Reading Literature

     One of the things I have tried to do in the past is to get into reading literature, the works of authors from the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Literature is a word that could refer to works from any era, but the works that I’ve read are mostly from the last two centuries. I must admit that sometimes, in the process of reading these works, I get bogged down with the style and language of the period. This includes authors writing in various styles and genres.

     For instance, at one point this year I set out to read Pride and Prejudice. I am familiar with the story, as my mom has watched a couple renditions of it several times in the past. I enjoy the banter between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth and roll my eyes as Mrs. Bennett at her outbursts.

     When I think of Mrs. Bennett, I can still hear her voice in my head wailing “Oh Mr. Bennett!” In the story Mrs. Bennett’s pestering and blustering are set against Mr. Bennett’s patience and it eventually comes to a tipping point. At a critical point Mr. Bennett finally puts his foot down and, rather than weathering the unnecessary storm and taking the underhanded comments from his wife he stands up to her and tells her to quiet down.

     However, the way in which Jane Austen (and many other authors of her period, I’m sure) approached their writing was very different than it is today. I remember reading through the book and watching pages of dialogue where, rather than seeing one-line banter going back and forth, one character will stand and speak for pages at a time. Paragraphs and paragraphs of prose as these characters stand and talk about what’s on their minds. If a modern author did that, their manuscript might be thrown out. I say might because once in a long while sometimes going against the grain is just what a book needs to do. I don’t bring up this point to criticize Jane Austen as an author, but to say I found it very difficult to track one line of thought for two straight pages.

     If you’re an aspiring writer, don’t take this as a model for how to form a good bit of catching dialogue. Once you have the audience reeled in you could take a chance and have a scene with some extended speech – if your scene calls for it.

     But as I read the book, I realize that it is a different style of writing for a different people of a different era. From what I read recently, Jane Austen’s book was not typical for it’s time period and critiqued culture, running as a social commentary of the time. From what I understand an outright critique of society in the way that she did it was nearly unheard of.

      The books I have been reading lately are The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. It is a fantastic series and I highly recommend it. I don’t read much fantasy, but I do know that whenever a writer takes up this genre they have a lot to take on, for they have to not only introduce the reader to the people and the things that they will encounter, but they also have to introduce the locations and the fantasy creatures, such as dragons, elves and dwarves that one might run into in that fictional world.

       The predecessor to The Lord of the Rings (LOTR), The Hobbit, is one of my favorite novels, one which I have read time and again. It has a very different style than LOTR. I have heard that The Hobbit was more extensively edited before it was released and that LOTR was not edited in the same way. Tolkien spent years building his mythological world of Middle Earth before the trilogy was written. The countries, races, famous weapons, creatures, and much history were already in place before he began to write the book.

        I was talking to my brother the other day and he spoke about reading Tolkien’s The Silmarillion. I have not read the text myself but apparently it reads something like a history textbook. Characters are suddenly introduced with no context. It s written as a report of events, a summary rather than a drawn-out story that we are used to hearing.

       However the author chooses to approach their text, it is interesting to see how the styles of writing have changed over the centuries. Though within a period there will certainly be authors who differ from one another, as time progresses societies change in tastes and authors change in how their approach to writing.

What is a 'Pantser'

One of the things that writers often talk about on forums is the spectrum ranging between pansting and plotting. Outside of this context, I don't know if most people will have heard this word before. “Pantsing” is a reference to the phrase “flying by the seat of your pants” or improvising. Writers who write without planning out their book (or without planning much of their book) beforehand are often called 'Pantsers' in the writing community while at the other end of the spectrum we have the 'Plotters', those who detail what the plot of their book is before they write it.

But if we consider the 'Pantser' if the writer doesn’t know the story, then how can they write it? Surely a story can’t be written if it isn’t known, right?

In my own experience as a Panster, I’ve found that the writing process often feels like a journey of discovery. At the beginning of writing a scene, I may have an idea of a premise or what needs to happen. Beyond that, I leave the slate blank and I start typing, letting my imagination work as I write. 

In this way I’m working out the story as I’m taking it down. You might imagine that I’m taking dictation.

As I said before, I may often have a general idea in mind. This was true for my first book. I knew what I wanted for a few key scenes in the book. It took me about a hundred and fifty pages to get to that scene but once I was there I knew what I wanted to happen. Sometimes I had no idea what was supposed to happen next. That’s fine – in a first draft that’s where a writer spends most of their time unless they’ve outlined the whole book before they’ve started writing.

The process itself is fairly straightforward. As I move forward in the book, I’ll have to decide how to start each new scene. If there is no gap of time between one scene and the next, and there’s no Point of View (POV) shift either, then I could go right ahead and start writing the next scene. But if there’s a gap in time I’ll have to sit back and decide when the story will pick up again and where. Through whose eyes will we see this next part of the story?

