First Drafts are Difficult Little Toddlers... Writing Craft Rules According to Meg

Recently I did some crit work for friend. As part of that, I found myself finding similar errors repeated and rather than bleed all over her wonderful work, I compiled a list of what I've learned and placed in my writer's tool box.

Rules are meant to be broken, however as Ms. Amy Boggs recently discussed, "Know them before you break them, and know why you decided to break them."

Here are my rules for discussion or to have you add your own. These are the ones that lend themselves well to lists. As to character development, plot development, tension, climaxes etc--I yield to JB's writing postings.

First drafts are difficult little toddlers… Writing Craft Rules According to Meg

Stolen from too many sources to remember.

*Avoid word repetition & action repetition (see how irritating the 'repetition' is? And yep, I did it again.)
*Seek out the simple verb: I ‘needed to hurry’ vs. I ‘hurried’.
*Seek out white space—whenever possible. Many times you ‘report’ through exposition what is said, when the actual dialog might be the better choice. This rule comes from too many sources to name. Mark Nieson lays out his pages on the floor, stands on a chair, and takes a look at the physical black and white on the pages, Darcy Patterson (sp) recommends the shrunken manuscript, i.e. literally shrink your manuscript to 20% or less and look at the black and white on your printed pages. Myself, I like easy and am occasionally OCD, I highlighted dialog one color, exposition another, and then I shrank it on the monitor. I mean WOW! Too much one color—get busy! You double click on the culprit and fix it, then shrink it down and move to the next. Shrinking gives you tons of pages on your monitor to see at once.
*Seek Out the long sentence. 90%, or what feels like 90%, of revision is tighten, tighten, tighten. One trick that I learned was to look for them. (Yes, I highlighted them and researched where and why I used them. I even shrunk the manuscript to see their positioning. Then I reviewed the best novels I had on hand to see how they used them. Meg Roskoff uses the most beautiful long sentences to end her chapters.
Long sentences can be beautiful and elegant; they can be the signature of an excellent writer.<--yes, I love this sentence that I wrote. (I took a long sentence Univ. of IA Great Courses class on the subject.) My take in YA, use long sentences as a contrast for emphasis, not as routine practice. In YA, use them when you can truly construct that beautiful, perfect, well-written sentence, but don’t lie to yourself about the quality. Edit 90% of long sentences to the core reason for it to have been written.
*’ly’ adverbs-never use them. (Yet, remember, there are no nevers in writing!  ) Learned from Brett Anthony Johnston, Harvard-creative writing & also Browne & King, Self-editing for Fiction Writers –As Brett said, when you use ‘ly’ adverbs, you haven’t found the right verb.
*Avoid re-capping at the end of a paragraph. Either you wrote it well the first time, making the re-cap un-nesessary, or you didn’t. Trust your writing. Trust your reader. Then keep your main character from re-capping inside the paragraph or in dialog.
*Pimp the senses--all the time. Use them to further plot, character and to set the scene. I took a workshop at Univ. of IA with Mark Nieson and spent an entire year exploring ‘how to write with senses’. Time well spent.
*Know when you write tension, and then don’t stomp on it with extemporaneous exposition—simply nail it. Yeah, this one is actually mine, probably borrowed from my debater coach daughter. I’m defining tension as applicable to romance, to action, and to high emotion packed scenes.
*Every chapter, every paragraph, every sentence, and every word has to earn its place in your writing. Better yet, scenes must earn that right for two, three, even better four or more reasons that further your plot/character. If they don’t cut them. This is an old and tried rule. Even elegant exposition is only good if it is there for a reason. Literally ask, ‘how does this sentence meet the goal of this scene?’ And ask it for every sentence. If it doesn’t, then you have to pull it or edit it to do so. Or with your historical information that you wish to impart, you must tie it to furthering the plot.
*’my mother’, ‘my father’, ‘my parents’ In 1st POV you are inside your character’s mind; your character will say, “Mother.” You might have an historical conscious decision to do this. If so, be aware that editors see it as a ‘beginners’ error. Jill Santopolo, author, editor, goddess.
*Use the most active verb possible to ‘brighten’ your writing. ‘I heard’, ‘I felt’, ‘I saw’, ‘I helped’ are reporting verbs, not ‘showing’ verbs. Use instead the direct, simple verb that follows. Never use 'seemed'. It either is or it isn't. Don't play word games without a reason.
Example: “I heard the sound of horses.” You are telling the reader what they are supposed to hear rather than showing me the sound. Alternative: “Horse hooves clopped—one, two, three, four and then one scrapped off rhythm like it had stumbled, struggling as it climbed.” See the strength of my poor example? You get the idea though.
*Be conscious of your beats. Uhm, I can’t really explain this one. This is my rule, but it is similar to what was taught in the long sentence Great Course. It’s something you know when you read it. Here is an example of great beat use in your work (with one minor edit on my part).
“Off to my left was the men’s dressing room where I never went. (5 beats) Off to my right was the women’s dressing room where I went twice a day. (6 beats) In front of me was the Earl’s bedroom where I was never to go. (7 beats after I edited)” And it’s in the classic story telling three sequence! Simply delicious! Well done!
*Kill all modifiers. Browne & King. (remember, rules are made to be broken) ‘most’ ‘still’ ‘just’ ‘only’ ‘almost’ 'always' weaken your writing.
*Search ‘I’ and when you see several in a scene, rewrite until the majority disappear. Scott Tremble’s comment, ‘Your character is full of herself.’ Ouch, hurt and learn.
*Seek out and judge your chapter endings. These are crucial and I think they terrify editors, because every ending is a spot the reader will possibly put down the book—and they may not return! Make sure they are special in some intimate way so the reader is ‘involved’ with your character.
*Book and Chapter beginnings: Dialog best. Action next. Dialog and action together is outstanding! Sorry, I can’t remember who gave these to me. I think it was an author panel at MiHi that included Connie Willis, Patricia Briggs, Tim Powers, among others.
*Protagonists must protag! Protagonists must be reactive and then proactive to their circumstances. Make your main character react! Writing without that reaction is reported, not emotionally rich. Sharelle Byars Moranville – children’s author, NBA nominee, but I think she stole it from another author/teacher at U of I.  That was the title of the other author’s class. See my scary, scary bones note later. (She referenced the instructor.)
*Use metaphors. They are your friend—just don’t mix them.
*Go for the jugular. When you are in touch with your character’s internal feelings, dig deeper and get more out of them. This is my rule.
*Look for the beauty in your writing, and then emphasize it through conscious artful decisions from your writer’s craft toolbox.
*English editing uses ‘s’ on toward, forward, backward, etc. American editing doesn’t use the ‘s’. Jill Santopolo, author, editor at Philomel, instructor.
*Do not personify body parts. Anj Sachdava, but it’s an olden goldie.
*’ing’ verbs are weaker than ‘ed’ verbs. Always chose the strongest verb. Chris White

