 95% of people don't. Only 5% can change through internal motivation. If you want to succeed as a writer, you must be part of that 5%. Perseverance is more important than talent.
7. Command. As a writer, you will put together a team (agent, editor, publicist, etc.). You must be the leader of this team because you care more about your book than anyone else does.
When approaching an editor or agent, look at it from their POV. What do they want? How will they receive your pitch? How do you want them to perceive you and your work?
Learn from any source. Be open-minded and able to admit when you're wrong. And have patience and self-discipline.
8. Communication. We're writers. We create words on a page that come alive in someone else's head. That reader is the most important person. Think about whether/why the reader would be excited about a story.
9. Complete. Break the rules. Be different. But know the rule, have a good reason for breaking it, and take responsibility for it. (Me: I don't remember why that connects to "Complete." It's been over a week now.)
Two final thoughts:
If you're not where you want to be, you need to do something different. What will your sustained action to bring about a change be?
Fiction marketing is tough. Oprah is NOT the talk show host who moves the most books--Jon Stewart is, with his nonfiction author guests.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
PNWC: James Thayer on the Top Novel-Writing Mistakes
The second workshop I attended at PNWC was, in my opinion, focused on beginning writers. As someone who's been at this awhile, receiving quite a bit of positive feedback along the way, I think of myself as the literary equivalent of Triple-A. I've got the skills, and I'm just waiting for that Call to transform my life by inviting me to the Show. So it's tempting to feel like I can't get anything out of a beginner workshop. But as in sports, you never get so good you don't need to drill the fundamentals every once in awhile, and I have to admit I'm still prone to some of these mistakes.
1. Beginning a scene too early and ending it too late. When editing, look at each scene to see what you can peel away from the front and back. If your scene opens with someone driving, walking, getting out of bed, etc., you're probably starting too early. Don't document preparation.
I'm prone to this error in the rough draft stage, when I pretty much write down whatever comes to mind. But I correct it on editing. Usually. I think.
2. Backstory and flashbacks. Should be avoided. Your characters' pasts are more interesting to you than they are to your readers. We always want to share how the character became who he is, but the reader doesn't care. When backstory is absolutely necessary, keep it in brief segments, never more than a page at a time. Ration it out.
This one I am very guilty of. I envy 19th century authors who could get by with including a biography every time they introduced a character.
3. POV that jumps around. Each scene belongs to the character with the most at stake. Too many POV shifts tend to disengage the reader from the story. Use observation and speculation to show what non-POV characters are thinking.
I'm clear on this one. I wrote my first manuscript in first person, so I learned early to stick in one head no matter how nice it would be to see what the other characters are thinking. Now I enjoy the freedom of third limited to give multiple perspectives, but I have no trouble sticking with one person at a time.
4. Too much interior monologue (aka Thinking). A scene should not be something that happens in a character's head. Thoughts are not as interesting as dialogue and actions. Think cinematically--could this scene be staged?
Guilty, guilty, guilty. I overthink, and I write overthinkers. But I fix on edit, reluctantly and with much grumbling.
5. Failure to describe characters physically. Your reader needs to see the character inside her mind, so give her the tools to do so. The more important the character is, the more detail you should use. And don't forget posture and mannerisms.
This actually contradicts most previous advice I've heard on this topic. And it's a challenge in Invasion because my two main characters are heterosexual men. If one of them lingers too long on the other's blue eyes and lean, wiry strength, well, they suddenly don't seem quite so hetero anymore. That said, one of my critique groups has been heard to grumble that they still don't have any idea what these people look like.
6. Use scenes, not summaries. I don't have much in my notes on this one. Show, don't tell, basically.
Thayer then segued into a discussion on how to write dialogue, which he recommends we do as much as possible. Readers are drawn to it, and their eyes like the broken-up text.
1. Avoid small talk. Everyday social lubricant is not interesting in fiction. Make the reader feel he has arrived after the small talk is over and is leaving before it starts up again.
2. Argument is the best dialogue. Accusations are more interesting than flattery. Bickering is more interesting than billing and cooing.
