A rejection?

I got a 'not perfect yet' letter from the agent who had asked me to revise and resubmit. It didn't specify, though, whether it was a further 'revise and resubmit' or an outright rejection, but it did include detailed comments and suggestions.

Comments and suggestions that lead me to believe the agent is looking for the next 'Twilight' (a paranormal romance.) And why shouldn't she be? It's a massive hit.

But it's a massive hit because nobody had done it before.

The comments she gave, honestly, were sound. But, unlike last time, they didn't drive me to my computer to open the file again.

I think part of it is that she seems to be looking for a romance with fantastic elements, where I wrote a fantasy with mystery and romance elements. Now, if someone said, "This is great, can we rewrite to make the mystery more of the focus?" I might bite. But for some reason I don't feel inclined just now to really play down the complexities that are left in the plot and really play up the relationships, although I completely agree in some ways that 'deepening' the relationship between Kate and Tom would make the book more satisfying.

Maybe the problem is I don't know how to do that.

Maybe the problem is that a fantasy is, characteristically, more complex in plot, more sweeping in action, and less focused on intimate emotional feelings in the characters that don't play directly into the action.

The agent also still has the impression that I personally don't have a real grasp of my own plot. This must be a flaw in the storytelling because I think I do have a firm grasp of the plot--I can summarize the 350 page book into a couple of paragraphs easily--and probably into one sentence if I need to, which you can't do if you don't have a grasp of the plot.

Maybe the 'problem' is that I have a couple of intersecting plots (or up to 3 or 4, depending on how you look at it--which characters you want to focus on), and the depth in the story comes from the collision of those plots and of those characters' realizations about themselves. I could easily remove the subplots and focus on Kate (not that I don't already), but the entire story would suffer because Ali Babba's, Beauty's, and Tom's stories are what let us see the real development in Kate.

Perhaps I should take the conglomerate of the comments as "Still a little confusing and intellectual".

Unfortunately, the sticking point for everyone who has read it was the joy for me--the complexity and mass of information that it's possible to include. The essence of the story is what would a smart, literate girl from 21st century Provo experience if she met the (oft-maligned by academia but idolized by little girls everywhere) characters from the fairytales? And its corollary: what would happen if a fairytale character and her problem were transferred to modern-day America? These are the two stories that collide in the novel--but that very exploration has been seen as confusing (too many fairytales!) by many people.

Oh, and she said there's too much dialogue with information that Kate could just think to herself, the way it happens in real life. Funny--I've been praised by other agents for the dialogue, and also have really had a hard time 'verbalizing in her mind' her thinking because I don't think that way. I don't realize things in my head--instead, I get an inkling and then have to talk it out to really get to the 'realization' stage. So I might need to smooth all that out in the text someday.

So I've come to the conclusion that one of two things will happen: I will re-expand this book into a 3-5 book series, so that you get it slower and feel less like you got avalanched (and I can put back a lot of cool stuff I had to cut), or it will be my second or third novel published because it's just too much of a risk for a publisher to take an unknown author and publish something that is at once clean as a whistle and intellectually complex. I guess, overall, it's just not 'there' yet.

Any way I look at it, though, I don't feel inclined to open the book again. So I'm going to put the letter aside for a few weeks or a few months and look at it and the novel with fresh eyes another day. Or year.

Maybe I'm just waiting to hear back from the other agent who has it still--fully expecting a form rejection but hoping for something more positive.

Meanwhile, I'm learning a lot about plotting in the clues for a mystery--and how much knowing the minute details of the ending play into the formation of the clues and plot up to that ending.

Always a new trauma....

And this one is silly...

So the last agent who requested my book got back to me with a "it moves too fast--both the readers and the characters need a pause here and there to rest and get to know each other." This was a variation on a comment I got from another agent who read the book pre-rewrite, and I had tried to fix the problem. You can see my reaction on the previous post about this. And it was even a quick response, well-phrased, and kind! I guess I just had to cry it out once, since I don't remember crying over any other rejection ever. She wasn't even an agent I've been following online for any amount of time, or anything like that.

Still, I went through several days of "Do I change it, or is the book what it is and it's time to move on?" and also "So I know I can write a killer query--can I write a book, or am I wasting my time?" and also, "Being mormon is an integral part of me and my outlook on life, and therefore the output of my writing. Is it possible that there really aren't any other women who want squeaky clean, plot-driven books--is the outlook too sweet for the content to be sellable?" and also, "Some of the stuff I want to write is driven by the conflict a main character has between their Mormon beliefs and their interactions with the real world, but one agent told me that Mormon references are a no-no in literature, even if it's a cultural rather than didactic reference (in other words, even if the character is mormon and neither of us is preaching). If I get tied up in a career as a writer, would I lose the freedom to tell these stories, too? Is it better to give up and feed my writer soul and never be published than to be constrained to fit someone's view of what should be written?"

I decided the only answer is that I can only tell the stories I have to tell, not anyone else's. And that nobody else can tell my stories. Orson Scott Card, in a lecture at BYU years ago, said that if you don't tell your stories, they are lost to the world, and that's a tragedy. I also concluded that the reason I write is because I need to write like I need to eat and need to love. To feed that need, I have to just write, and not worry about what is going to come of it.

That settled in my mind, I was perfectly content to never even pursue publishing again.

THEN I found my thoughts drifting to the reality that in times of turmoil and stress (think the '30s and '40s, for example), people need an escape and they seek out music, dance, social events, and the so-often disdained 'escape fiction'--just the stuff that I like to write. Many of the enduring forms of art in America really took hold and became a force to be reckoned with during those hard times, including jazz, American-style partner dancing (swing, etc), and the ever-popular murder mystery. Bad times promote good art, and also create consumers of fun art--not the depressing, 'literary' stuff, but the stuff that takes you away for a little while. So if this time of turmoil continues and gets worse, which I think it will, wouldn't it be a favor for the 'lightweight' artists of the world to provide an escape for people?

So, with all that floating in my mind, I checked my email and discovered an agent got back to me. I had emailed her the day before I got the previous rejection because on her blog she had expressed a new-found interest in a genre I write. I had been following her agency's blog for over a year because they have a fantastic reputation, and I liked their blogging personalities. I also really liked the insight and encouragement I got from their client guest-bloggers.

