Category Archives: On writing
A Scientist in Fantasy-land
I write a lot of Science Fiction, but have recently completed a fantasy trilogy. Greta was rather surprised about this (yes, I do write fantasy) and asked me to tell her a bit about how the trilogy came about.
I thought it was a rather interesting illustration of the question ‘where do you get your ideas?’
A number of years ago, I belonged to a face-to-face writers’ group. We met (and as far as I know, they still do) at a SF/F bookshop every third Saturday of the month. This place was quite far from my home, and because the meetings were held on Saturdays, my husband could look after the kids while I went there.
One Saturday, the meeting was rather disappointing. For some reason, not many people showed up, and those who did hadn’t read any of the posted material, and couldn’t stay for a chat and coffee afterwards.
I was kinda miffed about that, so decided to have coffee on my own, to snatch a bit more quiet time before returning to the war zone (aka home). You see, during the short meeting, someone had said something (I can neither remember who it was and what exactly was said) that made me think of a ridiculous concept: a person without a heart living on as a ghost-like being.
I had a notebook with me and while I was sitting there drinking coffee, I jotted down random thoughts. A world in which it is possible for a person to live without a heart must be a pretty strange one, and one with magic at that. I didn’t want to call it magic, because I write a lot of hard SF and don’t ‘do’ magic, so I invented a life and energy-sustaining force called icefire, which behaves not unlike nuclear radiation.
For something like that to exist, the people living in the area affected by the radiation must have a resistance to it. Ergo, there would be other people who do not have a resistance to it, and they would live outside the radiation’s area of influence, in a different country. They also approach the dangerous radiation with logic. They’ve devised ways to measure the radiation, much like we would in the modern world. Much of their weather relies on pattern generated by this radiation.
Clearly, to chuck some tension into the story, I needed an event that created a situation where a large amount of radiation is released and encroaches upon the neighbouring country. Of course, tension is higher when it’s not a random event, but part of an evil plan.
Enter Tandor, the hapless evil guy. Hmmm. What does he want? Well, in years before he was born, his grandfather the king was using the magic/radiation to perform wonderful feats of technology, and to do evil things, such as taking people’s hearts so that they became mindless servitors which inflicted a regime of terror on the citizens. Then the current regime overthrew the monarchy. The survivors of the ex-royal family, having fled to the neighbouring country, have conveniently forgotten about the evil stuff, and claim that they want to restore the country to its previous glory, a concept that appeal to the common people who have suffered fifty years of poverty. You can understand that this makes the rational neighbours nervous, as they scramble for ways to deal with the burst of radiation.
A story that began with a throwaway comment led me to explore the issue of magic from two sides, and answer the question: if you could quantify and explain magic in scientific terms, what would it look like?
This, of course, forms the basis of the worldbuilding. The story itself follows a number of characters and their personal struggles in the grand scheme. I call it post-apocalyptic steampunk fantasy. Although it all ends well, the story is quite dark in places, and it’s definitely for adult readers.
Bio:
Patty Jansen lives in Sydney, Australia, where she spends most of her time writing Science Fiction and Fantasy. She publishes in both traditional and indie venues. Her story This Peaceful State of War placed first in the second quarter of the Writers of the Future contest and was published in their 27th anthology. Her story Survival in Shades of Orange will be published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact.
Her novels (available at ebook venues) include Watcher’s Web (soft SF), The Far Horizon (middle grade SF), Charlotte’s Army (military SF) and books 1 and 2 of the Icefire Trilogy Fire & Ice (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005TF1B9K) and Dust & Rain (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006GODGVY) . Book 3 will be out in 2012 and will be called Blood & Tears.
Patty is on Twitter (@pattyjansen), Facebook, LinkedIn, goodreads, LibraryThing, google+ and blogs at: http://pattyjansen.com/
McDevitt breaks the rules
I’m updating this post because I’ve just read an article about the ‘10 writing rules we wish more science fiction and fantasy authors would break‘ As if happens, the articles reverberated with me because I’ve just finished reading a Jack McDevitt novel, ‘Seeker’. He breaks the rules, pretty much all of them.