3. Modifying the word "said." Here Thayer gave the standard advice on avoiding adverbs. I always snarl a bit when this Rule of Writing comes up, because I think that anti-adverb brigade has gone too far. Should you have them after every line of dialogue? Heck, no. Are they occasionally useful? Absolutely. But you tell beginner writers that adverbs are bad, writers who haven't yet learned that the Rules of Writing are like the Pirate Code--more like guidelines--and they become fanatical on the topic. And I've run into one too many critiquer or contest judge who red-pens everything that ends in "ly." Drives me crazy, so it does.
Don't get me wrong. Adverbs can be overused. When I'm editing, I look at every one I've written and cut out probably two out of three. But they're a legitimate specialty item in the writer's toolkit. Use them when they work. Adverb proudly.
4. In dialogue, a character should seldom answer a question directly. I.e. you often don't need "yes" or "no."
5. Avoid As-You-Know dialogue. Characters should never tell each other what they both already know for the benefit of the audience. To this advice, I can only say "amen." Nothing drives me crazier than stilted, unnatural backstory exposition through dialogue. Automatic wallbanger, for me.
6. Avoid "John and Marcia" dialogue. I won't bore you with why it's John and Marcia, but the error here is having characters continually say each other's name. It feels stilted and unnatural.
Thayer then closed with two bonus tips:
1. If your character cries, the reader won't have to. If you give your character a reason to cry and she doesn't, then the reader will cry. It's as if letting the character break down takes away the tension.
2. Eliminate exclamation points. They make your novel read like a teenager's diary.
1. Beginning a scene too early and ending it too late. When editing, look at each scene to see what you can peel away from the front and back. If your scene opens with someone driving, walking, getting out of bed, etc., you're probably starting too early. Don't document preparation.
I'm prone to this error in the rough draft stage, when I pretty much write down whatever comes to mind. But I correct it on editing. Usually. I think.
2. Backstory and flashbacks. Should be avoided. Your characters' pasts are more interesting to you than they are to your readers. We always want to share how the character became who he is, but the reader doesn't care. When backstory is absolutely necessary, keep it in brief segments, never more than a page at a time. Ration it out.
This one I am very guilty of. I envy 19th century authors who could get by with including a biography every time they introduced a character.
3. POV that jumps around. Each scene belongs to the character with the most at stake. Too many POV shifts tend to disengage the reader from the story. Use observation and speculation to show what non-POV characters are thinking.
I'm clear on this one. I wrote my first manuscript in first person, so I learned early to stick in one head no matter how nice it would be to see what the other characters are thinking. Now I enjoy the freedom of third limited to give multiple perspectives, but I have no trouble sticking with one person at a time.
4. Too much interior monologue (aka Thinking). A scene should not be something that happens in a character's head. Thoughts are not as interesting as dialogue and actions. Think cinematically--could this scene be staged?
Guilty, guilty, guilty. I overthink, and I write overthinkers. But I fix on edit, reluctantly and with much grumbling.
5. Failure to describe characters physically. Your reader needs to see the character inside her mind, so give her the tools to do so. The more important the character is, the more detail you should use. And don't forget posture and mannerisms.
This actually contradicts most previous advice I've heard on this topic. And it's a challenge in Invasion because my two main characters are heterosexual men. If one of them lingers too long on the other's blue eyes and lean, wiry strength, well, they suddenly don't seem quite so hetero anymore. That said, one of my critique groups has been heard to grumble that they still don't have any idea what these people look like.
6. Use scenes, not summaries. I don't have much in my notes on this one. Show, don't tell, basically.
Thayer then segued into a discussion on how to write dialogue, which he recommends we do as much as possible. Readers are drawn to it, and their eyes like the broken-up text.
1. Avoid small talk. Everyday social lubricant is not interesting in fiction. Make the reader feel he has arrived after the small talk is over and is leaving before it starts up again.
2. Argument is the best dialogue. Accusations are more interesting than flattery. Bickering is more interesting than billing and cooing.