I assumed it was another rejection, since she's a top-of-the-game agent, and not a 'baby agent' in a good agency. Still, I always read them.

And I nearly fell out of my seat--she wanted to see the first 3 chapters of the book.

Instead of being excited, I was horrified and absolutely overcome with doubts about my work.

It took me 24 hours to open my manuscript and see if I could fix the chapters and still mail them in a timely manner. It was another hour before I could make myself read it. And I had the same experience I did when I was studying for finals in college and got to a point when I was just done, regardless of whether I felt like I knew enough to pass the test. I realized that I am done with that book. It is what it is, and I'm ready to move on. For now. If an agent or editor wanted to work with the book, I'm sure I'd have no problem dusting it off again, but for now, I just can't go on changing the manuscript for every person's opinion. I mean, really, the agent before the one who said it moves too fast said it moved too slow!

It was another 8 hours before I printed the pages and decided to send them. 25 pages won't hurt her to read much (and she could quit after 1 or 2; I've heard agents can tell right away if they're going to like something). The worst that happens is she says, "No thanks." If I never send the pages, it's an automatic "no thanks."

But what happened to my resolve to settle myself happily in a private, non-published world and feed my writerly soul and spend happy hours with my children? Can I take the continual ups and downs of trying to get published, or will I finally be content to let it go and not care as much about the outcome?

(and isn't it when you finally adopt that attitude that things start to happen?)

Learning to Write takes a LONG Time

I started this novel in earnest in Colorado Springs before Anda's first birthday. She is now 8 weeks away from being 5.

I worry that I am beating a dead horse. I worry that I am doing what some of my friends have done to their novels--editing the life and joy out. I certainly have done too much of changing things to fit other people's ideas.

Now the novel, "done" last week but no longer, is 87,000 words long (versus 214,000 for the 2nd draft), and I have about 10,000 words I can add in before anyone even blinks at the length.

I have learned a lot about writing. First and foremost, there are no rules. But, with that in mind, there are most definitely guidelines.

For example, while characters must be believable, they don't necessarily need to be realistic. What I mean by that is just that we want to read about characters that are Characters as well as people on the street. I mean, if the bad guy is going to be a dumb witch, make her DUMB. But also make her believable (ie she doesn't know she's dumb, and dumb doesn't mean less mean and bad).

Query Letters are movie trailers in print. To learn to write a good query letter, read a couple of agent's blogs about the basics (links on the sidebar can point you to a couple), and then watch a BUNCH of movie trailers.

If it takes a lot to explain the motivations or reasons for an action, there's something wrong in the story (plot, characters, or whatever). When they say every movement in a story needs a motivation, it doesn't mean stretch really far to explain it. The motivation should be clear and obvious to the reader in general.

Don't talk too much--trust your reader.

Don't be afraid to say enough to make it work. Too little is not better than too much.

Readers want to be able to grasp everything the first time through--plot, characters, etc. It's great if there are layers and depth and ideas to explore, and ideally a book should be able to be read with satisfaction many times. But if someone can't grasp it the first time (which is my problem--I can think of all kinds of complexities that are delightful to me, but confusing to others even though it's clear as day in my mind), they aren't going to go back for another try. Or recommend it to others.

While you don't want to write something cliche, there is a great deal in life that constitutes the shared experiences of being human. If you avoid dealing with those things for fear of being cliche, you miss the chance for your reader to connect with your character. Yes a million women have longed for love, and a million authors have written about it. But we still read it because it is one of those shared experiences. I have thought of this in terms of giving birth and raising a baby--it is an incredible, powerful, amazingly unique experience. That a majority of adult women in the world have gone through. To put it another way, there's a reason so so many authors have used the phrase, "Her heart pounded."

As you know if you've read over the years I've been blogging, I have STRUGGLED with the first chapter of my novel. I've rewritten the first five pages five times for every full draft.

I got done with this draft, left it alone for a week intending to leave it for 2 months, and felt compelled to go back and re-read. So I started at the beginning with the end clearly in mind, and discovered that, to my horror, they didn't match! Not only that, the beginning was still BORING. Not just because I've read it before. It just was, all of its own accord. Dreadfully boring.
,
That night, I had a dream that I was turning a quilt edge for binding, and I had come all around back to that first corner, and it was all out of line. I kept trying to turn the edge under on one side, but that would throw all the folds out of line on the other, and no matter what I did, it was awful. I got more and more frustrated in the dream because I couldn't fix "this story" even though I had a quilt in my hands. I woke up and said to myself, "Duh. I just needed to take that corner all apart and re-fold it from scratch. Obviously something is puckered or mucked up inside that is irredeemable simply by holding and pinning.

So I deleted the prologue, introduction, and first five pages and started from scratch.

And Really Liked how they came out--easy, relaxed, to the point, natural, and fitting in tone and style with the new draft, in which I employed all my new writing skills (so the writing is much more interesting to read).

I gave it to Tim, and he pointed out to me all the places it failed. That's why I like him to read my stuff. He just says, "It's not there yet. Here's where I'm getting hung up...." and he KNOWS.

We talked for a long time, and he said, "If a query is like a movie trailer, the first chapter has to be like the song-and-dance number at the beginning of every Disney movie, before the character's parents die." He talked me through it and it was like a light came on in my head. I already knew the concept--the first few pages have to introduce the characters, setting, and problem. But Disney movies do it well, over and over with different stories, and in a straightforward, easy to pick apart way. Lots of examples of application of the same formula--and, going back to that cliche thing--it's a formula that works.

So I went back to the text and realized the problem. It was written when the main character was 16 and the intended audience was 13. But the new draft has the main character 18-19 and the audience the same. Not only does an 18 year old have a different learning curve and thought process than a 16 year old, the 13 year old readers need more spelled out to them than the 18 year olds do. Further, I realized the character's development had changed drastically over the million drafts, and the original "comic throughline" I'd drafted to guide character development (see sidebar for links to that) was completely out of the story.

So I went back to the beginning and opened the comic throughline and started over with "What does the character think she wants and what does she really want?"

