I Will Not Read Your Fracking First Chapter

Posted by Unknown |3 comments

So everyone has read that rather juvenile piece written by Josh Olsen by now. If you haven't, you've likely read clips of it here and there because agents and editors are eating that shit up. And yes, it's crap. The general premise is a good one, that hobby writers need to leave people who are working professionally ALONE, and that real writers aren't deterred from honest feedback. Unfortunately, that message is lost in Olsen's Junior High bitch fest because he won't own up for his own part in the incident that spurred his tirade. (Amber Gardner does a great job of pointing this out on her blog, and honestly, I thought she spoke more truth to the subject as someone just starting out than did the supposed professional script adapter Josh Olsen.)

I've been cultivating another critique thought for a while now, and Olsen's tirade brought it to fruition. We're starting up the Novel Critique group this week and that will bring a lot of first chapters my way. In addition to that I've recently critiqued a few first chapters by different writers, and I have to say, first chapters suck to critique.

The first chapter is pivotal to the entire story. Whether or not your story is even read is based on those first few pages. Agents tend to ask for just the first five, and if you can't sell them in that span then you're on the chopping block.

This brings us to our problem. As writers we look for a good critique of that first chapter to help us fix it and make it as amazing as it needs to be, but I honestly don't think that is possible. Your critic doesn't know your characters, they don't know where the story is going, they don't know the feel or mood of the story, so how are they supposed to help you fix it? They can't, not based on the first chapter. They can give you general thoughts, fix style issues, grammar, punctuation, flow, setting, so on and so forth, but the really important stuff, the Story Worthy Problem, the Inciting Incident, the Surface Problem, how all those things tie together and relate to the journey ahead and your character – they can't help you with that.

That's why I purpose that we stop critiquing first chapters. Put them out there as an introduction to your story, maybe collect some very general feedback or first impressions, but save the serious critiquing for later. Get several chapters into the story or ideally, done with it, before you ask for a serious critique on the first chapter.

I'm even willing to say that the first and last chapters should be critiqued side by side. That ending needs to tie directly into the beginning. It's a cycle. You need to have come full circle. You can't tell that about the first chapter until you've read the last.

So no, the title to this post does not mean that I'm turning into a professional dick. I would hope that I approach these writing topics with little more care than some “professionals” do. What I mean is that I think we should stop basing our critique interactions on first chapters. Yes, that's all that an agent gets, but that's not our goal in critiquing. Our goal in critiquing is to make that first chapter the best it can be. When we critique it first we do a disservice to the story. And that's what I'm saying.

See the full version of that amazing “full circle” picture here.

Types of Critique Groups

Posted by Unknown |3 comments

Part Five of the Critique Series

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

How Do You Group

I've been thinking about crit groups for the past few weeks and have some different configurations dreamed up.

The Hodgepodge: This is just a bunch of writers who happened to find each other. They likely all write something different. Face to face groups are more likely to end up like this. There's a Meetup.com group in my city that fits this description. Everyone who attends is a writer, but they all seem to write something different: mystery, paranormal romance, fantasy, westerns, so on and so forth. I honestly don't see how this kind of group can be of much help aside from grammatical and very basic style issues. Otherwise, what would be considered cliché in one genre would be spot on in another. They can be dangerous places for your writing to be edited, especially if you are impressionable.

The Forum: There are lots of these about, and often many genre writers end up finding their way to these at one point or another. They're great for finding like-minded people, just be wary of those who tend to be there ALL of the time. These people aren't writing; they are talking about writing and I question their seriousness with regards to it. The Forum is also notorious for not being very dedicated. You get random critiques, often from random people, and it's hard to count on them. Oh, and the fluffy bunnies! They're everywhere in The Forum. Tread lightly or they'll sneak up behind you and strike you down with their fluffy rainbow of sugary sweet emotionality.

Genre Group: “Hey, you write Fantasy, I write Fantasy, Bob writes Fantasy, John writes . . . well, terribly, but he's my roommate, we should get together and critique.” Nothing wrong with this one. I think that most personal groups fall into this category. These groups tend to be smaller and often the critiquing is done on a turn by turn basis. This usually works out well for those who are working on short stories or who need larger gaps of time between critiques so that they can get work done. But, if you're looking to churn out work; the gaps between crits can be agonizingly long in some cases, especially if meetings are skipped. My last crit group met once every other week. That means you get a critique every six weeks unless you start doubling them up like we ended up doing. But then there's a holiday, or an emergency, or who knows what and now you're looking at eight weeks or worse. 

Novel Group: I totally stole this one from the writing excuses kids; a small group of no more than five writers, all of a similar genre style, and all working on novels. Each person in the group submits a chapter a week of their WIP and each member critiques all the other chapters. This creates an artificial deadline that drives you to keep moving forward with your novel. No excuses in this group. You don't show up with your work and you get caned by the other members as punishment. But be careful, some people might join this group for the sole purpose of being caned when they fail to show up with their chapter. Naughty. 

Crit Guild: There's a temptation to find writers who are just like ourselves. We want them to have the same voice so that they can hear what we're saying and notice when something doesn't come out quite right. But what happens when everyone listens and no one looks, smells, tastes, or feels? 

