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Posts Tagged ‘Middle Grade’

I Figured It Out

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on September 23, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I’ve posted before about my difficulties with a particular story.

It started life as THE SHAMAN’S CURSE, my first completed novel (if you don’t count that thing I wrote in college). There really wasn’t much wrong with the story, but there was a lot wrong with my abilities as a writer and story-teller. So, I left it alone for a few years.

But I still really like those characters and that story. So, last year I rewrote a portion of that story as middle grade. It worked at least reasonably well. That version, MAGIC’S FOOL, still needed a little work, but I was pretty happy with it. And then, during WriteOnCon, I discovered that agents and editors don’t like stories that start off with thirteen-year-old protagonists. This was a problem because, for this story to work, I really couldn’t make him any younger. Drat. I had laid out several possible options for how I might proceed.

Well, last week, while I was trying to get THE BARD’S GIFT out of my head so I could start revisions on MAGE STORM, I sat down and as an exercise outlined the original novel. I have to say that was an eye-opener. It really highlighted some of the weaknesses in the original writing. I mean, I knew it, but it’s different when you see it in color-coded black and white, so to speak.

Anyway, my subconscious obviously kept playing around with the idea while I was working on other things. And then it forced me to sit down and type out a new outline. It’s the original, nearly-complete storyline with a couple of things left out that just really didn’t work well for a young adult story. Yes, it will be YA with a boy protagonist. The timeline is compressed from eight years (which was one of the weaknesses of the original story) to about two. And I like it.

There are a couple of things not clearly defined, but I’m a discovery writer; this is way more outline than I usually have at the beginning of a story. In fact, I’m sure that I’ll probably diverge from this outline at least once. That’s just what happens.

So, I guess I know what my next starting-from-scratch project will be, likely some time next year. Between now and then, I have to finish the revisions for MAGE STORM (I have a reader lined up who happens to be a great critique partner), revise BLOOD IS THICKER, possibly work on a couple of short stories, if I can squeeze them in, and then do the second and third drafts of THE BARD’S GIFT to have it ready for readers in January.

Looks like I’ll be busy for the foreseeable future, which is just how I like it.

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Status Update

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 19, 2012| 2 Comments »

Just a (relatively) quick status update today.

Monday, I finished the first draft of THE BARD’S GIFT. Yay! I took longer with that than with any first draft since my first novel. Now it rests for a while before I go back for revisions. I have it slated to be read by my writing group in January.

It’s good I have something to celebrate because my chances of getting into the second round of the GUTGAA (Gearing Up to Get an Agent) agent pitch contest aren’t looking too good. That’s a disappointment, but with four anonymous judges making the picks, you just can’t ever tell what particular kinds of stories will appeal to them–just like with agents.

Meanwhile:

Yesterday, I went through and outlined the existing version of that first novel, THE SHAMAN’S CURSE, as a way to help me decide what direction I want to take with this story. That was a very interesting exercise and certainly exposed some of the weaknesses. It also proved to be a pretty good way to get the last story out of my head and clear it for the next. Whatever I do with this will be a rewrite, but I need to decide on audience first. After I play around with it some, I may just submit this to my writing group for some brainstorming.

Now, it’s time to get back to the revisions on my middle grade fantasy, MAGE STORM. I know exactly what I want to do, so once I get into it it shouldn’t take long. 

Then I think I’ll get to the revisions on BLOOD IS THICKER (paranormal romance). I might even squeeze in a couple of short stories that need some attention.

And then it’ll be time to go back to THE BARD’S GIFT.

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Back to the Drawing Board

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 12, 2012| 2 Comments »

If you’re here looking for my GUTGAA Pitch Polish entry, go here.

I’m within sight of finishing the first draft of my YA alternate history, THE BARD’S GIFT, probably next week. So it’s time to look up and start thinking about what I’ll work on next, while the first draft cools a bit.

I have plenty of choices. Revisions to MAGE STORM are certainly at the top of the list. I have another story in first draft that I need to get back to, BLOOD IS THICKER, the sequel to BLOOD WILL TELL. And there are a couple of short stories that I need to polish up. I have a pretty good idea what to do with all of those stories. And that’s certainly enough to keep me busy until I can go back to work on THE BARD’S GIFT.

But, even though I may not start working on it yet, there’s one more story I’ll at least be thinking about as I try to figure out what to do next. This story was my first completed novel (if you don’t count the thing I wrote in college–and I don’t). In that incarnation, as THE SHAMAN’S CURSE, I thought it was a mainstream fantasy. Now, that version has so many serious flaws, I’m not even going to try to list them here, but, in spite of those flaws, I still love the characters and the whole arc of the story (which was always intended to be a series).

