I will be at the Summer in Words Writers Conference in Cannon Beach this weekend. Lots of great workshops and I get to read the first five pages of my second manuscript to a bunch of writers. How scary and exciting is that?!
Last Tuesday I went to the monthly Willamette Writers meeting at The Old Church in downtown Portland, Oregon. The Speaker was Randy Ingermanson, software engineer, novelist and author of Writing Fiction for Dummies. Over 26,000 people read his on-line advanced writers zine. He was there to talk about how drawing a snowflake is like designing a novel. Here’s a very abbreviated version of The Snowflake Method: *When you are ready to begin writing, think of one sentence of that describes your novel. The closer to fifteen words you can make it the better. For example: A sailor barely escapes drowning when the great white whale his demented captain is chasing smashes the ship. Moby Dick, Herman Melville or A grieving fifteen-year-old girl falls into a parallel universe and becomes a warrior mage. Forging the Blade (my book, new title) *Write a one-paragraph description of the plot. Use five sentences. The first sentence sets up the story, the second describes the first conflict point, the second… Read More »
The opening chapters of The Remaking needed something. I wasn’t quite sure what it was, but they weren’t ready to send out to agents. The best thing for me to do when I get stuck like this is talk to another writer, so I invited Kris out for a lunch of gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches. We watched the weather do what it always does in Portland in late May—dither about raining and then raining. We also talked about my manuscript. Because she is my friend as well as an English teacher and a writer, she listened to me as I drowned my sorrows in Coke and cholesterol and rambled on about the plot’s back-story. When I was all done she said: You need to include more of that back story right up front so I have a better understanding of your character. By golly, I thought, she’s right. Figuring out how much back-story to include is tricky. The reader doesn’t want to wade through… Read More »
When my friend, Kris, who teaches English and Writing at a community college, critiqued the first few chapters of my manuscript, one of the first things she did was analyze them using the Fry Graph readability formula. Unfortunately this formula doesn’t tell an author how much his readers will enjoy his writing, but it does calculate how easy or difficult his writing is to read. The Fry Graph result is a grade level. If the analysis result is 6.4, that means that most sixth graders would be able to read it. It counts the number of syllables and sentences in a hundred-word writing sample, and plots words vs. syllables on a graph. The more syllables and the fewer sentences there are, the higher the grade level. It’s best to use descriptive or narrative parts of a piece of fiction, not dialogue. The analysis is simple. This is how to do it. So that’s great, you say, but what good is it? Edward Fry developed the… Read More »
The rewrite of the first few chapters is complete. After several back and forth e-mails of suggestions on her part and revisions on mine, Jessica, my editor, says it’s “in good shape.” She wanted me to tighten it a bit more, and I tried, I really did, but I was only able to pare it down by a sentence here and there. She doesn’t like the title either. She says it needs to be more active and let the reader know that this is a fantasy. I’ve thought about shortening it to The Remaking, or possibly Forging the Blade. I also had Kris, a friend who teaches English and Writing at a community college, take a look at it. She critiqued the manuscript in a totally different way than Jessica. As an English teacher, she mostly looked at sentence structure and length and word usage. And because she’s only read the first three chapters she was able to give me a viewpoint of someone who’s… Read More »
Thing 2: A few days after I got The Letter I went to the library to find a book to read. I was too lazy to check my list of books that I need to read, I just wanted something to relax and entertain. It would be nice to be able to to say that a sense of foreboding settled over me as I approached the New Books rack, but it didn’t. I just picked a likely looking book, The Last Days of Madame Rey, skimmed the blurb, and checked it out. It was several days before I got a chance to sit down and begin reading it. The prologue was titled “The Fool”. Oh good, I thought, a book with a tarot theme. When I got to the first chapter and it was titled “The Magician: I began to panic. I looked ahead. Sure enough, the second chapter was “The High Priestess” and the third was “The Empress”. To my horror, A.W. Hill, the… Read More »
Thing 1: I received a very kind, but deadly letter from an agent. He had read the first two chapters and told me that he couldn’t connect with the concept and wasn’t interested in representing me. Standard. I’m used to this by now. But he continued with “A little friendly advice. My girlfriend, who is a novelist (she has a different agent—that would be weird), had a novel like this. After battling with it for a couple years, she moved on to a new idea, even thought it hurt to leave the old book behind. That new idea became her first published novel. I suggest you do the same.” Was the story that I had worked over five years to create substandard and doomed to failure? When in doubt run screaming to your editor. I took Jessica out to lunch and had her read the letter. She skimmed it, set it aside and got down to business. The story is fine, she said, but the… Read More »
1: Go over the OryCon critiques and rewrite the first three chapters of The Remaking of Molly Adair and Molly Adair, Beware. Ron Root, a writer friend, gave me a valuable piece of advice about rewriting the first chapter of The Remaking. We were sitting in a bar at OryCon and I was whining to him about how I was having trouble figuring out how to fix the damn thing. “The reason the chapter is weak is because Tracy’s character is flat and no one understands who he’s supposed to be,” Ron said. “I’d go back and do an in-depth character profile on him before I even thought about rewriting.” So I got out the trusty Character Template he’d sent me and filled it in for Tracy Bliss. It covers everything from physical description, to mannerisms, to fears, to desires, to religious philosophy, to strengths and weaknesses. By the time I was done, I knew just what I needed to change in the first chapter.… Read More »
As sci-fi/fantasy conventions go, OryCon is medium sized, has a good, steady following, and has been around since the late seventies. It’s Oregon’s only convention of this sort. I was told that all the others failed in their first few years. Even though OryCon is packed with writers and thought provoking writers’ panels and workshops, it is a very different sort of gathering than the Willamette Writer’s Conference. WWC has a serious air about it. Writers go there to pitch their manuscripts, network, and improve their techniques by attending excellent workshops. OryCon is an extravagant outpouring of fans’/writers’ love of science fiction and fantasy, and their joy at being with over a thousand other excited people who are ready and willing to talk for hours about the genre and all the philosophies and ideas connected with it. “It’s my yearly dose of sanity,” quipped one conventioneer. And the costumes were fabulous. Wizards conversed with pirates and steampunkers strolled down the halls with barbarians. In fact,… Read More »
And what, you may ask, do OryCon and Lake Oswego High School have in common? They both are sources of critiques for my manuscripts. OryCon is a huge Science Fiction/Fantasy convention that’s been around since the late seventies. I’ve never been before and I can’t imagine why, it looks like fun. How could it not be with over 1,500 sci fi/fantasy lovers all in one place? At the OryCon Writer’s Workshop I’ll get a fellow writer’s and a pro’s critique on the first 7,500 words of both my manuscripts for just $10 apiece. Such a deal! Of course, this means that I had to critique two manuscripts. The ones I received were Vampire Seminarian by Jeff Nichols and Tales from the Curr’s Head by Anna Lewis. They were fun to read and I was surprised at how inspiring and instructive it was. Looking at another writer’s work, seeing what they do well and not so well, and thinking about what it needs to make it… Read More »