3. Modifying the word "said." Here Thayer gave the standard advice on avoiding adverbs. I always snarl a bit when this Rule of Writing comes up, because I think that anti-adverb brigade has gone too far. Should you have them after every line of dialogue? Heck, no. Are they occasionally useful? Absolutely. But you tell beginner writers that adverbs are bad, writers who haven't yet learned that the Rules of Writing are like the Pirate Code--more like guidelines--and they become fanatical on the topic. And I've run into one too many critiquer or contest judge who red-pens everything that ends in "ly." Drives me crazy, so it does.
Don't get me wrong. Adverbs can be overused. When I'm editing, I look at every one I've written and cut out probably two out of three. But they're a legitimate specialty item in the writer's toolkit. Use them when they work. Adverb proudly.
4. In dialogue, a character should seldom answer a question directly. I.e. you often don't need "yes" or "no."
5. Avoid As-You-Know dialogue. Characters should never tell each other what they both already know for the benefit of the audience. To this advice, I can only say "amen." Nothing drives me crazier than stilted, unnatural backstory exposition through dialogue. Automatic wallbanger, for me.
6. Avoid "John and Marcia" dialogue. I won't bore you with why it's John and Marcia, but the error here is having characters continually say each other's name. It feels stilted and unnatural.
Thayer then closed with two bonus tips:
1. If your character cries, the reader won't have to. If you give your character a reason to cry and she doesn't, then the reader will cry. It's as if letting the character break down takes away the tension.
2. Eliminate exclamation points. They make your novel read like a teenager's diary.
PNWC: Bob Mayer on How to Pitch
Last weekend I went to the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference here in Seattle. I hadn't planned to attend. In fact, I'd already registered for the Willamette Writers Conference, which is coming up NEXT weekend. But I finaled in the associated literary contest, so I decided to go to enjoy the little perks of being a finalist and to be there in person in case I finished in the top three.
Which, incidentally, was a good decision. My Napoleonic-era alternative history, Invasion 1805, took second in the science fiction & fantasy category. Huge ego boost there, I gotta admit.
Anyway, I'm finally making time to go through my notes, so I thought I'd put them on my blog so others could benefit, too.
My first workshop on Thursday afternoon was with Bob Mayer, the ex-Green Beret military thriller writer who lately has been collaborating with Jenny Crusie. The title was "How to Pitch," a topic which guarantees a packed house at any conference, and this was no exception. I got there five minutes before the start and still had to sit on the floor at the back of the room.
Mayer opened with some general thoughts on marketing your book and navigating the shoals of the publishing industry:
1. TITLES: The only marketing tool you as an author sorta-kinda have control over is your book's title. As such, you want to make sure it invites the reader into the story. Too obscure, too generic, etc. is a bad thing.
2. TIMING: A factor you can't control. Sometimes you've got the right book at the wrong time. This one struck home for me, because I really think the best of my three romance manuscripts, The Sergeant's Lady, is of publishable quality, but just doesn't fit the current market zeitgeist. While all my creative energies are focused on Invasion, there's still a part of me that dreams of TSL getting its moment to shine. Maybe the market will shift. Or maybe I'll get lucky and become so gosh-darn popular that it'll sell just because it has my name on it. A girl can dream.
3. FOCUS: You need to know your goals and focus on them. E.g. at a conference you should filter everything you learn through your goal in publishing.
4. PITCH: Emotion is the key. First you need to hook the editor or agent to the emotional core of the story. If s/he's hooked, s/he'll move on to the next question: "Can I sell it?"
5. WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU'VE FINISHED A BOOK: Let it sit awhile before rewriting and submitting. Publishing is a slow industry, and you are the only one involved who's in a hurry. Start work on your next book even before querying on your first book. Once your book is on the market, it's not your baby anymore--it's a PRODUCT. Your emotional investment belongs to what you're writing NOW. Give up your Type A personality and focus on the most important character traits a writer needs--persistence and patience. Develop a 3-year mindset. It'll take you a year to write a book, a year to sell, and a year in production before the book hits the shelves.
6. THE MARKET: Don't write for the market, but invest in Publishers Lunch and understand the market and how you fit in. Network, network, network. And have a low PIA (Pain in the Ass) Factor. You don't want to lose a deal by being obnoxious.