Therefore, last year about this time, I started a rewrite, this time as middle grade. I called it MAGIC’S FOOL and had even started the sequel, MAGIC’S APPRENTICE. The original story had to be changed, of course. Some elements had to be dropped and in order to tell a complete story in about half the length I had to choose a different central conflict. I like the results and was planning on going back for another round of revisions and then polish it up.

That was until WriteOnCon, where I found out that agents and editors don’t want stories with main characters betweeen twelve and fourteen years old. Bummer. My main character in MAGIC’S FOOL was thirteen. (He had started out as fifteen in THE SHAMAN’S CURSE.)

So now, I have to go back to the drawing board and decide what to do with this story. It’s not an easy choice, like MAGE STORM, in which I can easily change or delete a couple of elements and make the protagonist younger, say around eleven. Thirteen was already pushing the limits on just how young this character can credibly be.

So, as far as I can see right now, my choices are:

  1. “Damn the torpedos, full speed ahead.” Just ignore this age limit or maybe delete the one or two references to the protagonists age and go ahead with it as it is. This feels a little like trying to swim upstream (even more than is normally the case).
  2. Keep the story as it is now (more or less) and just make the main character a bit older. Go back to fifteen as he was in the original. To do this credibly, the story would have to be expanded by about half again as much (from around 50,000 words to somewhere around 75,000 words). There are things I could expand. There are also a couple of subplots that could easily be added–and which would add depth to the overall plot. I’d be betting that agents and editors really mean it when they say they want boy YA stories.
  3. And the third possibility would be to go back to the original story line and central conflict. I’d still have to rewrite it, of course. That would actually be better and easier than trying to revise it. This version has what may be a more satisfying central conflict. That’s a draw, frankly. Now, I could still go two ways with this. I could still try to make it YA. There really aren’t any plot elements that are inappropriate for YA, although I might handle one of them a bit differently. Or I could just leave that alone and let it be a mainstream (adult, but not in a sexy way) story.

I’ll be giving this some thought as I work on the other revisions I’ve got stacked up.

 

 

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Decisions, Decsions

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 5, 2012| 4 Comments »

Well, I only have a couple more days of indecision. On Friday, the next phase of Gearing Up to Get an Agent starts up. Time to try to get my query in for the Pitch Polish part of the event. And I have to decide which story to send in.

I’m currently querying FIRE AND EARTH, a young adult fantasy.

When her country is invaded, seventeen-year-old Casora loses her battle against the berserker curse she was born with. The curse turns her into an unstoppable warrior, but that’s no use to her family when she must be exiled for the ferocious temper that goes along with it. She turns mercenary while searching for a way to tame the berserker. Hope comes in an unexpected form when she’s sent to rescue the scholarly Prince Tiaran.

The rescue leaves them stranded on the wrong side of the city walls by the besieging army. Now they–and Casora’s mercenary band–are the only ones in a position to stop the invaders. Casora teaches Tiaran how to fight. His special knowledge of the enemy allows them to devise a plan that just might work.

Even with Tiaran’s plan, the odds will be against them, but the situation becomes still more complicated for Casora. Now it’s more personal than defeating the enemy or freeing her people. Tiaran is the only one who’s ever called her curse a blessing or been able to calm her berserker rage. If she has a prayer of finding the serenity to conquer her curse, Casora must decide if she can believe that there’s any future for a battle-scarred warrior and a prince.

But I’m also making some revisions to MAGE STORM, a middle grade fantasy, and getting ready to start querying that one again.

Rell doesn’t want magic. He doesn’t dream of being a hero or a mage out of old legends. Certainly not a mage, after they all incinerated each other at the end of the Great Mage War. He’d just like not to be in his big brother’s shadow for a change. Someone should have reminded Rell to be careful what he wished for.

Mage storms, composed of the ashes of the wizards killed in the War, are the scourge of his world. The embers that fall like rain burn and destroy everything they touch. When he’s caught out in one, Rell is struck by a strange blue cinder that infects him with magic. That’s when the real trouble starts.

His father expects Rell to bring back the useful magic Da remembers from before the war. Rell wants to make his father proud, but his magic responds more to his emotions than his will. He can’t figure out how to make it do what he wants and the frustration only brings out one of its most dangerous aspects: fire.

Blowing apart the cave his family uses to shelter from the mage storms makes it clear that he’s never going to figure this out by himself. The next thing that blows up may be Rell himself, if he can’t find a better way to learn than trial and error. Turns out he’s not the only one–and not every solution to their problem is what it appears to be.