This third crit group is likened to an RPG guild. In a guild you try to have characters whose strengths lie in different areas. You have the ranger who attacks from afar, the soldier who carries the front line into battle, the healer who keeps everyone's stats up. Super hero groups get this too. Heck, even we as writers understand it when we are creating our group of companions. Unfortunately, we forget this valuable lesson once we get to critiquing. 

In a Critique Guild you might have one person who is strong in dialogue, another at pacing, another at setting, you might even have your token grammar nazi. Alone, they can manage well enough, but bring them together and you are UNSTOPPABLE!!!11!!1ELEVENTY ONE PWNAGE!!!

Each member focuses on their strength when they crit. They can give broad opinions too, “The opening works really well,” but Dialog-man focuses on your dialog, Grammar Nazi Girl focuses on your grammar, token annoying guy brings the snacks. This way, when you get your WIP back, you can go through each crit and work on that focus area. Of course the trouble is, how do you find these people? Do you use Cerebro to search them out? Do you find the local guild house for Grammar Nazis?

Anyone have any thoughts on this? I think I'd like to try the Crit Guild but have no idea how I would figure out who is strong at what? Heck, I don't even know what I'm strong at. Dialog, I suppose. Yup, that's it, Dialog Dave. It works. Do you just ask what writers find comes easiest for them, what they get the most comments on (hey, that's a good idea)?

Feedback please. :)

Critique Group Rules

Posted by Unknown |4 comments

Part Four of the Critique Series

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

Remember critique circles? When you'd go out and drop a wad of cash on a huge stack of copies all collated and stapled, text double spaced leaving just enough room for inline comments. Remember that feel of the warm ink and smooth copy paper in your hands? The slightly metallic smell of the freshly burned carbon. The lugging of all of those copies into a class and wishing them luck on their journey as they were passed around the room. “Fly little birdies, fly.”

Remember getting them back? By and large the feedback you get on most wasn't worth the fifty cents a copy that you blew on getting them printed in the first place. You got a lot back with “Wow, great story!” scribbled on them with silly little smiley faces, a bunch with meandering comments that didn't make any sense, some came back a gory mess, and maybe one or two that were actually worth a damn. Oh, and let us not forget that one jerk who returns your story with nothing written on it at all. Thanks Jasper; appreciate it.

All of my different experiences with crit groups led me to come up with my own "rules" with regards as to what should happen during crit group.   

Thoughts On Rules:

I think that there have to be parameters set up for crit groups. Get too many artsy people collected in one place and drama is sure to ensue. Remember, the key to a critique is open, and honest feedback.

Don't Talk Back: When you're being critiqued you sit there with your notepad and copy of the story, keep your mouth shut, and you listen. Period. As soon as the back and forth banter starts, even if it's all positive and Rainbow Brighty, you're affecting the critique and won't get honest feedback. We read body language, intonation, all those subtle hints and cues that others give off. And since humans have a strange desire to please those that we are around so that we appear favorably in their eyes, we'll adjust our feedback accordingly.

Don't Explain Yourself: When you send your story off to an agent or editor, you're not going to get to explain things. “Obviously you didn't get it, you see, so and so has to do such and such in order for this to happen so . . . .” Uh, no. You're story has to stand on its own two feet, so let it. If the reader didn't understand something, that's your fault, not there's. Now you just have to decide if you need to clear that part of the story up with your writing or that you like the ambiguity. 

Constructive Feedback Only: It's fine if you feel like there is a problem in a story but you can't put your finger on what it is. Just make sure you note that. “At this point in the story I found myself drifting away but I'm not sure why.” Also, try to give them something to go on. It's your job as the critic to provide more than just a read through.

The Critic is ALWAYS Right: If someone is telling you how something in your story made them feel, that's how it made them feel. They can't be wrong about that. Opinions are never wrong, just different. Now, whether you act on that opinion is up to you, but don't discredit it.

Don't Disagree: At least don't 'openly' disagree. To do so tells your critic that you don't value their opinion. In the future, said critic is not going to give you their open and honest thoughts. They'll filter their feedback so as to spare you're fragile ego. A tell tale sign of this is when your writing suddenly goes from being filled with feedback to receiving nothing but praise. It's not that you got into a car accident and turned into Stephen flipping King overnight, it's because no one wants to argue with you about how they feel about your story.

Take Notes: All of these rules don't mean that you don't get to interact with anyone. Once the critique is done, then you get to ask questions. If you didn't fully understand something that someone said, ask them about it. If you get an idea and think it might solve their problem with a story element, run it by them.

Wait Till The End: Related to the above, I think that questions should come at the very end. In this regard I like the crit circle setup. You go around in a circle, starting next to the author, everyone goes through their feedback, highlighting points that they think might need clarification or that really stood out to them as either good or bad, and then only at the very end does the author get to ask questions. This is a huge time saver.

Time Limits!!!!: I've been subject to no time limits before and it is an agonizingly miserable experience. You've done your crit, you're ready to move on, but said author wants to pick pick pick at your brain until nothing's left. Again, this is yet another way to earn yourself 'glowing' reviews.

Write Your Own Damn Story: Feedback should be general, and not specific. Rewrites should not occur during crit group. Two reasons: 1) it's your story, write it, 2) it will kill your voice. Take the suggestions home, sleep on them, then fix things.

Deadlines: Part of being in a crit group is coming through for others, both in your crits and in providing your work.

