What If You Could Not Fail

Choosing Readers for Your Novel

As I developed and honed my novel Rules for Giving, there came a point when I wanted to take the manuscript outside of my critique group and expose it to a wider audience. Not that I did not trust my critique group. It is a strong one, and I have been told this by people who have moved away and emailed me about critique groups in their new location. One fellow specifically, who has an MFA, wrote back and said I should consider myself fortunate.

But still, there is a point that you want to leave the fold and see if your novel has legs. Here is some advice as you choose readers and what your expectations should be:

• Have an agenda--sometimes. When you ask someone to read your novel, do so with a specific purpose. I have several gay characters in my novel. I asked a lesbian friend to read it with an eye towards whether I represented that culture properly. For the most part I did (I have a number of gay and lesbian friends) but there were a few inconsistencies that she pointed out.
• Realize that not everyone is the obsessive reader fool that you are. There are people out there, some even your good friends, who will ask to read the novel, and then they don’t. I quickly found this out and learned not to bug people about it. One reader even got a little upset at me when she learned I asked a neighbor, but did not ask her. I gave her a manuscript, but I am sure she has not read it. Also remember that just because you polish off a 400-page novel in a day-and-a-half, not everyone else does.
• Not everyone sees the world as you do. I have experience with alcoholics and addicts, probably more than the average person. The disease is rife in my family. One reader made some very good observations about many parts of the novel, but she had problems understanding the logic of a drinker (or, in reality, the lack of logic, because addicts, alcoholics or problem drinkers often act against their own self-interest).  I quickly figured out that I needed to consider this when she questioned motives in my novel that were fueled by alcohol or drugs.
• Don’t think that everyone will find all the typos. This does not happen. My wife has an extraordinary eye for proofreading, and still there were some obvious typos that flew right past her. I can take my manuscript out right now to a reader and they will find a typo that several other people, experienced readers all, missed.
• In the end, it is your call. There are some readers who will have serious objections to parts of your writing. When they tell you, you will look at that passage again and realize they are absolutely right. Other times you will disagree. It’s your call. Here’s a rule to go by: If one only person points it out, you might consider ignoring them. If two or more people point in out, you might consider rewriting it.

Take a look at this blog post by literary agent Rachelle Gardner for some additional advice. More good info.

See ya’ later.

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Image by Deutsche Fotothek‎ [CC-BY-SA-3.0-de (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons

Dashiell Hammett

It is the beginning of the end when you discover you have style.” 
― Dashiell Hammett

The Love Song of Jonny Valentine--This is Appropriate

Someplace last week in my readings I came across mention of The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, the second novel by Teddy Wayne. The story tracks a Bieber-esque pop star and his momager. It sounded interesting, and Teddy Wayne did okay with his first novel, Kapitoil, which won a Whiting Writer’s Award.

Today the Jack Copy column in the Los Angeles Times ran an interview of Wayne. More interesting reading. Here are a few tidbits:

Wayne credits his ability to capture the essence of the eleven-year-old narrator to, “My own arrested development, sadly …”

Referring to his first novel, Wayne talks about “the intense vulnerability of seeing your heretofore private thoughts and work made public. It was certainly gratifying, but there were times — negative or nonexistent reviews, poorly attended readings … more distressing than enjoyable.”

Wayne created Jonny Valentine in part because “If I got this distraught over a bad Amazon review that no one would see, I wondered how celebrities handle the much broader and snarkier scrutiny. And if I had this much trouble as an adult, how would a young celebrity cope?”

His research got him into some awkward places, “as a thirty-something man, you attract a lot of unwanted attention in Barnes & Noble when you’re leafing through a stack of issues of Tiger Beat.”

On writing in the first person: “Getting into the voice of someone who sounds completely unlike me gives me access to their character I wouldn’t find in the third person.”

Wayne likes to jump around when it comes to the setting for his novels, from a computer program that predicts oil futures in Kapitoil to the world of bubblegum pop. What’s next?

Happy Valentine's Day.  

See ya’ later.

