Love Your Editor #1: Early Feedback

Sometimes writing can be scary. But we write anyway.

Otherwise, your imaginary friends can really make you question reality.

2013 was a wild and wooly year for me for many reasons, both personal and professional. In the end, the details are mine alone; but it is sufficient to say that it was definitely a year of growth and change.

One of those big “growing moments” as a writer came in mid-December, when I did something I’d never done before: I took a completed, self-edited manuscript and handed it off to an editor for scrutiny.

I knew she would agree with me on the errors and issues I knew about.

I knew she would spot errors and issues to which I was utterly blind.

I knew her scrutiny would make my tale stronger, more vibrant.

BUT…

I had no idea how to-the-marrow, precise, and brutally insightful her assessments would truly be.

Sometimes I highlight whole sections and delete them. And start over again.

Sometimes multiple times, until I get it right. 

Then I feel halfway decent about what I've done.

And then I need an editor.

At the time I'm writing this, I have not yet received the full edits back. But she has contacted me three times in the last couple weeks with questions. The first two times, they were questions with the intent of helping her better understand the overall vision and trajectory of my tale.

The third time, however, I got a few “Have you considered….?” questions. As in, “Have you considered making character X more ignorant of [plot point A] and [plot point B] so that she can be more relatable/realistic?”

Of course, making X more ignorant of A and B changes a lot of things about her as a character. A LOT.

But just listening to my editor’s concise, penetrating questions made me realize her ultimate goal is to make my story the most powerful, well-formed, impactful tale it can be.

Sometimes abominable amounts of coffee are needed to help me through a mad writing session. 

Can't wait to see what the editing marathons will be like. o__O

On a surface level, I already knew that I needed an editor. I’ve read the blog posts, seen the tweets, followed editors, agents, and other publishing gurus. I’ve talked to authors who’ve walked this path before. So from an academic standpoint, I already knew it would be immensely helpful. I wouldn’t have doled out my hard-earned cash (read: squeezing blood out of stones because I was immensely short on monies) to hire one.

To know a truth experientially, however, is another thing entirely.

Just the little bit of feedback I’ve received so far has been enough to show me that no matter how gorgeous I think my idea is, how in love with my characters, how passionate about the storyline, how self-critical I am about my own work – I cannot see all the flaws.

In fact, some narrative flaws were so oddly positioned that I saw them as strengths.

Some narrative strengths had lodged in my perspective so crookedly that I saw them as flaws.

Character X, for instance, is one I’ve struggled with immensely as I endeavored to write her in the most dynamic way. By the time I handed off my manuscript for editing, I was so frustrated that I was 100% positive she was a weak, flimsy character. I told the editor so.

“I need help with her,” I said.

“I’ll give her a look,” said the editor.

When she contacted me later with her questions, the editor’s verdict on X stunned me.

“She’s too superwoman,” she said. “Too complete. She needs to grow and change with the story. Have you considered….?”

Then came a couple broad suggestions. My editor needed to know if I was willing to compromise on some things, because my willingness would impact the specificity of her suggestions to both the character, and the overall work. Her initial suggestions, however, meant doing heavy renovations to X’s character: her awareness of self, her personality, her personal history, everything.

And of course, those suggestions impact how other characters respond to her, and how she responds to them. In short, those “few” edits will drastically impact the whole book.

And you know what? She’s entirely right.

X needs to change – and the rest of the cast with her, if necessary. Even if it means reconfiguring certain aspects of the plot.

And when all else fails - do it old school. At least when it comes to storyboarding. 

Sometimes writing it longhand is therapeutic too - mostly because the interwebz 

is not lurking behind your word document, mocking you.

Why am I sharing this with you? Because this is part of my journey as a writer, and I figure at least a few of my blog followers are in same or similar positions as yet-unpublished authors.

I also feel that, if I take time to articulate where I am in this process, it will help me become a stronger writer – both in my craft, and my ability to take constructive criticism.

What I would like to do over the next few months is post some “Love Your Editor” blog posts (as time permits, as I still have multiple jobs). I would like to share some of the feedback I’ve received, and how that impacts me as a writer and, of course, the story I hope to one day publish.

Today is the “Early Feedback” episode because (as I said) I don’t have the full edits back yet. But I should have them soon. And when I do, you’ll hear from me now and then about how I’m ingesting and responding to this very new (for me) stage of the writing journey.

I hope you’ll follow along. J

What about you? Where are you in your personal writing journey?

Have you had any experience with editors, good or bad?

Let me know in the comments below!

And as always – thanks for reading!

Flight of Blue ~ Interview!