Rules Can Be Bent: Not broken. Everyone has stuff come up in their lives, though I'm finding more and more in life that those who achieve success do so because they don't come up with excuses. There are those of us who allow circumstances to get us out of things, and those of us who decide that we will get things done regardless of circumstances. Success seems to follow the latter group.

Today is supposed to be the end of the crit series buuuuut . . . tomorrow will be the end. Promise. The rules sound kind of like a rant anyway, so I'll post the above as a Friday Rant of sorts. Either tomorrow or later tonight I'll post the last article on critiquing. It will outline different forms of crit groups, my thoughts on both, the crit group I'm starting, and then a second crit group that I'm considering putting together in the near future.

Sorry about carrying this over an extra post. I hope you can all hang in there. I've noticed the comments slip off for the crit series, so I'm assuming that series aren't everyone's cup of tea. But I've got lots of fun stuff in the cue for next week.

The Critique Partner

Posted by Unknown |8 comments

Part Three of the Critique Series

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

So you want a critique partner? Well of course you do. You want that camaraderie. You want someone you can call on to help you through a scene during a moment of crisis. You want a brother or sister in arms. Just be wary when you go out and look for one. Even when you have great critique partners (like I do) there is both good and bad that you have to watch out for.

The GOOD

One on one dialog: I find that gathering ideas from a message board just doesn't work for me. As I mentioned in Talking Through Writer's Block, sometimes you just need to talk it out.

Intimate connection with your story: You eventually have another specialist in your work that you can turn to for help. They know the characters, how they would act, where you're going with it. This person can call you on things that others, who are unfamiliar with the work, might miss.

Cheering Section: We all need someone in our corner cheering for us. “Alright, now get it finished and send it off.”

Commiserate: You're going to have bad days, you're going to be rejected, slammed by decision makers, ignored by agents, and that's when having someone to help you come up with the perfect torture scene for those individuals is key. They know your pain because they've been there. Or better yet, they can be there to get excited with you about a rejection. Honestly, can you imagine getting all giddy about a personalized rejection letter with feedback in front of a friend that knows nothing about the publishing industry? 

Community: Writers tend to be loners. We like to sit in coffee houses and observe others. Trouble is, we need to get out there and experience life as well. You can only get so much from reading about others' experiences. Besides, who are you going to attend cons with?

Trust: Need I say more?

The BAD

Desensitizing: After a while they might gloss over things that they've grown used to in your writing.

Power: You might end up taking their word as the end all be all when what you really need is another opinion.

Colored lenses: The more your crit partners know, the harder it is to count on them to respond honestly to twists. They know where the story is headed, and can help map it out, but if they know the destination, your twist might be obvious to them whereas it wouldn't be to those with virgin eyes.

Crutch: If you can't get anything done unless your crit partner helps you through it, there's a problem. I've actually critiqued with folks who took suggestions for rewrites word for word and inserted them into their stories. We would honestly stop during critique reviews and reword sentences for this person. It got to a point where I just stopped giving suggestions because I knew that we would have to stop during the review to work through it with them. "Well, how do you think I should say it?" "Uh, I don't know. I can't really think of anything (lies all lies)."

Enabler: The wrong crit partner might simply be enabling you to continue to produce bad work. Granted, we need some praise from time to time, even Countess Bathory manages to dole some out for me from her tub from time to time, but when all you get is glowing reviews you run the risk of floating away with your inflated ego (as the Countess is always sure to remind me).

Voice Killer: And here's a good one that I never thought of that I found on another blog while researching this post. “Which brings me to critiquing. I have confessed in the past that I don’t critique—other than the occasional read-through for a friend—because I’m a voice-killer. I have this compulsion to rewrite the manuscript until it’s the way I would have written it. It’s wrong, I can’t help it, and therefore I’ll only read for writers I know are strong enough to ignore that aspect of my critique. Beware of authors like me. We are out there and not all of us recognize this tendency in ourselves.” (source:  http://shannonstacey.com/2009/06/09/critique-partner-or-enabler/)

The Dating Game:

Unless you have a frequented blog spot and can put up a crit dating request on your blog like Maggie Stiefvater, author of Shiver (made it up to number THREE on the NYT best sellers list), you'll likely need help searching someone out. And finding the “One” can often be as tricky as finding the one you'll spend the rest of your life with. Remember, you're not just looking for a friend. Just like in marriage, you're looking for a business partner as well as a friend. They have to fit what you write and they also have to bring their own strengths to the table. You have to feed off of each other. You have to inspire along with being inspired.

Damihjva, who shall henceforth be referred to as Paris because of her purchase of a rat dog, I found via a MySpace search. I wanted to find someone who lived nearby that I could commiserate with. That was the luck of the draw. She had a crit group that needed another critter; I needed a crit group. I made her cry with a short story and it was critter love.

Countess Bathory is a part of a fantasy forum that I'm on. (Oddly enough, Paris was a part of the same group years ago and remembers my handle from back then; guess we crossed paths but didn't meet up.) She sent out a request for off board crit partners and I made the audacious suggestion that she post something and get it critiqued by a few people and then pick out those she liked; I still think this is a good idea -- sort of like speed dating. She replied to me off-board, asked if I'd crit her chapter, I did, made her cry for an entirely different reason, was dubbed Attila and voila, critter love.

