Writing 21st Century Fiction (SIWC 2012 Master Class Notes)

Wow, it's October. And while I'd love for my excuse this time to be that I was off partying or traveling or away at a conference again, nope, this time I just caught a really bad cold.

(Okay, there was this one bachelorette party that involved attending the local Theatre Sports event last weekend, and I may have been called up on stage and had the chance to, among other things, play a helmet, dressage trophy, and horse, but hey, the bride was entertained, and I was sick before that, honest!)

The of-course-I've-been-querying-too aside, I've also been plotting and planning my next novel, because I am a firm believer in having an outline. And the magic system for this new book needed serious work. Dang, it feels good to be working on something besides the book I'm trying to sell!

Anyway. Back to my original point: it's October, and the end of the month is one of my favourite events: the Surrey International Writers' Conference. While I still have some notes left to share from ConCarolinas, I just discovered a few gems from last year's SIWC that hadn't been posted. So here's the first one, and to make up for my absence, it's a doozy: the Master Class with amazing literary agent Donald Maass.

The class was called "Writing 21st Century Fiction" and is based on his book of the same title that came out last year. (And speaking as one who owns the book, these notes are just a snapshot of that, because he elaborates on all of what I'm about to share there.) This was an incredible class, and even just editing these notes for posting reminded me of how valuable it was. Enjoy ... and definitely check out the book!


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Writing 21st Century Fiction
Donald Maass
Purpose: To dig into new dimensions of fiction writing.
New book: Writing 21st Century Fiction
- Observed changes in the NYT bestseller list: in recent yrs (during a recession at that when the book industry has struggled) – The hardcover bestseller list looks as usual – lots of thrillers, brand name authors; but the duration numbers have dropped (7 or 8 at the most) – an indication that sales are very front-ended, but Trade paperbacks are different: Trades have extended shelflife – groups of books that have been running for 1 to 2 years, with one exception – and some of them are literary fiction – there’s something odd about this – why are literary fiction selling in such numbers, for such lengths of time? Not just because they’re lit lite, but they’re selling incredibly well week after week. Some have been made into movies, but only long after the book was successful.

What makes them big? What’s between the covers. The stories and what makes them interesting.
E.g. Nancy Picard, Laura Litman both left category fiction and started writing in a different way as writers of standalone fiction. So what makes them so powerful? What are they doing?

1.    Telling terrific stories.
2.    Telling them beautifully.

Great storytelling and beautiful writing are the perfect combination.

So how do you do it? What’s different? How can you write a great story beautifully?

Literary Writers vs. Genre Writers
- The literary world looks at commercial fiction with a sneer – plot is gimmicky, cheap.
- Plot can be gimmicky, contrived, but not always. Likewise, literary fiction isn’t always just pretty words.
- Depends on the writer you are, too – identify yourself as the kind of writer you are.
- Do you identify as a genre writer? Nothing wrong with that. BUT if you work in a particular genre, whether you like it or not you’re putting yourself in a box and will reach for genre tropes, specific character types and language, default choices, stereotypical choices that make that box smaller, familiar.
- Literary writers tend to think they’re original but it’s not the case. There are just as many stereotypes that are true about them, too.
- Basically, you will think and identify in certain kinds of ways depending on what kind of writer you are.
- If you think of yourself as not a novelist but a storyteller, then you probably look at lit world and think “That’s nice, but that doesn’t have anything to do with me”.
- Literary writer trying to capture something that is true, realistic, fresh, you look at the genre world and think: “That’s crap. That’s not real writing.”

Plotters vs. Pantsers
- Other dichotomies in the kinds of writers we are that we need to think about. e.g. are you a Plotter, a Pantser, or somewhere in between?
- Outline writers will have certain advantages in crafting fiction, but certain shortcomings. By following a map you’ll miss detours; by intuiting your way through you might get distracted by the detours and wander too much; exploring is sometimes a way of not focusing. (This is why I'm a huge fan of organic plotting. Best of both worlds!)

Warm Temperature vs. Cold Temperature
- Are you a warm temperature writer or a cold temperature writer?
- Jane Austen vs Ernest Hemingway
- Austen: warm temperature writer: Austen plumbed the depths of the human soul and experience—rich emotional stew, immersion in point of view, the life and times of feelings on the page

- Hemingway: cold temperature writer—evokes feelings on the page with coldness

How Attached Are You?
- Authors who love to be edited, love revisions—that’s where writing really happens
- Others who have such an emotional attachment it makes it difficult for them to see the need for changes
- Agents love authors who love to be edited, who follow directions. (*raises hand* Me-me-me! Yes! The good of the story is what matters!)
- Waiting for agent/editor feedback is about getting their feedback, to see if you managed to accomplish what you intended to do. If you’re looking for a checklist of things to do, that’s wrong.
- If your book is your baby—it’s wise to stand up for your story, but not just “That’s not how I see it” or “My character would never do that”—you put up barriers to your own story, and the perfect story that is in you.

So, we need to delve into these dimensions that we don’t do first, naturally, or well.

The Inner Journey
- Goes hand in hand with the Hero’s Journey.
- The arc of change, how the character grows from one story to another.
- Stories far more powerful when the character transforms.
- Work through the journey that takes character from one place to another
- Story needs to be grounded in the character’s inner struggle.


The Emotional Landscape


Exercise: Emotional Landscape

1. Start with the emotional landscape of the writer. Character feels, is going through something. So whatever your style is, it can work with that.
- Take a deep breath, close your eyes. Just be with yourself in the moment. Then, think: what is too fearful, what is too inappropriate, to messy, to out of bounds, to angry, too trite, too personal with your story?

2. Next, write how it’s going to happen in your story, how you can put it to use. How’s it going to get on the page? What’s the moment when the reader will feel what you feel, be afraid, will experience what you’ve experienced, will go “holy crap”? What’s that moment that you’ll make such a mess you won’t know how to get out? You want the readers to feel that, heighten the “how is this character going to get out of it?" feeling for the reader?
- This begins to open the emotional landscape, the feeling of authentic experience.
- When you write what you think you should write, you are thinking in a box. You are preventing yourself from doing things that will make your story your story. You have to get inside of you.

3. Next: What’s an emotion that’s new in your life and experience? Something in the last year that you’ve felt that came upon you and was new, a revelation? Death of anger, a specific kind of hope, sth you discovered about yourself? What new understanding or insight? In what way are you new?

4. Next: When is your character going to have that same feeling, of being new, of understanding one’s self, a death or depth of a familiar emotion?
- Here we’re thinking about what we feel. The point? To bring to our fiction an emotional life and richness. That depth of righteous anger, that outrage we feel. We need characterss who feel strongly about things.

5. What’s the last scene you were working on in your WIP? Or that you seriously revised? Write down the strongest emotion your character feels in that scene.
- Write down two other things that s/he also feels.
- Out of these two, pick the one that’s most interesting.
- Take a look at this feeling. Why is it a good feeling to have right now? Or, why is it a bad, unhelpful feeling to have? How does it lead your protagonist down the wrong path? Or, how does it point your character in the right direction? Do they feel glad or not? Why? What is good or bad about this feeling?
- How does your character own the feeling, or how are they avoiding it? Why does your character have a right to this feeling? Or, why do they not have  a right to this feeling or feeling this way? If this is an emotion your character would normally suppress, write down why. If this is a feeling your character feels too easily, then why do they feel entitled or ashamed of going to this emotional place so readily? Why is it a weakness?
- What colour is this emotion? What hue, what shade?
- Give yourself some space for a few minutes to write about the emotion you’ve identified. This secondary, also-felt emotion. Describe what is good or bad or both? Why it’s an entitlement or shame. Is it welcome or abhorrent – what does it make your character felt? How do you make this character feel this? Then write a paragraph about how this emotion, this experience is conveyed. What happens?
- Is this passage just about the feeling? Do you like what you wrote? Does it have a place on the page, in this scene? Is this not your style?
- What if you did this exercise in twelve scenes? What if you had twelve passages like this where the rich, nuanced, deep and yet not necessarily obvious that you’re blowing up and pulling out?
- Why did we pick a secondary emotion? Because the primary emotions are the neon emotions.

6. Write down: rage, fear, desire, joy, grief, happiness, anguish, gut, twisted, (or phrase guts twisted).
- Why these words? Because they’re obvious emotions. Neon emotions – it’s not that we don’t feel these, it’s that on the page these are obvious emotions, easy emotions. To get your reader to feel something, they need to be surprised. So the character needs to be surprised by the emotions. So you’ve got to surprise yourself.
- Find something that’s true but less expected. Magnify it, and make it a predominant emotion, so your reader will feel something that is new, surprising, fresh, and it will grab their heart in a way that “rage” will not because it’s lost its teeth.
- Work with this rich emotional landscape.