To start with, he always begins with a prologue. I confess I’m not a lover of prologues. I’d rather just get into the story. You’ll find plenty of people who’ll tell you prologues are not ‘liked’ by agents so best to avoid but if you must have one, make it short. His can take up thousands of words. But I’ve learned that you really must read McDevitt prologues because in them he sets up a mystery which is solved in the rest of the book.
His pace is often leisurely, with a great deal of dialogue as he lovingly peels away the layers of the mystery. He often adds paragraphs of narration, unashamedly stopping to explain to the reader the history of a particular city or planetary despot. He adds colourful asides which do no more than add some depth to the story. He goes off at tangents which are presumably ‘red herrings’. In the vernacular, these are known as ‘info-dumps’.
At times I think you’d be hard pressed to explain how bits and pieces fit into the ‘every word must count’ theory. In many of his books he relates at some length the plot of a movie or sim or book a character is involved with. Then some tiny snippet of that tale is used elsewhere. I love it. It’s exactly how people think.
I’m not saying there’s no action in his novels. In ‘Seeker’, as in all the other Alex Benedict/ Chase Kolpath books, somebody is out to kill them and the author has fun coming up with ingenious ways of getting them out of various predicaments. In fact, in ‘Seeker’ I could have done without the ‘someone’s out to get us’ thread. I found it a little bit implausible. But it didn’t matter. The REAL story is the mystery and the science.
Yes, he has FTL (faster than light travel). In fact, his ships have quantum drive (!!!) Instantaneous transfer – although rendered a little more ‘believable’ because there are certain limitations which extend the duration of travel. No portals, but then, with a quantum drive, who needs ‘em?
McDevitt is touted as the ‘logical heir to Asimov and Clarke’ and I wouldn’t be arguing. The science is great, so is the historical grounding of his universe.
This author is a best-seller in hard science fiction. I get the idea he writes the stories he wants to write, the way he wants to write them.
Jack McDevitt is the author of “A Talent for War”, “Polaris”, “Seeker” and “The Devil’s Eye” – all Alex Benedict/Chas Kolpath stories, as well as a bunch of others. Two of my other favourites are “Omega” and “Slow Lightning”. And I’ve just read ‘Odyssey’, which is pretty well written in third person omniscient.
IO9, are you sure McDevitt didn’t write that article?
On over-engineering writing
Everybody’s got a novel in them, so they say. And as I’ve mentioned before, the novel writing business has become an industry in its own right. Everywhere you look you’ll find another course on how to come up with plots, write convincing characters, create a scene that ‘hooks’, edit your book so that every word counts. Writers blog about ‘how to’, things you should do, things you shouldn’t. What your novel must have to sell. Books have been written on how to market, how to sell, how to use the internet to create your ‘brand’. And so it goes. I wouldn’t say all of this is useless; far from it. I’ve done quite a few courses, read a few ‘how to’ books. But you know, I think the danger is that a novel can become over-engineered.
I wonder if Shakespeare, Dickens, Mark Twain, Jules Verne or more modern well-known authors like McCaffrey, Asimov, Stephanie Meyers and J.K. Rowling ever took much notice of ‘theme’ or ending every scene with the MC worse off. I don’t have to ask about Tolkien. He made his position very clear – he wanted to try his hand at writing a very long story that would entertain.
Let me give you an analogy. I would have loved to have been good at painting. I had a certain limited talent but (let’s face it) I wasn’t very good. That’s okay. I’m good at lots of other stuff. In the art world, though, I resorted to a few ‘paint by number’ kits. You know what I mean. A ‘real’ artist has created a painting of something (let’s say a horse) and the kit you buy shows the outline of the horse and its surroundings on a canvas and then various shapes are drawn, each with a number in them. You get a couple of paint brushes and little jars of paint, each with a number corresponding to the numbers on the canvas. And away you go. You carefully colour in each little shape and end up with a recognisable horse. But it isn’t art. Sure, you could improve your input by mixing the colours and blending them together, so it’s not so obviously a colour-in. That’s what it is, though – a colour-in.