So what do you think? These aren’t posted for critiques at this time. That’s next week.

On another front. I think I’m within sight of typing the end on the first draft of my YA alternate history, THE BARD’S GIFT. Realistically, that one won’t be ready to start querying probably until next summer. But it’ll still feel good to type THE END again. It always does.

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Gearing Up to Get an Agent Meet and Greet

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on September 2, 2012| 39 Comments »

This is a day early, but, well, Sundays and Wednesdays are my usual posting schedule and this way it’ll be up earlier than it would be if I waited until tomorrow to post it.

Mini bio:

Professionally, I’ve been a financial analyst and a visual basic programmer. I also have a paralegal certificate, although I’ve never worked in that field. It’s anybody’s guess what I’ll be when I grow up.

Imagining stories and writing have always been an important part of my life. It’s one I’ve finally gotten to spend a significant amount of time on while I care for my mother who has Alzheimer’s disease.

Questions:

  • Where do you write?

Currently, at my desk in one corner of my bedroom. I have plans eventually to set up a real office space, but can’t do it just yet.

  • Quick. Go to your writing space, sit down and look to your left. What is the first thing you see?

Hah! I cleaned off my desk and actually dusted and polished it last week or the answer to this question would have been different. Right now, there’s a pewter unicorn figurine in that spot.

 

 

  • Favorite time to write?

Hmm. I write on and off all day, but my most productive time is probably late afternoon or early evening.

  • Drink of choice while writing?

Usually water or tea in the morning.

  • When writing, do you listen to music or do you need complete silence?

Complete silence? Where do you find that? And would you want it if you could find it? I think complete silence is a little bit creepy. Usually, I have the tv on as a kind of general background noise. Sometimes, I’ll play instrumental music while doing revisions.

  • What was your inspiration for your latest manuscript and where did you find it?

Ah, long story. Let’s see. About two and a half years ago, there was a trigger challenge on Hatrack River Writers Workshop. The trigger was “slave to the flame”. I wrote a fable about a little dragon who outmaneuvered his larger tormentors by learning to breathe fire, but then I didn’t quite know what to do with the fable. (It had an unhappy ending by the way, partly because I couldn’t do anything else in the space allowed for the challenge. Everybody hated that ending. And a lot of readers didn’t really like the fable quality, either.) So, I wrote a framing story about a girl who had the gift of telling the right story for any occasion. I submitted that to a few places without any success. Some readers thought it felt like the beginning of something (a common complaint about my short stories) and I had some ideas about what else might happen to that girl and how she came to be in that position in the first place. So, now I’m writing a young adult alternate history. That original story will be near the end, though. Not the beginning.

Interestingly, to me at least, the manuscript I’m about to revise (a middle grade fantasy) also grew out of a trigger challenge on Hatrack River. The trigger for that one was “Cinders of the Great War”. Maybe I should do more of the challenges.  

  • What’s your most valuable writing tip?

Never give up. Never surrender. There’s going to be plenty of rejection and disappointment along this road. You’ve got to believe in your own writing and your own stories, even when nobody else does. Perseverance is the only way to succeed.

Oh, and find a great critique group. (I have two.)

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Inciting Incidents

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on August 29, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Related to my last post about middles, I’m going to share a few thoughts about inciting incidents.

Inciting incidents aren’t precisely beginnings. Even if a story starts in the middle of the action, as some do, the inciting incident may not occur until a bit later. I’m thinking here of HIS MAJESTY’S DRAGON by Naomi Novik (quite a fun alternate history about the Napoleonic Wars–if both sides had an air force composed of dragons). This book opens with a sea battle, definitely in the middle of the action, but the inciting incident doesn’t occur until a bit later when the captured dragon egg hatches.

The inciting incident is the event that sets the rest of the story in motion, the thing that makes it impossible for the main character to continue on as they have been. The inciting incident also sets up what will be the central conflict for the story. For example, when Frodo discovers that the ring Bilbo left him is the One Ring of the Enemy.

Generally speaking, the inciting incident should occur within the first ten to fifteen percent of the story, or by about page thirty of a three-hundred page novel. Usually, the sooner the better–especially in young adult or middle grade fiction. My general rule is to try to have the inciting incident in the first chapter. In fact, if you were to look for the inciting incident in one of my novels, the last scene of the first chapter would be an excellent place to start the search.

Often, of course, especially with fantasy, the story needs a little set up before things start to unravel following the inciting incident. The reader needs a chance to find their feet in this new world that’s being introduced and a chance to learn to care about the main character. It’s a delicate balancing act.