Ouch, Hurt and Learn - a Writer's Journey

Ouch:
My mentor, teacher, editor-extraordinaire, industry goddess—a person whom I admire and trust returned her opinion of Isis. Her offer to read my manuscript was a dream come true and I knew that I could count on her honesty.

Hurt:
I’ve heard of an author who takes her edits straight from the mail and puts them into the freezer section of her refrigerator. The desire to put some coldness between my writer’s burning soul and the hard, frozen truth of the professional (mine & my mentor’s) is understandable. It’s what happens next that defines the writer. I am a professional. I will not only open my arms to the advice, but I will feel it fully, absorb the pain, and learn from it.

Three areas to concentrate on:

More tension, (my readers just groaned-as they already feel like they’ve been through an incredible roller coaster ride of tension—keep reading) especially in the beginning.
Dialogue wasn’t feeling realistic to me.
I had trouble feeling Eve’s emotions.

Learn:
Tension, I can fix. The good news is that I found this myself coming back from DFWWW; the bad news is that I found it too late and may have squandered my ‘free manuscript review’ as a result. I even highlighted the problem in those first fifty pages while bouncing through air turbulence. To find the letter on my desk, simply confirmed my worst fears.

Dialog, I can fix. Perhaps this was more a style difficulty. My dialog also might include too much information, better explained elsewhere or cut. That I can do. Or it might be more underlying than that.