I did one year of English at university. I’d always enjoyed writing and reading and I thought I’d enjoy English lit. But I very soon discovered that the profs weren’t interested in MY opinion of the books we were given to read. I was supposed to go off and regurgitate what other learned folk had to say about them. I walked away because I didn’t care. I don’t analyse books I read. I read for entertainment. And nobody can tell me I have to read Dickens if I don’t want to, if I find his style overblown, if I can’t relate to his characters. On the other hand, I LOVED Tolkien, even if his style was narrative and he went off into tangents that didn’t relate to the overall story.
I’d take a guess that among those hugely successful authors it wasn’t only Tolkien who ‘just wanted to write a story’. I fear that if we all go along with the ‘template for novels’ approach we’ll lose our spontaneity, even our creativity. Yes, I guess this is yet another rant about the Rules of Writing. Follow them slavishly and you have a paint by numbers kit.
I’m very interested to know what others think.
Hogfather the movie. A mixed experience
I’ve finally had a chance to watch ‘Hogfather’ the movie – based on Terry Pratchett’s book. After I’d watched the first episode (the second will be on Saturday) my other half said “I didn’t hear much laughter.” So true. I’ve had some time to think about what I’d seen and how it affected me. I also went back and re-read the book.
I have to say I don’t think the book translated well to the screen. It’s just too complex and it’s actually a rather dark tale. Mister Teatime (pronounced ‘Te-ah-tim-eh’) is an evil nutcase, superbly played, I must say, by Marc Warren in the film. Teatime isn’t somebody like the fearsome Mrs Bucket (Boo-kay). A baby-faced young man whose only outward appearance of madness is his weird eyes, he murders for amusement, kills people for whom he has no further use. Lord Downey, head of the Assassin’s Guild, charges Teatime with the task of inhuming the Hogfather, a commission he has received from the shadowy ‘auditors’.
Sure, there are some genuinely funny parts to the book. Pratchett ‘gets’ kids and the whole sitting on Santa’s knee stuff, and the little ‘s’ which is a shy kid’s ‘yes’. The notion of a real, raw wood Santa sledge drawn by four wild boars replacing the curly sleigh and the pink papier-mâché pigs in the department store’s Santa grotto is hilarious. The kids LOVE the boars, which pee on the floor, generally stink and scare the bejaysus out of management. And the notion of Death, a seven-foot skeleton with a scythe, taking over the Hogfather role is mind-boggling. Only TP could have come up with that. But while there’s plenty of amusing by-play on the sides (the death of rats, the raven, the Cheerful Fairy, the oh-god of hangovers, the wizards, Ponder Stibbons and HEX etc etc at its heart, ‘Hogfather’ is a serious story with an interesting message. You might say it examines the real meaning of … not so much Christmas, but the ceremonies of the winter solstice. The more recent religions have tacked their message onto a primeval fear, that the sun will not return. In fact, that fear is stated – if the Hogfather is not found, the sun will not rise tomorrow.
This isn’t the only deep-seated belief Pratchett uses in this book. The Tooth Fairy looms large in the plot. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but the concept of giving a child money for a tooth may very well stem from the fact that if the wrong people collect the teeth, the child could be in jeopardy. The analogy is to hair and nail clippings, which are used in spells to control people. In fact, the whole book is about fear and belief.
I can quite believe people who had not read the book would find it very difficult to follow the thread of the movie. Even I had to work at it, and I’ve read the book several times. I think perhaps the people who made ‘Going Postal’, the more recent transfer of a Pratchett novel to the screen, learnt a few lessons. ‘Going Postal’ deviates from the book in several ways, simplifying the plot for a TV audience. I can’t help but feel that the resulting screenplay lost rather a lot in translation but it was probably wise.