Why is it that we would bother to work on this at all? Isn’t stuff like this on the page the stuff they tell you to cut because it doesn’t move the action along, is extra wallowy self-indulgent unnecessary stuff that drags the pace of the novel down?
- No, it adds depth. Depth of emotion, depth of character.

What do we mean by depth?
- The unique, nuanced, experience of the character that immerses us in the world and the point of view and the feelings they have – we’re drawing the reader into it.
- Mile-a-minute action isn’t what hooks us. What hooks us is what we feel.
- The emotional experience of the characters is as important as the action they undergo, the themes of the book, the world they find themselves in and what they see there. The issues in play in the story. Even their own feelings.
- What we feel is fascinating to us (and not just to women). It’s deeply absorbing and we want our readers to feel that. Replace the neon words with secondary emotions. Give your characters feelings about anything.


Exercise: Objects and Feelings

1. Pick say, 6 scenes.

2. In each scene, pick an object in the environment in the scene and write a paragraph about character’s feelings about that object) – part of storytelling is creating the world in which our character is in. What feelings do they have about this thing? How does it reflect on their lives? What does it make them think about? The protagonist’s feelings about all of these things are part of that world, they’re important, they need to be on the page.

3. If you found this exercise difficult, there are other ways to work with the emotional life of our characters. So write this down:

In the story as a whole, what is the predominant feeling that your protagonist has? The dominant, unshakable feeling that drives them through the story?


Exercise: Showing Your Character

1. Make your main character mute. They cannot speak. What is the one thing they must do or can do that he or she feels this way, that would show everybody exactly what is in his or her heart? Either tear something down or build something up. Take up arms or lay them down. Give a gift or an act of retribution.

2. What you just wrote, is it in the manuscript already? If not, what are you waiting for? Put it in. Why aren’t they doing that thing? Do it! Your story will be so much better.

3. You can also adapt this. For those of you who are cool-temperature writers and have trouble exploring emotions, pick six other scenes, find out what the strongest emotion this character feels in this scene, and don’t have them say it internally or externally but the reader will pick up on it and it will be very obvious by what they do. Then go back and look at that scene. There may be some talking and exposition you can take out. Probably also some gesture or action the character can do that will show the reader what we need to know.


Strengthen Your Weak Spots

All of this is about working on the things we aren’t good at. What we don’t do naturally and well. The hope is that the writing blends action and rich landscape. When you blend all of this together seamlessly in a story, that’s what the experience want the reader to have when they read. Great fiction gives us that.

We’re really only just beginning here, to approach the inner journey, the transformative arc. The experience needs to go somewhere. We need our characters to change over the story, to grapple with things.


Exercise: Bad Habits

1. What is your protagonist’s worst habit, weakness, or blind spot? Why aren’t they able to control that?
- Example: are they compassionate to a fault, or so quick to blame others? Why? Where does that habit come from?
- Maybe it’s because to see people as they really are would be unbearable, because there is so much negativity in the world? Does your sunshine character have a black hole inside? Terrible fear, terrible anger, comes from somewhere.

2. What’s the first time in the chronology of the story that the character surrenders to it, cannot control though they wants to? What’s a very inconvenient moement? What’s the first moment thtat it would be important for character *not* to indulge in this bad habit or weakness?

3. What’s the second moment they give in to or surrenders control to bad habit or weakness? Who notices? Who sees? Who winces? Who’s disappointed? How will we know that another character has seen something of the bad or weak side of the protagonist?
- Who is the worst person to notice or see this?
- Who is the last person your protagonist wants to disappoint?

4. What’s the third moment your protagonist gives into this flaw, and this time it costs him or her? Hurts them how? What can they lose? Whose good opinion is destroyed? Who is let down maybe for the last time? Is there something you can take away from your protagonist in this moment? (In crime novels this is the “You’re off the case” moment.)

5. What’s the worst mistake your protagonist can make, when this blind spot or bad habit or weakness on their part really bites them? When does your protagonist fail themself, because they have this flaw or weakness?
- Having shamed themselves, what does your character realize? Why? Where does this flaw come from?
- What’s the hidden emotion? What’s been repressed?
- Having bottomed out, having faced themself, what is the first thing they do that shows he or she has changed? What do they need to do? To whom do they need to say something? An apology, a truth, a confession, just something humble? Maybe something as simple as “I have a problem, I’m sorry.”

We often think of change as an upward rising curve, but it can also be from failing, not just from succeeding.

If we’ve anchored the protagonist properly in the beginning, if the reader’s connected to the character, we can put them through a heck of a lot and the reader will keep reading.

The part we’re not necessarily conscious of is “I’m so glad the author did that” even though we’re thinking “I wish the author hadn’t done that”. Because it means the author has done a good job.


Transformitive Arcs

There are lots of ways to put a character through an arc of change, of transformation. The problem Maass sees the most is that he doesn’t see enough steps, doesn’t see that inner struggle.


Exercises: Deepen the Inner Journey

Consider the following: 
- What is it that your protagonist has never told anyone?
- What was his or her worst mistake (betrayal, etc)?
- What secret is your main character keeping. Or if they don’t have a secret to keep, make one up.
- What would be painful for you protagonist to be concealing?
- What would be the kind of thing that your protagonist would hope he or she would never do, or have on his or her conscience?
- What is your character or protagonist the most ashamed of?
- What is something that other people would never guess about your main character? What is he or she hiding?
- Who does your protagonist never ever want to let down?
- Whom does your protagonist find impossible to forgive?
- Whom does your protagonist hate? The kind of hatred that is pleasure? The kind of hatred that is defining, shaping, that makes it part of who you are, defines who you are?

Secrets and shame, grudges and resentments, mistakes … all are rich material, so helpful for storytelling. So let’s do some things with it.

1. What’s the greatest length that your protagonist goes to keep the secret, conceal the shame, nurture the hatred, avoid a truth? What’s the most extreme thing that they can or will do because they’re carrying it around inside?

2. Who in the story has a vested interest in digging out of your protagonist what they’re hiding? The secret, the shame?

3. Who would like the protagonist to change? Who needs forgiveness? Who needs the protagonist to forgive?

4. What’s the biggest way this secret or shame or resentment or whatever it is is weighing down your protagonist?

5. In what way does it hurt your protagonist the most? In what way does it cost your protag? In what is it getting in the way?

6. Why does the secret need to come out, the shame be confessed? What would change? Can I make this more critical, more vital, in at least one way?
- If there’s someone your protagonist doesn’t want to let down, then disappoint them. It costs more if it hurts more.
- E.g. build up the high regard the other character has for protagonist,  so that the let down is a bigger let down. Can your protagonist be a hero to someone else, so that the let down for that person is so very much?
- What breaks open this lock, what causes the secret to come out, the shame to be exposed, the disappointment to occur, the grudge to reach its critical mass? The hatred to explode? What brings it to a head, whatever is simmering inside your protagonist? How can you make that event bigger, more ill-timed, inconvenient, more painful? How can you make the catharsis hurt more?
7. Along with this, is there something your protagonist can learn that he or she didn’t know before? Who in the story can tell your protagonist something eh or she did not know before? Who already knows your protagonist’s secret or shame? Who has made a similar or worse mistake than your protagonist?  What does your protagonist know about him or herself about what happened about who is involved that they can now reveal?

Note: What we’re looking to do is take what’s secret or painful and make it deeper. Effects that this secret or shame has on other people, on the protagonist (how are they suffering), who they’ll disappoint, how they can make this more dramatic, worse?
- If the protagonist is nurturing a hatred, for example, what was the episode that created this hatred, this resentment? What was done wrong, done to your protagonist, that hurt them, that planted a seed of darkness or anger? Find one way to make what happened more unjust, more undeserved, more cruel, more unforgivable.

8. What was the worst thing about this worst thing that happened to the protagonist that makes it exquisitely more awful? The timing, the context? How can you recall or echo that event, that worst thing about the worst thing, in one or two places in the other story? How can something similar be said? Or what are two things that trigger that old hatred, that old injustice, in your protagonist?

9. Then write down one thing your protagonist doesn’t know about the person that hurt them. Explanatory, perhaps, or at least unknown or human? Something unseen in this other person. If your protagonist needs to forgive something, who sees that need in your protagonist before they do? Who can say that before they want to hear it?

10. What triggers the deepest injury towards the end of the story that will cause protagonist to bring his or her hatred/anger to a head? When is he or she the angriest, most wounded, injured, hurt? How can your character explode at that moment and what’s the worst, biggest thing that can happen? How can you create a big, messy, catharsis? How does your protagonist act out?