Reader was unable to feel my main character’s emotions; the nail in the coffin for me and something I thought I fixed. Certainly other readers hadn't mentioned this or I didn't recognize what they were saying. Back to the writer’s tool chest and time to be brutally honest. Splat. Wall. Blood, guts and brain matter. Have I squandered two valuable opportunities as a result? Is the true strength of my first pages in this regard strong enough to carry over the weaker mid-section of my first fifty? I hope so, especially when that other opportunity was with an agent in my top five--to be honest, she is in all five slots of my top ten. Once done, there are rarely second chances in this industry...

In either case, it’s back to classes and intensive reading of current fiction work that draws the reader in close. Finding the right instructor, the right instruction book, the right course to help me pick apart successful manuscripts that do this and learn to apply it well is essential.

Learning the right tools to improve this is now my top priority. I can’t be content with what I have presently and this valuable feedback will drive me to a new level of competency.

Ouch, hurt and learn--I can do that.


Another thank you to all of the people who read my manuscript, gave me such excellent advice, and continue to support my efforts in this journey.

"Unless It Moves the Human Heart..."

Notes I took tonight from the PBS interview with Roger Rosenblatt on his book, "Unless It Moves the Human Heart: the Craft and Art of Writing." I've admired his work for years, but I didn't know he was such a wonderful teacher. I look forward to reading the work in full as soon as possible.

"There is no clock attached to becoming a writer." Thank you, Roger Rosenblatt!

“Write to make suffering endurable, evil intelligible, justice desirable, and love possible.”

What should a writer strive for? "Anticipation rather than surprise, imagination rather than invention, … and write with precision and restraint."

Why do you do it? "To make the world better, to be useful."

Finally, "If a critic says you meant something, take the credit, even if you didn’t."

My full apologies to Roger Rosenblatt and PBS for errors in grammar and misquotes.

http://www.amazon.com/Unless-Moves-Human-Heart-Writing/dp/0061965618/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1296524707&sr=1-1

Tagline Contest

UPDATE: Tagline has been re-worked as shown... Probably will change many, many more times!

Magi magic manifests through trial; the greater the magic within, the greater the trial, and Eve is going to manifest a shitload of magic, or die trying. To find her parents and save the world, she races across Rome trailing ritual murders by finding and deciphering clues in order to stop a ghoul, straight out of Lucan’s epic poem. All to clean up a mess made by Isis, her mentor—a mess that has already sent two samaneri to their deaths.



Deep in editing for that final printing to send off to an editor, I missed the great Miss Snark's First Victim's tagline contest. Completely inexcusable since she actually ran three submission times. Inexcusable, but you do learn as much by reading, writings crits, and reading the posted crits as you get posting! It's an invaluable resource I visit often.

Then to my surprise, someone else opened up same type of feed back on their site. Okay, missed three and MSFV has this fabulous opportunity coming up shortly--so to miss the 4th would be completely stupid. Therefore, for your editing pleasure here is my tagline for my manuscript.

Title: Star of Isis
Genre: high concept YA magic realism
Word Count: 60,533

Fifteen-yr-old Eve arrives in Rome to find her parents missing. To save her parents and defeat a ghoul straight from Lucan's epic poem, Eve must discover her magi powers and decipher clues while trailing a series of ritual murders. She explores real history, visits authentic exotic locations, and converses with historical figures-both real and from religious mythology.

Please comment away. ANYTHING you can do to make this stand out and say, "Represent me!" would be greatly appreciated!

What is the fuss? #queryfail

Recent Miss Snark's First Victim blog asked for opinions on agents and interns (remember an intern is under the supervision of an agent) who quote from queries as a learning tool on twitter. This could be an invaluable tool for writers. Apparently, there have been some authors who have taken objection to the practice.

I am not a follower of the tweet catagory mentioned in the blog, but here is my initial take on this. For any agent who is offended by my comments, my apologies, but I assume you have the same sense of humor as the prospective client is to have when they find their query commented on in a public forum... Seriously guys on both sides! Lighten up!

Yet...

"Personally, I couldn't care less, but on a professional level--perhaps. An agent has no responsibility to an unsigned author, yet there is a level of privacy assumed in the query process. For example, I doubt any of us would deny that sharing a premise, a plot line, a character quirk that the agent thought was clever would be 'all right'.

