Writability

On the Romanticization of Writers

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Frequently, around the interwebs, I see quotes that are meant to be inspirational for writers about how writers can’t do anything but write. Or how the true test of the writer is not not being able to write.

There are also really flowery quotes about how wonderful writing is, and then you see media portrayals of the struggling—but brilliant!—writer who becomes a bestseller, and then you hear about a teen getting a publishing contract for about a bajillion dollars and the whole writing thing can sound like a pretty sweet deal.

These writers, man. They’re special. They feed on words and bathe in advances. They are living the dream.

And I mean, some of us are, I suppose. Some days I kind of am. But sometimes the dream staring at the screen for hours when you’re supposed to be writing and not actually writing a word, or looking at a mountain of revision notes and panicking about how you’ll ever manage it, or realizing you’re going to need way more than one book deal to even think about supporting yourself off your author wages, or not being able to write for months and starting to wonder if you’re really a writer after all. If you’ve lost your magic.

The truth is, I don’t like romanticizing the process because it doesn’t do anyone justice. Because if we pretend those hard days, weeks, months, years, even, didn’t happen then suddenly a writer’s success isn’t perceived as earned—it starts to look like it’s been given. Because if we pretend writing is something that comes naturally and can’t not be done then on the days where the writing is really hard, you might start to wonder if you’re really a writer at all.

I’m not into pretending writing is always amazing, and wonderful, and rainbows, and sugar. I’m not into ignoring the days where the writing is tough and I’m not sure what I’m doing and the pressure feels like almost too much. I’m not into overlooking the days where I’m exhausted from school but still have manuscripts to edit or vlogs to post or blog posts to write.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my pub jobs and I’m so grateful to be working in a field that I love. But I think being transparent about the realities of the publishing and writing life is important, both to encourage each other and to get through the not-so sunny days.

What do you think? Do you tire of the romanticization of writers?

Twitter-sized bites:

Writer @Ava_Jae says, "I’m not into pretending writing is always amazing..." What do you think? (Click to tweet)

On the romanticization of writers, and why one writer is tired of it. (Click to tweet)

Fixing the First Page Feature #11

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It's time for the eleventh fixing the first page critique! Yay! As always, I'll start by posting the full first 250 excerpt, after which I'll share my overall thoughts, then my redline critique. I encourage you guys to share your own thoughts and critiques in the comments (I'm just one person with one opinion!), as long as it's polite, thoughtful, and constructive. Any rude or mean comments will be unceremoniously deleted.

Okay! Here we go.

Title: SPINSTER BRIDE

Genre/Category: YA Fantasy

First 250:

"I break the red seal engraved with a tree stump crest, unfold the stiff white paper, and squint at the contoured penmanship. The letter I received last week from the de Paula Barony communicated the death of my aunt’s husband and her impending arrival. I don’t hold much hope this message will relay better tidings.

Dear Baron de Souza,

It is with great pleasure that I invite you and your family to celebrate the wedding of my granddaughter Sophia de Paula to Lord Gavin Gwynn. The reception will be held at the riverside fortress of the de Paula Barony on the sixth day of the coming week.

Accommodations can be made for your party at the premises, and please forward my invitations to your baronets.

I hope this letter finds you in good health.

Looking forward to seeing you next week,

Baroness de Paula

I glance at the stack of letters on the large wooden desk then at the messenger who delivered them. His unruffled peasant garb is wrinkled from his day on the saddle.

'The others are for Father’s baronets?' I bite my tongue. My baronets.

He nods. 'Do I take back a reply?'

'Let Baroness de Paula know I’ll be attending with a small escort.' The other invitations I hand to Father’s Master of the Fields who is standing by my chair. I feel like I’m playing in Father’s dressing room, waiting for him to catch me in clothes too big for me. 'I’ll make sure these are delivered.'"

Okay, so, initial thoughts. I pretty immediately noticed two major things: first, the I double-checked the category because the voice does not sound YA to me (it sounds much more like adult), and second, I suspect this opening is starting too early.

On the first point, even for YA Fantasy which sometimes has slightly elevated language, the writing sounded too formal to me for YA (see phrases like "contoured penmanship," "communicated," "impending arrival," "I don't hold much hope" and "relay better tidings"). On their own, phrases like that could hypothetically work in YA without sounding too old, but all together in the first three sentences gives the impression written for an older audience, IMO.

