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[shalanna]

Y'all gotta go read the three parts of this conference talk by Cheryl Klein (editor at Scholastic), “The Rules of Engagement: How to Get (and Keep!) A Reader Involved in Your Novel.”

The way I read her, she confirms some of my own beliefs.

She also gets to analyze the Harry Potter books. After all, she works on them (or so I gather)!

Comments

[coneycat.livejournal.com]

I just started reading her dissection of how the first Potter book sucks you in, and by golly she nails it. Great eye!

And okay--I read the "how to lose a reader" installment much more closely than the "how to keep one." I often find "this doesn't work and here's why" examples easier to take onboard than examples of how someone does it right.

Very useful stuff!

[shalanna.livejournal.com]

I do, too. But I like to see the "here, this was done well" stuff because it inspires me. We aspire to greatness. Reach for the stars, and you'll probably disturb the squirrels who live in the live oaks . . . mind those acorns. *grin*

[coneycat.livejournal.com]

I guess I find that I can recognize flaws in my own writing when someone holds up a piece with the same flaws. I have certain writers and books I go to for inspiration (and a few that just depress the crap out of me, frankly!) but the good examples I tend to just enjoy. The bad ones--well, I shiver in terror and then run off to make sure I'm not doing the same thing!

Of course, I should also read the first part and see whether I'm maybe just sticking to old patterns or something.

[shalanna.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear. She *does*, doesn't she? When I was reading part three, my brain must've auto-corrected. A privet is a hedge; we have a privet hedge between us and the back neighbor. A toilet is called a privy. I suppose it's one of those thinko/typos. Yikes!

And it's funny that I auto-corrected it as I read. That comes of reading so many critique group/workshop manuscripts that tend to have stuff like that--I just circle it as I auto-correct and read on, because I can't afford to bog down in it if I'm to get through ten submissions of ten pages each. Ack! I haven't been to that particular group in a while, though, because that's very tiring to do, and tough to do justice to the pages in the couple of hours I have to devote.

What do you think--should I e-mail her to tell her to fix that bit, or would that make her angry because someone noticed it . . . I always like to go correct things like that, but some people shoot the messenger. *cringe*

It's kind of disheartening that so many of the people In Charge I meet or read make these kinds of mistakes, and somewhat often, in my experience. My reasoning is that everybody makes mistakes, though, and I wouldn't dismiss her other thoughts just based on the vocabulary error (though it's kind of mind-boggling--we'd LOVE to be editors and we like to believe we wouldn't do that if we got the chance, but it happens.) I *did* once go crazy upon reading a book that purported to analyze Hopkins's "God's Grandeur" based on a misreading of the poem that included the wrong WORD in a particular line, though, and went over to rant at our librarian, who agreed that someone should have caught that. *grin*

I also suspect that many of the people now In Charge are a lot younger than we are . . . er, at least younger than I am. This might mean that their teachers were not so concerned with having them learn to look up words whenever there was any doubt or whenever it was really important not to be embarrassed. (grin) My teachers were Old School. I swear we ALL believed that Mrs. Jolly had actually lived through the attack on the Alamo, and that Mr. Handy (who could sing all the verses of "Texas, Our Texas" and name any of the Presidents when you called out the number, not just Lincoln the sixteenth and Washington the first) really had gone to school in a log cabin with the aforementioned President Lincoln. But we also believed that we needed to be scholarly and like them (or at least I did), so we went to the dictionary anytime we encountered words that we might have gotten wrong. They also taught that if you encounter an unfamiliar word while reading, you surmise the meaning from the context and read on, then go back to check the dictionary and see whether you got the correct meaning--sort of as a test for yourself. Anytime I see somebody making a note of a word while reading, I think that Mr. Handy must've had a hand (groan) in that. When you do that while reading, I think, you get a better sense of the connotations of the word than you would if you just looked it up. But that could just be me.

Anyhow, I wouldn't discount her other thoughts just because of that, embarrassing as it is (especially if she is giving this talk in public, and no one has corrected this mistake as yet--ook!) I thought that some of her info was pretty useful. Take what you think is good and ignore the rest. It was nice of her to post it, I thought.

[shalanna.livejournal.com]

Looks as if LJ ate the comment I was just replying to. I didn't delete it, honest.

The writer of the comment simply pointed out that in section three of the website we were discussing, the editor said "privet" meant what "privy" means in British slang. The commenter also said that he/she couldn't therefore trust the other stuff the writer says.

We are not "privy to" what the writer was thinking, so we can't say where the mistake came in, but I think I *will* leave the website lady some mail or a comment about maybe removing that from her talk. No need to make a big deal out of it, but hey, why not tell her to change that. I'd want to be told.