Then Mayer moved into the meat of his presentation: how to distill the heart of your story down to 25 words or less. Basically, the "elevator pitch"--a quick one-liner designed to answer the question, "So, what's your story about?" and hopefully to hook the hearer and lead to more questions.
Mayer urged us to focus on "The Original Idea." Original here doesn't mean "unique"--he stressed that there are no truly unique ideas left--but rather "at the origin." You're to ask yourself, "What was it that made me write this book?" You'd think this would be obvious, but we often forget, and it's often where you find the emotional core that will resonate with readers.
Here Mayer digressed a bit to talk about character and its centrality to marketable, memorable fiction. What makes your book different from every similar book is character. You need to look at your protagonist's arc. If you put your protagonist as he is in his first scene into the climax of the book, he should lose, because he needs to grow over the course of the book to meet the challenge you throw at him in the climax.
Then he went back to more issues to consider in putting together your pitch:
- You want to lead with the most interesting aspect of your book.
- What's the payoff?
- What's your intent? What do you want readers to feel about your book?
- What's your protagonist's anomaly? What makes him or her unique?
- In general, less is more.
- Be wary of author comparisons. The invite the response of "No, you're not."
All through the second half of the talk, I was furiously scribbling away at my one-line pitch, because Mayer announced that at the end, he'd read out pitches from the audience and comment upon them. My Original Idea was maybe not as helpful as most people's would be, because Invasion started as a mental exercise to see if I could find a way to get the Napoleonic Wars onto English soil. (Why I engaged in such an exercise is a long story, and one I'd like to save for if/when the book sells.) After about eight attempts, I finally turned in "In a world where Napoleon conquers England in 1805, Arthur Wellesley (our world's Duke of Wellington) becomes a renegade resistance leader."
As luck would have it, mine was the very first pitch Mayer read aloud. He said it intrigued him, as someone who likes history and alternative histories. It's just a premise--we don't really know what's at stake, i.e. why we should care or root for England. A world where France conquered England 200 years ago might actually be BETTER, who knows. But he thought it was a good hook, a good premise that should lead to more questions. Oh, and he told me I needed to cut "Arthur Wellesley" and just say "our world's Duke of Wellington," because that's what my hearers will actually recognize, and there's no need to clutter the pitch with extra words. Good point. I should've known better, but I'm constitutionally incapable of calling my protagonist "Wellington" prior to 1809, because it wasn't his name yet. I nitpick, therefore I am. I am pedant, hear me pontificate. Also, I've come to think of the real man as Wellington and my interpretation thereof as Wellesley. Makes it simpler when talking to my critique partners, and frees me, somehow, to plunge into his head and play as I take him on a very different journey than the real Wellington ever experienced.
So. That's my one-line pitch, and I have to say it was effective as I tried it out on various people I met during the weekend. I have to work on a longer two-minute pitch and a query letter, but it's not urgent, since I'm still a few chapters shy of a completed first draft. It never occurred to me that anyone would question the "rooting for England" aspect of the story. As far as I'm concerned, I'm squarely in the Hornblower/Sharpe/Aubrey-Maturin tradition. Rooting for England is just what we do. It's a valid question, though, and I do play with issues of what freedom really means and what is worth fighting for.
Which, incidentally, was a good decision. My Napoleonic-era alternative history, Invasion 1805, took second in the science fiction & fantasy category. Huge ego boost there, I gotta admit.
Anyway, I'm finally making time to go through my notes, so I thought I'd put them on my blog so others could benefit, too.
My first workshop on Thursday afternoon was with Bob Mayer, the ex-Green Beret military thriller writer who lately has been collaborating with Jenny Crusie. The title was "How to Pitch," a topic which guarantees a packed house at any conference, and this was no exception. I got there five minutes before the start and still had to sit on the floor at the back of the room.
Mayer opened with some general thoughts on marketing your book and navigating the shoals of the publishing industry:
1. TITLES: The only marketing tool you as an author sorta-kinda have control over is your book's title. As such, you want to make sure it invites the reader into the story. Too obscure, too generic, etc. is a bad thing.