What can we learn from this? Make people cry.

But seriously, you have to try people out. It's like dating; you have to open up and expose yourself before you can find the right one. If you're too guarded, then you apparently aren't ready. You're also going to have to go through a lot of duds. That's the way it is. True love doesn't knock at your door; you have to go out, find it, hit it over the head, and then drag it back home.

Places to bird-dog partners:

Writing forums: This is kind of a crap shoot but worth a shot. Many forums want you to participate and critique others' work before you post anything of your own. If you've got the time, go for it. I don't critique in forums because I don't have the time. I give advice when I can and if someone finds what I say useful and decides they'd like to hear my thoughts on what they've written, they can ask and I will crit.

Critique Circle: There are a few sites that specialize in critiquing stories. Some of them are pay sites, others are not, but everyone there is there to critique. 

Social Media Search: In the same way I found Paris, you might be able to find someone near you.

Dating: Maggie Stiefvatter mentions in the above linked article that she was starting a critter dating board over at her fan site. I couldn't find it, otherwise I'd have linked to it, but it's a good idea.

Blogosphere: Seems like every writer has a blog these days. What better way to get to know a person before asking them out on a crit date than by reading their blog?

Keep a couple things in mind as you head out on your search. First, this is not a Hollywood Romance. Love and crit partners don't work like the movies would like us to think. My wife and I don't see eye to eye on everything, nor would we want too. The same holds true for crit partners. Don't try to make them fit an idealized mold of “the perfect crit partner” because you're going to end up frustrated.

That said, keep this second piece of advice in mind: Remember, it is better to not have a critique partner at all than to have a bad one. 

A Critique Example

Posted by Unknown |2 comments

Part Two of the Critique Series

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

October 24, 2000. That's the earliest “last modified” date that I have for my first venture into writing, and that's a “version 2” so something must have come before it at an even earlier date. I generally set things aside for a year before I come back to them and start working on second versions, so we're looking back at least ten years into the past. And if memory serves it was even slightly further back.

You see, on March 31, 1999 the Matrix was released. On April 1, I saw it in a crowded theatre, by myself, . . . on my birthday (sad birthday that year). I left the theatre with the same adrenaline rush as everyone else that had seen it. But there was one thing different for me. Along with trying to figure out how I might one day make Trinity my wife, and looking for tell tale signs that the matrix was real and all around us (come on, you know you did it too) I was also thinking, “Those bastards stole my idea!”

No, not the entire digital reality thing, they stole that from someone else, I'm talking about the programming fight training. This was nearly as bad as when Marvel Comics stole my name for a super group when they retitled The New Mutants to X-Force. I totally came up with that years ahead of them. Of course there's no proving any of this because in both cases I never showed the works to anyone. So that's just downright creepy. I mean, how did they get into our house and steal all those ideas? There's no justice in the world! Wait! There's a black helicopter flying over my house again. I'll be right back, I'm going to get my bullhorn and read them the constitution again, that usually gets them to go away, that and “I'm calling the news!”

Now then, where were we? Right, my crap story. It's old. I also didn't critique all of it. I just couldn't make it through the entire thing. I got two pages in and asked, “Why are you torturing yourself?”

Being as I did not have to torture myself, I opted to stop. I also knew that if I couldn't make it through, no one else would either, so after two pages I cut out the middle section, four pages of the middle section, four pages that didn't need to be there. Sigh.

Keep in mind that I'm a bit harsher with myself than I would be with someone else's work. Although, if you asked crit partner 2, the one that calls me Attila, as in Attila the Hun, she might disagree. But the way I see it, for as harsh as my criticism tends to be, I don't say anything out of spite, and nothing I can say can ever be worse than what you'd get from an editor.

Remember that my crit guide would usually come along with the critique so as to explain some of my terms and thoughts in better detail. Also bare in mind that this is not the only way to give a crit. David Farland recently sent out an entire series on 'how' to give crits. Unfortunately, Farland doesn't have a blog or anything that I know of where he posts all of this stuff, so I can't link to it (if he does and I'm just clueless, let me know and I'll fix this). You can only get it in your email. Farland is also long winded, even more-so than me (yes, it's possible). His critique series was at least seven posts long. Honestly, I don't think it's possible to keep even half of what he mentions in mind when doing a critique. That's why I resort to the tried and true, “This is what I was thinking while reading,” approach.

I try to note any “rules” that I think are broken. I look for repetitive uses of words and sentence starters. I'm looking for gerunds and participles that don't need to be there as well as said bookisms. POV shifts tend to stand out. In beginnings I'm looking to see if I'm going to be hooked, if I can get a hint at the characters story worthy problem and the inciting incident that sends us on our path. I also like to give my feelings, “At this point I'm curious about so and so.” And yes, I really do say nice things too. Just because there's not much nice to say about this old story doesn't mean that I don't say them about others' stories.

For the most part, you get better at critiquing by doing it, just like with writing. And the more critiques you expose yourself to from others the more rules you learn. I'm going to try and aggregate Farland's guide into something digestible. (Momentary admission of guilt: I never read the series he sent out, it was too much for my little brain to wrap around at the time.)