Welcome to a very big day in the life of one of my writer friends. Today, Anna Howard releases her debut novel, Flight of Blue to the reading public. A YA book about magic, friendship, and what it means to do what is right over what is easy - Flight of Blue tackles hard issues in a fairy-tale-with-a-twist approach.

Haven't heard of Flight of Blue? Here is a snippet to whet your appetite:

A cursed traffic light. A rip in the fabric of the world. A possum sorcerer injured on a quest for revenge.

Kai and Ellie embark on a journey to return the sorcerer to his home. Entangled in events that could destroy the world, Kai must choose whether to accept the role he was born to play, but isn’t sure he wants.

Writing a novel is always an intense act of love - and very hard work. So of course I wanted to know more about how Anna got to this point. Lucky for me, she was willing to sit down for an interview and give me the inside scoop on how her dream became a reality.

* * * * *

Hello, Anna! Thank you for taking time to answer my questions. First and foremost, how did you get the idea for Flight of Blue?

After nearly being t-boned in an intersection when someone ran the new traffic light by my house, I was driving home with adrenaline pumping in my veins and saw a possum lying by the side of the road. I stopped to see if I could help, and the possum told me a story about a sorcerer and the curse on the light. That's my story and I'm sticking to it ;-)

One of the more powerful sorcerers in the books is a talking Opossum. It's such a great twist to the story, but I do have to ask: Why Opossums? What made you pick that creature and not racoons or foxes or something more "traditionally" fairy tale-ish?

Well, Angela, that's a good question. I'm glad you enjoyed the twist, but I have to confess, I didn't plan it. Possums are unfortunately the most common victims of careless driving in the semi-rural area of Tennessee where I live. So my sorcerer was always an opossum. Once I met Reginald and then met his folk, I realized what a fun group they were and how much material they gave me to work with. Plus, Reginald's fun to tease. I call him a rodent and Kai calls him Reggie, and I'm not sure which of us is higher on his black list, but he's so cute when he gets all bristly. I suppose it could get us cursed or something, but Reginald's sort of sworn off cursing things in revenge after the fiasco with the traffic light. At least, I sure hope he has...

I know from my own writing experience that certain aspects of novel-writing are more difficult than others-sometimes it's an unsavory character who is hard to write, sometimes its a specific scene. What was the biggest challenge about writing Flight of Blue?

I'd say the biggest challenge was actually Sebastian. But of, course, it wasn't his fault. It was just difficult to remember to record his reactions to events since he wasn't taking part in the conversations. I finally figured out I'd been neglecting him when he kept up a constant stream of head bumps and wiggles, drawing more and more attention to himself until I had appropriately recorded all of his contributions to the events.

While Flight of Blue has a happy ending, it does end with a few unanswered questions, and hints of events to come. What can we expect for our heroes in the next book?

After discovering where his parents are, Kai will embark on quest with his friends to free them. The Realm of Darkness is even more intent on taking control of the Middle Realm, now that they've realized the Keeper walks the Realms once more. Kai will have to battle enemies on all sides with the help of his friends from Flight of Blue and some new ones along the way as he strives to retain control of his own mind and solve a puzzle that will give him a powerful means of rescuing his parents while discovering more about the mysterious prophecy of the Lucinarium.

When can readers expect the second episode in the Keeper of the Keys Chronicles?

The release date is still to-be-determined, but definitely by Summer 2013, and hopefully a bit sooner if my team and I can swing it. The sequel is called the Guardians, and folks who are interested can like my Facebook page and/or sign up for my mailing list to get updates as planning progress. I can say that I'm about halfway through the first draft, so it is definitely underway!

Links:

Facebook:

http://facebook.com/aehowardwrites

Mailing list:

http://eepurl.com/kj4dj

Thanks, Anna, for a great interview!

Curious? You can check out Flight of Blue using the links provided above, 

or check it out on Goodreads!

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Jellybean, Licorice, Vonnegut, Line

Time for the next installment of the Visual Storyboarding series! 

(Previous entries have been bookmarked for you at the end of this post.)

________________________

KINDS OF TIMELINES: 

JELLYBEAN, LICORICE, VONNEGUT, LINE

Now that we’ve discussed (a) why we storyboard and not merely “plot”, (b) how to visualize our hooks, and (c) how to pull together the factual AND visual details for our respective novels --- the next step, then, is to craft a timeline of events that your characters must endure for the sake of the story.

The good news? 

Timelines don’t need to be ultra-specific - only enough to keep you on track with where your tale needs to go.

The challenge? 

Since this is visual storyboarding, you'll likely need at least two different kinds of timelines, and possibly all four.