2. TIMING: A factor you can't control. Sometimes you've got the right book at the wrong time. This one struck home for me, because I really think the best of my three romance manuscripts, The Sergeant's Lady, is of publishable quality, but just doesn't fit the current market zeitgeist. While all my creative energies are focused on Invasion, there's still a part of me that dreams of TSL getting its moment to shine. Maybe the market will shift. Or maybe I'll get lucky and become so gosh-darn popular that it'll sell just because it has my name on it. A girl can dream.
3. FOCUS: You need to know your goals and focus on them. E.g. at a conference you should filter everything you learn through your goal in publishing.
4. PITCH: Emotion is the key. First you need to hook the editor or agent to the emotional core of the story. If s/he's hooked, s/he'll move on to the next question: "Can I sell it?"
5. WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU'VE FINISHED A BOOK: Let it sit awhile before rewriting and submitting. Publishing is a slow industry, and you are the only one involved who's in a hurry. Start work on your next book even before querying on your first book. Once your book is on the market, it's not your baby anymore--it's a PRODUCT. Your emotional investment belongs to what you're writing NOW. Give up your Type A personality and focus on the most important character traits a writer needs--persistence and patience. Develop a 3-year mindset. It'll take you a year to write a book, a year to sell, and a year in production before the book hits the shelves.
6. THE MARKET: Don't write for the market, but invest in Publishers Lunch and understand the market and how you fit in. Network, network, network. And have a low PIA (Pain in the Ass) Factor. You don't want to lose a deal by being obnoxious.
Then Mayer moved into the meat of his presentation: how to distill the heart of your story down to 25 words or less. Basically, the "elevator pitch"--a quick one-liner designed to answer the question, "So, what's your story about?" and hopefully to hook the hearer and lead to more questions.
Mayer urged us to focus on "The Original Idea." Original here doesn't mean "unique"--he stressed that there are no truly unique ideas left--but rather "at the origin." You're to ask yourself, "What was it that made me write this book?" You'd think this would be obvious, but we often forget, and it's often where you find the emotional core that will resonate with readers.
Here Mayer digressed a bit to talk about character and its centrality to marketable, memorable fiction. What makes your book different from every similar book is character. You need to look at your protagonist's arc. If you put your protagonist as he is in his first scene into the climax of the book, he should lose, because he needs to grow over the course of the book to meet the challenge you throw at him in the climax.
Then he went back to more issues to consider in putting together your pitch:
- You want to lead with the most interesting aspect of your book.
- What's the payoff?
- What's your intent? What do you want readers to feel about your book?
- What's your protagonist's anomaly? What makes him or her unique?
- In general, less is more.
- Be wary of author comparisons. The invite the response of "No, you're not."
All through the second half of the talk, I was furiously scribbling away at my one-line pitch, because Mayer announced that at the end, he'd read out pitches from the audience and comment upon them. My Original Idea was maybe not as helpful as most people's would be, because Invasion started as a mental exercise to see if I could find a way to get the Napoleonic Wars onto English soil. (Why I engaged in such an exercise is a long story, and one I'd like to save for if/when the book sells.) After about eight attempts, I finally turned in "In a world where Napoleon conquers England in 1805, Arthur Wellesley (our world's Duke of Wellington) becomes a renegade resistance leader."
As luck would have it, mine was the very first pitch Mayer read aloud. He said it intrigued him, as someone who likes history and alternative histories. It's just a premise--we don't really know what's at stake, i.e. why we should care or root for England. A world where France conquered England 200 years ago might actually be BETTER, who knows. But he thought it was a good hook, a good premise that should lead to more questions. Oh, and he told me I needed to cut "Arthur Wellesley" and just say "our world's Duke of Wellington," because that's what my hearers will actually recognize, and there's no need to clutter the pitch with extra words. Good point. I should've known better, but I'm constitutionally incapable of calling my protagonist "Wellington" prior to 1809, because it wasn't his name yet. I nitpick, therefore I am. I am pedant, hear me pontificate. Also, I've come to think of the real man as Wellington and my interpretation thereof as Wellesley. Makes it simpler when talking to my critique partners, and frees me, somehow, to plunge into his head and play as I take him on a very different journey than the real Wellington ever experienced.