If you didn't catch the link above, you can download the pdf of the critique here [link]. Thanks to FreePDFHosting.com for hosting the file. If you've got a pdf of less than 2mb that you need to create a down-loadable link to, be sure to check these guys out.

Critiquing Using Word and Open Office

Posted by Unknown |4 comments

Part One of the Critique Series

Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

Critiquing in the digital age. Gone are the days of sorting through stacks of line edits in your double spaced manuscript, bloodied with red pen in indiscernible handwriting, returned to you by critique partners that you met down at the local coffee shop. Actually, if you can find people to critique with at a coffee shop, wow. I applaud you. I for one haven't been so lucky. Okay, actually I was, but then she moved away. Sniffle sniffle.

But even if you do have local crit partners and don't have to collaborate via the internet, you can still find something useful in today's post. Meeting in person does not change the fact that you can save a lot of trees and make life a bit easier on yourself by using the built in functionality of word processing programs to help streamline some of the work for you. So let's get to it.

I've gone through and taken snapshots of both Open Office and Word 2007 in action in order to help guide you through the process. There are subtle differences in the two programs, so pay attention, but by and large you can get the same things accomplished in both.

Track Changes:

One of the first things you're going to want to do with any critique is turn on 'Track Changes'. This feature allows the recipient of the critique to go through and see exactly what you've changed and then choose whether or not they will keep the changes. In both Word and Open Office a black, vertical line will appear net to any line with a correction. Right clicking on the change will bring up an option menu that will let you choose to accept or decline the change.

MSW: Select the 'Review' tab and click 'Track Changes.' Yup, it's that simple.  

OOo: Once you're used to the Word tabs that are so annoying when you first upgrade to 2007, finding things in menus becomes annoying. For OOo you have to Edit>Changes and then choose 'Record' and 'Show' if you want to see it recording the changes.

Line Numbering:

Each time I get a document to critique I start by numbering the lines. I've found it to be helpful when going over any questions that the recipient might have. They can refer me directly to which line they are talking about as opposed to going through the headache of “third page, second paragraph, about halfway through the third line.” Just say, “Line 93,” and we're all set. No confusion there.

MSW: Go to the 'Page Layout' tab, select 'Line Numbers' and then direct it to number in the way you would like. I usually just go with continuous.

OOo: Tools>Line Numbering pretty simple, no?

Comments/Notes:

Gone are the days of trying to squeeze your comments between double-spaced lines of text. By using the comments feature you can be as wordy as you'd like. Normally, wordiness is a bad thing, but when you consider that you're trying to be delicate with your criticism, that you want it to come across as “you're going in the right direction, I'd just like to see you expand this,” rather than, “you suck,” then the extra words end up counting for a lot.

Both Word and Open Office expand your screen when you start using comments (they're called 'notes' in OOo, but I'll just call them 'comments' for both programs) and tuck them off to the right. Comments is one of the areas where Word outdoes OOo. Word will number the comments for you so that they are easier to refer to. It also allows you to highlight a section of text and comment on the highlighted section. OOo will only place an arrow marker at the beginning of your highlighted area, so it makes it harder to cue a person in to a line or a series of lines that you want to comment on. The person being critiqued with OOo has to guess at where your reference begins and ends unless otherwise specified.

As I mentioned in the Word vs. Open Office post, one way OOo one ups Word is through having an option to comment on a comment. Although, honestly, I don't see much point to the feature unless you're collaborating. If anything, this feature makes it easier to commit one of the deadly critique sins that we'll talk about tomorrow, responding to criticism.

Another nice feature of Word is that when you hover the cursor over a section of highlighted text, it will pop a dialogue box that shows you the comment. You know, just in case you can't trace that dotted line back to it's origin.

MSW: Each time you want to make a comment in Word, just go up to the 'Review' tab and hit 'New Comment'. Wherever your cursor is in the text is where your comment will be attached. Or, if you have a section of text highlighted (click and drag with the mouse) and then hit 'New Comment', the comment feature will highlight that text and attach the comment to all of it.

OOo: While OOo doesn't highlight, it is a bit easier to add your comment. Just hold down Ctrl+Alt+N and it will give you a new comment where your cursor is. Otherwise it's under the 'Insert' menu. I haven't been able to find such and easy keyboard shortcut for Word, so if you know of one, please share. With as much commenting as I do on crits it would save lots of time.

Merge:

After I've gone through all of the comments, deleting those that I don't, hanging on to the ones that I need to give more thought to, and accepting the changes I feel should be made in all of my returned critiques, I start the merger process. This collects the remaining feedback and all the changes into a single document. Word call's this process “combine,” and it might take a little while for the process to complete, but hang in there. To be safe, I set my merges to take place in a new document. I haven't tried to do more than two documents at a time, and I really don't think that it's possible. I reduce by twos until I can get it all down into one document.

(Note: I haven't used this process of combining in a long time. Last time I used it was in the 2003 version of Word. I'm trying it right now in 2007 as an experiment, an experiment that is not going so well. I started the combination process about 30 minutes ago with two crits of the same chapter and I'm still waiting for Word to show me something.)

(Note to the Note: Crash! Word apparently could not handle all of the comments left by my crit partners.)

Highlighting:

As I noted in my crit guide. I use the simple highlight feature to draw attention to things like repetitive words. If I find that someone is using an odd word rather often, I'll simply conduct a search for that word and highlight it each time it appears. Explaining this in a crit guide helps cut down on explaining it each time you do it.

