Santa came late and dropped off a critique from a REAL editor!

[shalanna]

Now Hear This: The elephant trumpeted as advertised!

This morning around eleven, my computer scooped up an e-mail message from one of the Intrepid Editors I've been pursuing. (I won a critique from this editor in one of the eBay auctions mentioned in an earlier entry.) Alas, I had left the house at 10:45 to go pick up a check (we were supposed to have gotten this "end of year bonus" LAST year, so I scurried over to get that dude and cash it before the SOBs ran out of money with which to pay the bonuses) and then had an appointment at two, so I didn't see it until almost 4 PM.

My success in getting a reply is due in part to the efforts of eBay auction organizer and talented author Alesia Holliday, one of the famous Literary Chicks. She e-mailed this editor asking whether the critique had been done. The editor thought this had been taken care of last December and was apologetic.

It looks as if the editor actually got on the ball when (s)he first got my e-mail yesterday. I wrote to the editor before I thought of writing to Alesia, the fund's organizer. On the other hand, my e-mail could have gone into the junk folder, and she may have prodded the editor into action! (I'm not saying whether Intrepid Editor is a male or female. I will note that it's an acquiring editor at a major New York publishing house starting with "D." Let's just call him/her IE.) She'd told me that if she couldn't verify that IE could still do it, she'd ask the editor who actually acquires chick lit for that house. Wow! While I'm happy that the original plan worked out, in one sense I'm kind of sorry that I didn't get to hear from the editor who actually buys the chick lit. *sniffle*

So you've been skimming down until I get to the good part.

What good news? Well, IE says (and I take this as REALLY GOOD stuff, unless y'all think it might just be "being nice"): "Your pages are difficult to critique, because they are above average in many ways. Most notably I applaud your voice, which is honed, engaging and rings true. Some of your descriptions were two-timers (where I re-read the sentence because I like it so much) and you made me laugh out loud several times. However--and there's always a however, I guess; otherwise this email would be a deal offer--there's an unfocused quality to these early pages."

Eeeee! Just kill me now . . . a deal offer, missed by THAT much (as Don Adams would say.)

IE goes on to describe the exact problem that I thought I'd fixed after Melissa Senate's critique--that the reader still doesn't realize that the book is about her attempts to "get that hex off" that she has accidentally put on herself. (It's actually about her character arc, her journey from someone who blames everything else, including bad luck, for the downward spiral she is in, instead of taking personal responsibility and going and DOING things about it all.) It appeared to this editor that it was just a wandering narrative that followed a few things that this chatty Cathy happened to be doing that day. IE didn't see a relationship between the scenes, even though each one had a mini-disaster and referred to her rotten luck and how she was trying to change her luck with little rituals and lucky breaks. IE couldn't see how this was going to tie together.

So now I'm trying to figure out the magic word that needs to be said to let readers in on what's happening. However, to hear that my style is OK (that's what amateur readers/critiquers often want to change totally, my style and voice, whereas I know that is not the trouble) is really great!

If IE really means that if not for this flaw there'd be a deal, O Fortuna, stomp me now. That's really depressing, because I can't figure out how to fix the flaw; it seems impossible, because most readers are just pulled along by the narrative and don't SAY this. It's only the pros who are watching to see if it's a picaresque like "Don Quixote" and are worried about things being episodic. After all, many mainstream "novels" are made of short stories sewn together and are very episodic. This one isn't, but I don't know how to pull along the readers who read for plot. Aaaugghh!

Should you know of any good book doctors (or a published author who'd like to make some extra money by brainstorming this with me so I can fix the flaw--I'd send along the comments I've received if that would help), let me know. I'm not above groveling.