On the second point, this, to me, just isn't an arresting enough opening. We don't know enough about the protagonist to really care what the letter says, and we don't know enough about what's going on to understand the significance of some likes like "My baronets." Furthermore, there isn't really any hint of conflict here—the protagonist is invited to a wedding and she agrees to go.

I'm wondering if it would be better to open when she arrives at the wedding (or just before/when conflict begins to happen at the wedding, which I presume is where the conflict begins). Either way, I think the solution here is to open closer to the inciting incident, whatever that may be, though of course I'm just guessing here based off the first 250. But on its own, this does not feel like a strong enough opening to me.

Now the in-line notes.

"I break the red seal engraved with a tree stump crest, unfold the stiff white paper, and squint at the contoured penmanship. The letter I received last week from the de Paula Barony communicated the death of my aunt’s husband and her impending arrival. I don’t hold much hope this message will relay better tidings. I already mentioned my thoughts about this first paragraph. As a whole, the writing is just fine and I like the details, but the language is a little wordy and in my opinion feels too formal for YA, even YA Fantasy.

Dear Baron de Souza,

It is with great pleasure that I invite you and your family to celebrate the wedding of my granddaughter Sophia de Paula to Lord Gavin Gwynn. The reception will be held at the riverside fortress of the de Paula Barony on the sixth day of the coming week.

Accommodations can be made for your party at the premises, and please forward my invitations to your baronets.

I hope this letter finds you in good health.

Looking forward to seeing you next week,

Baroness de Paula

Do we need to know every word of the letter? It seems to me like a pretty standard invitation and I find that it's slowing down the pacing in the opening. If you choose not to cut this scene entirely, you may want to consider cutting the letter and just making it clear that it's an invitation to a wedding. (An example where telling might actually work better than showing.)

I glance at the stack of letters on the large wooden desk then at the messenger who delivered them. His unruffled peasant garb is wrinkled from his day on the saddle. I have two problems with "peasant garb." First, it's not very descriptive and I'm not entirely sure what it means. What is "peasant garb" to the protagonist? Second, it makes the protagonist sound super snooty. I understand that she's from a high status family, but calling someone's clothes "peasant garb" makes me not like her very much.

'The others are for Father’s baronets?' I bite my tongue. My baronets. As stated above, I don't understand the significance of this line. Why does she bite her tongue? Why does this bother her?

He nods. 'Do I take back a reply?'

'Let Baroness de Paula know I’ll be attending with a small escort.' The other invitations I hand to Father’s Master of the Fields who is standing by my chair. I feel like I’m playing in Father’s dressing room, waiting for him to catch me in clothes too big for me. This is nice. I like that we see some of her insecurity here. It makes me a little more sympathetic toward her. 'I’ll make sure these are delivered.'"

On a writing level, I think this is actually written well (which is why I don't have many notes on the writing itself), just...not necessarily for YA as I mentioned above. I think in order for this to really read like YA we need to streamline some sentences and remove some of the more formal (and wordy) phrases. The idea is to write the way today's audience might imagine a teen would speak whenever this takes place—if she doesn't sound like a teen to the reader (not necessarily the way a teen would actually speak then), no amount of authenticity is going to matter.

Some good examples of YA Fantasy voices that do this include the TV show Reign (which say what you like about its lack of historical accuracy, does a good job capturing a YA (TV) voice in a historical setting) and the Graceling Realm series by Kristin Cashore.

With a re-worked opening closer to the inciting incident and with a hint of conflict, I think this could be really interesting. But unfortunately as is, if I saw it in the slush, I would probably pass.

I hope this helps! Thanks for sharing your first 250, Patchi!

Would you like to be featured in a Fixing the First Page Feature? Keep an eye out for the next giveaway!

Twitter-sized bite:

.@Ava_Jae talks starting in the right place & historical YA voices in the 11th Fixing the 1st Page critique. (Click to tweet)

Vlog: How to Write When You Don't Want To

Confession: sometimes writers don't feel like writing. But here are some ways to work through the slump.

RELATED LINKS:

Have you ever experienced this slump? What did you do to get through it?

Twitter-sized bite:

Don't feel like writing but know you should? @Ava_Jae vlogs about breaking through the "don't want to write" slump. (Click to tweet)

How to Turn an Idea into a Plot

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Note: Quick announcement! The winner of the Trish Doller prize package is Victoria Gender! Woot! Congratulations, Victoria! Now onto the post...