Whew!

And there you have it. Those are all the features that I use when critiquing. Of course I'm no word-processor guru or anything, so I'm sure that there are probably more features that need to be added to this. I'm also sure that as smart as all you folks are, you know of some of them. So please add them to the comments so that I can update this article. And don't worry, I'll be sure to give credit where credit is due.

Talking Through Writer's Block

Posted by Unknown |10 comments

You've hit that inevitable road block. You've written to a point that you can't get past. Characters have stopped talking to you, scenes aren't appearing in your dreams anymore, and even though you know where you're supposed to end up you can't seem to get there. Time to brainstorm, right? What happens when your brainstorm misses the lightning rod? You've got all kinds of dead cattle in the field and charred trees but no forward progression. What do you do?

Brainstorming itself is a solitary solution to writer's block. Heck, writers tend to be solitary by nature. Our craft demands it. How many writers can sit down and write out a scene while carrying on a conversation with someone else?

Surprising people with what we come up with adds to our own personal imprisonment. We're like magicians who can't tell our secrets. As such, we keep our stories hidden under lock and key until we think they're ready to be seen. We have to struggle through all of the troubled spots on our own otherwise we're not really writers. It relates to the Novel in a Day post from yesterday.

For the longest time I've had the notion stuck in my head that unless I do it on my own, unless I come up with all of the ideas, all the twists and turns in the story, all the witty turns of phrase, then I'm a hack. With help the end product ends up as hollow as the eyes of my early drawings.

It might be another one of those daddy issues that I have. When your father was abandoned as a child and then raised by a jerk who barely tolerates his presence in 'his' family, you find that he grows up not expecting help from others and finding ways to do everything on his own. That inevitably gets transfers to the children and is reinforced when the parents divorce and both of them have to make it on their own. I saw family help out when I was a child, but rarely was it heartfelt barn raising kind of help, more like begrudging “I've got too much to do to bother with this” kind of help. I also can't remember friends of my parents being called on for help. Heck, I can't really even remember friends of my parents. Divorces have a funny way of shattering things. And maybe that's why when someone who is not family offers to lend a hand I say, “Thanks, I'll keep that in mind,” and then never call on them.

It becomes even trickier with your writing, when every suggestion can come off as criticism. I don't know about you, but I find it easier to prepare myself for criticism once the story is done. In the middle of the work there is a good possibility that the wrong words might derail me. And so I hang on to my troubled spots, trying desperately to work through them on my own.

Recently, my two crit partners have been there for me, helping me work through things that I was avoiding. My writer's block had derailed me and I was going to sit there and let it happen, trying to heave that entire train back onto the tracks all by myself if I had to. But thankfully both of these young ladies are as stubborn as I am, and they insisted that I talk things out with them.

It was sort of like losing your keys in the trunk lock. You rushed home, got the groceries out of the trunk and now you can't get into the house because you've lost your keys. They're right there clear as day but for the life of you, you can't see them. It takes a kind neighbor walking by to point out, “Hey, did you know your keys are in your trunk lock?” The solution to my problem was that obvious, but I honestly don't think I'd have seen it had my crit partner not mentioned it as an aside, sort of like, “So you'll have him do this?”

“Huh?”

“Well he does this next, right?”

“Oh my god, that's it. That's what I'm missing.”

“Really?”

I don’t think we can dispute that we need help. The question is; how do we get ourselves to open up to the possibility?

Prepare For Criticism: Often we’re not ready to hear criticism at this stage of the game. We don’t want to hear that something is not working or that it is hackneyed. But know that if a friend doesn’t tell you, you’ll likely never hear it because an editor is not going to take the time to point it out for you.

Trust in Friends: Have crit partners that you can depend on, people who know your work and your style. You need to play a friendly game of mental ping pong, and who better to do this with than a friend.

Be Clear: Clearly define what you need. Don’t throw the entire piece up for a critique if you’re not ready for it. Outline where you’ve been and where you’re going and then talk out the moments leading up to the scene that you’re stuck on.

Open Up: Remember, the only way you’re going to make progress is by being straightforward. You might want to keep some things hidden from your crit partner because you want to see how the surprise you have in store works on them, but be aware of what you’re holding back and how that might limit their ability it give you good feedback.

Putting People Out: My biggest problem with asking for help is that I often consider it to be bothering others. It never occurs to me that they might actually enjoy helping. I for one love helping my crit partners work through a problem. It’s sort of exhilarating, like trying to solve a mystery. And it can be quite satisfying to get to the solution and hear, “Oh my Gaia, thank you. I never would have come up with that.”

And yes, once again a topic that I thought was going to be short has turned into yet another “opus” as one of my crit partners so affectionately puts it. Therefore I’ll save the witty ending for another post. Besides, I have to get to the update below.

On an unrelated note. Last week's rant was about the first-time-unpublished-series-author. There was a lot of back-and-forth in the comments about whether or not my advice was sound. It just so happens that literary agent Rachelle Gardner recently blogged about the Five Myths about agents. Myth number five? “Most agents won't consider any manuscript over 120k words in length.” How depressing for me, wrong again.