Which all goes to show why I’d rather read a book. You can uncover so many more layers.
If you’re a writer, nothing is ever wasted
If you’re a writer, nothing you’ve ever done, nothing you’ve ever learnt, or experienced will ever go to waste. I was thinking this profound thought the other day, when considering my latest work-in-progress. It’s a paranormal romance, set in India, Hong Kong and Melbourne and it touches on Indian and Australian history, as well as tiger poaching.
Wow. That’s quite a canvas, isn’t it? But you know the old saying – ‘write what you know’. To which I would add ‘and research the bits you don’t’. So what did I know? Well, I’ve lived in Melbourne, I’ve visited Hong Kong and I studied Indian history for three years as part of my BA(Hons) in history. I wanted to weave in a little of the history of the Afghan cameleers in Australia, so I used the internet for what I wanted to know. To learn more about tigers I watched documentaries by the master, David Attenborough, and went to the net to learn what I needed about tiger poaching.
The Indian part of the story had several layers. This wasn’t a history lesson, it was a novel about an Australian doctor confronted by a very different culture. I had to have enough of an idea of how that would work. My interest in India helped, because I had some basic understanding of how caste works and its impact on workers. But movies like ‘Ghandi’ and ‘A Passage to India’ added some color, as did traveler accounts I encountered on the net. I also had to learn enough about how a broken hip affects the patient and how it’s treated to make that thread convincing. One man who had experienced a broken hip had actually chronicled his recovery. Very useful.
This particular book (working title ‘Shadow of the Tiger’) is contemporary. Most of my other work is science fiction romance. Write what you know? How does that work?
Let’s take ‘Morgan’s Choice’. You’ll find a society which quite possibly derives from the Indian caste system. I wonder where I got that from? The main character, Morgan, is human but she has a supercomputer in her brain. This isn’t new; the concept is in other books. I’d suggest the difference with Morgan is I emphasise her humanity more than her data skills. Be that as it may, I worked for many years in the computer industry, first as a programmer and later as an analyst and team leader. So I felt I had a good chance of making Morgan’s activities in the cyber world convincing.
In my other two books, the ‘Iron Admiral’ series, I introduced an alien species called the ptorix. They’re not just a nightmare I dreamed up one night. I’ve had an abiding interest in nature and animals, as well as astronomy and cosmology, for many, many years and my alien species was well thought out, with characteristics you would expect in a technologically advanced society.
That history background has been useful many times over. Who said a BA isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on? The plot in ‘The Iron Admiral: Conspiracy’ is loosely based on a real, historical incident when Hitler’s secret police, dressed as Poles, staged an attack on a German radio station near the Polish border to give the Fuhrer an excuse to start what became World War 2.
See what I mean? Nothing is ever wasted.
Oh – one more thing; Sally Carter, MC of ‘Shadow of the Tiger’, is a very keen amateur photographer. Gosh, what a coincidence. 
Do ‘autocritters’ help?
I’m on the final hurdle of the editing marathon for my latest novel, “Starheart”, the copy edit. I’m not a great adherent of the “Rules of Writing” as I’m sure some of you know. But on a whim I decided to test my MS against an ‘autocritter’. They come under various names and are easy enough to find. Software which sucks in your manuscript, breaks out every word, and comes back with a list of how many times you used what.
The software I used is available at Savvy Authors, an energetic and helpful web-based writers’ site. Basic membership is free for those interested. Anyway, this package prepares a report after it has done its thing. The user is told that “All percentages are based upon industry averages for mass market fiction.”
These are my initial results for Starheart
The software also listed the number of times every word occurred, but I haven’t shown those results. This table is worth considering because it purports to give a comparison against ‘industry standards’. So what does it tell me?
I don’t use exclamation marks (yay me!) and I’m okay on a few others, according to whoever came up with the recommended maxima. But overall, I guess you’d have to call it a fail. 
Let’s see, now.
All
I overused ‘all’. I checked by using ‘find’ to read each one in context. And yes, I agree I had many instances of ‘nothing’ expressions such as ‘after all’ and ‘at all’.