Which four kinds of timelines do I mean? The ones mentioned in the blog title, of course: Jellybean, Licorice, Vonnegut, Line.

But in true Angela fashion, I’ve given you the list of timeline forms in reverse order. Let’s start with the last one, shall we?

LINE TIMELINE:

This is the form of timeline that every schoolchild knows. A basic, straightforward timeline that gives the general idea of which event happened first – you know, to show that Napoleon lived before Ronald Reagan, or that the sinking of the Titanic did NOT happen during the Third Crusade.

A basic line timeline looks something like this:

photo source

Simple enough, yes?

So when you first sit down to work the timelines for your novel, this is usually your first step. Go ahead and get the obvious out on paper – not in paragraph form, but in this simple line form, so that you can have a quick reference to make sure your novel doesn’t jump the tracks and diverge into the opium fields somewhere.

You may have already done this part, of course. If you have, you’re ready for the next kind of timeline:

VONNEGUT TIMELINE:

This is the timeline idea that revolutionized the way I plot my stories – and, as you might have guessed from the name, the idea was given to me by the old wisecracking surrealist writer, Kurt Vonnegut himself.

More specifically, I learned about this style of time-line-ing when I first sat down to read Vonnegut’s best-known novel, Slaughterhouse Five.

I refer, of course, to the first chapter of that book, which explains how he came up with his hypnotically fractured story about time-sliding Billy Pilgrim. More specifically, he explains what aliens and a disillusioned middle-aged man have to do with Vonnegut’s own experiences during the bombing of Dresden (WWII), which he and his comrades narrowly survived by hiding out in a concrete slaughterhouse (from which the book derives its name). 

The part that changed the way I saw story-plotting was Vonnegut’s own confession on how he started to draw out the idea for Slaughterhouse Five:

I had outlined the Dresden story many times. The best outline I ever made, or anyway, the prettiest one, was on the back of a roll of wallpaper. I used my daughter’s crayons, a different color for each main character. One end of the wallpaper was the beginning of the story, and the other end was the end, and then there was all that middle part, which was the middle. And the blue line met the red line and then the yellow line, and yellow line stopped because the character represented by the yellow line was dead. And so on. The destruction of Dresden was represented by a vertical band of orange cross-hatching, and all the lines that were still alive passed through it, came out the other side.

Now – I don’t know if that description makes any sense to you, but it sent off massive amounts of light bulbs in my head. Holy crow, I thought. That makes so much sense! I could see at one whack where all the major characters are, where they fall in and out of the story, who crosses into the climactic conflicts, and so on. I could totally do this.

And when I did the serious storyboarding for Castle 8, that’s just what I did. I taped together several sheets of typing paper end to end – fourteen feet of it – and spent five solid days during a January ice storm laying out my Dresdens and colored lines and battlefields.

The result looked like this:

"The beginning of the story." First half of the behemoth 14 foot timeline, spread across 

my desperately-needs-vacuuming floor. This is how I spent the five days I was stuck 

at home during the ice storm of early 2011.

"All that middle part, which was the middle." What you see here has 

changed somewhat now; I’ve dropped some characters and shifted the timeline. 

That happens when you write, at least to a point. 

"And the other end was the end." The other end of the 14 foot timeline. The broad yellow stripe 

indicates the huge climactic scene of the series. I gave myself another foot 

or so of space afterward, to allow for adequately handling the denouement of the tale.

Some of the timeline has changed, but most of it is still structurally sound. I refer to it frequently, because this shows me at one glance where each character is in relation to the major events happening in my tale. Moreover, because my series will become increasingly complex in the overlap of characters’ lives, I will refer to it still more as the tale progresses. My fourteen foot timeline may look like overkill, but for me – it’s a lifesaver.

LICORICE TIMELINE

So you’ve got your Vonnegut Timeline ready (or we’re pretending that you have). Now you realize that even within the overall harp of colored lifelines, there are some finer points that need their own timeline. Maybe there is a very busy three month period in your tale where a lot is going on – OR maybe your story doesn’t cross years (like mine), but a series of weeks, and a narrower range of time-line-ing is in order.

That’s where laying out a licorice timeline will help.

An incomplete licorice timeline. With very short, squat licorice strips. 

(But not quite a jellybean timeline, even so.)

I call it a “licorice” timeline because it looks like someone’s laid out those long, thin rectangular strands of Twizzlers and given them funny labels, and took away the color. I did a licorice timeline for a nine month stretch of Castle 8, and while it’s not completely finished (or accurate), the current format still helps me understand the necessary structure of those nine important months in my characters' lives.