Perhaps the solution is to post the opening chapters here and ask for volunteers to read and comment. Those would be some bodaciously long posts, and they'd have to be behind an LJ cut. Alternatively, interested parties could just ask me to send an MS-Word file. What do you think that would be worth, though? I wouldn't ask a pro volunteer to do this for free*. Most of the time, book doctors charge by the page, and that would be really expensive here. I don't need a complete read-through of the entire book, it seems, just a brainstorming session or two about this particular issue. But you *would* have to read some of it to see what is being referred to. I understand that it's the result of the way my plot is set up; I don't have event A cause event B, and the cleanup of B cause disastrous event C, etc. I have the events building to a crisis, and the character is oblivious (but the audience isn't supposed to be.)

* Not putting down "the rest of us" as volunteers, BTW. People who aren't "pros" shouldn't do it for free, either. But I don't have time to do a critique for someone else in exchange (which is usually the trade), not if I want to fix this and get it back out right away. Don't know how much someone should charge. And I don't know whether even a pro can come up with the magic for this.

Like my main character in this very book, I need a little magic in my life right now. But I don't even know if the right magic exists. . . .

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

That critique sounds familiar--you've heard such before, haven't you?

Why not post some bits? Reading on screen (hate hate hate) is so much easier in small bits.

Anyway. My take on what you quoted is that they might like the style and the sentences as discrete units, but overall there is too much of it for the pacing and the flow of story. It's that key word "wandering"--what they usually means is that the reader has begun skimming. The sentences might be clever, but enough clever on the same note ends up being the same note.

[horace-hamster.livejournal.com]

And thus a pro has come up with the magic, and Shalanna's wish has been fulfilled.

[shalanna.livejournal.com]

Yay! Yay!! *grin* Alas, though, I think this is the wrong magic. Right fairies, wrong magic. The prose could probably be pruned, but I sense that what editors are saying goes far deeper than this. They can't see a thread running through the scenes. They don't see a connection or buildup. The character is supposed to have a goal and be going after that goal, and everything is supposed to add up to getting to this goal. They can't see the goal, although I believe it is there.

This is just much tougher to fix than the problem of having too much backstory or too much rambling. (*sigh*) But thanks for trying.

We're still working on it.

[horace-hamster.livejournal.com]

Perhaps, as an exercise, you could follow S's advice and severely prune the prose. This might (or might not) expose a clear goal currently hidden or distracted from by the presence of conflicting/unnecessary/excess text.

Such an exercise can sometimes be aided by first drawing a scene map: for each scene, identify in a single sentence what the scene needs to accomplish. Then go through the text and highlight every word, phrase, sentence, paragraph that does not directly contribute to that scene's purpose. The proportion of colour:white can be illuminating -- particularly if you have a critiquer, rather than yourself, do the highlighting.

Deeper problem, I think

[shalanna.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking that they mean something deeper. It's not just a matter of pruning and tightening up the prose (notice I didn't say "simple matter"--hee!), I don't think. What they're saying is that they don't see where this plot is leading. They don't see that there is any connection between the scenes. It's looking like a slice-of-life to them. I can see this, kind of, when I read it, but then I am never bothered by this in stories if I'm being pulled along by the narrative or by the voice, or if I am sufficiently fascinated by the characters.

I'm not blowing off what you say--I feel that it's always useful to look and see if you're repeating yourself or if you're doing too many metaphors in a row, or if you just need to cut "the fact of the matter is that it's time to go" down to "it's time to go" or maybe just "it's time, dear." But I think they're talking about this more problematic matter, that it seems I'm just walking the heroine through her typical day and introducing character after character, rather than having her start off with a call to adventure or a specific goal.

It's true--I'm not really doing that kind of story. What I'm trying to do is a story in which events start piling up. Not really an "A causes B, and the clean-up of B causes C," etc. This makes it tougher. It can seem to be a wandering picaresque. But it's not, because this stuff adds up and then blows up at the first plot point.

