Posted in writing, tagged agents, characters, conflict, fantasy, Middle Grade, writing, Young Adult on August 10, 2011| 2 Comments »
While researching agents to query, I came across this very interesting post. Very useful ideas for any kind of writing.
Meanwhile, I’m making good progress on my third draft of SEVEN STARS. Hopefully, I’ll find a way to incorporate at least some of these ideas as I go.
Posted in writing, tagged characters, conflict, fantasy, revisions, writing, Young Adult on April 3, 2011| 2 Comments »
Well, after David Farland’s pep talk last week on “How to Sell Your Novel”, I’ve decided to give BLOOD WILL TELL another try through the traditional channels, after the revisions of course. E-publishing isn’t going away. It will still be there–maybe better and easier–when I’m ready. (I probably will still stick a toe in those waters with a couple of short stories. We’ll see.)
Revisions on BLOOD WILL TELL continue roughly on schedule, if not as fast as I would really like. Still, all things considered. . . Yesterday, I finished changing one transition into a scene and well, I don’t think the other quite comes up to the level of a scene, but I at least dug deeper. I wrote one whole new scene and added material to another. Not a bad day’s work.
Those additions are mostly for the purpose of showing earlier exactly what is driving my main character. Not only her main motivations, but her fears and the things that she believes (some of which will turn out not to be true). All good and necessary things.
And as I work on these scenes from the beginning, I’m working out some revelations about my characters. The critiques helped me see some things in a new light. I think I sufficiently tortured my main character, but I may have been a bit too easy on my side characters. The love interest gets tortured for a while, too. But his transformation may be just a bit too easy. And, darn it, it’s a source of conflict which I wasted. Can’t let that happen. They ought to have at least one good argument over it and let him think he’s losing her again, before he finally finds the way to change.
I’m still struggling a bit with the sidekick. I’ve tried to give her a little more rounding in the early chapters, but I don’t know if I’ve succeeded, yet. I’ve got a scene coming up later today (hopefully) that I’m going to recast into her point of view. I actually haven’t had a scene in her point of view yet. That’s something I may have to fix later. She seems weak and fragile, shy and naive to the other characters. So, of course, that’s how the reader sees her, too. To a degree, that’s what I want them to see. But to some readers she was just too useless to live. I have to fix that. This scene should give me a chance to show at least a little interior toughness and resolve.
Posted in writing, tagged conflict, e-publishing, fantasy, revisions, writing, Young Adult on March 30, 2011| 4 Comments »
First, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the death of Diana Wynne Jones last weekend. She was one of the truly great writers of young adult fantasy, weaving magic with her words. A very sad loss.
Second, if you haven’t checked out Farland’s Authors’ Advisory Conference Calls yet, tonight’s the night to do it. David Farland will be talking about How to Sell Your Novel.
Now, on to BLOOD WILL TELL:
I’m beginning to make good progress on my revisions, working through scene by scene. First making any changes I think are necessary, then working through the three full critiques. I’ve gotten some excellent critiques that have made me look at the story and characters in a new light. That’s invaluable. I liked this story before, but I think it’s going to be much stronger when I finish.
My current goal is to work through a chapter a day. Some days I may get more done and some chapters or scenes may need less work. That should fill up about a month before I’m ready to return to SEVEN STARS for the second draft.
The question then becomes what to do with BLOOD WILL TELL. Last year, I sent out 34 queries on this one. I got two requests for a partial, both of which ended in rejections. That’s not a very good showing.
Now, I’ll never know for certain why all those agents chose to pass. I can’t tell if the new first chapter and the revisions to the early chapters might have gotten a better response. But in my gut I have a feeling that part of the problem is that it’s a werewolf story.
It’s only a guess, but I have a feeling that the agents and editors of traditional publishing (who have to think about a book that might hit the bookshelves of Barnes and Noble three years from now, at best) just aren’t interested in werewolf stories right now. At least, unless your name happens to be Patricia Briggs, Gail Carriger, Sherilyn Kenyon, Charlane Harris, or Stephanie Meyer. I suspect, even, that when they open their inboxes they find half a dozen werewolf or vampire stories every day and it’s just easier to hit the next button than to try to sort out which ones might be good. I know that I’ve seen at least one or two agents’ websites that said specifically something like “Please don’t send me any more werewolf stories”.
So, what to do with BLOOD WILL TELL? One option is to change the title, write a new query, and try again. Frankly, I haven’t found another title I really like. And I’m not sure it would make a difference, really. It’s still a werewolf story.
The other option that I am considering very strongly at the moment is to e-publish it myself, probably under a psuedonym. The pen name would be mostly because this story (and it’s sequels) don’t really fit with the rest of what I’m writing. It’s adult, probably new adult, and I write mostly young adult and middle grade.