11. Having done all that, who can deliver to your protagonist what he or she didn’t know? This would be a good moment to release that information.

12. How does your protagonist know that he or she has changed inside, that they’re ready to change, that something been has let go? What’s the most dramatic way your protagonist can use to forgive the unforgivable?
- Change is hard but in story terms it’s only hard if we make it hard. So let’s make it hard (for the character).
- Every character is different. All of these things are good, durable, useful, transformative – you can
- At the end of this story what’s the hardest action your character will have to physically do, the most painful, truthful thing they’ll have to say?

13. Now, go back to the beginning of the story so that it’s something the protagonist has sworn he or she will never do or say. Find a way in the story to test that conviction twice, and have your character succeed. We know this is part of who they are, a defining characteristic, until they *do* do or say it at the end.
- What causes your character to change is important too.
- What provokes them? Make it bigger.
- How much will it take to provoke them? Make it even more.

14. What’s the most important thing the protagonist needs to know about themself? What is he or she trying to understand?
- Come up with reasons why they don’t care, why it’s not of interest or significance, think others can deal with it. Then you can tear those reasons, those excuses down, so that each of those excuses can be ruined. This is what other characters are for – to force on your protagonist what they’re avoiding. Who can force on your character what they’re avoiding, make hard decisions, make impossible decisions they must make? Why does it become critical, unavoidable?

15. What is a truth that your protagonist clings to that she or he believes absolutely, a truth, a principle that is rock solid for your protag? Reinforce it three times, tis truth, this understanding or conviction – show it to be true three times. Then destroy it. How will your protagonist discover, know, understand that what she or he believed was wrong (dead wrong)? How can you shatter that truth? Take away from your protagonist that which he or she beieves, has had faith in – how can you remove that? And what replaces it?

16. What’s your protagonist’s gratest hope, dream? Where do they want to get to? What do they want to create, bring about? How can you make that hope more necessary, more beautiful? Who shares that hope, dreams that dream, is persuaded by that protagonist, can enforce that hope (yes you’re right, you’ll get there, don’t give up)? Write down how it is that your protagonist’s hope is naïve, that what she or he dreams of can never be, that the place he or she wants to get to doesn’t exist – not exactly. It’s flawed, it’s wrong, or it simply can’t be. Shatter the hope, shoot that dream out of the sky. It’s naïve. Childish. And what replaces it?


Change is Good

When your protagonist learns something or has his or her eyes opened, finds a different way, a better, stronger, more mature way of looking at things, a deeper understanding – that is growth. That is change. Good change.
- Bad setbacks and disasters lead to positive change and necessary growth.
- The worst things that happen to us are the best things that happen to us. Every mistake and disappointment has made us better or stronger, something we’re glad for.

Growth is good, but growth comes at a cost. It comes from hard experience, from growing up, from disappointments. These are ways of looking at how to bring your character through change.
- Change in relationships, outlook, the way they regard themselves, understanding, all these things can change.
- Change is good, change is story. Change is emotional, change is dramatic.

Two of the most emotional moments in any story: the moments of saying goodbye, letting something go  and  “hello, welcome home” (forgiveness) – healing, reconciliation – these are story at its best. Get your reader to feel these things and you’ve got a good story.

Sometimes to get where you want to go quicker, you’ve got to spend more time getting there.


The Business of Writing Beautifully

There are ways in which to tell a story and work with a story that go beyond mere imagery. Terrific metaphors and sparkling moments, capturing a moment with crystal clarity, bringing something vividly alive – skillful and artful writing, but there are a lot of ways in which we can give our stories resonance, meaning, beauty.


Exercise: Parallels

1. Pick any one event that happens in your story that is done to your protagonist or that they witness, do, provoke (something we can visualize, not just an internal journey) and then find one other way or place in the story where the same thing can happen in a smaller or bigger way. When in the story can the same thing happen (maybe not in as dramatic a way, or more, but nevertheless)? How many other times do similar things happen? Look for parallel ways in which the same thing can happen. Make a list of things that are analogous to, similar to, what you wrote down – come up with two or three, maybe more. How can you echo these images?
- Building up parallels to something that happens enrichens the story.
2. Think about the climax of your story, the high point in your novel – think about where it happens, the environment of climactic events. Take a look around at where this action is actually happening. Pick out one object. What’s there? Find at least three other places where we can see that object or something like it tree or four other times in the story.

3. What is the meaning of this image? Then plant it in other places, build up the symbolic value of that image. That symbol has resonance, carries meaning. It creates connections. Parallels, associativeness – called resonance. Echoes, ripples, mirrors … we can make those things. Not necessarily an accident. Something we can engineer into our story.
- What matters is that the association is made.

Exercise: Flash Symbols

Pick any scene in your book. What’s the most essential change that happens in that scene? What’s different? Pick something visual in that scene that reflects the change. Something small that represents that.
- E.g. Summer Sottage by Susan Wiggs – the half-finished house, the car fishtails (loses its way), the mailbox knocked over as she leaves (also the fluid doesn’t squirt, the windshield – can’t see, etc). The scene is so effective. She uses symbols like that through the novel. More symbolism throughout.

You cannot overdo these symbols and parallels. They feel contrived, and most readers don’t pick up on them, but they work. These connections enrich, resonate, even if the reader isn’t writing a term paper, it’s there, working on the reader.


Exercise: Parallels

In your story is there someone whose fortunes fall? Romance becomes impossible, healing becomes out of reach, seems to be increasing difficulty or failure? Is there a journey toward failure that someone has? Well, whose fortunes can rise? They succeed at something they’ve never been good at, meet the man of their dreams, get somewhere or get something that the’ve  been struggling with? Can someone find an elusive faith?
- Sometimes parallels are the same thing happening in a different way, sometimes it’s a reversal.

- E.g. If something is lost, can something else be found? If someone dies, can someone be born?

Parallels and symbols – all part of beautiful writing, don’t require a gift with words. If you dthat, the Novel can become more resonant, more shapely, more brautifully crafted, more meaningful, more powerful.


Beautiful writing can also be …


Exercise: Milleu

Think about the milleu of your story. What kind of world does your story take place in? A small town, a fantasy realm, a time and place in history, the world of particle physics? Write down two or three things that protagonist sees about this world, place, time that no one else does.

What is one thing that the protagonist finds ironic about this world?

What is the one thing supremely beautiful, delicious about this world, that your character finds? Craft beer? Bread? What’s not to like about this world?

What’s one thing that is unbearable about this world? How can we possibly stand to live in a world in which ___ is present?

Think about the landscape, the environment, the surroundings? What is one unchanging feature that is always there, has been there, for aeons, or at least a long time? What meaning does your protagonist see in this thing that other people do not?

What is the place of fear, the dark place, the place you don’t go, the place you get warned about, the place where terrible things happen, the place of death? What is the cellar, the cave, the place of deepest fears? And when is your protagonist going to go there? And what happens, or doesn’t? What does she discover, or not? What secret is hiding there, is deepened?
- e.g. The Virgin of Small Plains – Nancy Picard – past mystery that comes to the forefront, secrets will come out, etc – gravesite becomes a place of events happening there, and a tornado sweeps through town – so many interconnections. (this book is the source of his class, “The Tornado Effect”) – A catharctic scene that seems like it’ll be the climax of the story, but then tops it with an even stronger climax


In Conclusion

The world of the story – more importantly, the protagonist’s experience of the world she sees and feels and inhabits.

Throw “Description” out of the writer’s toolbox. Often it’s flat, something that readers skim. Nothing dynamic about it. The tool you need is Point of View Description – the unique way in which your point of view characters appropriate, experience, notice, infer about the world around them. The solid world we can see, the sounds, the temperature – the tangible world around us – but *also* the intangible things that we can see, taste, smell, touch, feel – the cruelty of the ATM machine that eats your plastic card because it’s expired and you needed $60. The irrational exhuberance and the horrible beastiality of Canucks Fans. Even the feeling in a crowd. If the character experiences that tangibility, then you’re recreating the world around us. We each experience it in different ways. We need the way our characters experience things on the page. Feelings, ironies, etc. We’re not just describing a place, we’re capturing a world. That’s beautiful writing.

Writing 21st Century Fiction is packed with prompts, tools, to help you develop and get more out of the story to try to draw something out, make it more powerful, give it greater impact.

Everything We Know is Sexist. Now What? (PAX Prime 2013 Panel Notes)

 

August was a fun month of weddings, traveling, and general mayhem. I sent off some queries to agents for the novel I'm trying to sell; did a *lot* of reading in my subgenre (YA High Fantasy); and got ready for Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, where I, as usual, had a blast. I didn't catch con crud, thankfully, but I went back to the dayjob on Wednesday and am still catching up on sleep. Regardless, the convention was worth it. So many good things happened. It made stuff like receiving rejections on queries while *at* PAX just a tiny bit easier. I even took some notes!