My heroine is having bad luck as the book opens. She says she has hexed or jinxed herself by doing one of her superstitious little don't-step-on-a-crack rituals wrong. But she doesn't know how to fix it, and says she is going to try to get the curse off. Okay, she has said this, and now she's walking in the door at home and events start to snowball. The boss calls her in on her day off to find something in his office (where she loses a charm off her bracelet behind his desk); she proceeds over to the manicurist, a friend of hers, where they talk about rituals and how to get rid of hexes (the manicurist is Korean and knows some Korean folk superstitions that she suggests); she returns home to retrieve her cell phone, where she is confronted by her angry ex demanding that she hand over the laptop he gave her (among other things.) So far, it's just a sequence of things building up. There's not the "A caused B which caused C" sequence. That's what I believe they're telling me. It's a much DEEPER problem than the sentences wandering around and so forth.

She doesn't give the laptop to the angry ex just yet, because she has some data she needs to get off of it, and he storms away, leaving her upset. But she heads on to her stepmother's birthday party, where she meets a new guy who notices that missing charm off her bracelet (though she doesn't realize she lost it behind the boss's desk, where the boss will later find it and, having forgotten the day she was told to search his office, accuse her of snooping in his office. This contributes to her being fired later.) The stepmother is also a "moral compass" for the story.

So, as you can see, an editor reading these scenes apparently yells, "But THIS DOESN'T CONNECT. She should be trying to get the hex off and running around doing ONLY that." This isn't the way that *this* type of story works, IMHO. It's much easier to tell this type of tale in the movies, where the audience gives the actors a break while the setup goes on.

They don't make it to the next scene, which is where the ex has sneaked in and taken the laptop (with the roommate thinking it's just fine for him to do so), and now the presentation my heroine has just finished for the boss is GONE. She tries to get it back . . . and all the previous events blow up.

What I need is some way to indicate that events are building and related. But I don't want to do the Victorian "if only she had known" stuff.

I'm working on it. Thanks for the suggestions!

Re: Deeper problem, I think

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Ahah--yes indeed, a tougher one to bring off, but should be satisfying indeed if you can get it to snap into place for the reader.

Good luck!

I just don't see why this shouldn't be your year to start earning buck$, given your hard work and willingness to tackle craft issues in order to get that story in its best possible shape.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

A quick reaction -- after YAAAAY!!!!!

Ok, about the first few chapters not holding together or whatever, that you thought were held together by a character arc: your CHARACTER didn't see a pattern, everything that happened she thought was random unconnected bad luck.

Maybe this could be fixed by EITHER making the character arc more obvious, OR starting a plot arc earlier. Or both.

For a plot arc that doesn't mess with your character arc (like by her getting a grip and getting purposeful sooner) -- could you put in something else that the character doesn't pick up on but the reader does, to let the reader know this is going to be a story about a hex, and the hex is already working, tho Heroine doesn't know it yet.*

For making the character arc more obvious ... could this just BE ... made more obvious:
her rotten luck and how she was trying to change her luck with little rituals and lucky breaks? If the readers are missing that pattern, just say it louder and clearer?

The following is just brainstorming, examples....

As a last resort, what about having some other character say it, spell it out to her and to the reader -- tho of course your heroine doesn't believe it at that point. It wouldn't even have to change or add another character: what if it's just some walk-on, never seen again, like the witches in MacBeth? That would give it more emphasis too. The Heroine pays a lot of attention to the incident becasue it's unusual to be cornered by a homeless rambling madwoman trying to tell her fortune; the Reader knows the fortune is probably true also.


*AS for other hints to the Reader aboaut what the plot is going to be.... Dunno what your POV allows, but lots of horror and disaster stories do this: a character goes along unconcerned while the Signals to the Reader mount up. What about some sort of token arc here, that all day she is thinking of a special party or something that night, and all these random mishaps seem like they're 'conspiring' against that? So she and the scenes are all focused on the party, but the reader figures at the party all hell will break loose and we'll be into the real plot arc? Whether you really do that at the party is another matter. Maybe at the party there's a Third Alternative. :)

[ramblin-phyl.livejournal.com]

Shalana,

I have a week between projects. Contact me off list.

Irene Radford