Why didn't I get that memo?
Nov. 16th, 2004 07:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shalannaFirst, the neat discovery.
There's a really neat thread (from Feb. of this year) about Writing Commercial Fiction over on James D. Macdonald's SFFnet site. It's almost a hundred pages long, and most of the later posts seem to be from people asking him questions. But the first few pages have some interesting information about the way he works.
"Your readers are subconsciously constructing a world under your direction. If your blueprint doesn't make the unseen parts line up, the reader will disbelieve."
"[L]et me natter on a bit about Positional Chess Plotting. What this means, to me, is that when I start a book I have a general idea of what I'd like to do with it (checkmate the other guy!), but I'm vague on the exact path that'll take me to that goal. I know how I want the book to end, yet all the steps in between the start of chapter one and "The End" are as much a mystery to me as they are to my characters. The major characters are the pieces. The minor characters are the pawns.
"I do know some things -- the size of the area I'm working in (be it a single room in a single night, or half a galaxy over a span of a millennium) -- and the characters I'll be playing with. From experience, I know that it's best to get the characters out early, moving. That they need to control the whole of the game board.
"I know, from experience, where each kind of character is strongest. I try to put him there. It may not be obvious at the time why I'm moving a character to some location, but I know if he's there he can be active and control part of the story. I know to place my characters so that they guard and support each other. Then, later, when plot starts to twist, my characters are where they need to be. It's almost magical. This is how I arrive at the state where the book writes itself. Then, as the story drives forward, suddenly the exact way in which I'll arrive at the conclusion becomes apparent, and it will be both surprising (because it's only now been revealed to the characters as it was only now revealed to the author) and at the same time inevitable, the "right" conclusion, since the characters had been heading to the places they needed to be since they were introduced."
Again, a very left-brained approach. (But not NEARLY as Mr. Spock as Mr. Prather's notebook-of-plotting method was!) Chess as an analogy. It's still quite different from what I usually do to get a novel started, seat-of-the-pants, wingin' it with trust that I won't go too close to the sun and fall in . . . but my way also works. I'm just peering into other heads (Being John Malkovich-style, but WITH permission and guided by the authors!) to see other ways of constructing the tribal lays.
That's *James D. Macdonald. Not John D. the noir mystery guy, but the SF/F writer who teaches at Viable Paradise.*
Learn Writing With Uncle Jim
I must have missed an important memo here.
It has come to my attention (ahem) that F&SF ran a column all about POD books and what sucky trash most of them are. The columnist, Robert K. J. Killheffer (and I'm just spelling that from memory), does find one that he likes and one that he feels could be saved. However, I would have liked to be able to send him my novel. It doesn't *have* cover art to make fun of, thank goodness.
And he would NOT be able to bash my prose with complete alacrity. Sure, I could go back and polish the book again now if I wanted to waste precious writing time (as I'm doing now by posting to the LJ, hmm)--I've learned and grown and matured further since 1987, when Dulcinea was the first runner-up in the Warner Aspect contest and I got the kind letter from editor Betsy Mitchell. ("Sorry you weren't THE winner, but we liked your story." This does not sound like the type of response you'd get if you sent in stuff that didn't have coherent prose or a workable story.)
But I can't rewrite the same book over and over with no hope of getting it published by (say) Tor or Baen or DAW, just on a hope that they might look at it someday. I am working on other projects and have given up on the idea of a young adult (or whatever it is) fantasy series because that turf has been claimed. Perhaps someday I'll find turf that hasn't been so thoroughly claimed and saturated. (Sounds like a dog wee-weed on it.) Still . . . it'd have been nice to get a heads-up from this guy. I'm still willing to send a free copy of the book (although it will cost me $20 to do so . . . I have to order the books and pay for them and then mail them to people, etc.) to any reviewer or critic who'd like to do his or her worst. The "worst" that could happen is that he or she will actually give helpful suggestions or find interesting criticisms to hit me with; if I don't agree that these would improve the book, I'm not any worse off than I was before hearing them. (I always hear that I should delete the first three chapters and start with what some people feel is the "action" of the plot, but that's not what the story is ABOUT. The story is ABOUT Dulcinea's world suddenly opening up to be larger than her previously sheltered life. That's like Miranda's epiphany in Shakespeare's Tempest. The action plot is a secondary plotline to the character change plot line in which all three main characters have an arc with major changes . . . it's not the "real" plot in itself. But you don't see that unless you twig to the subtext and the romantic thoughts that she's having which cloud her vision so she doesn't realize she's being a little fool . . . you can't really blame her, for she's a naive sixteen. But I digress.) What I'm saying is that even if I'd gotten stomped in the way that some of those writers were, it'd be better than sitting around here in obscurity. I don't think he could support the contention that I don't know what I'm doing, although he might say "delete the first three chapters" if he (like most guys) doesn't twig to the subtext or the "real" story about Dulcinea's liberation of the mind. But heck, go ahead and swing at me. Until somebody does, I'm not even in the match.