To my great relief, the answers were already built into the story. I had written them without knowing it--and in a nice, fleshed out kind of way that I really like.

So that solved the first chapter problem, and that old "how do I make this compelling" problem. The first chapter needs to establish the starting point for the character development that's already happened in the story.

So now I can get started again!

It's a wonder I get anything written at all

I've been doing revisions suggested by that agent, and it's been the hardest thinking I've done in my life. The agent suggested I take out as many characters as I could. Unfortunately, every character actually played a role in the story, so in removing them I had to reassign those roles to other characters, and then deal with the fact that Tory would handle something differently than, say, Hansel and Gretel, and Tom would do things different that Arvense, and Prudence than Grandma, and....you get the idea. Plus, I did want the novel to hit some key, not-needing-to-be-rewritten points. But it isn't enough just to take the narrative there--I had to get the characters to the same emotional state, and in a way that is believable and legitimate.

To complicate things, this is how writing usually happens in my house:



(It's not a great picture because it was taken on a kid camera by Anda).

That was followed by this:



Note that I am interacting with three children--a sleeping baby, a toddler who is trying to poke me in the eye with sunglasses, and a four year old who is saying "Smile Mom!" Not to mention it is probably 3:00 am and I look like it. In fact, ignore how awful I look in both pictures.

Looking at these pics, I wonder how I've managed to write a novel and re-write it at least 3 times, plus do detailed outlines on at least 3 more novels. It's even more of a wonder that anything I've written makes enough sense to get the attention of agents enough to get personalized rejections with helpful comments.

Hopefully we'll get beyond the rejections part soon.

If I can just get Kate to a character who has a different name in this draft, and then to Mother Goose, and figure out (once again) why she's traveling alone (since that doesn't make sense in the new draft).

But hey, I worked it out twice so far. I can do it again. It's just the hardest problem solving I have EVER had to do. Partially because my usual MO for solving these kinds of problems is to let them ferment, but I want to get this revision done before the agent loses interest, so I am pushing it through. No time to ferment.

We'll see what happens.

Agents Catch Up on their Mail in December

Because agents are out of the office, some of them, for the Holidays, December is catch-up time for them. So the week after Christmas, when I was trying to move, I got like four rejection letters.

That was just what I needed.

I decided to forget about that manuscript and go on to the next. I was going to "put it under the bed", so to speak, and I even dragged the file off the desktop and dumped it in the archive folder.

And then I moved to Las Vegas, and being in the actual place where my stay-at-home mommy CIA agent story takes place, I suddenly got lots of inspiration about it, and completely re-outlined the entire beginning. I realized that for the story to really suck the reader in, it had to be extremely personal to Maggie. Not just that an organization she had fought previously was there and her family was in danger, but that the son of the only man she ever killed was there with the bad guys--and he recognized her and is personally out for his revenge he's been wanting for 5 years. It makes it heavily a story about fathers and sons--the two antagonists are men who lost their fathers, both of whom died in pursuing their unorthodox work, and about how the men want to connect with their fathers and are mistakenly using violence to do so. I also fixed a plot problem that was rather glaring.

Then today the neighbor brought over our mail, which was stuck in his box by mistake.

Another rejection, from the last full ms I sent out before Christmas. I knew it was a rejection without opening it because it came in the self-addressed letter I put in the package, and it's my understanding that if an agent wants to represent you, they call. So if you see that envelope with your own handwriting on it, it's a no.

I almost didn't open it. I've had a pretty crappy week, and a very difficult month what with moving and all, and everyone getting sick.

But I can't just throw away mail unopened. I even open every piece of junk mail I get.

So I opened it.

It was only half a rejection! It was actually a long, very detailed letter about what worked and what didn't in my novel, and what I could do to fix it, and it ended with an invitation to rewrite and resubmit. This may not seem exciting to you, but it is extremely exciting to me. Because her comments jived with me, and with the more vague comments I've received in the past, and I think I agree with her and I think I know how to fix the manuscript. And all the agent blogs I read say that when they say they'd like to see the changes, they mean it. They've already put work into the manuscript, and are testing the waters to see if you are willing to change your work, how good you are at editing, and how open you are to hard work, as well as testing to see if you can go from potentially good to great.

So I dragged it back to my desktop.

Back to work, this time the carrot of possible representation dangling in front of me.

Wow--why I hate English programs, by someone else

http://www.sff.net/people/DTruesdale/wolverton1.htp

This article fully explains how I feel about literary fiction, and with more information than I knew.

I should stop saying, "I can't write because I don't write literary fiction." I've fully believed that since I was in 8th grade and had to start reading "real" books.

What made classic literature in days of yore? Staying power. People loved Shakespeare because it was good and it was cool and everyone kept rediscovering it.

What makes classic literature now? Literary criticism.

Have you read some of that lately? It embodies everything I hated about college. It IS elitist, superficial, esoteric, and false, just like Wolverton says.

And, after reading Wolverton's article, I am completely willing to admit that the seventh Harry Potter book was the most powerful, life-changing book I've read (short of the scriptures) in YEARS. Why have I been embarrassed by this?

And why should I be ashamed that I write fantasy?

Rejected!

So I got a very nice rejection from an agent who read 100 pages of my book. She said I write well.

That was really nice to hear.

She said it starts too fast.

Maybe my first instinct of how it should start--with a rather lenghty (2 pages) description of Kate through a description of her relationship with books was the right thing. The agent said she needed to feel more connected to Kate before the action started. I have been concerned about this.

She said the constant references to fairtyales were relentless. I can't change that. That's the point of the book in some ways.

So we'll have to see.

At least I know it's not because I can't write.

Poison Spindle and custard creme

I'd better get that manuscript spell checked fast. I just got two requests for FULL manuscripts, (never mind the partial), "please send ASAP" from well-established agencies. One is from one of the top top agencies in the nation.

That's not why I logged in to blogger, though. I initially intended to post my "mostly perfected now" recipe for easy creme brulee for one.