Oh, but wait! She was pulling a fast one on us. She goes on to say that this is “NOT a myth - this one is true! Until you've proven yourself with a couple of books that sold well, you're not likely to sell an epic or saga much over 100k. There are always exceptions, of course. But if you're trying to break in, your 180k-opus is probably not the ticket.” (It should be noted that Rachelle does not represent Sci-Fi or Fantasy).

Not trying to pat myself on the back too hard here, (although I am in need of a good massage after the pounding I took during Sunday's biweekly basketball game with the fellas). I just wanted to point out that I don't pull ALL of this stuff out of my ass, just most of it. :)

Today's fantastic artists: Smell of Solitude by KatjaFaith, and Derailed by emmajeanjumpingbean

Spread the Word Saturday: Emo Critics

Posted by Unknown |14 comments

So I'm going to start a new feature for the blog. I've been finding so much great content out there in the blogosphere that I want to share with everyone and I don't want it to get lost in the sidebar. Since I don't do anything on the blog during the weekend anyway, I'm going to rename Saturdays to "Spread the Word Saturday." (Oh so witty, I know. Pft.) 

I'm going to highlight one blog post that I thought was ultra witty, snarky, or just plain ol' good advice. Most often they'll be people I know, so be looking for a link to your blog. Today's is not going to be someone I know. Today's relates to my own personal emo experience from this week. 

Dahmijva shared this with me today to cheer me up. Seems there are people out there that truly dislike me and I can only figure it is because I give it to you straight. That said, here's a link to critique guides for those fluffy bunnies who can't stomach my straight forward style. It's from Wired Magazine. 

Alt Text: Genius Strategies for Defanging Web’s Harshest Critics Please pass it along to all the fluffy bunnies in your life and let them know that we lubve them, we weelly weelly do. 

And thanks for all of the comments on yesterday's post, it made me feel warm and fuzzy in spite of finding out that I'm a know-it-all jerk that no one likes, oh, and that I'm apparently wrong (thanks Dahmijva). Friday's will likely be filled with snark from now on so read with caution. :) 

Directing Story Criticism

Posted by Unknown |0 comments

This post wasn't going to be about that, but I had a dream. And as we writers do, when we dream, we write it out. No, not that kind of dream. What kind of blog do you think this is? Sheesh. I'd actually be making money if it was that kind of blog. (Image: Strange_Dream_by_Sander_Seto)

In the dream my father stops by with a new truck. Well, it's sort of a new truck, new to him anyway. Let's just call it a different truck. It was a monstrosity of a machine. Late model American nineties when things were built “Ford tough” and not “Like a bailout.” On the back where the bed should have been was some kind of hand made shanty house. It wasn't an old shanty house that some one picked up with a crane and dropped there, it wasn't being moved. No, my father had built it.

In typical dad fashion, he didn't build it like one of those wooden tear drop trailers that some people make, it wasn't aerodynamic, didn't meet any kind of safety standards (no cardboard, no cardboard derivatives, paper's out, no cellophane or rubber . . . you really should watch the Monday funny, it was great). Nope, his knowledge of house building and applied it directly to this truck design.

I groaned but humored him when he invited me to check it out. We stepped in through a regular sized door and looked in on a kitchen area. Now mind you, it's the size of a truck bed on the outside, but on the inside there are standard size rooms. The guy's freaking amazing.

Then he takes me on the “tour” because this place is two stories with what I would say are two 12 by 20 rooms. Very spacious. And each of the rooms serves a double purpose, like kitchen and dining, then living room and sleeping. I think they were 10 foot ceilings too. He's still working on it, but what's there is impressive and I tell him as much.

Then I woke up.

I know, I know, what does that have to do with anything? Right? Well in real life my dad is very sparse with praise. He feigns interest in anything your working on just long enough to tell you about what he's working on. While my mom reads the blog, I have no illusions as to my dad reading it. It's not that he's not a nice guy, and it's not that he doesn't love me, it's just that he isn't interested and has too many of his own projects to worry about. And it also likely has something to do with his not having a father in his life when he was growing up, so he simply doesn't know how.

The dream reminded me of all of this. I'd been thinking about it a week or two ago when I was working with my dad on the garage. I noted how important it is that we give praise to others, how picking out positives can inspire a person to push forward where as criticizing will only lead to dragging them down. Often the criticism comes in the form of “helping,” we're just trying to point out the things that need work, but too much of that can be detrimental.

Then again, too much positive is also detrimental. We can't go around thinking we are the best that ever was either. That's just be delusional and it doesn't lead to growth. Or, conversely, it leads to our not respecting the opinion of the person giving it. It becomes a mother's unconditional praise (don't worry mom, mothers can get away with it, others can't) and therefore loses value.

Now, while it's all fine and well to talk about how we can encourage others in our life, this blog is supposed to be about you. How does me telling you about this help? Quite simply, you have to be able to recognize these things when you run into them in life. You have to be able to not only see it when it happens, but be able to predict it.

I no longer go into a situation with my dad hoping that he'll take note of something that I did and say, “Wow, you did that? I'm really impressed. Tell me about it. How did you get those miters to match up so well? And you say you built the entire door frame from scratch? That's slick.”