So. That's my one-line pitch, and I have to say it was effective as I tried it out on various people I met during the weekend. I have to work on a longer two-minute pitch and a query letter, but it's not urgent, since I'm still a few chapters shy of a completed first draft. It never occurred to me that anyone would question the "rooting for England" aspect of the story. As far as I'm concerned, I'm squarely in the Hornblower/Sharpe/Aubrey-Maturin tradition. Rooting for England is just what we do. It's a valid question, though, and I do play with issues of what freedom really means and what is worth fighting for.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Final Conference Update
Today was the last day of the conference--just breakfast and two workshop slots. I went to Debut Authors Talk Publication and Writing Sex Scenes: How Much is Too Much? with Jade Lee (romance), Chris Humphreys (military swashbucklers), Diana Gabaldon (unclassifiable), and, uh, one other person whose name I can't recall. Humphreys was a good sport about being the only guy, and much hilarity was had by all, though the general agreement was that love scenes must serve the plot and that sex is dialogue by other means. Also, Lee stressed that in romance you need to make sure you keep the conflict high (whether between the lovers or through the external plot) immediately following a love scene, lest readers feel like everything is resolved by the couple's passion and love and there's no reason to keep reading.
I feel pretty good about the conference overall. It didn't blow me away the way the Surrey conference did last fall, but maybe that was too much to expect. I think Surrey is an unusually intensive conference, designed for fairly advanced writers. Also, the longer I do this, the less likely I am to be surprised by a workshop at a writers conference. But I think I made some good contacts--not new best friends or anything, but authors I can contact if need be and say, "You may not remember me, but we talked about X at the HNS Conference in Albany." And it was a good refresher in many areas. One thing that stands out is how confident the two big names, Bernard Cornwell and Diana Gabaldon, both are, albeit in different ways reflecting each one's personality. And I'm sure that to a large degree that confidence is born of their success. But when you hear them tell their stories of how they got published, you feel like at least half of it was there from the very beginning. They believed in their stories and in their ability to tell them, and look where they are now. Sure, they're talented writers who had very good ideas, but you could say the same of many authors who aren't a fraction as well-known and well-published.
Most of the time, I'm plenty confident about my writing. The past few months I've gone through a doubting, tentative phase, and I want to move beyond that. Because I'm a damn good storyteller with a fine voice, too, and someday the world will know it. I'm too stubborn to give up before I've proven it.
I feel pretty good about the conference overall. It didn't blow me away the way the Surrey conference did last fall, but maybe that was too much to expect. I think Surrey is an unusually intensive conference, designed for fairly advanced writers. Also, the longer I do this, the less likely I am to be surprised by a workshop at a writers conference. But I think I made some good contacts--not new best friends or anything, but authors I can contact if need be and say, "You may not remember me, but we talked about X at the HNS Conference in Albany." And it was a good refresher in many areas. One thing that stands out is how confident the two big names, Bernard Cornwell and Diana Gabaldon, both are, albeit in different ways reflecting each one's personality. And I'm sure that to a large degree that confidence is born of their success. But when you hear them tell their stories of how they got published, you feel like at least half of it was there from the very beginning. They believed in their stories and in their ability to tell them, and look where they are now. Sure, they're talented writers who had very good ideas, but you could say the same of many authors who aren't a fraction as well-known and well-published.
Most of the time, I'm plenty confident about my writing. The past few months I've gone through a doubting, tentative phase, and I want to move beyond that. Because I'm a damn good storyteller with a fine voice, too, and someday the world will know it. I'm too stubborn to give up before I've proven it.
Saturday, June 9, 2007
Conference update #3
Tonight's dinner and Diana Gabaldon's keynote speech were excellent, though the ballroom where the meals are served has the worst acoustics for conversation of any I've ever been in. The way sound echoes in there, you can barely converse with your neighbor, much less have any kind of general conversation at your table. That sounds like a petty complaint, but it really does limit your ability to make new friends or network, since a lot of that happens over meals.