It is thus: One-Serving Easy Creme Brulee (any flavor)

1 egg (or 1 egg yolk--yolk comes out better, but whole egg is easier to use)
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 c liquid dairy product (don't laugh; I have successfully used milk, evaporated milk, and sour cream and milk mixed. Most recipes call for heavy cream. I am anxious to try cream cheese blended with milk. Creamed cottage cheese and milk would work, too...so many options)
1 tsp vanilla (or other flavoring--I like 1 tsp vanilla plus 1 tbsp lemon juice)

Whisk it together. Put it in a ramekin (or other single-serving glass baking dish). Put the ramekin in a pan of hot water (water should come about half way up the side of the ramekin) and bake it at 300 for about 45 minutes. It's done when a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. It will still jiggle, though. Cool before eating. You can torch sugar on the top to make it official, but ours hardly ever lasts long enough to cool!

First Lines Revisted (again and again and again)

An agent requested the first hundred pages of my novel, and I was just getting ready to send them (Oh they were so perfect!) when I happened to reread chapter 1.

And I hated it!

Back to the drawing board.

The only first line I come back to over and over is the one I started with 2 years ago. The one that precipitated the cascading out of the rest of the novel.

"Kate hated to read."

But but but....I protest to myself. But I can't get away from it. The purpose of the first page, I tell myself, is to introduce the characters and setting, primarily. I'm not even going to try to introduce the entire problem on the first page because it is a complex issue--princess is missing, witches have taken over, and only Kate can fix it. (Funny that I haven't been able to distill it to that before, and now it was so EASY!). That comes within the first few chapters, anyway. I introduce the "urban fantasy" part's setting on the first page (used bookstore in the fall). So that leaves me with the character for the first paragraphs.

And "Kate hated to read" is a good way to start an introduction to this character, who says she hates to read but it well versed in both literary convention and the details of the literature, and who is sixteen but is just moving into an apartment above a used bookstore.

So I rewrote the beginning. Again. Back to square one, but with different words and not so long. Back to an introduction to all of Kate through an explanantion of her relationship with books. Back to possibly boring, but back to where I started and where I keep coming to.

Hopefully that's because it's actually the right beginning instead of being "like a dog to his vomit", as they say.

Rewrote that beginning twice, getting it just right and polished, and am now reading for typos in the 100 pages, which I thought were perfect but needed some tweaking (that resulted in the whole book being 6000 words shorter), and I'll send the partial off tonight.

I know you aren't supposed to query until it's all perfect. My problem is I always think it's perfect. And then I can always find something to fix.

Ups and Downs

Got a partial request--and then a nice rejection with a personal note. My novel is not high concept enough.

I had to look that up.

High concept, as far as I can figure, means "You can explain the plot in 10 words or less and it has broad appeal."

You know, none of my novels are high concept, I guess. They do have very intriguing premises. The trouble is, they aren't written for your average, everyday teen. They are written for 13 year old girls with IQs over 120 who are widely read but who are still a little sensitive for full-out adult situations and language in literature, although they can handle the complexity and length of an adult novel. Like Adult Lite--complex, well-thought-out, exciting, long, not really about high school (because girls like that really think high school is dumb--why would you want to read about it?)--but no sex, all off-screen or bloodless violence, and no swearing. In other words, squeaky clean.

I can see why an agent might not pick that up--there might not be a big enough market. Smart LDS girls?

So I know now that I don't write adult lit--too sweet--but I realized tonight that "Young Adult" lit is all that stuff I hate--coming of age, teen angst, etc. It's what chick lit was based on. It's set in the high school. It's gaggy.

So how do I search for an agent? What search terms do I use? "Smart?" It's like literary teen fiction, except literary has as strong (and unpleasant to me) connotations as "Young Adult". It's that genre question again...It's fairytale fantasy, but who reps that?

News and foods

I started querying agents again. My theory is that if the book is good enough, or at least, if the query letter is, I should get requests for reads coming.

So far so good--requests for partials are coming in.

We'll see what happens. With the "old" version, I had requests for partials, and fulls, but no offers. But it's the right length now, and much more exciting, and (dare I say it) better written.

So...to distract myself--FOOD!

I think I finally perfected my orange sauce recipe (you know, the oriental sauce that coats orange chicken). The key was a tidbit I learned from a muffin recipe: if you want good orange flavor in anything, forego the orange juice, orange zest, and orange extract. Instead, blend half an orange--with its peel still on--with the liquid for the recipe in the blender. Fast, easy, and the best orange flavor I've ever used. And cheap cheap cheap, especially in the winter.

So, my new and improved, modified and like no other, recipe for Oriental Orange Sauce:

1 1/2 c water
1/2 orange, sliced and with pits removed but keep the skin on

Blend these until only tiny bits of orange remain. It gets quite frothy. Pour into a small saucepan.

Add:
1 c brown sugar (I use light brown sugar)
1/3 c rice vinegar (red wine vinegar makes a nice substitute if necessary)
2-3 tsp soy sauce
scant 1/3 c lemon juice
1/4 tsp powdered ginger
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp dried snipped chives or chopped green onion
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes or a dash of red pepper powder

Bring to a boil. Remove it from heat and let it sit for 10 minutes or until you get back to it.

Mix 10 tsp cornstarch in a bowl with about 1/4 c water--enough to make it liquid. Pour this into the slightly cooled sauce. Return to high heat and bring to a boil. It will clarify slightly and thicken quickly after it begins to boil. At this point, remove it from the heat and let it cool.

It's done.

Use it to coat chicken pieces before or after you cook them, or mix with noodles or rice, or use it as a dip, or pour it over a chicken in a crock pot, or whatever you like sauce for! It's really really good.

Writing, like Music, is a powerful tool

In reading first lines, I have come face to face with the reality that some writers "got it", and some don't, and then there's this other class of writers that write so beautifully that it's hard to believe the power they manage to express in one sentence. Chaim Potok's first sentences are infinitely more powerful than almost anyone else's. This distressed me for a minute--I can't write like that, and the harder I try, the worse I write. Then I talked to Tim (he is so wise) who reassured me that my voice is sufficient for the stories I have to tell, and if I'm writing with what Ueland says is "Honesty" or sincerity, my writing is good for what I'm doing.