As
I was astounded at how many times I’d used the ‘as…as’ construction, such as ‘as fast as’, ‘as soon as’ and so on. I managed to replace quite a few of those with words like ‘immediately’. But here we hit a problem. If I use ‘immediately’, I introduce an adverb, something this software does not detect and which (according to the Rules of Writing) should be used sparingly (sic). I found that quite often, ‘as’ occured in a construction such as ‘“where are we going?” she asked as they walked down the corridor.’ Now, I could replace that fragment with ‘Walking down the corridor, she asked, “where are we going?”’ Having been guilty of overusing ‘…ing’ words in the past, I’m careful with them. Besides, to me the meaning isn’t quite the same.
Could
I suspect the main reason for the objection to ‘could’ is that it is often used in constructions like ‘could see’ when one is in a character’s POV, for instance, ‘in the distance she could see a train’. It’s not needed. Just tell the reader what the character saw. ‘A train meandered through the valley far below.’ But ‘could’ is a perfectly legitimate word in many other cases. For instance ‘Even her security couldn’t beat one of those.’
Just/then
These can often be ‘nothing’ words. Eg ‘Let’s go, then’. ‘I don’t want to air the whole ship up just for a quick visit.’ I did go through and eliminate many instances of these two words.
Key/major/meaningful/important/significant
I can never use those words? Never? Oh, bummer. I have keys to locks, keypads. Jess only wants calls directed if they’re important. ‘He didn’t think it important, but Longford clearly did.’ I think I’ll ignore that one.
So/very/really
I was fascinated to read that the count for ‘so/very/really’ was zero. Certainly I checked for ‘very’ and often I could eliminate the word. But I did not remove it from dialogue, because that’s how people talk. And ‘so’? The word is not always used in the context of ‘so fast’, or ‘so slow’, it can be in context such as ‘So that’s what you meant?’ Why would you eliminate the word there?
The word ‘really’ isn’t always used as a nothing adverb, as in ‘really quickly’. Take this example; “So you believe what she’s saying? Really?”
Knew/know/think/thought
The implication here is that these words are unnecessary if you’re in a character’s POV. For example, ‘What the hell am I doing here, she thought.’ This is true and I take care not to use such constructions. However, I do use lines like this. “By the way, I thought the strip search was foolishness. But it’s not my command.” It’s in dialogue. Another example – ‘it would be interesting to find out what everybody else thought.’
See/saw/look
Here again, I suspect this is mainly aimed at cases where the narrator intrudes, as in ‘she could see the train in the distance’. But what about “See what you can find out.” Or ‘ Nothing to see.’ And dare I say, ‘saw’ might just be a crosscut saw (though not in this story).
Taste/smell
I passed this one with flying colours. Here again, I think it’s about POV, the ‘could smell’ or ‘could taste’ construction. ‘She could smell something rotten.’ So much better to write ‘the stench of decay invaded her nostrils’.
That
It’s always wise to check for ‘that’. It can be used as a ‘nothing’ word as in ‘so that‘. The word isn’t needed in this context. You might also be able to appease the software by replacing that with which.
There/it
My favourites in this category are ‘there was/were’. You can almost always find a better way of expressing this. For example ‘There were thirty levels on this thing.’ ‘This thing had thirty levels.’ Well worth a check.
Was/were/am/is/are/be/had/has
I seem to have overused these rather a lot. I’ll read through the MS and see what I think as I go. Again, I suspect this is a warning about POV and of using passive language. Why say ‘was walking’ when you can say ‘walked’? But while I’m checking, I’ll bear in mind that passive voice is perfectly legitimate in some circumstances, it’s preferable since it slows the action. And then there’s dialogue. It’s how people talk.