Read the review/discussion of the week Robert K. was a POD reader at http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/depts/rk0307.htm.
I *DID* hear back from another of the professionals (you know, the writers I won critiques from.) Karen Harbaugh, a multi-published Regency romance and mainstream fiction author, has told me that she doesn't really think my book is ChickLit, that she feels it's more of a mainstream or women's fiction novel, and that it could really be big and take off. After getting over that blow to the solar plexus, I wrote back to ask her for suggestions. She needs to know which way I want to take the book, for it's not fitting well into the ChickLit mold. I spent some time raving about how I had chosen a popular genre because IT MIGHT ACTUALLY SELL, but she's convinced that the Book of the Heart is worthwhile. I'd like to still believe that ("Isn't it pretty to think so"*). But I see all these first-time authors who get their ChickLit stuff put on best-seller lists, and they gush, "Wow, and I just sat down to dash off a little story, and I've been really lucky to sell the first thing I wrote to RDI/Downtown Press, and got the first agent I contacted, and we're just sooo happpppeeeee." (Spare me, please.) And of course I have stopped telling people that I write, because all it leads to is comments like, "Well, you must be the most TERRIBLE writer ever born, because if you can't do any better than the trash that's getting published NOW, God, it must be HEINOUSLY AWFUL." There really is no proper reply to this.
Anyway, we'll see. Maybe I can manage to figure something out without wasting too much of her time. I already told a couple of other writers who gave me feedback earlier that I'd pay it forward (e.g., help other writers once I had gotten established) . . . but right now, there's not any "capital" in my credibility account.
I could teach 'em to bitch, moan, piss, and whine, I suppose. But most of them already know how! (*GRIN*)
I believe I'm stuck writing whatever-this-is. At least *I* am enjoying it. Still praying fervently about that mystery, but I'm losing heart; I suppose that whoever they've anointed has already gotten the confetti in the mail, and eventually they'll get around to sending out the rejection notices. It's kind of sad, really--the mystery/suspense market is said by some agents to be shrinking after a long run (no, not "ruin" as I originally typoed), and so it may be too late for my characters. They're sisters (the sister I never had plus the sister I never was) and they get off some funny dialogue and into some neat situations. And it's as good as . . . never mind, we've been all over that. Ten miles of bad road in the rain.
"In the end, you write the book that grabs you by the throat and demands to be written."--Salman Rushdie
"*strangled noises*"--Shalanna
* Yep, that's the same quotation I challenged people to identify in an earlier entry. It's the final line of one of the books up for the title of Great American Novel. Any guesses?
There's a really neat thread (from Feb. of this year) about Writing Commercial Fiction over on James D. Macdonald's SFFnet site. It's almost a hundred pages long, and most of the later posts seem to be from people asking him questions. But the first few pages have some interesting information about the way he works.
"Your readers are subconsciously constructing a world under your direction. If your blueprint doesn't make the unseen parts line up, the reader will disbelieve."
"[L]et me natter on a bit about Positional Chess Plotting. What this means, to me, is that when I start a book I have a general idea of what I'd like to do with it (checkmate the other guy!), but I'm vague on the exact path that'll take me to that goal. I know how I want the book to end, yet all the steps in between the start of chapter one and "The End" are as much a mystery to me as they are to my characters. The major characters are the pieces. The minor characters are the pawns.
"I do know some things -- the size of the area I'm working in (be it a single room in a single night, or half a galaxy over a span of a millennium) -- and the characters I'll be playing with. From experience, I know that it's best to get the characters out early, moving. That they need to control the whole of the game board.