Here is the possible problem on a professional level. First, the new practice of not replying to queries places another layer of anonymity and distance between agent and prospective client. In that environment, imagine the possible anger when author sees their query picked apart publicly later? And remember, prospective authors are often following the agent in question. Tweetdom is public, blogs are public, forums are public--agents are not without responsibility when in the public eye.

Agents are professionals. Professionals do not use their knowledge or expertise to snark or ridicule others. The agent should have replied courteously with the obvious error and then could have asked to share on a blog or tweet or whatever without naming names etc. Then it would have been a true learning experience for all, without the vague possibility of harming another.

Signed Ann Landers... or maybe Pollyanna in the heartland. :-) "

The Writer's Craft and Scotch Whiskey

Is it a surprise to anyone that I am a classic Type A personality? Yes, the upholstered chair at my desk frays along the front, not the back. When I focus on a client, it’s intense, eyes in compassion, but still intense. I don’t meander; I storm. My actions reflect layers of quickly reasoned thoughts, not tending to linger on the single thought in great depth.

I don’t write short stories, but for assignments at the Univ. of IA summer program, I am forced into its tightly knit form. I learn a great deal as I organize my thoughts, reach for the concepts and writer craft skills I have and I’m learning. They give me a chance to see what I’ve accomplished on a few pages. One such work, I’m cultivating, revising, and eying for my annual contender for the Zoetrope: All-Short Story Contest. I do this without any thought or hope of recognition, but more of a final school exam, a statement of my growth.

This year, two writing projects intersected and gave me pause. One a nonsense, fun piece for an acquaintance about reviews and scotch whiskey—okay, you had to be there… The other was this short story, Eden.

After Eden’s time in the corner, in the drawer in writer's vernacular--that recommended writer’s rest and pause, this time rather than picking it up, attacking it with vigor, and devouring it, I read it through the eyes of that master brewer, deep in his caves, testing his kegs in the cold, bitter winter time, imagining the spring. The deep draw of breath from each glass, the first virgin taste on one, the middle-aged ripeness on another, and then heavenly, fully aged flavor of the cream—aged ten, fifteen, more years. Reminiscing on the smoky flavor, the subtle blend, the gentle timeless aging in a keg traveled with me into my revision of Eden—an incident unprecedented.

Being type A, these moments do not settle easily around me, but when they do, when I find that peace, when I find that time for being in the moment—it is a delicious and wondrous time, and the work does well for it.

The Value of Taking the Side Path...

Over and over a writer hears that taking a side path, a branch off from the planned route can add, add, add to our work, even as the writer worries about the time it takes to travel them. Yes, I've been down three side paths since last I posted.

1. I took some serious time to do 'writing craft' research on 'plot climax' from as many sources as I had on hand and available through the internet. As a result, I came to understand that my climax was actually a couple chapters prior to where I thought it was. Okay, you're scratching your head going, 'how the f****** hell can Meg not know where the blasted plot climax is after all that time!?!" Turns out, I have one climax that births another that follows immediately after that one. The first is a physical plot climax followed by a final massive mental/emotional climax puzzle to figure out. I'd erroneously figured that the mental section was the massive plot climax...

Decided after research that I had to make the physical climax even more satisfying for the reader and make it the top of my upside down plot chart. Then the mental section is an odd twist that extends that height, or might even be considered to slip down and then get pushed over the top again before resolving the book.

That might seem minor, but it put a whole new spin on how much I had to put into the physical plot climax scene...

Then 2. I've been listening to a "Great Sentence" MFA lecture series from a retired Univ of IA professor. It's a complicated, but fascinating class on sentence structures from cumulative sentences, suspensive sentences, etc. From that reading, I ripped apart Carrie Vaughn's short story from Dark and Stormy Knights to critique when and where she used them in her work to heighten tension, build suspense, etc and also a Meg Rosoff book for the same detail. Both use cumulative sentences in different but fascinating ways.

Both research side roads have paid off in huge dividends when I look at the overall effectiveness of my WiP.

3. An assignment on 'order', not flashback, but conscious reveal of back-story in book real time woven into the work has made three beautiful counterpoints of jeweled nuggets that simply make the emotion zing off the pages. Thank you, BK Loren and the Univ of IA writer's festival!