No, I go into those situations expecting this: first he's not going to recognize anything unless I point it out, and second he's going to have this kind of response, “Looks good. How long did that take? I'd of just bought a pre-made one. Why waste the time doing it yourself? Looks good though.” That's not a compliment, it's a euphemism. My ability to recognize this doesn't shield me from it entirely, and understanding why he does it helps some too, but being able to predict it helps most of all. Combine them and I can pretty much shield myself from any ill effects by avoiding the situation altogether.

Does this mean that I never go to him for advice? Not at all. I am fully aware that there are things that he knows much more about than I do. And so I ask for advice knowing that I will likely get good information that can start me off on my path, I just don't turn to him for encouragement while I'm on said path, or praise when I finally reach its end unless of course it's a path of his choosing.

As writers we need to learn to notice these traits in others, understand them, and then understand for ourselves what we need from whom. Don't open yourself up to everyone's criticism, figure out who is good at what and then turn to them at the point in your journey when you need them. Say you're all finished up with your story. You've had it critiqued a hundred times and revised it a hundred more. You can't look at it anymore. It's as good as it's going to get. Don't then turn around and take it to your most critical of friends whose pastime it is to find flaws in the Mona Lisa.

In our stories we can simply make characters act the way we need them to or come up with the appropriate character to put in the situation. In life we don't have such luxuries. We have to look around at the cast of characters available to us, figure out which roles we need them to play, and then turn to them when it's time for them to say their lines.

Creating Critique Guides

Posted by Unknown |0 comments

As writers, nay, as humans, we inevitably have to come to accept that we need help. I'm not just talking about self-improvement help, I'm talking about help in general. Our society, for the past two-hundred plus years has been built on this notion of self-reliance. I mean, the American dream is that you can have it all, all on your own. There's no clause in there about needing others. No one ever talks about anyone that might have helped Benjamin Franklin along the way when he arrived here with nothing to his name. Nope, do it yourself or you're a failure.   

As such, I think we often forget about how important it is to keep the lines of communication open once we start reaching out to others. We take things for granted, expecting the people around us to know what we're thinking. I've noticed this with regards to critiquing.  

While on the one hand we often want a virgin reading of our WIP, we don't seem to take into account the fact that we're all different and bring different things to a reading. We also write to vastly different audiences.

I think that in the last couple of weeks I've done about five critiques, mostly for people whose work I've never read before. What I noticed is that I found myself backpedaling at the end of my critique. I'd say my piece and then add in that I wasn't sure where they were headed with it, what kind of work it was, and that those things could greatly sway my opinions.

It does no one any good to take a Lamborgini to a Ford dealer to have it repaired. Sure, they might be able to keep it running, but they won't be able to fine tune it. They're just not familiar enough with the workings of the machine. You have to be upfront about what the mechanic is going to be dealing with, and the mechanic has to be up front with you about what services they can provide.

This got me thinking that the way we do critiques needs to be changed. We've all had classes or been apart of groups, where we send our story off with strangers and wait for their feedback. We then get upset when all of the reviews on our Stephanie Meyer inspired teen, vampire romance come back with suggestions for more historical accuracy from those that love historical fiction, more suspense from the thriller crowd, and more purple in our prose from the poets of the group.

While good writing does tend to simply be good writing no matter its genre, you can't please everyone. That's just a fact of life. We don't necessarily have to find only those who are in our proposed niche audience to do readings for us, we just need to be up front with each other about what to expect. When you take the Lamborgini in, the Ford dealer will tell you straight up, “If you really want us to work on this we will, just don't expect much.” And you have to be upfront about what you're bringing in too.

So I set to work creating my own personal critique guide.

“Like how to critique? Psh. I know how to do that.”

No, like a guide that explains to the person you are critiquing the sorts of things you look for. Here's a run down of mine. Right now it has five sections:

Disclaimer: Talk about your limitations, what you can and cannot offer and how you might be limited by what has been provided. For instance, I note that unless the author has a clear idea of what their Story-Worthy Problem is (SWP), I'm not going to be of much assistance to them. And without a general outline of what the story is, I can only grade it based on what is in front of me.

My Writing and Reading Style: This is where I go into the things that I appreciate in writing. I note that I am a slow reader and that affects how I take in information. Prose weighted down by heavy description are going to draw more criticism than those that are fast paced.

Books I've Enjoyed (and Short Stories): One of the easiest ways to convey to others the kind of writing you enjoy.

How I Crit: We all have different subtleties in how we go about conveying our suggestions. For instance, repetitive words, or consecutive sentences all starting with the same word just get a highlight by me. I don't comment on it, I simply highlight them. I also comment heavily in the beginning of a piece and then taper off. These explanations can help to do away with a lot of confusion.

List of Terms: Another time saver. There are certain things that occur often in writing and we all have different terms for them. My crit partner will note show don't tell as “write it fresh.” The first time I saw that I had no idea what it meant. Luckily, I had her right there in front of me to explain it, but in most cases we don't have the other person at our disposal when we read over feedback.

Click this link if you want to see what my critique guide looks like. It's a work in progress, so it will be updated from time to time.

Once you've created your Critique guides you can attach them to your crits and reader copies. This way everyone is on the same page as to what to expect. As I get a new story ready for submitting to readers, I will work on coming up with a Reader Guide, so be looking for that in the future. I'm also trying to figure out how to host files so that I can put this guide up as a download in case you're interested.

So remember, open those lines of communication and I'm sure you'll find that life gets a little easier.