There are different kinds of inciting incident, too. If a story is going to be about the internal journey of the main character, the inciting incident may not be a big external event. It might be something that other characters barely even notice. In an action-oriented story, it’s much more likely to be a big dramatic event.

This is where I’ve run into some questions from critiquers on recent stories. The later scene which I intend as the end of the first try/fail cycle may be much more dramatic. I’ve had a couple of critiquers on different stories misidentify the inciting incident.

Now, that doesn’t mean they’re wrong. What it likely means is that even though I mean the inciting incident to be something of importance only to the protagonist, at least at the start, I need to ramp up the significance to that character.

This is something I’ll need to consider when, later this year, I start the revisions to THE BARD’S GIFT. It will also be an important consideration when I figure out exactly which of several possible courses I’m going to take with the rewrite of MAGIC’S FOOL/MAGIC’S APPRENTICE (formerly THE SHAMAN’S CURSE and THE IGNORED PROPHECY). Who know what the eventual title(s) of that story will be.

But titles are another subject entirely.

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Middles

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on August 26, 2012| Leave a Comment »

As I launch into another revision of MAGE STORM, I’m moved to think about middles. Every part of a story has its own issues.

It can be hard to know where to start a story. In the middle of the action? Just before? Enough before the action starts to give the reader a sense of the world you’ve built? Each has its plusses and minuses.

Endings, I’ve never had too much of a problem with. They seem to follow naturally out of the story for me. Of course, you’ve got to make that climax work or the payoff won’t be very satisfying.

Middles, though. I think every writer at some point or another has a problem with the middle of a story. And that’s one of the problems with MAGE STORM. It took reading a mostly unrelated post during WriteOnCon to make me realize it. Just one of those epiphany moments that sometimes happen.

Yes, there’s a problem. The middle advances the story and moves things along toward the climax. The problem is that there are about four or five chapters in which my main character is mostly inactive. He’s not trying to do anything–well, except stay alive. What he does even makes sense. It’s just not interesting enough. 

I knew there was a problem with those chapters the last time I read through it. I just couldn’t quite put my finger on it. I tried to solve it by cutting it down, making it shorter. That’s not a bad thing, but it didn’t get to the core of the problem. The real problem is that I have to give my protagonist something to do, even if it’s futile. Even if it’s counter-productive. He’s got to be acting, not reacting.

That’s the main thing I’ll be addressing in this revision, but it’s not all I’ll be doing.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, something else I learned at WriteOnCon was that there’s little to no market for stories with thirteen- to fourteen-year-old protagonists. While I never explicitly mention Rell’s age in the story, there are several things that make it clear that he’s going through puberty–and therefore right in this no-man’s-land age range. So, I’ll be cutting those references (voice changing, growth spurts, unprovoked emotional outbursts) and adjusting his relationship to one of his friends who happens to be a girl, ratcheting down the level of interest and the angst over how to approach it.

The third thing I’m going to do is to look critically at some of the scenes and see where I can apply a little help from The Emotion Thesaurus. This dandy little book is a great reference for showing the outward and inward signs of emotions.

That’s the plan for MAGE STORM. Once the revision is done, it’ll be back to querying this one again. It’s a story I really love. Plus, I’m itching to tell the sequels, too.

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The Middle Grade/Young Adult Gap

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on August 19, 2012| 1 Comment »

Something new I learned in the very last event of WriteOnCon this year. Apparently there’s a gap between the middle grade (8 to 12) age group and the young adult (14 to 18) age group. Nobody wants books about twelve- to fourteen-year-olds.

The reason given? Bookstores don’t know where to shelve such books. The main characters are too old for middle grade readers and too young for young adult readers. It seems like a pretty thin reason to ignore an entire group of readers. Makes me think that online bookstores, like Amazon, are a very good idea. It’s no big deal to create a new category in the database and nobody has to move bookshelves or books.

Plus, of course, that skips over the difficult period called puberty, which strikes me as just cowardly. Admittedly, it’s been a few years, but there are parts of that time that are indelibly etched on your memory. Not only is it a time just rife with conflicts, which we all know make good stories, it’s also a time when reading about others going through some of the same embarrassing, confusing things might be more than usually beneficial. But, there’s no space on the shelves for it.

It also makes me wonder about something else. The standard wisdom that you’ll see quoted around the internet by industry professionals is that girls graduate from middle grade to young adult, while boys, if they keep reading, graduate straight to the adult section. I have to wonder if at least a part of the reason for this is that the romance element of just about all young adult stories satisfies at least a part of the needs of pubescent girls. On the other hand, the young adult stories in which the boy is almost always older, hot, and at least socially adept enough to ask a girl out without blushing maybe just don’t address the needs of pubescent boys, so they turn elsewhere.