And that's what I have to share today.

Before we go any further, yes, I am aware of the recent kerfuffle. (Understatement? Perhaps. But I like to keep things polite here.) As for how I feel about it? Let's just say that M.C. Frontalot, brilliant nerdcore hiphop artist and someone I have admired since meeting him at PAX '09, said it best.

So with that in mind, let's talk about non-standard representation in video games. Or rather, the lack thereof...

Everything We Know is Sexist. Now What?

Regina Buenaobra (Community Manager, ArenaNet); Jessica Price (Project Manager, Paizo Publishing); John Sutherland (Writer, VidGameStory), Anna Megill (Narrative Designer, Airtight Games), Matthew Moore (Game Designer, ArenaNet, Cameron Harris (Editor & Story Consultant, Freelance), Tom Abernathy (Writer & Narrative Designer, Freelance) 

Note: Matthew Moore was kind enough to give me a copy of the slides from the presentation, so the following notes include those, but also include a lot of the elaboration that happened at the panel. I was delighted that all of the panelists encouraged me to share this. 

Note from the Panelists: We are about to present opinions that are our own and not necessarily those of our employers (even when they probably should be)

What’s the problem?
-    Sexism, for one …
-    Though we’re also talking about issues of race, sexual orientation, etc.

Problem:
-    The 2012 game player gender (market) is 55% male, 45% female.
-    The gender of protagonists in games from 2012, however, is 51% male, 45% choice, and only 4% female. (This number is closer to the number of people working in the game industry.)
-    The potential game player market in the US is 51% male, 49% female.

Human beings have a tendency to do their creative work from their own thoughts, needs, and life experience.

When recently creating a game, one panelist sought ideas for vignettes for NPCs, and every suggestion was sexist. The people making the suggestions resorted to stereotypical situations without even being aware of it.

Why do we care? Why should we?
-    Lack of diversity in general.
-    There’s a creative side to it as well: new takes make it more interesting.
-    Creative consequences of the same old stuff: boredom, lack of expansive information. Not unrelated.
-    Who’s making these games really has an impact on how they get made and the broadness of the vision.
-    We don’t want to read and see and experience the same thing again and again and again. That won’t happen if we keep relying on our tropes.
-    Hollywood is telling fresh perspectives of stories.
-    Stories about a straight, white, male are getting old.
-    The gender of protagonists in movies from 2012: 65% male, 19% female, and 16% mixed ensemble.
-    The gender of protagonists in books from 2012 is much better: 43% male, 41% female, and 16% mixed ensemble.
-    The TV market is getting better, splintering, targeting small groups and bringing those to life. And they’re reaching wide audiences because of it.

Why else we should care: Video game dollar sales are slightly, steadily down from 2010.
-    Not growing.
-    Not reaching out to new audiences.
-    Probably because they’re not trying new things.
-    We don’t want video games to become a niche medium.

Furthermore: Lack of diversity in viewpoints, characterizations, plots, story structure, etc. limits the potential of games as an art form.
-    Game consumers are artistically malnourished.
-    Art that gives its power to  move us is commonality, but also diverse experiences.
-    Sexism hurts everyone.
-    It hurts men too, because the typical male protagonist presented is a man who’s physically strong, the ideal man. Marketing executives point to and justify how much money that stuff makes and assume the game will sell better with it.
-    On a professional level: Paternity leave, child care issues; sometimes men have issues that are perceived as falling in the female realm that aren’t extended to them because they’re men and not women.
-    We need more interesting characters with diverse backgrounds. It doesn’t make it easier to make them if we stick to the tropes.
-    If you like shooters, they are still making them. The number of action and shooter games offered at the launch of each new X-Box has increased.
-    Most importantly: Making more types of games doesn’t mean less of games people already like (the core game types) will decrease. Just that it makes more options available to consumers.

So, what should we do?

1.  Check our assumptions and our perceptions.
-    Look around at the crowd in this room, at the number of people here. How many are women? Turns out that there were 3 men for every 2 women were present at this panel. (Even though most attendees thought there were either more women, or that it was a 50-50 split.)
-    This is important because our perceptions of what is fair are now off.
-    Geena Davis Institute: “We just heard a fascinating and disturbing study, where they looked at the ratio of men and women in groups. And they found that if there’s 17 percent women, the men in the group think it’s 50-50. And if there’s 33 percent women, the men perceive that as there being more women in the room than men.”
-    In games, even when the lines were divided equally, the men had the more important lines. That’s the first step you have to take.
-    Use the Bechdel Test: Find a movie with two women talking and if it’s not about a man, then that passes the test. Observation. How many of them actually pass? Games pass it even less. Think about this test. Do you have women in it, do they have names, do they talk to each other? Is it about a man, a relationship, parenting, shopping? This is a good rule of thumb, the lowest bar you can clear, when dealing with diversity in video games.

2.  Read, watch, and play things made by people who aren’t like us.
-    The canon English literature: almost all of it is by men. Shapes how we write. This becomes problematic because even women learn how to write women from men because our perception has been shaped by male writers. Literary voices have been shaped by male writers. It’s been changing. The best way you can learn to write those characters is if you learn from the horse’s mouth. So, read people who aren’t like you.

3.  Learn to recognize tropes.
-    Trope: A literary or narrative device.
-    Cultures have common sets of tropes. Tropes have baggage.
-    A trope is not evil or bad. They can be useful. Just use them mindfully.
-    Do it in a way that subverts the trope, or defend to your league so they know why you’re using the trope as is.
-    Marketing wants quick story hooks.
-    The more you know what a trope is, the better you can put it into a game and sell it and make your vision happen.

4.  Ask ourselves why we like the things we like.
-    Rather than just mindlessly liking them.
-    What is it that you actually like about it? Can you get things without mindlessly importing all the details (like with pulp)?
-    The presenters aren’t saying these stories can’t be told, just that we need to think about this stuff.
-    And think about who the perceived audience is. Who is the character designed to appeal to?
-    (Aside: Google “Lawrence Croft”)
-    (Aside: Google “100 Sexiest Men Alive”. Turns out they’re not the muscle-bound men we see in video games.)

5.  Improve our work!
-    Try to be inclusive (even when we are afraid we’ll suck at it.)
-    Look over your work. Does everyone have to be (straight, white, male, etc?)
-    Make sure you interrogate yourself while you do your craft.
-    Practice “flipping” exercises with gender, orientation, race, etc. What happens if this character is a man / woman / different race / gay / trans / etc?
-    This has often resulted in stories that are more moving, more interesting.
-    Experiment with trope subversion.
-    Constantly ask yourself, is this what I want it to be, or is this just intellctiual comfort zone stuff, tropes too well worn, or The Unexpected Choice? That moment you take readers/customers in a direction where they think they know you’re going, then change trajectory: it’s important. If you do that, you’ll constantly be surprising people. And the more you do it, the less you’ll find yourselves having to revise your choices.
-    Show your work to people from different groups to critique.
-    Friends, family, people you trust. Generally you can recognize the broad strokes. But words have baggage. E.g. Calling a woman “frigid”, or an African American person “articulate”.
-    Don’t let “perfect” be the enemy of “good”.
-    Complaint from male writers who don’t know how to write women so they don’t bother trying
-    Writing anything is this: trying to make something knew, exploring the scary white page and trying to fill it up with stuff.
-    If you are not secure expressing the experience of those you don’t know much about, get to know them.

6. Address issues.
-    Support inclusivity; be an ally to undeserved groups and those who are working for change.
-    If you see it,  you don’t have to be the person being victimized to take that issue on.
-    Speak up when something is troubling.
-    Listen to the people who are telling you it’s a problem, and do something about it.
-    Address the issue vs. trying to appease the people coming to you. Not “Should I put in more women characters”, but “Fix the dialogue.”
-    Be aware. If you’re the creator, it’s hard to step back and look at what you’re doing, but it’s worth it.

Choosing the Right Words (ConCarolinas 2013 Writing Panel Notes)

    Choosing the Right Words: A Magical Words Panel
David B. Coe/D.B. Jackson, Faith Hunter, Misty Massey

The Magical Words Team – Created MagicalWords.net, a group blog that discusses writing and publishing issues for fantasy authors, with a focus on traditional publishing. (Come check them out! It's a great community.)

Choosing the right words: You see a lot of times people writing, and you think, really, you used that word? You don’t have to choose the right word the first time Important that you get it right when you finally turn it in. Important to paint an accurate picture of what you’re trying to tell someone about. Choosing the right words is vital, to tell a story and get across an idea that’s clear in our heads that accurately enters the readers.