Then I picked up Douglass Adams. I'm still reading only first lines. He managed to make me laugh in only ten words. How's that for power. No, it didn't have the beauty that Chaim Potok had, but it had the same power to move me to feel. And, frankly, I prefer to laugh than to cry.

So there you go.

I don't have to be Chaim Potok to have my writing worthwhile.

Goodness--I don't even like to read the stuff Potok wrote. It's good. It's powerful. It's so powerful at stirring emotions that it's too much for me, and I can't handle it. Why would I want to write stuff I can't stand to read?

More on First Lines

More studying of first lines of novels--this time in the form of reading the first line of every book I come across, most of them classics.

This is what I discovered:

And author has exactly 1 sentence (a short one, too, maybe 10 words) to get the reader completely into the setting OR the plot OR the character. That's it. One line. By the end of that first line, you've either caught them or you haven't. For most of the 1800s and early 1900s, authors seemed to favor getting you right into the setting (with lines like, "The wicked sea tossed and toppled the little ship as if it were a toy to be played with and then discarded."). Since the mid-1900s, authors have really drifted to dropping you right into the plot, but through the mind of the point-of-view character (the one that you see the story through). Like (a paraphrase of one of Susan Cooper's first lines) "He remembered that Mary told him they would all speak Welsh." The reason this is effective is it gives you a taste of all three--plot, character, and setting.

Several agents have decried the use of dialogue on page one. They seem to favor action rather than "talking heads". Dialogue is an easy way for an author to give information that sets the setting, backstory, and characters. The problem with it is that it doesn't open up the picture in the reader's mind. It just tells you that someone thinks something might have happened once or might be going to happen. Dialogue with action seems acceptable, as does dialogue with action and description. It's not that people can't talk on page one. It's that there shouldn't ONLY be talking on page one.

Most of the agents spend a lot of time trying to explain the intangible "It just has to be good" with "rules" (which they all admit are more like guidelines that can be broken because, well, if it's good, it doesn't follow rules anyway...). Rules like "No dream sequences." "Don't start with someone sitting around thinking." "There needs to be action on page one." "I want a body in line one." "No talking heads." "A description of the setting with no characters is boring."

What they mean is, "Go read a bunch of first lines and see what works. If you find you've read all of page 1 without thinking about it--that worked!"

So I'm still pondering the first line problem in my book. I like where I went with the first line I posted last week, but I couldn't get it to work with the rest of the book. As usual when I've done something wrong with the text, I couldn't work any more. I spent hours every day staring at the screen, re-reading chapter 1 and the first 3 pages of chapter 2 over and over and over, with a complete stupor of thought and inability to go on.

So now the first line (or two) says: "Kate suddenly wished that 'Escape from Coffins and Other Confined Spaces' had been a required course in her high school." She then squirms around and wishes she had the training and gadgets that kid spies from the stories have.

I'm still not entirely settled on it--there's still the problem of the segue back into the flashback that brings you to 12 hours earlier and shows how she got into the box. And it might be still not "right" somehow. But it's easier to work with than cookies.

Editor's Note: I realized the first line, as it stands, is not true to Kate's character. She would never presume a school that can't meet her academic needs would ever dream of meeting other needs. Now the first line reads, "Kate wished she'd read a book about escaping from coffins. Was there such a book?" This is true to Kate's character because she WOULD read a book about that for fun. She reads nonfiction avidly, and the last book she put down was "The Encyclopedia of Mummies," which she read just after she read a book on forensic entomology.

First Lines

Nathan Bransford (see sidebar for link to his blog) recently had a first line contest, and I learned a lot. I was already puzzling over the first line of my novel. I knew it was wrong, but, ever since I cut the old introduction, I haven't been able to figure out what to write. Reading the top ten entries in Mr. Bransford's contest helped a lot.

The old first line: "Kate hated to read. That's not entirely true. She hated to read fiction." I really liked it, and I still do, but I couldn't see starting a YA novel with an essay on the main character's relationship to books (as a description of who she is in general). I wanted to start with action--something that would suck you right in, instead of something that makes you say, "Oh."

There were many interim first lines, prologues, introductions, first five pages (I think I rewrote the first five pages at least 20 times, eventually reducing 50 pages to 2), flashbacks, dialogues, action, etc. I moved the beginning forward and back, trying to puzzle out the best starting point that gave me the right balance of a "dead body in the first line," as Miss Snark recommended (I wonder if she is the agent for Sarah Graves, who writes the "Home Repair is Homicide" series? She would approve, I think), and enough backstory and character development that you care about the main character. I realize the start of the story is the point where the character can no longer turn back--in this case, she's literally stepping through a door--but it didn't feel right to start right there in the first paragraph or you really don't care that she can't turn back.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I was trying to balance the dual needs for compelling action and a compelling character. The two requirements are not necessarily at odds--I just couldn't seem to get them both into the first paragraph. It just wasn't interesting. It didn't "suck you in."

It helped when I rewrote (not revised; not edited--actually deleted and started over) the first third of the book. Then Tim suggested a first line concept that really caught my fancy, and I'm testing it out.

So now, for your review and comments, the current first sixty words or so of The Poison Spindle Problem:

"Death by cookie.

No. That was a terrible first line for a novel.

Besides, it defeated the purpose. The reason Kate was trying to figure out what the first line would be if this were a novel instead of real life was to distract herself from the probable outcome of being locked in a crate and carried off by costumed kidnappers."

From there, we go back 12 hours and cover who she is and how she got into the box and why she's talking about cookies, and come back to this exact section, expanded some, about 10 pages later as the beginning to chapter 2.

What do you think? Most specifically: Does It Make You Want To Read More?

Poison Spindle Problem: Draft 7567

I will never never never ever say my novel is finished ever again.

I got another rejection from a partial, but it was very positive, with specific positive comments (she said I have "witty dialogue."). I figured the rejection was coming because I rewrote the whole beginning of the novel. Not just revised. I actually threw away the first ten chapters or so and re-did the sequence of action, prompted by a realization that several key characters were behaving in a way that was inconsistent with their characters. I really like the new version and am getting positive feedback for the flow and "fun". I'm also not surprised by the rejection because I had queried the senior agent at one of the oldest agencies in the nation. They are well respected, and handle some very established, famous authors (like Steinbeck--THE Steinbeck). The fact that they'd even request the partial was HUGE. To get positive comments instead of a form letter is extremely flattering. The other reason I'm not surprised at the rejection is I now realize I write YA fiction, and this agent doesn't do YA. So that's the wrong fit anyway. But she was really nice.