"I know, from experience, where each kind of character is strongest. I try to put him there. It may not be obvious at the time why I'm moving a character to some location, but I know if he's there he can be active and control part of the story. I know to place my characters so that they guard and support each other. Then, later, when plot starts to twist, my characters are where they need to be. It's almost magical. This is how I arrive at the state where the book writes itself. Then, as the story drives forward, suddenly the exact way in which I'll arrive at the conclusion becomes apparent, and it will be both surprising (because it's only now been revealed to the characters as it was only now revealed to the author) and at the same time inevitable, the "right" conclusion, since the characters had been heading to the places they needed to be since they were introduced."
Again, a very left-brained approach. (But not NEARLY as Mr. Spock as Mr. Prather's notebook-of-plotting method was!) Chess as an analogy. It's still quite different from what I usually do to get a novel started, seat-of-the-pants, wingin' it with trust that I won't go too close to the sun and fall in . . . but my way also works. I'm just peering into other heads (Being John Malkovich-style, but WITH permission and guided by the authors!) to see other ways of constructing the tribal lays.
That's *James D. Macdonald. Not John D. the noir mystery guy, but the SF/F writer who teaches at Viable Paradise.*
Learn Writing With Uncle Jim
I must have missed an important memo here.
It has come to my attention (ahem) that F&SF ran a column all about POD books and what sucky trash most of them are. The columnist, Robert K. J. Killheffer (and I'm just spelling that from memory), does find one that he likes and one that he feels could be saved. However, I would have liked to be able to send him my novel. It doesn't *have* cover art to make fun of, thank goodness.
And he would NOT be able to bash my prose with complete alacrity. Sure, I could go back and polish the book again now if I wanted to waste precious writing time (as I'm doing now by posting to the LJ, hmm)--I've learned and grown and matured further since 1987, when Dulcinea was the first runner-up in the Warner Aspect contest and I got the kind letter from editor Betsy Mitchell. ("Sorry you weren't THE winner, but we liked your story." This does not sound like the type of response you'd get if you sent in stuff that didn't have coherent prose or a workable story.)
But I can't rewrite the same book over and over with no hope of getting it published by (say) Tor or Baen or DAW, just on a hope that they might look at it someday. I am working on other projects and have given up on the idea of a young adult (or whatever it is) fantasy series because that turf has been claimed. Perhaps someday I'll find turf that hasn't been so thoroughly claimed and saturated. (Sounds like a dog wee-weed on it.) Still . . . it'd have been nice to get a heads-up from this guy. I'm still willing to send a free copy of the book (although it will cost me $20 to do so . . . I have to order the books and pay for them and then mail them to people, etc.) to any reviewer or critic who'd like to do his or her worst. The "worst" that could happen is that he or she will actually give helpful suggestions or find interesting criticisms to hit me with; if I don't agree that these would improve the book, I'm not any worse off than I was before hearing them. (I always hear that I should delete the first three chapters and start with what some people feel is the "action" of the plot, but that's not what the story is ABOUT. The story is ABOUT Dulcinea's world suddenly opening up to be larger than her previously sheltered life. That's like Miranda's epiphany in Shakespeare's Tempest. The action plot is a secondary plotline to the character change plot line in which all three main characters have an arc with major changes . . . it's not the "real" plot in itself. But you don't see that unless you twig to the subtext and the romantic thoughts that she's having which cloud her vision so she doesn't realize she's being a little fool . . . you can't really blame her, for she's a naive sixteen. But I digress.) What I'm saying is that even if I'd gotten stomped in the way that some of those writers were, it'd be better than sitting around here in obscurity. I don't think he could support the contention that I don't know what I'm doing, although he might say "delete the first three chapters" if he (like most guys) doesn't twig to the subtext or the "real" story about Dulcinea's liberation of the mind. But heck, go ahead and swing at me. Until somebody does, I'm not even in the match.
Read the review/discussion of the week Robert K. was a POD reader at http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/depts/rk0307.htm.
I *DID* hear back from another of the professionals (you know, the writers I won critiques from.) Karen Harbaugh, a multi-published Regency romance and mainstream fiction author, has told me that she doesn't really think my book is ChickLit, that she feels it's more of a mainstream or women's fiction novel, and that it could really be big and take off. After getting over that blow to the solar plexus, I wrote back to ask her for suggestions. She needs to know which way I want to take the book, for it's not fitting well into the ChickLit mold. I spent some time raving about how I had chosen a popular genre because IT MIGHT ACTUALLY SELL, but she's convinced that the Book of the Heart is worthwhile. I'd like to still believe that ("Isn't it pretty to think so"*). But I see all these first-time authors who get their ChickLit stuff put on best-seller lists, and they gush, "Wow, and I just sat down to dash off a little story, and I've been really lucky to sell the first thing I wrote to RDI/Downtown Press, and got the first agent I contacted, and we're just sooo happpppeeeee." (Spare me, please.) And of course I have stopped telling people that I write, because all it leads to is comments like, "Well, you must be the most TERRIBLE writer ever born, because if you can't do any better than the trash that's getting published NOW, God, it must be HEINOUSLY AWFUL." There really is no proper reply to this.
