Category: writing

Agent blogs you should be reading

Like all writers, I love using the Internet to stave off the nasty business of writing for as long as possible. But while sites like Damn You Autocorrect, Parents Shouldn’t Text, or Failbook are certainly enjoyable, you soon feel guilty for putting off your writing.

Enter the agent blogs. The great thing about them is that they provide countless hours of guilt-free browsing. After all, you’re not procrastinating; you’re doing valuable research that will advance your career! Some of my favorites include:

Janet Reid, Literary Agent

Pub Rants

Nathan Bransford (NB: Nathan is no longer an agent, but his archives contain a lot of useful advice)

Miss Snark

Jennifer Jackson

BookEnds Literary Agency

Once you start reading these blogs, you’ll realize that agents are, in fact, human. Not only that, but they’re also nice, decent people who don’t particularly enjoy having to say ‘no.’ Once you realize this, I guarantee you that it becomes a lot easier to reach out and query them.

Reasoning with Vampires

Reasoning with Vampires has got to be one of the best things I’ve ever stumbled upon.  It’s a forensic examination of the Twilight series where the books are carefully dissected and their inner workings exposed to the harsh light of day.

Never having read the Twilight series, I hadn’t realized just how flawed they are on almost every level.  Not only is Bella’s relationship with Edward pathologically unhealthy, but she literally forgets to breathe on several occasions.  Honestly, Urban Dictionary could define TSTL with a picture of Bella Swan.

If that wasn’t bad enough, the books also suffer from all kinds of mechanical problems.  Stephenie Meyer’s sentences are often so large and unwieldy that they collapse in on themselves and become literary black holes.  She also never met a dialogue tag that she didn’t like.  Her pronouns stubbornly refuse to be tied down to any clear antecedent.  The list goes on and on.

Snarkiness aside, RwV is a valuable resource for any writer because it can actually teach you quite a bit about grammar.  It’s certainly much more enjoyable than The Elements of Style.

Interesting perspectives on indie publishing

I came across two interesting pieces about indie publishing on agent-turned-author Nathan Bransford’s blog.  The first is by Nate himself:

http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2011/05/why-i-chose-traditional-publisher.html

The second is a guest post by Tracy Marchini, self-published author of  Pub Speak: A Writer’s Dictionary of Publishing Terms (a guide to the publishing industry) and  Hot Ticket (a novel):

http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2011/05/real-skinny-about-indie-publishing.html

It was interesting to see both Nathan and Tracy discuss the amount of work involved in self publishing.  For me, that’s one of the main reasons why I’m NOT going the indie route.  Writing is enough of a time sink by itself.  I think I’d go insane if I had to assemble my book and do all of the marketing for it, too.

Recommendations, please

I have an idea for a new series bouncing around in my brain.  It’s still in the earliest stages of life, so I can’t go into much detail about it right now.  It will, however, be something of a change for me since it will be science fiction rather than fantasy.  However, since I have more than enough Ptahmose-related stuff on my plate at the moment, it’s going to be a while before I devote any serious effort to this new project.

In the meantime, however, I’d like to broaden my exposure to sci fi.  So far, my experience of the genre has been confined to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (plus some of its sequels) and several books set in the Star Wars expanded universe.  But I was hoping that you, dear readers, might be able to recommend some good reads.  So if you have any recommendations, please leave them in the comments!

Truth in fiction

I was rudely awakened this morning by the fire alarm.  As I waited outside for the all clear to return to my cozy bed, I decided to download a sample of Wilbur Smith’s Warlock on my iPhone.   Warlock is a fantasy novel set in ancient Egypt and I had been meaning to check it out for some time, but I never managed to get around to it until now.

By the end of the first page, it became apparent that artistic license was going to be the order of the day.   I had hoped that Warlock would be a work of historical fantasy on par with Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, but Smith took so many liberties with the past that it had a negative impact on my ability to enjoy the story.