JELLYBEAN TIMELINE

But what if you need to break events down even further? What if there are a few days in your narrative where everything is happening at once, and in several different places?

That’s where a jellybean timeline will help. It works essentially like the licorice timeline, but with shorter, fatter dollops of information on a Vonnegut trajectory. I recently had to create a jellybean timeline to get a better grasp of the opening five days of my story, and the result was this:

 See the cute little jellybean shapes? Or maybe they're more like gumdrops. 

But "gumdrop" doesn't quite catch the rhythm of the "jellybean, licorice, Vonnegut, line" jingle. 

OTHER THINGS TO REMEMBER ABOUT STORY TIMELINES:

·      I am severely OCD when it comes to timelines. Yours doesn’t need to be so neat, or so anal-retentive.

·      Not all of these timeline types will apply to your story. Most of you will need only one or two, and which ones you need may vary, depending on the project.

·      It’s always advisable to do the standard line timeline at least, just so you know where your major events fall, and what those major events are.

·      EXPERIMENT. I’m sure there’s another way of handing the timing aspect of things that I haven’t covered here. Use what works right for you.

________________________

If you missed the earlier Visual Storyboarding episodes, you can follow the following links to catch up:

     PART ONE: Storyboarding vs Mere Plotting

     PART TWO: Building on Your Hook

     PART THREE: Chasing Down the Details

Questions? Comments? Let me know in the comment section below!

Honeymoon = GONE

This week has been extremely difficult, writing-wise. Feeling I am so close to the brink of really nailing Castle 8 rewrites in a way that I think will shine through with my original vision, and yet feeling so inadequate in making it actually happen.

Also, I am tired. Though most of my jobs have stopped for the summer, they've only been replaced with summer employment (bills must be paid in June and July, after all), which means now instead of having three jobs, I have FOUR.

But that's not the real reason for my fatigue, believe or not. Most of my weariness has stemmed from my writing, which - up to this point - I would have told you was pretty much impossible.

I had coffeehouse meetings with four different writers this week, and I detected the same fatigue in two of those four writers. At a couple times the conversation actually lagged as we just stared at each other wearily across the polished wood table, wondering what to say next.

The meetings were entirely worth it, of course - they always are. But the truth of the thing was underscored for me: the Writing Honeymoon is officially over. For me and, I think, a couple of my writer friends.

photo source

The more strained of those two bah-humbug meetings happened this afternoon; or at least, that's how the meeting started. Fortunately, we did not give up on our writing talk, or the writing date, either. We stuck around another hour after the collective depression over our projects set in, and bought another cup of coffee. And talked some more. Compared more notes. Asked more open-ended-you-couldn't-possibly-answer-this questions.

Eventually, remarkably, a "eureka" moment came - not for me, but for my friend. By the end of the session, her enthusiasm had penetrated my funk. I wasn't feeling nearly so down, but I was still feeling tired. But the kind of tired that keeps on writing.

In exchange, my friend gave me something hard to think about concerning Castle 8. So hard that it took me all evening wrestling with it to admit that she was right: One of my major characters had to go.

Nor was she the first one to point it out. Two other beta-readers whose opinion I value highly had said the same thing. I've spent the last six months trying to argue them down, explain to them how that was dead wrong. My character was witty, charming, great with a comeback, handsome, a lover of music and poetry, and a redhead goshdarnit!! So of course he's necessary!

But wit and beauty and a love of beautiful things does not a necessary character make. I sat down and considered the hard question: What would this story look like without my pet character?

The hard-to-swallow answer: A lot tighter. Much more driven. Less prone to wandering. It eliminates several plot detours. Action goes up. WAY up. Nostalgic detours drop to zilch.

Ugly truth: I eliminate my pet, and my manuscript reaps amazing benefits. In all quadrants.

I admit I cried, a little. That's a definite a first for me. I always thought stories about writers who cried over their characters were nutzo. Now I'm one of the lunatics, I guess.

This will take a few days at least for me to get over. Won't lie about that. But after an hour of eliminating The Pet from my narrative - only an hour; he was in woefully few parts once I sat down and really looked at it - I have to admit that my narrative is already healthier, in many ways.

But you'll forgive me, I trust, if I drown my sorrows in a couple days of raging jigpunk music. Or frozen yogurt. Or maybe a good book that will remind me that I am not the first writer to realize that the Writing Honeymoon was over.....and write through it anyway.

Anyone else ever been there?

Visual Storyboarding (pt 2): By Hook or By Crook

A couple days late, but here it is - Part Two in my current series on Visual Storyboarding!