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One of my Favorite Authors

I fell away from the Catholic church at seventeen and have not been back except for weddings and funerals. My excellent Catholic education taught me to question, and it just so happens I questioned my faith. 

There have also been a few periods when I fell away from reading obsessively. One of those times it was Lawrence Block who brought me back, especially through the characters of Matt Scudder, Evan Tanner and John Keller. 

So it was with special delight that I read this blog post by Lawrence Block this morning and his suggestion on what might be wrong with publishing (just one of the things). 

Enjoy. 

See ya’ later.

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Photo courtesy www.lawrenceblock.wordpress.com

Advice from a Writer of Another Era

Want to hear something meaningful from a stodgy old British lady?

A recent edition of the Brain Pickings blog listed Nine Rules for Success by British novelist Amelia Barr, who did all of her writing after moving to the U.S. with her husband. She published her first novel at 42, and wrote a total of twenty four before passing away at 87. I have never read any of her novels, but the rules certainly apply.

1. Men and women succeed because they take pains to succeed. Industry and patience are almost genius; and successful people are often more distinguished for resolution and perseverance than for unusual gifts. They make determination and unity of purpose supply the place of ability.
2. Success is the reward of those who "spurn delights and live laborious days." We learn to do things by doing them. One of the great secrets of success is "pegging away." No disappointment must discourage, and a run back must often be allowed, in order to take a longer leap forward.
3. No opposition must be taken to heart.Our enemies often help us more than our friends. Besides, a head-wind is better than no wind. Who ever got anywhere in a dead calm?
4. A fatal mistake is to imagine that success is some stroke of luck. This world is run with far too tight a rein for luck to interfere. Fortune sells her wares; she never gives them. In some form or other, we pay for her favors; or we go empty away.
5. We have been told, for centuries, to watch for opportunities, and to strike while the iron is hot. Very good; but I think better of Oliver Cromwell's amendment – "make the iron hot by striking it."
6. Everything good needs time. Don't do work in a hurry. Go into details; it pays in every way.Time means power for your work. Mediocrity is always in a rush; but whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing with consideration. For genius is nothing more nor less than doing well what anyone can do badly.
7. Be orderly. Slatternly work is never good work. It is either affectation, or there is some radical defect in the intellect. I would distrust even the spiritual life of one whose methods and work were dirty, untidy, and without clearness and order.
8. Never be above your profession. I have had many letters from people who wanted all the emoluments and honors of literature, and who yet said, "Literature is the accident of my life; I am a lawyer, or a doctor, or a lady, or a gentleman." Literature is no accident. She is a mistress who demands the whole heart, the whole intellect, and the whole time of a devotee.
9. Don't fail through defects of temper and over-sensitiveness at moments of trial. One of the great helps to success is to be cheerful; to go to work with a full sense of life; to be determined to put hindrances out of the way; to prevail over them and to get the mastery. Above all things else, be cheerful; there is no beatitude for the despairing.

Apparent success may be reached by sheer impudence, in defiance of offensive demerit. But men who get what they are manifestly unfit for, are made to feel what people think of them. Charlatanry may flourish; but when its bay tree is greenest, it is held far lower than genuine effort. The world is just; it may, it does, patronize quacks; but it never puts them on a level with true men.

It is better to have the opportunity of victory, than to be spared the struggle; for success comes but as the result of arduous experience. The foundations of my success were laid before I can well remember; it was after at least forty-five years of conscious labor that I reached the object of my hope. Many a time my head failed me, my hands failed me, my feet failed me, but, thank God, my heart never failed me.

See ya’ later.

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More Conflict, Conflict, Conflict.

Some years ago, while browsing through the clothes and yard tools at a yard sale, I happened upon a novel that had just been released, a sequel to a best seller from a few years earlier. The new release was on sale for a dollar. What a find.

That should have been my first clue. It was a total dog of a story.

So much emphasis is put on the opening line of a novel. You must come up with a line that will compel the reader to read the next sentence, and then the next sentence until they are hopelessly hooked and they head for the cash register in the bookstore because they have to buy your novel.