The thing I found inspiring about Gabaldon's story is that she wrote Outlander before she'd ever been to Scotland. So many authors today stressed the importance of visiting the sites you write about, walking the battlefields, and so on. And believe me, I would if I could. But given my current finances and responsibilities, a weekend like this is enough of a splurge. I can't take off and spend a month in Europe scouting sites. And while I know Gabaldon's work isn't perfectly accurate, she did prove that it's possible to write a richly detailed, compelling story WITHOUT having personally walked the ground. And I needed to hear that tonight.
The thing I found inspiring about Gabaldon's story is that she wrote Outlander before she'd ever been to Scotland. So many authors today stressed the importance of visiting the sites you write about, walking the battlefields, and so on. And believe me, I would if I could. But given my current finances and responsibilities, a weekend like this is enough of a splurge. I can't take off and spend a month in Europe scouting sites. And while I know Gabaldon's work isn't perfectly accurate, she did prove that it's possible to write a richly detailed, compelling story WITHOUT having personally walked the ground. And I needed to hear that tonight.
Conference update #2
Today was the busy day at the conference, with a full day of workshops. Right now I'm taking an introvert break before going down for dinner and the historical talent revue, with keynote speech by Diana Gabaldon.
As is usual at these events, the day was a mixed bag. I attended an entertaining workshop on how an author recreates a famous battle, the author in question being C.C. Humphreys, who IMHO bears a striking resemblance to Christopher Eccleston. He read some excerpts from his novel Jack Absolute by way of example, and I was one of many at the workshop who rushed straight to the conference bookshop to buy it. I got the last copy, in fact. If the book lives up to the promise of the scenes he read aloud, I may have found where to get my Age of Flintlock fix once I run out of Sharpes. At least briefly. Humphreys has only written three in the series thus far.
Next came a state-of-the-market workshop, always a slightly depressing event unless you happen to be writing EXACTLY what the market currently adores, which for now is fictionalized biographies of famous women. I think it's wise to know the market, because it can help you package your work for editors and agents--for example, while my alternate history isn't a fictionalized biography of a notable woman, it does have well-known figures ("marquee names," as the agent giving the workshop put it) as major characters, and you better believe I'll tailor my pitch and synopsis for it accordingly.
But in the end, what are you going to do if you're 3/4 of the way through a manuscript on, say, Genghis Khan, and some agent or editor says it's a terrible, unmarketable idea? Go home, give up, and delete the file? Or what if you ARE writing what's hot, but you're me and have a full-time job, a husband, and a 3-year-old and can only write so fast, and you hear that the market for your idea is nearing its peak and likely to start fading soon? Quit the job that pays your bills and alienate the husband and daughter you love just so you can write 80 pages a week instead of 15 and strike while the iron is hot? In the end, you've got to do as Bernard Cornwell recommended at his workshop--write what you want to read. Otherwise it's not worth it.
I spent the afternoon in military history land, between Cornwell's workshop and a Q&A panel, and thanks to Cornwell's generosity, I probably have a lead on the most vexing research question I've encountered thus far in planning my alternate history. And now I need to change for dinner and go fake extroversion again.
As is usual at these events, the day was a mixed bag. I attended an entertaining workshop on how an author recreates a famous battle, the author in question being C.C. Humphreys, who IMHO bears a striking resemblance to Christopher Eccleston. He read some excerpts from his novel Jack Absolute by way of example, and I was one of many at the workshop who rushed straight to the conference bookshop to buy it. I got the last copy, in fact. If the book lives up to the promise of the scenes he read aloud, I may have found where to get my Age of Flintlock fix once I run out of Sharpes. At least briefly. Humphreys has only written three in the series thus far.
Next came a state-of-the-market workshop, always a slightly depressing event unless you happen to be writing EXACTLY what the market currently adores, which for now is fictionalized biographies of famous women. I think it's wise to know the market, because it can help you package your work for editors and agents--for example, while my alternate history isn't a fictionalized biography of a notable woman, it does have well-known figures ("marquee names," as the agent giving the workshop put it) as major characters, and you better believe I'll tailor my pitch and synopsis for it accordingly.