Recommendations:

MM: Don’t just rush out and buy a thesaurus to fancy up your writing.

DB: Has a dictionary and thesaurus and uses them regularly.

FH: Uses the online stuff (e.g. Dictionary.com/Thesaurus.com) and highlights a word if it doesn’t satisfy, then comes back. Moves on.

DBC: Can’t move on to the next sentence if the sentence writing isn’t kind of satisfying. Has to know right away. Checks definitions of words to be sure of meaning; checks dates words was in use first because otherwise it doesn’t jive. E.g.  “paranoid” is a 19th Century word. A medieval character could feel panic, unease, but not paranoia.

FH: Can’t have dialogue with historical characters talking the way we talk, because they didn’t talk  like that.

FH: Words to use all the time: he said / she said. (Aside: when dealing with copy editors, writing “stet” is Latin for “let it stand”, when the editor suggests a change. Also use sparingly, unless the copy editor has done something atrocious with your work.)

MM: Also don’t use he said / she said after every single line of dialogue. Identify who’s speaking. Break it up. If you’ve set up who’s talking and the order, then it’s more about the dialogue and less about the reader figuring out who’s saying what.

DB: You can also use facial tics, actions instead of “said” (Elaborated on this MagicalWords post).

FH: This is especially good if you have more than two people talking. She writes dialogue then goes back to add in gestures, tics, and saids.

MM: if two people are of same gender, use names.


What to avoid?

MM: Avoid said-bookisms – the term for elaborate words like rasped/snarled/griped/opined, etc, used in place of “said”. Don’t use them.

DB: Dune has a terrible case of said-bookisms. But they were in fashion at the time. Same with Tigana (Kay), which does head-hopping. Omniscient narrator. Again, they were in fashion at the time.

FH: It’s happening more again, but possibly because editors have less staff to work with. More stuff to throw against the wall.

MM: Avoid purple language/prose. Flowery old-fashioned language you’d see in Austen or Dickens. The  most pretentious words. Sometimes there’s a moment for that, but most of the time you don’t want it. You want the writing.


DB: What about word choice in narrative context?

MM: In a fight scene: not slow. Words should reflect that the scene is fast, brutal, sharp, quick. Quick sentences, quick words, strong words. Likewise, tender scenes: not typically fast. Soft, gentle, hot. Not brutal or sharp or hard.


Audience: Depends on what website you’re looking at.

FH: Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum, when she finally gets with Ranger: six lines, very effective. Nothing graphic, absolutely short and sweet.

MM: If you’re going to write, you’ve got to read. Even if it’s just “I can do better than this.” You’ll come across the kind of writing that’s like what you want to do, and you can emulate.

DB: There is no right way to do this. Depends on the character, the story, the scene.

FH: The emotional connotations of the character change.

MM: “Her hair fell like grace exhausted to her shoulders.” – William Gibson – The words that make your heart respond are the words that you should use.


Audience question: Going back and double-checking your words: How often do you go back and go, “Oh, that doesn’t work?”

Everyone: All the time.

FH: If something’s wrong, and she doesn’t know what it is, she’ll come back to it.

MM/DB: Hits a place, can’t find the right word, will not move forward without it.

FH: Yes, especially when the scene is emotionally explosive and needs the character to deal with emotion.


Audience comment: Reading your work aloud – when the reader uses different word than what you’ve written down, that’s often the right word.

FH: Reading aloud, especially if someone else is reading it, can help you spot errors.

MM: Regardless of who’s reading it, sometimes hearing it aloud helps you figure out what needs work.

MM: When using words, know what they mean, know how they’re pronounced. The reader will hear it in their head. If you’ve used a word that doesn’t flow how you’ve decided it sounds and they’ll throw the book. Don’t use Nubian draped across the couch when you mean Afghan. Also don’t use a phrase wrong like “begs the question”, instead of “suggests the question”.

DB: Or Phelps’ “loss of words” instead of “loss for words” – ‘could of’ instead of could have – Remember we don’t write how we speak. Be sure what you’re writing is grammatically correct or that the grammatical problems are consistent across point of view so that voice comes across and is clear.

FH: Author’s narrative and character speaking – shouldn’t overlap all the time.


Audience question: What about word choice based on the book’s target audience?

FH: Don’t dumb it down.

MM: Kids will either go to an adult, look it up, or take the word as “I don’t know” and move on. It exposes kids to these words.

DB: Kids would rather confront word challenges than be written down to.


Audience question: With editors being stretched thin these days, does the onus then fall to us to put out the best we can?

FH: Yes, they do think the  onus is more upon us. The opportunity to use independent editors is there now, look for it. Put out the best you can. Outside editors are way more in use, especially for the self-publishing market.


Audience question: Does the influx of terrible self-published fiction

FH: Readers coming back to traditional publishing because they can get better quality. The backlash is now driving people back to traditionally pub work.

DB: Learning to be an effective editor of your own work is an absolutely essential part of being a writer. Recognize your crutches, words you repeat without thinking, look at your writing fresh, finding ways to correct yourself, is so important. Internal editor is valuable, too.


What’s the best ways to spot flaws?

DB: distance from manuscript – puts away for as long as he can (4-6 weeks), different format (digital to printed paper), read aloud also helps – changing the experience and not just replicating the writing – also, go back and read old work. You’ll find 1) it’s not nearly as bad as you think, there’s good stuff there; and 2) you’ll recognize fundamental flaws in your writing that go way back that you can now look for.

MM: Great to have a writing network – find out what strengths your writing friends have, and exploit them.


What about slang and real life references?

FH Books have longer shelf life than they used to

MM Tech goes in and out, so do popular businesses. If you put these things in, they might not be there in five years.

ES: Can use the reverse of that if you’re using the refs to ground a period piece (eg. Ready Player One).

MM: If you’re writing in a fantasy world, don’t make the slang twee – super ultra sweet. Make sure slang has a basis in your world, and sounds like a world you’d spit out. Otherwise it sounds contrived.

DB: Cursing done well can be absolutely poetic.

Tiger-Milking 201

 

 

So, it's been awhile since I updated this recipe. However, my tiger-butter making techniques have changed since I posted about this last, mostly for one reason:

This fudge has become *very* popular.

It's crazy to be saying this, but I think I went through nearly 15 kilograms of white chocolate melting wafers  between October (when I make a batch for SIWC) and June (when I cart another batch to ConCarolinas). This is typically a holiday treat, but here we are at the beginning of August, and I was invited to an online release-party last Thursday for A.J. Hartley's DARWEN ARKWRIGHT AND THE SCHOOL OF SHADOWS and I shared the above pic. Hey, why not? For me, writing events aren't complete without sharing my signature treat.

My point being, I had to hone my skills in order to produce quickly, efficiently, and still come out with this awesome edible art that looks gorgeous but doesn't take away too much from my writing time. So here's the updated recipe [and for variants and allergy-friendly versions, click here]:

Laura's Tiger Butter

Supplies:
1-2 baking sheets with edges, depending on size of sheet and desired thickness of tiger butter
Aluminum foil

Ingredients:
4-5 cups white chocolate melting wafers
1/2 cup milk chocolate melting wafers
1 1/4 cups regular peanut butter, smooth

TIP 1: Please note that the above supplies and ingredients are for a *single* batch. Given the treat's popularity and the demand for it, I tend to make it in much larger double-batches. (Doubles, I can manage. I tried making a quadruple batch once. That was not a good idea because I was racing around trying to catch the fudge before it all set. Lesson learned.)
  
TIP 2: Before mixing, ensure that the kitchen is warm, as colder conditions can make the freshly melted chocolate set too quickly.

TIP 3: Best if made on a full stomach.

TIP 4: Better if made in an empty house before certain sweet-toothed partners can "sample".

1. Line the cookie sheets with aluminum foil. Previously, I said waxed paper, but I found that it stuck sometimes. With foil, the finished product came away much more easily. Okay, the fact that I was out of waxed paper the first time I tried this and was forced to give it a shot may have been an impetus for the switch, but I am pleased with the new technique.

2. Next, melt the white chocolate wafers with 1 cup of the peanut butter. If you are blessed enough to own a double boiler, congratulations. Since I, like a lot of folks, don't, I melt it directly on the stove in a stainless steel pot on very low, stirring frequently so that the sugar doesn't crystallize. If it does it makes for crunchy tiger butter, and the smoothness of the product is one of its selling points, IMO.

3. Once the mix seems to be nearly there, melt the milk chocolate wafers with 1/4 cup of the peanut butter, also on low, also stirring frequently. This smaller mixture melts a lot faster than the white chocolate behemoth, which is why you should wait to start it until the white is nearly ready. 