Your job is not done here, though. Now you have to string together a sequence of scenes that gets the reader to keep reading. If you don’t, your novel will end up on sale at the next yard sale for a dollar.

I recently posted about writing killer dialog that keeps the reader reading. That got a lot of comments. Then yesterday I was browsing through recent columns of Draft in the New York Times when I came upon this piece by Lee Child on creating suspense. Child builds suspense by asking questions and then building plots that keep the reader reading to find the answer.  

Child illustrates this technique with an example used by many television news shows. TV producers know that the ADD-afflicted public is armed with a remote control. As soon as they go to commercial, the viewer is checking out another channel, or flicking to cable. That’s why the anchor or the talk show host says what’s coming next, and it is always a line that makes folks want to watch. “Kate Upton models the latest bikinis!” or, “Mom gives birth to triplets in parking lot!” Chances are you will tolerate the commercial on erectile dysfunction (with those two bathtubs in the middle of a field that make no sense) to see what’s coming next.

Your writing should do the same thing.  

See ya’ later.

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Why Read a Lot?

More About Hopeful Endings

A few days ago I posted about a short story I wrote in which the first version included a devastating ending which left very little hope. Fellow blogger and writer John Reeves pointed out that this was a recycle post. Indeed, it was. I posted about writing this story back in December. I have recently been working on it again and it was on my mind, so I must have forgotten the first post.

Reeves posted on his own blog in response to my original post that not all devastating endings are bad.  My story was about a husband and wife and their drug-addicted son, and from lots of experience I can tell you that situations like that do not always end well. Reeves pointed this out, too.

Whether you choose to end your story on an up note or a down note depends on your style as a writer. Edgar Allan Poe was a dark writer and many of his stories ended on a down note. That is what he was known for. Other writers, not so much.

For many of you over fifty, you might recall a movie in the 1970s called The Deerhunter (CAUTION: Spoiler Alert) about three friends from an ethnic Russian town in Pennslyvania. They go to Vietnam, are captured and then escape after a brutal experience. At the end of the movie one of the friends, Nick, dies by his own hand as a result of his experience, and the movie could have ended there. It would have been a brutal ending.

Instead the director, Michael Cimino, brings the survivors and their friends together after the funeral back in Pennslyvania. They meet in the bar owned by one of them and they toast to their fallen friend after singing God Bless America. There was hope, at least in some people’s eyes. I still remember thinking it was a devastating ending.

A philosophy professor in college once told me that making all statements is a risky position. When you say that something always ends a specific way, or that you should always do things in a certain manner, only one person has to prove you wrong, then you are wrong. The type of ending you go for in your story is dependent of what you write, your style, what you want to be remembered for, and what your readers enjoy.

See ya’ later.

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A Flicker of Hope

I shared a short story with my critique group a few weeks ago about a husband and wife in crisis over their son’s drug addiction. The consensus was that it was a strong story. There was foreshadowing, irony, and lots of conflict.

The problem I had, as one member of my critique group pointed out was that the end was devastating. The husband and wife stay together. They solve the challenge to their marriage, only to get blindsided by another calamity when the addict child dies. It is an ending that many marriages do not survive.

“It’s a powerful story,” the group member said, “but there’s no hope. Readers need a ray of light, the possibility that things might get better.”

I must have unconsciously realized this, because I had already written a different end for the story, one in which there was the possibility things would be better than worse.

“Oh, we like that better,” the group said collectively when I read it.

Moral of the story: It doesn’t always have to be a happy ending, but there should be the glimmer, however slight, of blue sky.  

See ya’ later.

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If I'd Known This I Would Have Taken a Bath Yesterday

If you have ever read The End of War by David L. Robbins, there is a scene in which Winston Churchill is going over crucial war documents while sitting in the bath and sipping champagne. I've spent many an hour in the tub, never reading war documents, but reading lots of great books. Yesterday was National Read in the Tub Day and I didn't know it. It is never too late, though. I'm going to run a bath right now (which is a visual image some of you don't need). 

See ya’ later.

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