So it was brought to my attention that I’ve written frighteningly little on brainstorming and my brainstorming process, and I suspect that’s probably because my process is fairly nebulous and can vary depending on the book.

That said, I’m going to try to explain the best I can anyway.

So you have some kind of idea. Maybe it’s just a character, or a single scene, or a vague compilation of images. For me, it almost always starts with a character (though Beyond the Red was a notable exception), usually the protagonist. But regardless of where you idea begins, when all you have is a fragment, it can seem kind of impossible to turn it into a whole book.

The very first thing I do when I have an idea fragment I want to explore is make a bulleted list. This list will include anything and everything I think of related to the idea: What If? scenarios, other characters, potential sources of conflict, possible scene ideas, setting notes, genre/category notes, themes I’m interested in exploring, etc. In this stage, I don’t filter at all—the idea is to just get as much down as possible.

Usually, by the time I get to the bottom of the list, I’ve started to get a feel for the potential book. That’s when I go back and start to weed things out by starring bullets I really like. Once I’ve got my main bullets marked out, potential plot ideas start (slowly) forming in my mind.

The very first plot point I tend to nail down is the inciting incident. Occasionally another random plot point will surface before the inciting incident, but once I have the inciting incident down, that’s when I open up Scrivener and start a new project.

Note that at this point, starting a new Scrivener project does not guarantee the book is going to be written. Or even fully plotted for that matter. All it means is I like where this idea is going enough that I want to explore it further. There’s no pressure whatsoever in this stage—I’m just testing the fragments I have to see if I can expand and weave it together into a potential book plot.

I’ve mentioned before that I am a plotter, and this is where the plotting really begins. I go straight to Scrivener’s cork board, write down the inciting incident and any other scene ideas I already have…then stare at it and try to push it further. I like to start from the inciting incident and think, okay, what could happen next? Some questions I frequently ask myself in this stage include:

What happens next?
How can I make this worse?
What if x happened?

While I do this, I try to keep the main points in mind. Generally the first couple points I want down are the big plot points (Inciting Incident, Point of No Return, Rising Action, Dark Night of the Soul, Climax, Falling Action, Ending) but it doesn’t always work out that way. The ending, especially, I often don’t figure out until I’ve plotted most of the book.

From there, there’s a lot of back and forth. I jump around between flash cards and add new scene ideas wherever I can think of them, writing a sentence to a paragraph on each card to describe the scene/plot point. I delete scenes, rewrite them and move them around until the plot makes sense and fits the way I want it to. Once I’ve hit roughly somewhere between 30-50 flash cards (depending on how long I sense the book will probably be) and I can’t think of anything else to add and it all flows together in a way that makes sense, I know I’m ready to start first drafting.

And maybe when I’m first drafting I’ll fall in love with the characters and the ideas and write the whole book. Or maybe I won’t. But either way, if the idea makes it to the end of the plotting stage (not all ideas do), then I know at the very least it’s worth experimenting with with some words.

How do you turn an idea into a plot?

Twitter-sized bite:

How do you expand a book idea into a whole plot? Writer @Ava_Jae explains her process. (Click to tweet)

Fixing the First Page Giveaway Winner #11!

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Quick off-schedule post today to announce the winner of the eleventh fixing the first page feature giveaway! Are you ready?

The winner is…

PATRICIA MOUSSATCHE

Yay! Congratulations, Patricia! Expect an e-mail from me very soon.

Thank you to all you lovely entrants! If you didn't win, as always, there will be another fixing the first page giveaway next month, so keep an eye out! :)

4th Blogoversary Giveaway Winners!

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Wow! So thank you all so much for entering—the response was pretty amazing and your excitement made me pretty darn excited. :) I'll have to do something like this again in the future.

There are a lot of winners, so here we go!