Part of me wants to say that this is an under-served audience just waiting for the right books. On the other hand, I can wonder and even rant about this as much as I want, but one fact remains: getting started in this business is an uphill battle as it is. Making it any steeper than it has to be is akin to banging your head against the wall because it feels so good when you stop. An established author with a great track record might be able to write these books successfully. A debut author–or a writer hoping to be a debut author–just hasn’t got the horsepower to get up that hill.

Rats! And I’d started MAGIC’S FOOL with the MC at age thirteen. I’m shelving that one and the sequel, MAGIC’S APPRENTICE, while I decide what to do. Make the MC younger? That complicates the plot of MAGIC’S APPRENTICE enormously. Make him older and take this story to the younger side of young adult? It’s ironic that he was fifteen in the original version of this story. In that case, I’m going to have to weave in a subplot or two or else change the central conflict to expand the story–a rewrite, either way. Otherwise, at less than 50,000 words it’s just too short for a young adult novel. Hmm. I already have at least one idea for a subplot, though.

It’s not all bad, though. I got a couple of really good ideas on how to improve MAGE STORM and make it even better before I start sending it out again. That will probably be my next project after I finish the first draft of THE BARD’S GIFT.

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Two Sides of the Craft

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on July 25, 2012| 2 Comments »

My recent reading–some good, some bad–has made me think more about this. It occurs to me that there are two separate parts of the craft of writing.

One part is unquestionably the writing itself, learning the techniques of making our stories come alive for readers. This encompasses most of the “rules” you’ll run into in books and critiques. Show vs. Tell (and both have their place), dialog tags and beats, avoiding adverbs, sticking to a single point of view at a time. There are whole books written just on these techniques. They’re the mechanics of how to get your story out, but they are not the story.

Of course, we all aspire to write eloquently. But it is possible to write competently and tell a rousing story. Some of these even become best sellers. And it is also possible to write well and not be able to tell a story. All the mastery of technique in the world is wasted without a good story.

Telling a story is also a craft. There are more things to learn, here–foreshadowing, plotting, pacing, characterization, character arcs, and weaving in subplots. And pitfalls to learn to avoid, like deus ex machina endings and withholding. Even a good story can be ruined by clumsy handling. I have, unfortunately, read a couple of those lately.

A really, really good writer has both sets of tools at their disposal–a mastery of the are of telling a story and the techniques to make the story come to life seamlessly. Sometimes that means an invisible narrator, who just keeps out of the way as the story unfolds. Sometimes it means a distinctive voice that draws the reader in. But neither one will work if the story isn’t right in the first place.

Anyway, that’s my opinion.

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Learning Process

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on July 22, 2012| Leave a Comment »

A discussion on one of my onling writers’ groups this week prompted me to think about this.

Sometimes, if you stack up all the rejections–and you will get rejections in this buisiness, even the pros do–it’s easy to think that it signifies failure.

Maybe I’m a cockeyed optimist, but I prefer to think of it as steps along the learning process. There’s a lot to learn and not just about the craft of writing well and telling a great story. That’s a great start, but then you’ve got to brace yourself and send your work out into the world. That means learning to write query letters and synopses–a whole other kind of writng craft. It may mean learning how to e-publish some of your work. It means learning how to market your stories. No matter how far you go, there will always be more to learn. That’s actually a good thing. This will never get boring.

So, yes, if i just look at the rejections, I might get depressed. I prefer to look at it another way. From each project that has fallen short of my hopes, I’ve learned something. And each project takes me a little closer to my goal. If I just keep on doing what I’m doing and learning with each step along the way, I will get there eventually.

My motto has always been, “Never give up. Never surrender.”

Apart from improving my craft, things that I’ve learned so far on this journey:

  1. Don’t send out a story too soon. This is a big one for me and I’ve sabotaged myself more than once this way. The old saying is true for stories as well as people: you never get a second chance to make a first impression. I just get so excited about my stories that I want to share them. I’ve instituted a new rule. After I finish the “final” revision, I allow a story to sit for about six months before I send it anywhere. At least, that’s what I’m trying to do.
  2. This applies to query letters, too. When I think it’s perfect, it’s probably about three months away from good enough. That means I’m going to have to start working on them earlier.
  3. Some stories may just not fit the mold of traditional publication, by the nature of the story or its length. But we’re very fortunate to live in a time in which we have the option of e-publication for those stories.

There are plenty of things I still have to work on. Marketing is a big one. I’ve done a little more work on book trailers. Here’s the trailer for BLOOD WILL TELL. The audio is not quite perfect yet.

Never stop learning.

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