Anyway, we'll see. Maybe I can manage to figure something out without wasting too much of her time. I already told a couple of other writers who gave me feedback earlier that I'd pay it forward (e.g., help other writers once I had gotten established) . . . but right now, there's not any "capital" in my credibility account.
I could teach 'em to bitch, moan, piss, and whine, I suppose. But most of them already know how! (*GRIN*)
I believe I'm stuck writing whatever-this-is. At least *I* am enjoying it. Still praying fervently about that mystery, but I'm losing heart; I suppose that whoever they've anointed has already gotten the confetti in the mail, and eventually they'll get around to sending out the rejection notices. It's kind of sad, really--the mystery/suspense market is said by some agents to be shrinking after a long run (no, not "ruin" as I originally typoed), and so it may be too late for my characters. They're sisters (the sister I never had plus the sister I never was) and they get off some funny dialogue and into some neat situations. And it's as good as . . . never mind, we've been all over that. Ten miles of bad road in the rain.
"In the end, you write the book that grabs you by the throat and demands to be written."--Salman Rushdie
"*strangled noises*"--Shalanna
* Yep, that's the same quotation I challenged people to identify in an earlier entry. It's the final line of one of the books up for the title of Great American Novel. Any guesses?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-11-16 06:31 pm (UTC)One minor correction: It's Jim Macdonald (James D. Macdonald)--small d
Macdonald . . . check
Date: 2004-11-18 12:43 am (UTC)I guess I assumed that it was always capitalized like that . . .but then I remembered the Maclaurin series (in calculus).
no subject
Date: 2004-11-16 06:31 pm (UTC)Anywho, she's a very down-to-earth person, and trust me, if she tells you something, it's not pie-in-the-sky. She's a neat lady, and worth listening to. Her first book, "A Special Licence", was taken out of the slush pile--so it can work. :)
that is SO neat. And so is KEH!
Date: 2004-11-18 12:48 am (UTC)It is really nice of her to be talking to me. I have not been able to formulate what I want to ask/say . . . so I'll work on that tomorrow before e-mailing her. It sure did make me feel more positive, though, to hear that she thought this could BE something. Especially after that disastrously depressing Tarot reading with all those turn-ups of the 3 of swords (the picture is a heart stabbed through with three swords and the nickname is "sorrow," which gives you an idea how scary that is) and the six of pentacles a number of times (which isn't as scary, but weird). The question, of course, was "will I sell a book in the coming year?" Ha!!
Re: that is SO neat. And so is KEH!
Date: 2004-11-18 04:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-11-16 09:42 pm (UTC)I mean it. I'm not a writer. I'm a reader, and an editor (not professionally any longer, though). And I always thought that putting books in little cubbies was the worst thing that could happen to them.
Because then this is what you get. "Literature" separate from "young adult" separate from "fantasy" separate from "science fiction" separate from "romance" separate from "ChickLit" separate from "Action" and so on -- and readers choosing their little box and not venturing beyond it.
I'd rather read a book with integrity -- internally consistent, interestingly written, with characters I can care about and laugh with and cry for -- any time. And let the editors worry about which boxes to sell it in.
But I admit, I'm not the zeitgeist, and it has far more disposable income than I do :-)
Keep bashing on the doors, and sooner or later one of them will open. We'll be there cheering when one does.
Thanks for the support!
Date: 2004-11-18 12:51 am (UTC)Kurt Vonnegut seems to be SF if you look at his work a certain way, and "Field of Dreams" (the film) seems to be fantasy if you really look at the story. Yet those are "mainstream." It's all kind of loony.
Thanks for the words of support and encouragement. I'm not always as much of a downer as I may appear to be in the rear-view of the LJ posts. . . .
And the last line of which novel. . . .
Date: 2004-11-18 12:54 am (UTC)"Isn't it pretty to think so" is the final line of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, when Jake finally realizes that Miss Brett is just a tease and the two of them have no romantic future together. It's a comment on self-delusion, illusions, and the shattering thereof.