But in the end, what are you going to do if you're 3/4 of the way through a manuscript on, say, Genghis Khan, and some agent or editor says it's a terrible, unmarketable idea? Go home, give up, and delete the file? Or what if you ARE writing what's hot, but you're me and have a full-time job, a husband, and a 3-year-old and can only write so fast, and you hear that the market for your idea is nearing its peak and likely to start fading soon? Quit the job that pays your bills and alienate the husband and daughter you love just so you can write 80 pages a week instead of 15 and strike while the iron is hot? In the end, you've got to do as Bernard Cornwell recommended at his workshop--write what you want to read. Otherwise it's not worth it.
I spent the afternoon in military history land, between Cornwell's workshop and a Q&A panel, and thanks to Cornwell's generosity, I probably have a lead on the most vexing research question I've encountered thus far in planning my alternate history. And now I need to change for dinner and go fake extroversion again.
Friday, June 8, 2007
Conference update #1
Back in my hotel room after 1st evening of conference. No workshops tonight, just welcome banquet with Bernard Cornwell as keynote speaker. The organizers had a history quiz with books as prizes before his speech, and believe it or not I won on one of the local interest upstate New York questions. I read the Little House books into tatters as a child, so I knew Almanzo's hometown (Malone, NY).
Afterward I met Michele Young from the Beau Monde group in the bar, but we didn't stay terribly long because the band was so loud we could hardly hear ourselves think, much less talk. It would've been just right for playing a large wedding in a spacious auditorium, but it was obnoxious in a small bar. BACKGROUND music, people. Background.
Tomorrow, workshops, including the 11:00 a.m. session where I wish I could attend all four of them: Americans Writing English Settings, Putting the Who in Whodunit: Historical Forensics, Fictionalizing the Already Famous, and Finding the Story in History. Must clone self overnight.
Afterward I met Michele Young from the Beau Monde group in the bar, but we didn't stay terribly long because the band was so loud we could hardly hear ourselves think, much less talk. It would've been just right for playing a large wedding in a spacious auditorium, but it was obnoxious in a small bar. BACKGROUND music, people. Background.
Tomorrow, workshops, including the 11:00 a.m. session where I wish I could attend all four of them: Americans Writing English Settings, Putting the Who in Whodunit: Historical Forensics, Fictionalizing the Already Famous, and Finding the Story in History. Must clone self overnight.
Greetings from Albany
I'm in Albany, NY for the Historical Novel Society's biennial North American conference. I'll try to post some conference updates and highlights after it starts tonight, but so far I've learned three important lessons:
1. Don't fly through Chicago in the summer if you can help it.
2. Don't fly two airlines on a codeshare unless it's the only way to get to your destination. It only confuses the lost baggage people.
3. If you must do 1 & 2, whatever you do, DON'T switch onto an earlier flight out of your origin city upon seeing all flights to Chicago are badly delayed, in hopes of making your connection because it's the last flight to your destination city that day. You may rejoice at first when you successfully get your body and your carryon to your destination on time, but when your checked bag turns up missing, the change in your itinerary will confuse the lost baggage people into paralysis.
My bag and I were finally reunited about an hour and a half ago (I got in at 9:30 last night), so I have my good clothes and such for the conference. But the process was much more stressful than it should've been thanks to terrible customer service. As Stephen Colbert would put it, American Airlines, you are Dead to Me.
1. Don't fly through Chicago in the summer if you can help it.
2. Don't fly two airlines on a codeshare unless it's the only way to get to your destination. It only confuses the lost baggage people.
3. If you must do 1 & 2, whatever you do, DON'T switch onto an earlier flight out of your origin city upon seeing all flights to Chicago are badly delayed, in hopes of making your connection because it's the last flight to your destination city that day. You may rejoice at first when you successfully get your body and your carryon to your destination on time, but when your checked bag turns up missing, the change in your itinerary will confuse the lost baggage people into paralysis.
My bag and I were finally reunited about an hour and a half ago (I got in at 9:30 last night), so I have my good clothes and such for the conference. But the process was much more stressful than it should've been thanks to terrible customer service. As Stephen Colbert would put it, American Airlines, you are Dead to Me.
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