So now I'm trying to weave the new and old together nicely and finding that some things ("discoursal animals" and who is Goldie anyway?) have to be put back in because they were inadvertently cut. However, Tom (the Piper's Son) is more prominent, and I really like him more and more the more I get to know him, and that solves the "where's the love interest" comment I got repeatedly from readers of early drafts. Kate ends up travelling with Tom through much of the book, and he makes a healthy foil to Ali Babba, surprisingly, even though one is an older, experienced thief and the other is an 18-year-old college student who wants to be a spy. It works, though. Now I have to fix the chapter numbers, though. I have no chapter 7 at all, and there are four chapter 12s in a row. That's what comes of repeated massive edits.

We're still marginally too long: 135,000 words, but I'm still cutting masses of information as I edit. I might actually get down to that "top limit of acceptable" of 120,000. Except the top acceptable limit for YA is about 85,000 words. So maybe I'll keep it at 135,000 words and sell it as two books of 75,000 or so each.

So the series of queries I've sent out and learned from have prompted many many rewrites, and the responses I get from the queries is encouraging. The first round were mostly nos up front; the second I got some reads out of and some comments; the next round I got more reads and more comments; now I'm gettting rejections with positive comments but "not right for me." So I'm hoping the next round with be several "I need to read more" with "hey, I can sell this book!" results. One would be enough. For the first time, though, I'm feeling like polishing the manuscript and then plastering the query all over--to all the agents that seem like a good fit at once, instead of 6-8 at a time. It's an interesting strategy. If the book is as good as I think it will be, I should be able to choose from several competing agents. If not, I've burned all my bridges at once and will have to start over with another novel and sell Poison Spindle second.

New Resource for Writers

Go to QueryTracker! The link is on the sidebar. It has a searchable database for agents, and each agent's page links you to all the other standard resources on that agent: google, yahoo, agentquery, preditors and editors, etc. Also, other users can enter comments, so you can see what other people are saying about the agent.

And, best of all, it does what I have been doing with my own home-made chart: it keeps track of what agents you've queried, when, and what their responses are. It can also save your query for each agent online (in case of computer failure--it's not lost!), and produce envelopes and letterhead for you (you have to choose and mail the queries to the agents yourself, so it's not like one of those query blaster scams).

And it's free.....(the guy who started it three months ago, in Montana, does need donations, though, and has some cool services available to "premium" members--at $25/year. Pretty cheap except for those of us who are broke. That's a problem, for sure--so many people searching for agents are broke writers.)

Never a Shortage of Ideas....

I have ANOTHER idea for a novel. I never seem to run short on ideas.

So now while Kate is turning into a smart and overconfident 16-year-old, Maggie is stewing over how someone could electronically hijack her top-secret cell phone/CIA toolkit and how to get to the seventh floor unseen, Sophronia is lying about her age so she can ride with Annie Oakley, and Melora is trying to find a contest a teen could win against an adult that would have high stakes, I am pondering this:

Wouldn't it be fun to write a murder mystery where one of the fairytale wicked witches has been murdered, and all the princesses are the suspects. Naturally, it would take the stories of the princesses and, instead of asking "how would a good person grow from these experiences", the question would be "how would this life history ruin a person?" So, for example, Sleeping Beauty is a pothead (or junkie or something). Snow White? Obsessive-compulsive. You get the idea. Each of the princesses really does have a legit motive for wanting a witch dead, you know....

Unfortunately, I haven't gotten very far on the plot. I just have a little dialog jotted down--the princesses are sitting around talking when a flying elephant zooms by and someone shoots it. They think whoever created those creatures out to be shot, too, and have his heart and brain buried under a mountain. "Have you noticed they always seem to fly overhead right after you wash your coach?!" Imagine the mess that would make. They all live in the same ostentatious neighborhood, of course, and everyone's always remodeling their castles to be better than everyone else in a serious case of Keeping Up with the Charmings.

The thing that's holding me back is the sleuth. Who would the sleuth be? The Fairy Godmother? Another fairy? One of the Handsome Princes wouldn't work because I don't think I could write a convincing male sleuth. Maybe one of the ugly stepsisters or a stepmother of someone. That would work--a wicked stepmother, who is actually a really nice, down-to-earth person who has been vilified by the "rich" set. She's not actually wicked--it's just that the princess was a real jerk who was always in trouble (stealing and stuff), and stepmommy got the blame. Hmmmm.....

I'll have to let the idea ferment some. It might conflict with my idea of taking Kate to a convention of holiday-related characters. Maybe not. The mystery can be different, although I kill a witch in one and the easter bunnies (stupid pests--always running around, multiplying like crazy, and they have no sense of propriety. Not to mention they chew the furniture and tend to run off in the middle of a conversation) in the other.

Writing is so fun.

Compelling, Part 2

I haven't been blogging much lately because I've been too busy writing. While we were in Utah, I realized, thanks to promptings by my mother mentioned in earlier blog entries, that I had really written two books, not one, even though it was one story.

So I cut, added a few lines, and sent it off to my beta readers (I know you're not supposed to use husband, sisters, and parents as Beta Readers, but my family happen to be extremely competent editors and well-read in many genres, and with different but equally refined tastes--why search for someone else?).

My beta readers said it was boring.

They were right.

So I skipped back to the rewriting I was doing at the moment--re-doing the query to reflect the "two books" status.

My beta readers said that was boring, too.

They were right.

So I sat down with Tim and he said, "Think movie trailer. Decades ago....." and he went on and told me what would really be interesting and catching. He, a great student of movie trailers (he watches and studies hundreds) gave me the "quick and dirty" of what makes something interesting and compelling or not, with examples of trailers that work and that don't. He said, "Put on the most cliche movie trailer music and get to work." Then he went to bed and I went to work. Now I'm embarrassed about the queries I've sent so far. The fact that they got good responses lets me know the quality of the other queries out there!