It’s a decision I’m likely to take with one or two of my short stories, too. In fact, I’ll probably do the short stories first, just to test the waters.
Posted in writing, tagged characters, conflict, fantasy, revisions, writing on March 20, 2011| 2 Comments »
I’ve successfully gotten myself into revision mode and back into the story and characters of BLOOD WILL TELL.
I’ve even drafted the new first chapter. I tried to do two things with it:
I don’t know how well I’ve succeeded, yet, but that’s what first drafts are for. I’ll get a few readers in a couple of weeks (after it’s had time to sit a little and I’ve gone back over it) and then decide whether this works or if I need to do more.
I think the strong emotions are key. My main character starts out sort of bottled up, very controlled. But that’s what’s shows on the outside, not what’s really going on on the inside. I need to dig deeper and show more of her inner turmoil early in the story. She has reasons for keeping her emotions on a tight leash, but there are still things she cares deeply about. That both builds conflict and should help readers to identify more with her.
Aside from that, my goals (for now, subject to change as I get going) are to:
Those are my main goals for this revision. Of course, certain specific scenes or chapters have additional goals for the action that occurs there, as well.
On to revisions.
Posted in writing, tagged conflict, fantasy, mystery, revisions, rewrites, writing on May 19, 2010| 2 Comments »
I’ve started the rewrite of THE IGNORED PROPHECY. The revision is significant enough to call it a rewrite, I think, even though I’m mostly rearranging things I’ve already written. There is some new material as well. And quite a bit of what was there is being cut, too.
And that makes me think about mystery and how to create it in a story, because THE IGNORED PROPHECY is at least partly a mystery. At the end of THE SHAMAN’S CURSE, the main character had just come to terms with his own magical abilities–something he had tried to reject during most of the book. Now, at the beginning of THE IGNORED PROPHECY, all kinds of strange things are happening to his magic, things he doesn’t seem to be in complete control of. Some things are odd. Others are disturbing. And one scares him to death. (Well, not literally.) And he won’t find out what the causes of these phenomena are until the end of the book.
The last revision was pretty good (compared to where this one started out), but I need to increase the tension and up the stakes. I also took pity on my protagonist and resolved (or at least proposed the correct solution for) one of the mysteries way too soon in the current version. I’m trying to reorganize things so all of these strange things happen within a very short time. This structure pushes the “big scary thing” a little further back, but hopefully lets me build up to it so that when it happens the main character is already off balance.
I’m going to have to employ some misdirection as well, to keep things from being resolved too quickly. There was a little misdirection in the last version, but not nearly enough. Then the answers should start coming during the last quarter of the book. But, again, I need to try to arrange that so that answering one question just raises another or makes the remaining questions look more serious.
This mystery thing is harder than it looks.
I’ve been thinking about conflict a lot lately. Several different things have happened at around the same time to give me different perspectives on the issue.
Conflict, of course, is what drives a story forward. Without conflict, it might be a vignette, but it’s not a story. Story is all about the development and resolution of some central conflict. Otherwise, it’s just stuff happening, but it doesn’t come out to a story in the end. Conflict is how you know where your story should start (the inciting incident) and when it ends.
Now, there can be a difference between the conflict being there in my head and actually getting it onto the page.
I recently read a book by a well-known and respected author in my genre (fantasy), third in a series. I realized about three-quarters of the way through that that book didn’t really have much of a central conflict, it just bridged the gap between books two and four. It was interesting, because I already cared about the characters, but dinner was never late because I just had to finish one more chapter (something that had happened more than once with books one and two). Near the beginning of book four, something happens which shows how much internal conflict the MC was going through in book three. If that had only been on the page, the book would have been so much more gripping.
Well, and that’s similar to a problem that I have with THE IGNORED PROPHECY. A lot of what’s going on in that book is internal to my MC. So, now I know what I need to do on the next revision to that novel. It’s harder when most of the conflict is internal. Battles and confrontations are obvious.
At the same time, I just got a critique back on my short story “Becoming Lioness”, set in the same world. I’m still digesting some of the comments. Some, I think I agree with when I do another revision. Others, I’m not so sure. “Becoming Lioness” was a departure for me in short stories because there are three different conflicts that resolve around the same event. For a short story, I usually focus on one. This critique on this story actually came back that there wasn’t enough tension. Now, the reader is never wrong about their experience of the story. Which doesnt’ mean that they’re always right about the cause. I’m thinking it may be more of a pacing problem than a conflict problem. It is my longest short story yet. There may be things I can cut to move things along more quickly. I’ll have to think about that.
Update: Call me prophetic. A rejection just came back on “Becoming Lioness”, citing the pacing. I’ll get to work on that probably tomorrow. It’ll give me a bit of a break from revisions on DREAMER’S ROSE.
Meredith Mansfield, Author 