So there you have it. Is this type of software worthwhile? Yes it is. Anything that makes a writer think about his/her MS in a different way is useful. However, it is just one snapshot, a two-dimensional view of a complex object. I feel if you take these ‘rules’ too far, you’ll lose your own, distinctive voice. So take what is of value to you, and ignore the rest. I’m re-reading Terry Pratchett’s ‘Going Postal’ at the moment. It occurred to me, as I read, this award-winning, hugely popular author would fail the Autocritter, every time.
What about you? Do you use these tools? Do you find them helpful? I’d love to know.
Is writing a bit like prospecting for gold?
You know, there’s a lot of similarities between the business of writing books and prospecting for gold. Think about it. There you are in London trying to scrape a living doing something or other and you hear the news they’ve discovered gold in Australia. A place called Ballarat, quite near Melbourne (wherever that is). It’s 1851, life’s hard, cold and grim in England. Why not go off on the Big Adventure? Somewhere new and warm. Sure, it’s a long way but you’ll only be away for a year or so. They say you can pick up nuggets as big as your fist, just lying there for the taking. A few weeks and you’ll come home a millionaire.
But it isn’t like that. You join the other thousands intent on the same purpose, enduring bad food, harsh weather, unsanitary conditions. Sure, a few people make it big and find a large nugget. But most of the people who make it big are the people who supply the miners with everything. Food, safe drinks like lemonade, mining equipment, sex.
For us poor writers the conditions may be a little better, we’re not at risk of a cave-in or typhoid (I’m not, anyway – don’t know about you). But I’ve paid an awful lot of money to attend courses, join writing groups, buy ‘how-to’ books. I’ve sold a few books – panned some gold dust from the river, you might say – but I haven’t found that nugget yet.
I hasten to add I never expected to earn a mint from this (nice to have but not a requirement). I enjoy the courses. I tend to treat writing as a hobby and (generally speaking) it’s fun. I reckon if I wanted to make money out of this, I’d be offering a service to writers.
What do you think?
Clear your throat – then write
My guest today is Meredith Lopez who shares with us her first encounter with getting those words on the page. It isn’t always the wonderful experience we imagine it will be. Over to you, Meredith.
The first time I sat down to write my novel I pounded out a first chapter in about an hour. This was going to be Epic, with a capital E. Mine would change the face of urban fantasy forever. Maybe even get made into a movie! After hours of researching the historical time period and crafting a simple outline, I felt ready to finally – FINALLY! – bring my characters to life on the page. I let the words flow through my fingertips, as if prose were air and my fingers lungs. My characters whispered into my ear and I dutifully transcribed the scene, the richness and fullness of the settings, the smell, taste and feel of the world around them, the world I had created.
Satisfied, nay, smug, I emailed my chapter off to my writing mentor, sat back, and awaited the hot, gushing praise she would surely heap upon my masterpiece.
She wrote back, “Great, you’ve cleared your throat. Now get writing.”
You know that scene in “Amelie” where she is so devastated she turns into water and melts into a puddle? Well, you could have mopped me off the floor.
What happened?
Back in college I had a Dramatic Literature professor who was kind of full of himself, but we all forgave him for it because he was also kind of brilliant. Sure, sometimes we had no idea what he was trying to teach us, but we knew whatever he said was important. Of course, years later I’ve forgotten most of his “brilliance,” but one thing stuck with me: when writing papers, he said, do not go with our “Aha!” moments. He did not mean, do not let inspiration guide us, but rather, when inspiration strikes, don’t simply regurgitate it onto a paper and hand it in.
In other words, do not let your first idea be your only idea. If you have an “Aha!” moment, write it down, then think on it for a while. What else could work here? Does this idea lead to others? Can it be fleshed out, made whole?
My professor did not want half-baked musings. He wanted well-developed theories with cohesive, backed up logic. He wanted to be lead on a journey of discovery, rather than handed some undergrad’s fleeting moment of insight.
As a writer, that has stuck with me. The difference in my work between those written from “Aha!” moments, and those written as fully developed stories is staggering: I have several short stories that will never see the light of day because they were written based on a turn of phrase that came to me, or an anecdote I tried to mold into a story. I’m sure most writers can relate to the well-meaning friends and family who point to every clever anecdote and say, “Wouldn’t that make a great story?” Well, no, but it might inspire a good scene in a story. If writing were that easy – you take an idea, put it to paper, and voila, you are a published billionaire – everyone would do it.