4. Pour the melted white chocolate into the pans first, being sure to evenly (at least sort of) distribute the mix between the pans. Be sure to spread the mix to the edges of the pan. Over four pans with my double batch, I can usually get a nice, regular but not too thick result.

5. Then, pour the milk chocolate over the white in lines (as globby as you like).

6. As quickly as possible, drag a spatula through the lines, swirling the milk chocolate in the white to create fancy random designs, as shown in the above photo. Do not over-swirl, as the chocolate eventually blurs together and messes up the design. Unless you like blurriness. Maybe that's your style. When done, if the surface of the mixture seems uneven, give the pans a gentle horizontal jostle so that the chocolate flattens out.

7. Place finished trays in freezer. This is to help the chocolate set quickly. In a pinch, the fridge could work, but not for the next three steps.

8. After waiting at least an hour (though more doesn't hurt) while working on your novel or query letter, or while catching up on your reading, remove from the freezer and place in a plastic bag.

9. Then drop the pan on the floor.

10. Now that the fudge has been artfully shattered, break the rest of the pieces into more manageable bites. (If you don't approve of violence, or decided to go the fridge route, a sharp knife drawn through the hardened candy works, too. But hey, this is art, right? And every artist's interpretation is different.

11. Variations:

a. Depending on how much of a swirl or blend you want, you could change the white chocolate / milk chocolate ratio. This will change the flavour.

b. Likewise, changing the peanut butter / chocolate ratio will also change the flavour. I like a nice balance that isn't *too* heavy on the PB, but isn't too light, either. In the previous rendition of the recipe, I used unsweetened/unsalted peanut butter for the milk chocolate portion, but frankly (and this goes back to the mass production situation in which I now find myself) I didn't find it made enough of a difference to bother. Gourmands and picky chefs, feel free to go to town with it.

I love to joke with people who make comments about the finished product. When asked how long it takes to make it, I answer, "Oh, I slaved over it for a day and a night." After their requisite sagely nod, I add, "I'm kidding. It takes half an hour."

12. Arrange neatly on a platter (see above).

13. Share!

Agents and Editors (Concarolinas 2013 Writing Panel Notes)

Hey everyone! I've been working on a few projects lately, but I am really excited to say that today's post means a lot to me, because that's exactly where my writing goals have been focused at the moment. Ahh, the terrifying thrill of sending out queries! The part I'm looking forward to this time is the lesson I had to learn the hard way: Just because one agent rejects you, doesn't mean you have to give up, go back, and fix everything. Not that I minded terribly, because in the case of the novel I'm querying, I realized that a lot of work *did* need to be done. But seriously, one rejection does not a failed manuscript make. That's a lesson that this time, I'm going to apply.

 

This panel had a slightly different focus from last year's Agents and How to Find One panel. It was also useful to have (mostly) different presenters talking about the same subject, and to get a current refresher on things. 

Agents and Editors
Carrie Ryan, Gray Rineheart, David B. Coe, A.J. Hartley
Moderator: Edmund Schubert

Agents

With the way the landscape has shifted, some are questioning why we still need agents, what’s the future? Why do you feel an agent should still be considered? What should you be looking for in an agent?

DBC: If your goal is to be traditionally published, a publisher won’t look at you as an author unless you’re represented. The fact that you have an agent gives a certain cache to the quality of your work. Also, agents can look at contracts, subsidiary rights, foreign rights, etc. One trend in traditional publishing these days that agents can help with is basket accounting: if you sell a series, the books can be accounted book by book so you see royalties book by book, or not until the entire series has earned out (basket). Separate accounting used to be the norm, but now basket accounting is. Agents are also getting into electronic publishing because they recognize their own obsolescence is looming.

AJ: Simply for management of multiple income streams, especially if you have lots of books from different publishers. Helpful to have all that stuff funneled through an agency. Agents often see themselves as author-career management. Has self-published his backlist through his agency. It helps to keep all the things together.

CR: If you go for traditional publishing, you need an agent. A lot of authors are artists and not business people. We (writers) are not the best business people, so it’s important to hire someone who can be that person. Lots of houses won’t accept unagented submissions. She has lots of author friends who didn’t have agents when they signed, who gave up rights they shouldn’t have, contracts they regret signing. Agents go beyond the power of negotiation. No agent is better than a bad agent, but the negotiating aspects of the contract, the little things they catch that have big impact are huge. Agents know this stuff and go to bat for us so we don’t have to deal with it.

DBC: Most important about an agent: when he (DBC) has a business-based dispute with his editor, his agent handles it. This keeps the author-editor relationship good. Also, it’s an artistic relationship about the content, to make the books the best they can be.


No agent is better than a bad agent: What should you be on the lookout when deciding who to sign with, and what should you be careful about?

CR: Had a friend with a question about a new agent. The new agent has no sales or anything on her site that says how that agent is better than the author. So CR suggested to her friend questions to ask the agent: What are some of your favourite books from the last year? How do you feel about certain rights? If the agent can’t answer those questions, then why are you going to pay them money if they’re in the same boats?

AJ: Some agents are not professional – copyists – not professionally-dependent on selling your stuff. Research and find what they have sold, who they work with, who they represent, which editors they routinely lunch with. A New York agent isn’t necessarily the best or only option these days, but personal communication and connection with editors still matters. It’s where stuff gets done.

DBC: His agent left her agency in New York to go to Atlanta, but that agent is conscious and goes to New York every few months still. Also, authors often switch editors, but you can stay with an agent for your entire career.

CR: It is common to switch agents. What you need at the beginning of your career isn’t necessarily the same as what you need as your career progresses.

DBC: If you switch agents every few years, you might get a reputation.

AJ: You can switch agents if you’re very successful. If you’ve a represent for being difficult to work with, you won’t be re-signed.

CR: Agents who are starting out can be  hungry, looking for submissions – so research, who was their mentor? Where did they learn to be an agent? Check Publisher’s Marketplace – $20/month, provides info agents and their deals. See if the agents are selling, and who are they selling to? Just one publisher or many? Do they represent your genre? YA and MG?

ES: Define boilerplate.

CR: Boilerplate: the starting contract that every pub house starts with that favours the publisher. Agents negotiate it down.

ES: Some represent only some genres, but not all.

AJ: Has one agent for everything, but a separate film agent.

GR: Baen still looks at unagented submissions. Has seen a lot he can compare from authors submitting on their own compared to what’s come from good agents to what comes from not-so-good agents. There is a marked qualitative difference in what comes to them. Not just that he’s met the agent and knows it will be good quality, just that he recognizes the difference. E.g. a bad agency that would send multiple query letters. He has checked Writer Beware against some agents. This is a business, and some agents don’t deserve the title because they’re not representing their clients.

AJ: Any agent who wants money from you is a dead giveaway that they’re not good.

DBC: Same if they refer you to a book doctor.

CR: Money flows to the author. Also, agents often work as editor. They went through several versions and rewrites before sending her manuscript to an editor, and that made a remarkable difference.

ES: A lot of current agents are former editors. They know the industry. (To GR): You have the most current experience for searching for an agent. How should people go about doing that?

GR: Agencies have guidelines just like publishing houses have guidelines. Some want a certain number of chapters or pages, some want an outline, some want a synopsis. READ THE GUIDELINES and conform to the guidelines. Usually an agent will look at a cover letter, synopsis, and a few chapters, and then decide if they want to see more. They’ll ask for an exclusive if they want to see more. Partials can be sent out to multiple, but the moment someone wants to see more, they get an exclusive for as much as a month or three (definitely not more than six), and then you say, “someone else is looking at it” to further requests. BAEN is interested in reducing backlog and reducing slush pile. Hasn’t yet been successful.

CR: Posted on how to research agents at Magical Words.

AJ: Has heard that agents are lazy and will use every available opportunity to reject your manuscript because that makes their life easier. Your job is to make it as hard for them as possible to say no. Even if they say send a query, ALWAYS send a sample. You need to get your work in front of their eyes. If they glance at it, there’s a better chance of them wanting to see more.

GR: They don’t reject if guidelines aren’t followed to the letter. They’re looking for a great story.

AJ: Yes, but agents are looking for any excuse to reject the book.

ES: It’s a factor of volume. After six months of rejection, he realized that agents weren’t rejecting the novel, they were rejecting the query letter. Re-sent queries even to agents he’d subbed to before (assumed they wouldn’t remember him six months or a year later, you can go back), and got a great response rate.


Audience Question: is exclusivity longer than six months a red flag?

CR: Don’t give them exclusivity longer than a month. To spend six months waiting on one agent is a long time in your career.

ES: Check Writer’s Market – no financial info, but will show who represents what. $15/mo.

GR: These are great places to start, but once you have the agent, search their website, that info should be more current than whatever is listed on the directory site.