The second book I’m writing has been pretty straight-forward since I’m following one small group of characters, for the most part, and each scene directly follows the next. Imagine, however, you are writing an Epic Fantasy which sprawls over a map between two or three kingdoms with some kind of great quest or war going on. In this case it will take a good amount of awareness to juggle what is going on at any one time in different parts of your invented world. Whether your story will be told in parts, with halves (or thirds, quarters, etc) of the book devoted to a character or region, or if you spend a chapter at a time with one character, you’ll have to find a way to manage keeping track of where everything and everyone is at any one time.

This is all to say that, for the Pantsers out there, a bit of organization can go a long way. I’ve been watching some videos about charting out chapters of a novel to see who is in it, who isn’t in it, where the turning point it, and other vital information.

Why?

So that when someone asks you, rather than flipping to page 164 to figure out whether there is enough conflict, you can glance at a chart and see that you’ve had three chapters in a row where things have got better for your protagonist. Entering all the information into a chart can be tedious, but the payoff could be very handy, especially if you were to move into a long period of revision with your novel.

Despite the idea the name brings about, it doesn't necessarily have to be done with no plans made at all. As I said before, the "Pantsing/Plotting" argument is on a spectrum, so some people who plot out their books will make much more detailed outlines than others who will only do a rough sketch of what they want their book to be like. Some pantsers will say "I want to write a Mystery" and sit down to start their first draft. Others might take a little time to flesh out a few characters, the basic plot and maybe the setting before the go forward with the first draft.

In the end, Pantsing is just another way that writers get the job done. Some Pantsers may plot a little, some may not plot at all and let the story develop as they write it. Each chapter they finish will inform the next chapter that they write. And so chapter follows chapter to form a book and book will follow book as writers as different types keep at their work.

Three Hundred Pages

     Over the past several months I've been working on my second novel, an action book. It has been an interesting process in several ways, one of which is that this has ended up being a longer project than I anticipated, and longer than my first novel.

     My first book was a shorter project, which I'm not surprised at, since I had not experience writing anything of that length. I was still exploring how to write a novel, so I was still trying to understand how it works in a very real way. One can read about it and watch Youtube videos, but doing it is a bit of a different experience. however, when it was all said and done, my first book ended up being about 260 pages, beginning to end. Now this isn't too long of a book, considering different genres and the lengths of books out there today. My first book will probably fall under General Fiction, so it could be relatively short and still be all right.

     I know it's early to talk about it, my second book, on the other hand, is in a different genre. Now a lot of writers will stay true to their type and only write in one genre. I think that, for myself, I discover ideas for stories, and then find the genre of the story after I begin to write it. Because my second story is an action book, there is a different style of writing throughout the novel than my first book. This means that, hopefully, the plot moves faster. Readers, then, will expect some longer novels in the Action genre than under the General Fiction genre.

     Now when the editors come into play they may ask the author to write more scenes, so my book may be longer. They may ask him to cut or edit scenes that slow down the plot and which don't move the story forward. (I can certainly think of a few of these in my own book.) The thing is, I'm still working on the first draft, so we may just have to see how the story works out, and how long the book turns out to be.

     For the last two weeks I've been keeping track of my daily word count just towards my novel, and I've been managing a steady 1,200 words or more, just about every day. A few bad days, some very good days with 1,300 or 1,600, but almost every day I get in more than 1,000 words each day.

     But different books have different word counts, even within the same genre. Depending on how complex the author decides to make the plot, the number of characters involved, the time-span, how far the characters may travel and how quickly, and how much detail the author goes into - all of these elements may add up for a novel of great length, or it may be something much smaller.
J.R.R. Tolkien considered his 'Lord of the Rings' to be one work. Those who worked with him saw that it wasn't publishable in the form of the tome that it was and broke it up into three volumes, a trilogy as we know it today.

     As I write and as I read I've found that I don't have a particular tie to any one genre. Some people, for instance, love science fiction books and would rather read and write those all day. For others it's romance or high fantasy. I've never made that distinction. I've read some sci-fi, some high fantasy, some action, a thriller or two, and some Christian fiction, so I've been all over the board for genres, I think. As I said before, my way of writing is to discover what the story is first, and then to label it for marketing.

Writing Genres

As an author, what genre do you choose? It sounds like a pretty simple question, but one that is loaded with possibility. For the most part, I think that if anyone assumes anything about authors they assume that an author will write most of their work in one genre and stick with the one. Why write in more than one if you can help it? Well, because it's fun! And because the next story you want to tell doesn't fit in the genre of the last story you told.

Sometimes an author sits down for their next project and has decided already, or asks themselves, what genre will I write in next? Fantasy lends itself to great amounts of creative output and imaginative creation. Action books challenge the author to keep the book moving forward at a heart-throbbing pace without much call for deep character development. If you want to talk relationships, Romance may be the genre for you, setting up relationships, breaking them apart and finding a way to lead them back together again.