My writing mentor turned out to be correct. That first chapter was terrible. For all my hours and days of research and plotting, I hadn’t come up with more than two characters in a room, talking. I had a set-up; what I lacked was the follow-through. No amount of preparation could turn my simple idea into a compelling story that would immerse my readers in the world I had in my head. Only I could do that, but it would take more than a few trips to the library and a simple plot outline to accomplish that. I had to really get to know my characters: who they were, where they came from, what their desires and hopes and fears were. I had to create a world with rules and laws and force my characters to obey. I had to learn how to plot a novel with enough action and suspense to keep the story moving forward without white-knuckling the pace. I had to invent subplots, and supporting characters, and red herrings, and surprises. I had to be sure of payoffs by the end, remember to fire every gun left on the mantle in chapter 1. And all of that had to come after I cleared my throat of my basic idea, got over myself, and sat down to focus on the journey of discovery I wanted to write.
Once you clear your throat, you are ready to say what you need to say. Get rid of all your false starts and flashes of “What if?”s. Take your inspiration but don’t stop there: follow it deep down, as far as you can go, past your comfort zone and into the sweet spot of creativity where ideas turn into tales, where moments become worlds, where “Aha!” becomes “Oh, WOW!”
Meredith Lopez is a stay-at-home writer and mother. In addition to reviewing budget wines for Moms Who Need Wine she drinks and complains over at her blog, Grey Skies, and has a historical urban fantasy novel-in-progress. Meredith was born and raised in Miami, and now lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY with her husband and their son, the Juban Princeling.
You can catch my wine-ing here: http://www.momswhoneedwine.com/author/meredith
And keep up with my whine-ing here: http://greyskiesnyc.blogspot.com
Are all critiques useful?
Like most authors, I’ve belonged to my share of writers’ critique groups in my day. Authonomy was one but there have been others. There are certain difficulties with being a member of these sites and those difficulties will inevitably affect the value of the critiques you receive for your work. I recently posted a book to a writers’site. I did this because I had diverted into a genre I hadn’t written before and even then, I felt my novel was a little bit different to the usual types of plots I’d seen.
Leaving aside the wide range of technical competence and the gamesmanship inherent in such groups, I think the biggest issue is that comments can come from people who don’t, in the normal course of events, read the genre. Some people will immediately say ‘yes but writing is universal’. But is it?
Romance novels may be the biggest sellers on the planet but many, many people heap scorn on the very notion. Some are afraid of science fiction, others shudder at horror. Personally, I don’t understand and would not read vampire or zombie stories. So if I encounter a vampire story on a writers’ site, what do I do? (Assuming I have an obligation to read and comment) I don’t like the subject, I haven’t read other such books, I don’t know what an avid reader expects or would find acceptable. So all I can usefully say is whether or not the story engaged me and why.
Normally judgement is passed on a section of the book which may be as small as the back of the book blurb and three chapters. After all, that’s what a query to an agent or publisher would offer. So would I read on after 3 chapters? Come on, let’s be honest here. This is a vampire story. I wouldn’t even have picked it up off the shelf. Sure, if I read the whole thing I might be able to suggest changes to structure or weaknesses in characterisation and such. But I think I’m going to be in much better hands, talking with people who actually read the sub-genre I’m writing.
What do other people think? Please share – I’m genuinely interested.
Born in Ice
Today, my guest is Linda La Roque who is stopping off on her blog tour of her new book, Born in Ice. Over to you, Linda.
This futuristic romantic suspense story grew from a dream, one of a woman frozen in a block of ice and found by fishermen from an undersea world. She’s taken to their home and with the help of advanced medical technology, she recovers. In time she learns she must learn to fit into their social system, one different from what she’s known.