Anyway, that fixed, I started thinking about if the query is the trailer, the book is the movie, and suddenly the issue of what's compelling became very clear to me.

I have to go back here to fill in the blanks in the thought process, or it won't all be clear.

It actually all started with Dad's comments (emailed privately) on my previous "compelling?" post. He said that "hooking" the reader like a fish seems unfair, and referred to D&C 121 that talks about your dominion flowing to you without compulsory means. I thought that this was the key to the issue, but I didn't understand it myself, even after talking to Dad. Wouldn't a writer use the same techniques to hook the reader as to make them want to come to you? What's the difference between those, anyway?

I didn't have answers, so I let the questions ferment.

Then, in Utah, I had sick kids, sick husband, and I was sick, day after day. Just as soon as one person got well, another got sick. So I sat in my mom's house and ended up picking up the books she had lying around. Mom reads murder mysteries. One after another I picked them up--legitimate, published books, mind you--and read the first chapter or two and then gave up. They just didn't catch me. Then I picked up Sarah Graves' book, "Mallets Aforethought." Man, I was caught. I read it straight through, every word, in order. You know the last time I did that? It's been so long I don't even remember. Probably the last Harry Potter Book, and even then I skipped ahead a few times and went back.

So I spent a few days thinking about what caught me. There were a few elements that I'm just a sucker for: a historic mystery that has to be solved alongside the modern one, secret rooms and passages in an old house. But that was only part of it. The thing that surprised me was that the story itself was so formulaic as to be predictable. It followed the exact story that I criticized at the beginning of the early drafts of Poison Spindle, down to the last predictable detail. The characters were fun, lovable, interesting, and not entirely believable--and not in the larger-than-life way that Donald Maass thinks is ideal but other agents don't really go for. She didn't even follow up on every detail that she made out to be important (spent a lot of time talking about a cat and then never followed up with it). But it was still compelling!

Then I realized that one of the themes of Poison Spindle is that the real world is formulaic, and knowing the formula doesn't make living it any less traumatic or surviving it any less satisfying. (Didn't even know I put that in there!). In "Mallets" the journey was satisfying anyway.

So it was something about the writing itself that made the story compelling. Looking at the writing, the one thing that stood out, above and beyond the other books, was that Ms. Graves didn't waste any words. It's not that she didn't include anything that didn't move the story forward. Obviously (the cat) she did. But she only said as much as she needed to, in an easily accessible way, to get the story told. The other thing she did was put a body in the first line. Dear Departed Miss Snark used to say she wanted a body in the first paragraph. One of the other mysteries I got into still didn't have a body by page 20, so I gave up. Took too long to get to the story. And THAT is exactly what my beta readers missed in Poison Spindle. They wanted action up front--a body on the first page, and it was on the sixth (or maybe fifth, but still....).

The problem with the novel before, that made the story "just not come together in my mind" was that I was writing the novel as if it were a bit of expository writing. The story and characters are interesting enough that this almost works, and definitely has it's good parts.

I realized, as I tried to make the first chapter less boring, that I was trying to "hook" the reader. I was trying to create something that was interesting and intriguing, and I couldn't make it work. The harder I tried, the more contrived it was. I finally realized I was just trying to manipulate the reader. It might work to keep them reading, but it wasn't fair and it didn't make for compelling work. Instead, it created the kind of work I skip through quickly just to get the answer to the "hook", but I don't get lost in the story. I was trying to force a body into the first paragraph, and all I got was a lot of bodies, but not story still.

Then I read Orson Scott Card's analysis of Snape, and, in it, his analysis of what makes a character interesting and alive. I was struck by his comments that at some point, Rowling got lost in her own story. I have thought I got lost in my story before, but I hadn't. I had gotten lost in the incredibly pleasurable experience of writing. But not in the story itself.

So then I got to "Decades ago...." When Tim verbally turned my query into a movie trailer, I was floored. I actually HAD written an interesting story. It had been so long that I wondered. He hooked me, and I wrote the darn book!

So how did he do it? With Living Language. It wasn't just that he took out the passive voice because I don't really have a serious problem with that. It's that before, the language was expository, and the story was just being told. But in a compelling book, the story isn't just being told. It's living and happening. The characters aren't just cardboard cutouts being moved by the writer through events set up to take them to the end of the story, they are live people that the writer watches and knows and follows.

Writers have said this all before, and I've known it. But I finally "got" it.

It's not that the writer has to know the story well. It's that the story has to be alive (and worth telling), and the writing has to be alive, and then the reader, without being compelled to, WANTS to stick with it and read it. Not just to find out what happens, or how all the pieces fit in, but because they just somehow got lost in the story. They might go back and appreciate the novelists' craft and skill, but that's not what makes them want to read every word. That's the after-the-fact effect.

Can I write a living story? I don't know. Visualizing it all as a movie helps--where would the director cut to a shot of out the window? Where are the characters? What lighting is there? Where does he zoom in, or cut to the wall instead of the speaker's face?

The first time Tim read my book, he said, "You're a playwrite." All my experience to that point had been something like that. But now I hope I've moved on. Suddenly, in my mind, my novel isn't just on a stage, it's a real, living, thing.

Does this mean I have to rewrite every word? Probably.

Will it be better? I hope so, or I should stop trying to get published and just keep enjoying the experience of writing as an end in itself.

You know why I hate touring?

I hate touring because the kids invariably get sick.

Yest, on the road again--and home again. This time our trip was half touring, half family vacation, and we got to see all the families. Also share the stomach flu with them. How lovely. There were many good shows, lots of good talk, more than enough getting stressed, and I'm glad we're home.

One significant thing happened--my mother, fearing I would be offended, suggested that what I really write is Young Adult Lit (in publishing, as I understand it, that category covers junior high and some high school aged readers, what's called Teen Lit in bookstores and libraries and academic circles). I was not offended. In fact, that's what I set out to write in the first place. I accepted the suggestion immediately, and applied it to my WIPs (works in progress), too, and found that the new focus was the solution to lots of my problems.

And viewing myself that way ended up being a great relief.