ES: And if they don’t have a website, that’s a red flag, too.

DBC: Search for agents who represent the same kind of stuff you write. And acknowledgements of books, because authors thank their agents.


Audience Question: Is it helpful when agent hunting, to conveniently have someone else interested in the work?

CR: Can help, but it’s more important about the strength of your work. Be specific.

AJ: And sometimes the agent has difficult selling the work.

CR: And if they have difficulty selling it, they should try to work with you. That’s something to ask – what do they do if that book doesn’t sell? Will they work with next one?


Audience Question: When you supply an outline, how do you know that outline won’t be stolen?

DBC: They’re not. Sorry, nothing is interesting enough for that.

AJ: You can’t copyright an idea.

DBC: And if you give the same idea to five authors, you’ll get five different novels.


Audience Question: Are there any genres you don’t need represent for?

ES: If you’re self-publishing online or only writing short stories. Who are you looking to publish with? How are they selling your work? If an agent thinks they can make money from your work, they’ll sign with you.

CR: Harlequin is an example of a publisher who’ll publish you without agent.

AJ: And you can technically go to an agent after the publisher accepts you.

GR: BUT not all publishers are like that. BAEN will drop you if you go and get an agent. They’re negotiating with whoever initiated the relationship. To do so is taken as a bait-and-switch.

ES: But BAEN is the only pub that seems to do that.

CR: There’s an exception to every rule.


Editors

ES: So, about editors.

AJ: In all his experience, his best experience has been with acquisition/developmental editors. Gets edit memos from them. Editors definitely still edit.

CR: The copy editor goes through and finds tiny errors, keeps details consistent. Grammatical, syntax, inconsistencies, anachronisms, etc.

DBC: His copy editor comes back with copy edits and a style sheet. Terms, names, places, anything unique to book, so that typesetters can make sure that all the words are as they should be. Stylesheets are like a world bible. Invaluable.

ES: “Line editor” and “copy editor” are pretty much interchangeable.

ES: As short fiction editor: works in acquisitions, not much developmental editing, but also does copy editing.

GR: Every house is different with which editors do what and who consults with whom. BAEN books – the editor in chief makes the final decision about acquisition.

The Unfair Folk (ConCarolinas 2013 Writing Panel Notes)

I'm sure you don't need to hear about  my crazy month of parties, traveling, and computer issues. (Though I narrowly avoided sending my laptop off for needless repairs when I realized that the fix had partly to do with all the accumulated cat hair. Which we will not speak of right now. Seriously.) And above all, woven through that were more revisions. Revisions that lead to hour-long conversations about the nature of my main character's magic, the flaw with middle books in some fantasy trilogies, and the plausibility of stairs on ships. Among other insanities. So I'll spare you the details, except to say that barring final feedback from my critique partner, I'm ready to get back to querying. Yay!

But I will say this: the process of doing an intense revision with a critique partner who knows how to kick butt has been *awesome*. I learned a lot in the process. I paid attention to whether or not my main character was driving the story. I remembered to factor in the advice about making sure that at least three of the senses are engaged to enhance description. And I kept an eye on the flow. What I'm saying is, I feel really good about this.

Meanwhile, please enjoy more notes (at last, as usual, sighhhhh). I feel no shame. But guilt? Um ... OH HEY LOOK AT THE PRETTY NOTES ABOUT FAERIES!


The Un-Fair Folk
Emily Leverett, Misty Massey Kalayna Price, Janine K Spendlove
Moderator: James Maxey
JM: How did we get from Oberon to Tinkerbell?

EL: It’s changed with time. In the medieval version of Orpheus’ tale, his wife gets kidnapped by faeries; Orpheus is a king who dresses as a minstrel and faeries are evil, creepy. Then a few hundred years later, we get Shakespeare with Oberon and Titania who aren’t very nice either and mess things up. Then in the Victorian era, it’s twee faerie things; then they became cute and fluffy much later on with Disney and the like.

Regardless, if you want to meet fairies: fall asleep by a river under a tree at noon.

MM: For a very long time, people believed that the faeries are really there. Some people still do. For so long we’ve believed they’re real, so in story we’ve needed to make them more friendy, less harmful. It was an attempt to make them less terrifying as the modern world came in slowly and our understanding grew.

EL: The rise of childhood as an actual thing may have contributed. Maybe the creation of children’s stories led to the sanitization of previously-darker tales.

KP: There’s lots of research on Victorian era faeries; she (KP) has researched faeries elsewhere. Often there are different names for the fae. There’s the story of humans being caught in the endless dance, and a darker story with vampire mythology that as they dance, the beautiful women slowly cut them apart and drain all their blood. There are lots of dark creatures in the older mythologies, but they by the time you get to Victorian folklore, some were bad luck but became good luck. Oral tradition has so many variations.

EL: Stories got attached to morals, and become moral tales.

JM: Neil Gaiman reclaimed faeries-as-evil: presents them as beautiful, interesting creatures in a variety of shapes and form, with an element of the uncanny and terrifying underneath, if you cross a line. Say the wrong thing, turn the wrong direction, eat the wrong food, and you’ll pay the price.

Disney and J.M. Barrie aren’t to blame. Faeries represented the ignorance of what is making nature tick. Suddenly we didn’t have to attribute strange noises in the ground, in the air, to supernatural forces. With a scientific world view , faeries stopped having the sinister aspects.

Because science has become so rational, Arthur Conan Doyle believed that two girls had taken pictures with faeries. Even today in Iceland, you have to have people familiar with the fae to survey the land and confirm it’s okay to build a road. They even build little churches for the faeries to come and be converted.

JM: So why does the belief persist?

EL: Because it makes the world more interesting. It’s a boring world without faith or belief. Some of it is desperation. One of the darker sides of faerie beliefs was the concept of changelings. They had instances of that in renaissance and medieval history. Probably it was a child with Down Syndrome. It’s okay to kill a changeling, not a child. Bad things, ugly things happen, and it was a way to cope. Even today we want a way to cope.

KP: Faeries were also used to explain things like SIDS.

MM: Ancient beliefs are very hard to let go of. It’s easier sometimes to still say, “it could be faeries and not science” – we can’t always see the science. And part of us will always go, “What if I’m wrong about not believing in this?” Often it was used as an excuse – the faeries did it.

JM: These were myths from the past that people believed. Future people might think that we actually believed in Santa because we have a lot of Santa stuff  around. And what would they think if they read our fiction?

EM/KP: [Amusing, too-fast-to-log discussion about Santa being raised by elves]

JM: What’s difference between elf, faerie, brownie?

KP: From a writer’s standpoint, anything

MM: Brownies are tiny; fae, human sized, elves are not necessarily fae

EL: Elves were popularized by Tolkien. Lots of his stuff about elves comes from Norse Myth.

KP: And lots of fiction based on elves has modeled them after Tolkien.

JM: From a purely fantasy perspective: One of the common aspects of faerie myths is that they were the original inhabitants of land that went into hiding when mankind took over. How much of this is scientific memory of more advanced cultures coming in and taking over from the tribes, the aboriginal inhabitants? We’re now advanced enough to recognize they’re people, but what if we once saw aboriginals in body paint and thought they were supernatural beings? Made them into myths? It’s a way to explain it. The same thing is true with the tree folk. Did we impose powers and abilities on them?

JM: Ancient ruins: There’s still something haunting about lost worlds, something out of place, the separation of time but being in the same space. Often true of the faerie world: time shifts.

EL: The Ruin (poem) about a roman bath, a former civilization – the poem talks as if those people had magic, and what is lost is a true loss.

Audience question: How much of the beliefs about the Fae came from the old myths of Baccus, Odin, etc?

KP: very good chance, especially since myths were revived in the renaissance. Most of these stories came from the oral tradition, which is hard to track.

EL: The environment affects the mythology – e.g. Japan has lots of water ghosts, not desert ghosts

JM: This panel is about elves and faeries in lit – what reading would you recommend?

JS:  Loved C.S. Lewis’ dryads, naiads, etc. in the Chronicles of Narnia. Gateway in childhood.

KP: Katharine Mary Briggs wriote several good books on specific stories and an encyclopedia on this subject – presents different types of fae; also recommends reading Child’s ballads – stuff he collected. Also: for classic tales – Thomas Knightley’s study of romance in the Victorian era

MM: Very impressed by the YA: Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr. Her faeries are terrifying critters. (also gorgeous cover art). Also, Lady Cottingly’s pressed fairy book. (a parody)

JM: Gaiman’s Sandman dips into faerie realms, astonishing stuff; also, the movie Pan’s Labrynth (horrificly violent, about the brutality of war).