Query critique from Michelle Hoen: Kelly DeVos
Query critique from Megan Easley-Walsh (five winners!): Elizabeth Flynn, Patricia Moussatche, Sussu Leclerc, Roxanne Lambie & Amelinda Berube
Partial submission package critique (query, synopsis & first three chapters) from Cait Spivey: Don King
Partial submission package critique (query, synopsis & first three chapters) from Phil Stamper: Sydney Paige Richardson
First twenty pages critique from Liz Furl: Cassandra Catalano Newbould
Query plus first twenty-five pages critique from K.T. Hanna: Dea Poirer
Query plus first twenty-five pages critique from me: Samantha Harris
First fifty pages critique from Nicole Tone: Chelly Pike
First fifty pages critique from Jackson Eflin: Laurel Decher
Query plus first fifty pages critique from Anya Kagan: Saratu Buhari
Full MS critique from Jami Nord: Jodi Vorwald
Full MS critique from Kisa Whipkey: AurorA Dimitre
Proposal plus full MS critique from Nicole Frail: Mary Liles Eicher

That’s it! Thanks again to all who entered—and to those who see their names here, you should be receiving an e-mail very shortly (if it’s not already in your inboxes!). Keep an eye out today. :)

Finally, if you don't see your name here, don't despair! You can still win a first 250 critique to be featured on the blog (giveaway closes today!) and a Trish Doller book package that includes Something Like Normal, Where the Stars Still Shine and an ARC of The Devil You Know, (which also closes today)!

Thanks to all who entered, and good luck!

UPDATE: The super generous Megan Easley-Walsh has offered a 10% discount code for any Writability readers that booked any service from ExtraInkEdits.com by June 1st. (Discount code: EIE2015FE) Yay!

“But The Book Gets Better!”

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Occasionally I’ll get questions from writers who are worried about their WIP because they’re aware of an issue in the beginning of their novel—whether it’s slow pacing, a ton of exposition, a protagonist who isn’t initially compelling, etc. Oftentimes, when I get questions like these the concern is that their book gets better, but readers might not stick around to see it improve.

The truth is they should be worried.

In terms of publishing, there are tons of manuscripts that are submitted to agents and editors every day. Way too many to even think about one person reading the entire submission every time—way too many to read more than a brief sample until one decides whether or not they’re interested. There's literally not enough time to read everything being submitted from cover to cover.

In terms of self-publishing (or books that do get published), there are tons of books being published every day. Way too many to even think about one person reading (let alone buying) every book published even in a single day—way too many to read more than the back cover copy and maybe a quick sample until one decides whether or not they’re interested. There's literally not enough time to read everything being published from cover to cover.

This is why first pages are so darn important. This is way getting your opening right and not wasting a single sentence is crucial. This is why compelling for one reason or another, is not optional.

It’s also why “the book gets better” is never going to cut it.

As of this moment, I have 362 books on my Goodreads TBR shelf. I add more constantly. And I’ll probably start removing books I added years ago that I’m no longer dying to read. Because the truth is, I literally don’t have the time to read them all—and that’s without adding to the list like I frequently do.

If I start sampling a book on my list and the opening doesn’t grab me, it’s getting removed from the list. Period. There are too many books out there that I would really enjoy for me to waste time on a book that I don’t find interesting. And if I’m being entirely honest, and I hear from readers that the book gets better…well, to be honest, it’s too bad. Why should I slog through an opening I’m not enjoying if I could read (and spend money on) something I’d love from page one? The truth is, unless there’s an external reason for me to read the book (i.e.: assigned for class, book research, etc.) I won’t.

This doesn’t change for submissions. When my boss sends me something to look at, I’m honest with him if the opening doesn’t grab me. On the other side of the desk, the publishing industry is not a place for sugar-coating—we have to be honest with ourselves as editors and assistants and interns and readers about whether or not we really think a submission could be successful. And if the answer is “maybe,” well, maybe usually isn’t good enough. Maybe might get you an R&R but it’s not going to get you a “yes.”

You, the author, will not be there to tell that agent, or editor, or reader your book gets better. And even if other readers are there to say it, quite frankly, it’s not going to be good enough for every reader. Some might stick it out, maybe, if they hear really raving reviews from friends. But many won’t. Many just don’t have the time.

I’ve heard people say online that some agents and editors look at submissions looking for a reason to say no. And while I can’t speak for everyone, I can say this: do you want to give anyone a reason to put your book down, even temporarily?

I know I don’t. And I suspect you don’t either.

What do you think? Would you stick it out for a book that “gets better”?

Twitter-sized bites:

"You, the author, will not be there to tell that agent, or editor, or reader your book gets better." (Click to tweet)

Writer @Ava_Jae says "the book gets better" isn't enough. What do you think? (Click to tweet)