I immediately knew what I needed to do to "fix" Poison Spindle to be a YA book again. Then I realized it was twice too long (instead of just 15% too long). But then I realized I could make it into two books if I divided them not where the ms was divided right then, but about 20 pages later. This is not the exact middle of the manuscript, but it's a nice "done but what next" kind of stopping point like you want for leading someone to the sequel. Writing is not a fast craft, especially with three or four kids at (or on) my knees at any one time, so it took me two hours to finish the changes. But only two hours. I re-read the dialogue and realized that Kate, the heroine, already acted 16, just like my mom said. No change necessary there. And, as with all good edits in this book, the change allowed me to delete and simplify some things that I had to write pages of dialogue to "justify" (like how come nobody noticed Kate was gone for 2 months?).

So, dare I say it again? The book is finished (?).......and is now one story, but could be two books legitimately.

Anyway, I then went to my other books. Maggie, the ex-spy housewife, is still an adult book series and always will be. But the Western, which was going to be a sequel to the Poison Spindle Problem, is no longer a "Bookstore" book. Instead, it is a standalone YA novel, "Sophronia Kelley, Hired Gun", about a teenage sharpshooter who, after lying about her age to get in with Annie Oakley's girls, gets hired to be the President's daughter's bodyguard as she's going to a new women's university in California. Half-way there, the train they are on is held up by "Injuns" and Sophronia is too young and scared to actually shoot a man (she's really 15-year-old actress, not a cowboy!), so she loses the President's daughter. Instead of going on, she sets out into the Arizona desert to find the girl and make good her promise to protect her. It just works so much better as a YA book! And the other one, Melora and the Maltese Falcon, which I noted it's permutations before, is still a mystery, but I've restored Melora to her 14-year-old splendor. Instead of saving her boyfriend, she's out to rescue her father. Other than that, the story stays the same. Wow--do I go in circles or what?!

What Makes a Story Compelling?

I have seriously considered all comments sent by agents who have read all or part of my novel. After all, this is their business, to know what "works" and what doesn't. Everyone agrees that the novel is "fun." They all use that word, and that is exactly what I was aiming for--something that was fun to read. Lightweight. They all say, "It's fun, but....." The comments after the "but" are different, but I've come to the conclusion that the bottom line is Poison Spindle is fun, but not compelling. By that, I mean the first fifty pages don't leave you hungry for more. They don't make you miss your bus stop because you're lost in the story.

That is not to say the entire story isn't compelling. I firmly believe the last 3/4 of the book IS compelling. That's the part I wrote after I figured out two things: how to tell the story so I liked it, and what the story actually was (other than let's get Kate to meet every fairytale character ever so I can tell you what I really think of them). I have already condensed the first 100 pages out of maybe 200. The book is 70,000 words shorter than it started, despite the fact that I added 15,000 words to the last half of the book. For reference, many novels are about 70,000 words long. Total.

So I've been pondering how to fix this problem. But before I can make a story compelling, I have to know what makes a story compelling. This is entirely a separate issue from what makes writing good or a voice interesting. And, despite the fact that my writing is very plot-oriented, I don't know the answer. Research time.

Going to agent's blogs, I found a few things. Miss Snark, before her retirement, advised that writers include the main character and the main conflict in the query letter. She said that to make it compelling, the reader has to care about the character enough that we want them to come out on top in the conflict. Nathan Bransford said that every story must have a quest and a conflict, which I understand to mean the main character has to be trying to do something, and something has to be trying to stop them. The Comic Throughline suggests that there should be a conflict, but that it should be colored by what the character thinks they want and what they really want, or, in other words, there should be an internal conflict and and external conflict that actually also conflict with each other, and both have to be resolved at the end by the character choosing what they really want (resolving the internal conflict) and this magically makes the external conflict possible to resolve as well. Mom, the avid reader and excellent editor, suggested that every main character needs to have something (often in their past, but always internally) that makes them conflicted about solving the mystery/conflict at all--some secret in their lives that is holding them back and colors how they act.

So I've looked at my story. It does all this. Just not in the first 50 pages, which is what most agents read and make a decision based on. Like most first-timers (even though Poison Spindle is number 4), I wrote a slow-starter, and nobody can sell a slow-starter because nobody wants to read a slow starter.

So this is what I think about what everyone else has said about making a story compelling--they're all right. But there is something they missed: mystery. There has to be something the reader doesn't know that they want to know that keeps them reading, beyond just "do they resolve the conflict." At least for my stories.

So, for me, to be successful, a story must have:
a mystery
a character you care about who is round (not perfect)
a quest
an internal conflict
an external conflict

So I analyzed the Poison Spindle Problem:

The character is Kate. I hope she's likeable. She seems rather your normal over-intelligent girl to me, which isn't necessarily likeable. She's a little naive about life. She's a little over-confident in her abilities. She lacks any kind of street smarts or experience at all. Unfortunately, I wrote her as me, so I can't tell if she's likeable. Or if you care about her.

The mystery is what happened to both possible heirs to the throne and their husbands. This is interesting and compelling. It's not really defined well until the 60th page of the book.

The quest is for Kate to get home, at first, and then to solve the problems her grandfather caused when he "lost" Sleeping Beauty. In other words, to restore order to the kingdom.

The external conflict is between Kate (and eventually the princesses she sides with) and the witches (who want her out of the way so they can use her key to reach Sleeping Beauty) and maintain the new order they've established in the kingdom.

The internal conflict is between Kate and her overconfidence and inexperience. Kate understands things intellectually, but when it comes to actually making a decision and acting on it, she just floats. She is out of touch with the practical aspects of being smart, and she has to learn how to act instead of be acted upon.

So the internal conflict probably isn't terribly compelling--but it's something every young college-aged woman actually has to learn. Nobody is born a problem solver.

So my questions that remain:

What do YOU think makes a story compelling?

What makes you care about a character, and how can a writer get you there on page one, instead of page 65?

How much does a reader have to know about a mystery in order to want to know the solution?

I really need to get beyond, "Hey, that's definitely a conflict" to "I have to know what happens next!" How do I get there? What is it that makes a book a real page-turner, or "compelling"?

I really want to know what you voracious readers think. If you put it in the comments on the post, everyone can "discuss".