EL: Hellboy 2 plays with faeries, too. Faerie magic appears very  differently in medieval and renaissance lit. Seconds gaiman. (esp the midsummer night’s dream story). LKH’s faeries are fun (though very non traditional). Medieval Arthurian legends deal with magic, and so does Chaucer – lots of medieval romance (quest narratives). Beowulf: Grendel, Cain, and Fae. Also, critical book: The Faeries at the Bottom of the Garden.

Aud: With the Victorian stuff, Andrew Lang’s colour fairie books?

MM: Current fairie books are drawing from older literature, but making it their own, too.

JS: Yes, whatever works for the story.

Audience: What about Spencer’s Faerie Queene?

EL: Stay away from that. He’s awesome but the story is about flattering Queen Elizabeth 1 and it’s a Christian allegory.

Audience: Teen section of library – the Faerie Path series. Talks about faeries good and bad clashing.

MM: In some mythologies, the summer court and winter court do clash a lot.

KP: Also Seely versus unseely. Different types depending on where you go in the world and what decade you’re in. Oral traditions change faster.

Aud: More writers are using more original tradition – is that a backlash against Disney?

JS: No, but it is a realization growing up that not all faeries are Tinkerbell (not that she was very nice if you read the book) – more of a discovery of everything else that faeries could be. We're leaning more about faerie lore, people are rediscovering it, and we want to play in that world.

MM: Writers want to do something different, too. There's nothing really new out there, so we take what we have and reinterpret in our own way to *make* it new and fresh.

JM: Once you go back and start researching, you find that almost everything has a very dark origin.

KP: John Harntess’ Black Knight Chronicles – deals with Faeries in Book 2.

EL: Yes, some of it is a bit backlash, but also, in urban fantasy especially, things have generally gotten darker. The economy has crashed, 9/11, and other stuff. We were headed that way darker, artistically, as a way of dealing. Hartness' book is comic. We may be back on the swing towards more lighthearted soon, as times change once more.

The Future of Print (ConCarolinas 2013 Writing Panel Notes)

 
I love having a birthday party. I've done so every year since high school. Not because I'm trolling for attention or presents, but because it's fun, and it falls at a good time, coinciding with the end of the school year and all. It's an annual excuse for a party. These days, it's also an annual excuse to clean our house ...

(I kid, I kid. We also clean at major holidays and when expecting relatives.)

The past three years, it's also fallen the weekend after ConCarolinas. Since I go mostly to see all of the Magical Words authors and community members who can make it, and to attend the writing panels, it feels like the best birthday present I can give myself. We even have a party there, too, and it's a blast. Especially when one inadvertently plays bouncer and successfully discourages would-be crashers with the words, "sorry, we're just writers". But hey, that's another story.

So, here I am, finally recovered from the jet lag and the celebrations. I'm sharing the following notes first. It was a Sunday, but as was emphasized during this panel, the publishing industry is currently in flux. Big changes are happening on a nearly-daily basis. So while they couldn't guarantee that this info is still valid beyond the hour of this panel, I think they're a great snapshot of things as of a week ago, an excellent discussion, and definitely worth thinking about. Enjoy!

* * *

The Future of Print
Faith Hunter, David B. Coe, Stuart Jaffe
Moderator: Edmund Schubert

Is Print Dead?

SJ: This is one of the most fluid times of publishing. We don’t know what will happen tomorrow – this is a snapshot of *right now*.

Print won’t die completely, it’ll shift to what types will survive and what won’t. Theatre in the 1800s was a dominant form of entertainment, a lucrative job. Then came movies and TV. Theatre didn’t die. It just provides a different medium. What it provides is a different experience. The theatres able to survive were the ones able to adapt and change. Youtube and TV can do the little things much better.

There will be a rise in hardcover and quality because the people who collect paper are going to still want it. Mass-market paperbacks were invented for people to consume and throw away. For people who didn’t care, they just wanted the story. E-readers do that now:  they’re cheaper, faster, and serve the purpose of mass markets. In some ways, even serve it better.

FH: It takes a publisher about $28,000 to put a book through the system, not counting the cost of print. Once they get their money back, they could change the price, but they won’t.

SJ: The big news from last week (i.e. week of May 26th): Self-publishing when it first started was written off as an economic model that wasn’t viable. The returns system was difficult. Stores were only allowed to order and return books in set quantities. Last week, Baker & Taylor announced that they will accept one-copy orders and returns. Now a self-published author can get their single title on the shelf. This is a direct outgrowth of Print On Demand.

FH: We’re not just going to see bookstores anymore. Big bookstores are going to be gone. Everything will be done online. Small presses have shifted to e-books. They’re making money with this and loving it.

DC: Tectonic changes in the industry means dog-eat-dog among booksellers, publishers, and distributors, and everyone is fighting with everyone. E-books loosen the grip of big publishers.

SJ: Took him a year to stop thinking of self-publishing as a stigma. Really, truly at the beginning of the line are writers who want to write, and at the end of the line are readers who want to read. People in the middle either help or hinder. Every writer is different depending on what they want from their careers. What’s helpful for one dream may be a hindrance for another.

ES: In the next 10-20 years, Print On Demand machines will come down in price and you might be able to buy a book that way. Stores won’t need to maintain an inventory. Instead of bookstores, there might just be kiosks.

SJ: Also, e-books are a first world problem.

FH: The phone is an equalizer. Anyone with a cell phone will be able to read e-books.

SJ: When big bookstores disintegrate, and they will, there won’t be a thriving indie market, but there will be a niche market. Bookstores will exist in some way or another. Like the theatre. People who figure out how to make it work will do so.

ES: Just as big box stores pushed out mom and pop stores in the 90s. Nature abhors a vacuum, and there will be a rise of mom and pop stores that *have* figured out how to do it.

SJ: We are at the the prototype stage of a star trek replicator. 3-D printers are now an industry disruptor to any object sold anywhere.

DC: But won’t that cause unemployment and then people won’t buy our books?

SJ: People pay for our talent.

FH: New jobs will come from the shift. This happens every decade. Invention will always create change.

SJ: Publishing may look very different, but it will continue. And without writers, the chain can’t happen, regardless of whatever’s in the path between writer and reader. It’s our job to navigate these waters.

FH: The same thing happened to music.

ES: The mode of distribution has shifted.

SJ: There aren’t as many quadruple-platinum musicians, but more musicians are making a living. He (SJ) is now putting food on the table with his self-published books.

ES: But more people have more options, and making a living isn’t happening as much, and only the ones who have mastered the distribution are really making money.

DC: Midlist authors’ earnings have been on a steady decline. Authors are working harder, producing more, publishing more and are making less.

FH: But often making more money in percentage sold as e-books. Greater percentage as more books sell.

ES: E-books are also opening up options for books once considered dead.

SJ: Amazon stated their own imprints because they were trying to accomplish things with publishers and not succeeding, and then finally decided to do it themselves. Authors they think are good, they’re acquiring.

Audience Question:  This is also impacting libraries. You’ll have centrally located libraries. E-publishers are already making inroads on “first sale” – treating it not as a physical books but as a license. Thoughts?

FH: This will help authors in the short run because they will see more money, but they will see less fans. We need to turn the used-book buyer to the buyer of something affordable.

DC: With the Kobo, a Canadian* company, you purchase, not license, the book. Kobo could force Amazon to stop doing the licensing.

* At this point, I have to interrupt these notes to say how loved and welcome I feel. There I am, sitting in the front row, rapidly typing notes, and one of the panelists joked, “But everyone knows you can’t trust Canadians.” Because as far as I know, I was the only Canadian in the room, and the panelists (MW alumni all) knew that, too. In hindsight, I should have replied, “Hey, at least when we take over the world, we’ll say ‘sorry’ after,” but it was Sunday morning, sleep was beyond me, and I was too busy laughing with the rest of the audience. Good times. ^__^

ES: Amazon and Kobo are fighting outside of the US, and Amazon isn’t always winning. This could be a major game-changer in the future.

*cough* Our takeover will be swift and polite.
 

Audience Question: What about piracy?

SJ: "Sure, pirate it. I get exposure. [As a self-published author] Getting people to know I exist is hard work for me." People who pirate stuff will only ever pirate anyway, so you’re gaining a reader. Or they can’t get it any other way. Exposure leads to greater readership in the long-run.


Audience Question:  Will e-publishing change word count and book length for getting books onto shelves?

FH: It already has.

DC: But some books are best at shorter lengths, anyway.

SJ: Writes shorter fiction; is now able to sell the novels for the size they’re supposed to be, rather than adding unnecessary subplots. Also, there will be a rise in short stories sold via e-book.

DC: The 49 cent short stories.

FH: The business model is always going to be in a constant state of flux.