(Didn't catch the first post? Look for it here.)

Now - to cut to the chase!!!

The Hook That Grabs You

Part of knowing how to visually storyboard is to really grab on to one detail: How did the story come to you in the first place?

Of course there are myriad ways this happens to any writer. You overhear a snatch of conversation. You see one remarkable person in a crowd. You have a wacky day (or a glorious vacation, or some other event) and think: “You know, this could have gone another way…”

Sometimes the idea coalesces from various bits you’ve gathered from books you’ve read or movies you’ve seen. Sometimes you’re ambushed by an idea entirely.

My current project, Castle 8, literally ambushed me while I was driving home from an after-Christmas dinner with friends on December 26, 2010. More specifically, I was ambushed by four brothers. I knew their first names, I knew their faces, I even had a general idea of their (very strong!) personalities. They just needed a last name and a story to wrap around them.

I went home and immediately got out pencil and paper, and started hashing out who these four young men were that had crowded into my car during the long dark drive – leaped, as it were, out of my imagination and into my reality.

I was hooked. More than that – I had my hook.

If It Hooks You, It Hooks Your Audience

Granted, Castle 8 is nowhere near completion yet, though I have made it my personal goal to get it polished and query-worthy well before the end of the year. Expanding on the idea was fun, and it led me into all sorts of interesting narrative quirks that absolutely thrilled my nerdy, writerly soul. But as I worked on it, I found that I kept returning to the original idea that hooked me in the first place – the brothers themselves.

Usually, when we talk about what hooks a reader into a story, it comes down to: What was it that hooked YOU in the first place? The situation? The place? A specific character?

For me, it was the four brothers: Greg, Errol, Finn and March. They were so real to me that I kept going back to them as the central focus of my tale. Naturally it followed that the tale itself became a character-driven story.

This was confirmed even in the responses I received from my first round of beta-readers. Though the narrative was choppily rendered, with detours it didn’t need and even a few unnecessary characters, everyone honed in on the four brothers as the one thing that drew them in.

Everyone had their favorite brother, just like everyone pointed to another brother they thought was weak or “unnecessary” ~ though interestingly enough, no one ever pointed to the same brother as the “throwaway.”  I chalked that up to my bad writing and figured it was okay to keep all four of them. But it meant that I had to sift through some serious plot holes in the story.

The whole process was a priceless lesson for me. It taught me that if the hook was good enough to hook me – it’s good enough to hook my audience. Even if I fall on my nose during the actual telling of it.

Visualizing Your Hooks

That realization brought me back to the big problem I had with my narrative: it was, in short, a jumbled-up mess. And that’s putting it politely.

So what was my problem? I had visualized the Swackhammer brothers so well that I hadn’t taken the time to visualize the rest of my story. I knew it happened in the future, but a plausible future, based on technologies and machines we have now. I had an intuitive understanding of some of it, but not a lot of specific knowledge.

Scratch that. I had NO CLUE what I was doing in creating this world.

I knew the Swackhammer brothers were where they needed to be. I just didn’t have a clear idea of what that being entailed – what it looked like, smelled like, how it all fit together. Heck, I didn’t even have a map to know where everything belonged!

No wonder the narrative sagged so brutally. I had my hook, but hadn’t taken the time to fully visualize it. ALL of it.

Saved From the Black Hole

End result: in January of this year, I put Castle 8 on the back burner. WAY on the back burner. I was so discouraged with the narrative mess it had become that I figured it would be years before I could get it out of its black hole.

Boy was I wrong.

In the past four months, I stumbled across a couple of tools – some very old school, others very new – that have enabled me to get a lock on the full three-dimensional aspect of my story. I know what it looks like. I know what it feels like. I have my map. I have sounds and notes and photos and all sorts of creative detritus that has given me a tighter visual control on my project.

I’m currently rewriting Castle 8 as we speak, from the ground up.

It’s hard, of course – but only in the tenacity required to keep at something I’ve already written before. Because now I have all I need to make the story come alive – not just the brothers, but everything that surrounds them, including the dangers and locales to which future installments will take them.

How did I manage that? Well – I hate to be a tease, but that’s a subject for next time. But the next update WILL deal exclusively with the tools I’ve used to really build up my project.

Heck, I’ll even post photos. Lots of photos. Doesn’t that sound like fun?

Cannot wait to share the next step – it’s probably the most fun, if you ask me.

But tell me – what do YOU do when you realize you haven’t fully realized something in your story world? I’d love to hear of other’s techniques. I know I haven’t thought of everything.

Got a comment or idea? Let me know in the comments below!

And as always – thanks for reading!