Now I get the fact that this is a novel and not a history textbook.  I also understand that artistic license is often necessary.  But if you’re going to set your work in a real-world society, I think you have to adhere to a certain basic standard of authenticity.  Populating your version of ancient Egypt with people named “Lostris” and “Memnon” is like writing a story about feudal Japan with characters named “Tiffany” and “Bartholomew.”  If you’re going to fudge that many details, why not just go all the way and set your story in a wholly fictional world of your own creation?

Let me make one thing clear, though: I’m not saying that Warlock is a bad book because it lacks authenticity.  It’s just not the sort of book I want to read.   I think I’ll download something by C. J. Sansom instead…

Revisions, revisions

I’ll be honest: revising a novel after a beta read is probably my least favorite part of the writing process.  Compared to the adventure of coming up with a plot and writing the first draft, post-beta revisions tend to be something of a chore.  By that point, you have your plot and your characters pretty well nailed down, so most the changes you’re making are mundane tweaks and typo-fixes.  And, vital as they may be, it’s hard to get fired up about moving commas and adding dialogue tags.  True, you do get to write the occasional new scene, but such creative bursts are usually few and far between at this late stage.

I think I may have figured out a way to make the revision process a little bit less of a hassle though.  Since most of my beta readers made their comments using Word’s track changes feature, it occurred to me that I could merge all their changes into one master document.  This makes things a lot tidier since you don’t have to have a gazillion documents open at once.  Also, since Word allows synchronous scrolling when you’re viewing two documents side-by-side, it’s easy to keep track of the line-by-line comments.

Some of my beta readers made their comments in a separate document instead of using the track changes feature and I ended up having to go through and add them to the master list manually.  For simplicity’s sake, I think that from now on I’m going to request that everyone make their comments alongside the text itself.

Now that everything is set up, I’m cautiously optimistic that I’ll be able to move quickly through the revisions.  With any luck, they’ll be done within a week to ten days.  Then I will probably have a very limited gamma read, largely for the purpose of hunting down the last remaining typos.  Once that’s done, it will be time to declare the writing process finished and start sending out query letters.

On infodumps

One of my biggest pet peeves is when authors clutter their work with excessive background information.  Few things irritate me more than having the flow of a story broken so the narrator can regale me with a mini-lecture on Egyptian temple decoration, the lineage of the High Elf Lords of Fantasia Minor, or the sewer system of Paris.  Even if I’m actually interested in the subject material, I resent having it dumped on me in that fashion.

Part of the problem is that these infodumps are almost always done by the narrator.  For me, narrators work best when they’re unobtrusive and it’s hard for them to be unobtrusive when they’re yammering on about  beekeeping in the Roman Empire.  Some writers try to avoid this by putting their infodumps in the mouths of their characters, but that gets dangerously close to “As you know, Bob…” territory.

Writers of historical fiction need to be especially wary of falling into this trap.  We do not have the luxury of writing in worlds that are readily understandable to our readers, so we’re always going to have to make more of an effort to set the scene properly.  But while it’s fine to spend some time explaining things that modern readers might not be familiar with, that doesn’t give us license to cram so many historical tidbits into our work that it looks like it was written by an 18th century antiquary.

Regular readers of my blog may wonder how I could enjoy Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell since it contained copious amounts of background information.  She could get away with it because she was deliberately imitating the style of 19th century authors.  As anyone who’s ever read Victor Hugo or Anthony Trollope will tell you, info dumps were all the rage back then.  Clarke also tended to confine her background information to footnotes, so if you didn’t want to read it, you could easily skip over it.

What do you think?  Do extensive background infodumps detract from a story, or do they make it richer?

Rebecca Black, self publishing, and the rise of the eBook

Many of you have no doubt heard about Rebecca Black, the thirteen year old singer whose debut song “Friday” has become an object of near universal mockery on the Interwebz.  With lyrics like this:

Fun, fun, think about fun

You know what it is

I got this, you got this

My friend is by my right, ay

I got this, you got this

Now you know it.

it’s not hard to see why some people are calling “Friday” one of the worst songs of all time.

Black’s parents paid $4,000 for her to make a video with ARK Music Factory, which makes “Friday” the musical equivalent of the many self-published books churned out by vanity presses like iUniverse and AuthorHouse.  Since these companies get their money upfront, they don’t have to worry about pesky things like quality or marketability.