Blurb:
Pulled from an icy grave…into a world of doubt and danger.
Frozen in ice for seventy-five years, Zana Forrester suffers the agony of rebirth to learn her son is dead, and her daughter’s whereabouts is unknown. The year is 2155. A man’s soothing voice and gray eyes haunt her drug induced dreams. When she recovers, she meets their owner and finds her heart in danger. But, a relationship isn’t a consideration; she must find her daughter.
Brock Callahan is drawn to the beautiful woman taken aboard his salvage ship. He’s determined she’ll be his wife and a mother to his young daughter, but he vows not to love her. All the women he’s loved died. While Zana searches for her daughter, Brock must protect Zana from the evil that threatens.
My editor for Champagne Books has graciously given permission for me to post the Prologue and Chapter One of Born in Ice, so for 10 days I’ll be sharing another instalment.
Prologue – part 1
2080 A.D., St. John’s, Newfoundland
“You don’t love me else you’d take me too. Nana can watch Jonathan. You just love him more.”
“That’s not true, honey. You know that.” Zana tried to cuddle the girl, but she’d have none of it.
Her daughter shoved away and screamed, “I hate you.”
Zana looked up and pleaded with the heavens for help. As she stood, she heard Gran’s soothing voice from the other room. “Child, you know you don’t mean that. You’ve got to be big and help Mama. She’s doing all she can to provide for us all by herself.” What would she do without the older woman?
“But… Jonathan always gets to go.”
“I know honey, and that’s my fault. I can’t keep up with the little bugger. You’re my big girl. You can help old Gran get around when Mama’s not here.”
Leaving Katy at home always made Zana feel guilty, and today was no different. But no way could she manage both kids at the store. At six years old, Katy wasn’t a problem for Nana to watch. Jonathan was a different story. He was too active and wore the older woman out. She worried the child might suffer from serious emotional problems. Not that she blamed her. After losing her father to an avalanche, having every moment of her life dictated by the elements had to be hard on an energetic child.
How had they come to such a sad state and would it continue to get worse before it got better? Since the 1990’s, alerts had been issued about global warming. Suddenly, in 2045 warnings became fact. One of the sea’s conveyer belts stopped working, causing a chain reaction, affecting others and throwing the Earth’s weather patterns out of balance. Would nature be able to reset the ocean currents back on a normal course or were they in for even worse conditions?
Not knowing what was in store for them terrified her. It was all she could do to keep the four of them fed. Fortunately she worked from home as a computer programmer, but if she were to lose her job… she shuddered.
Don’t buy trouble, Zana.
Tune in tomorrow for the 2nd installment. I’ll be on Linda Kage’s blog at http://www.lindakage.com/index.html
Please leave a comment today to be entered into a drawing for an ecopy of A Way Back, my time travel set in the 1930s oil fields of Texas. Your name will also be entered in the GRAND PRIZE drawing for my blog tour—a KINDLE. A name will be draw at the end of my tour on December 16th.
I also have a release contest going. Sign up for my newsletter by emailing me at linda@lindalaroque.com with Born in Ice in the subject line. Your name will be added to the drawing for this rhinestone frog pin. For each of my releases I try to find a piece of jewelry significant to the story. After reading Born in Ice you’ll understand why I chose this frog.
Thank you, Greta, for having me here today, and thank you readers for stopping by. Good luck in all the give-a-ways!
Happy Reading and Writing!
Linda
Linda LaRoque is a Texas girl, but the first time she got on a horse, it tossed her in the road dislocating her right shoulder. Forty years passed before she got on another, but it was older, slower, and she was wiser. Plus, her students looked on and it was important to save face.
A retired teacher who loves West Texas, its flora and fauna, and its people, Linda’s stories paint pictures of life, love, and learning set against the raw landscape of ranches and rural communities in Texas and the Midwest. She is a member of RWA, her local chapter of HOTRWA, NTRWA and Texas Mountain Trail Writers.
http://www.lindalaroqueauthor.blogspot.com