Recently, it has become something of a fad within the publishing world to forecast the imminent demise of literary agents and traditional publishers.  Pundits point to people like Amanda Hocking (who has become a millionaire by selling her self-published eBooks through the Kindle store) and claim that authors will eventually self publish all their work in eBook form.  It’s not hard to see why some authors find self publishing platforms like the Kindle to be an appealing alternative to traditional publishing.  Not only are you free to publish your story exactly how you want it without any editorial interference, but you can also get royalties of up to 70%.

While  eBooks will eventually relegate paper books to the status of collectors’ items, literary agents and traditional publishers still have a valuable role to play in ensuring some basic level of quality.  They’re actually making an investment in the author, so they have a vested interest in making sure that the author’s work is good, or at least marketable.  Granted, Amazon doesn’t charge you anything to publish via the Kindle, but they’re not exactly making an investment in you either, which is why they’ll still accept almost anything under the sun.  A traditional publisher also provides basic publicity services to help market your book.  If you’re self published, you have to do all that on your own and, contrary to what some people seem to think, social media isn’t a magic wand that you can wave and guarantee your book a vast readership.

As long as self publishing continues to be associated with the literary equivalent of Rebecca Black’s “Friday,” there will be a place for traditional publishers.  The switch to eBooks may provide a second chance for authors who were bypassed by traditional publishers, but easier distribution won’t automatically level the playing field.

First person narrators

I’m not really a fan of stories told by a first-person narrator.  I know that, to some people, they make the story seem much more personal, but I just can’t suspend disbelief enough to accept a narrator who can somehow remember the ins and outs of every single conversation he/she has ever had.  There are a few books where the story is so compelling that I’m willing to overlook the first-person narration: N. K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy, Robert Graves’ I, Claudius, and Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicles are the ones that spring immediately to mind.

Regular readers of my blog know that I’m not really a fan of H. P. Lovecraft.  But I don’t see his frequent use of the first person as one of his problems.  In fact, he’s usually able to pull it off a lot better than other writers because he doesn’t use a lot of dialogue, so his narrators’ reminiscences seem more believable.

What do you think of first-person narrators?  Am I alone in my distaste?

Forward!

Now that the first Ptahmose book (tentatively titled Evil in Thebes) is in the hands of my lovely beta readers, I’ve decided to start work on book 2 of the series.  I know it’s a bit risky to start work on a sequel when the first book hasn’t even been submitted to agents yet, but I’m so excited about this universe that I’ve created that I feel compelled to keep writing.  I have an enthusiasm for this project that I don’t have for the Andrewverse (for those of you just tuning in, the Andrewverse refers to the setting of my first book A Theft of Bones).  Don’t get me wrong, I still have fond feelings for Andrew and his friends, but at this point in time I don’t feel a strong urge to write anything more about them.  That may change someday, but for now they’ll have to sit on the sidelines.

Back to book 2: I’m pleased to report that I just finished a rough plot sketch tonight.  Following the precedent set by Evil in Thebes, it’s in table form (an idea I borrowed from J. K. Rowling, as you may recall).  I think it’s a great way to keep track of the various subplots as they develop throughout the book.

When writing a plot sketch, I basically write down the first semi-coherent ideas that pop into my mind without worrying overmuch about their quality.  A lot of stuff is promptly erased by the delete key, but some of it sticks and eventually I have a decent foundation for a story.   Once I actually start writing in earnest, the plot usually undergoes a few more changes and I always love to look back and see how my work has changed over time.

I think that the initial plotting of a novel is probably my favorite part of the writing process.  I love sifting and winnowing through endless possibilities to come up with a coherent, entertaining plot.  It wasn’t always that way.  When I first started writing, I got frustrated with plotting very quickly.  It galled me when a great idea fell apart once I started pursuing it.  But my attitude changed once I accepted such mistakes as an unavoidable part of the writing process.  Now when an idea doesn’t pan out, I just shrug my shoulders and try to think of something better rather than getting bent out of shape.