Whatever happens in the book, one of the things you have to understand about me is that I’m a punster, I write by the seat of my pants. That means I have to have a good idea of what my story is before I sit down to write, even a basic concept – a young woman’s car breaks down and she gets stuck in the middle of nowhere. Perfect! Now where do we go from here? The key is to let the story lead you forward, no matter the genre. 

One of the differences about writing in a genre that young or inexperienced writers may have is whether to write in a different style for the genre that they’re in. Should an author change their style to suit the genre they’re writing in? My answer is not straightforward. Don’t change your personal style of writing. However, if you’re writing a piece set in Victorian England, this will naturally reflect something different than a piece set in post-apocalyptic Boston, MA. People have different vocabularies, dress differently, use different dishes and carpets and furniture – the essence of the piece which you describe will lend a different air to it which will set is apart from the next piece.

So if you’re deciding you want to write, and you don’t know what genre to pick, that’s fine. Find the story that you want to write and go from there. Once you know what kind of story you want to write, the genre will be clear. The story will lead you in the right direction.

How Publishing Works

     My mind has been on the topic of publishing recently, so I thought that it would be a good time to blog about it. I've been doing some research about the publishing world and what it involves. What I've found on the internet is a lot of article and videos giving your "10 Tips on getting published" which is not exactly what I was looking for at the time, but some of these article were interesting.

     Part of the problem was that many of the articles and videos I found were actually about self-publishing, which is an entirely different ball game than traditional publishing. For one thing, instead of the publisher footing the bill, you, the writer, have to pay the expense up front. That might be thousands of dollars out of your pocket to see your book on store shelves in the hopes that some people might pick it up and purchase it.

     In self-publishing, the process is involved for the author. After the book is written one of the key differences is that, as a writer, you will not have the benefit of an in-house editor, one of several people hired, full-time, by a publishing house to look over your book for ways to improve it. If you want to improve it in self-publishing you either have to do it yourself, find friends and family, or hire an editor. This will be the first expense.

      After that, you'll have to design a book cover. You could do this yourself or find someone to do it for you. Again, this could get pricey. Then it's a matter of formatting your book. This part means that you'll have to make sure the spacing is right on the pages, and the fonts are the ones that will read easily. Being sure you have your cover pages, page numbers title pages, and other details like this are all part of formatting. Once you have it formatted, you approach a company who works with you to get your book self-published, if you want to work with a company. They’ll get your book put together and printed in the quantity you order.

     The reason that so many of these online articles and videos put forward the idea of self-publishing is that it is a faster method to publish than the traditional method. In the traditional method, you have to submit a book proposal or send your manuscript to a publishing house. Then it's a wait of up to eight weeks until you hear back from them about whether or not they are interested about taking on your book or not. 

     From recently reading an article by Chip MacGregor on his website, I learned that the process isn't as simple as the Big Kahuna taking a look at your book's title, flipping through the first chapter and saying "I don't like it. Wait two weeks and send them the form letter." There's an acquisitions editor who looks at it, an editorial committee who takes a gander, then a publishing committee who looks at it if it gets past those guys. If it gets through all of those groups, then the editor runs a profit and loss sheet to get some ideas about how well the book might do if they publish the book.

      People often get the idea that publishers get the manuscript then sit around on it, burning time before deciding arbitrarily to send out a rejection letter. But this article made it more clear to me that there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes even before a writer gets an offer to publish their book. Though it might be weeks before they hear back from the publisher, the people working for the publisher might be deliberating and running numbers for weeks on their book to see how well it might do before they tell the writer anything about what they intend to do.

      In any case, whether one intends to self-publish or go by the traditional method, it’s been an interesting process to learn more about both methods and what they entail. The self-publishing method will have you pay up-front, but you keep all the rights to the book. However, if you go by the traditional method of publishing, you will be paid to publish your book, and will have a team of people working to be sure that it gets put together and to see that it gets a good chance to sell in stores.

MacGregor, Chip, “Ask the Agent: How Does a Book Get Selected by a Publisher?” MacGregor and Luedeke, MacGregor Literary, 4 – January – 2017, http://www.macgregorandluedeke.com/blog/ask-agent-book-get-selected-publisher/

Fiction Series

     One of the things on my mind recently has been the idea of writing for a series of books as opposed to a novel with no intended sequel. Writing a series of books instead of a single novel changes the game which we writers are playing. The particular kind of series I'm thinking of are not like the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, or other long-running, episodic books. I'm thinking of series usually running between three and seven (or more) books with a tightly-woven story line as opposed to a series with a separate plot for each book.

     When approaching the idea of writing a series of books, we have to think about long-term consequences. The scoundrel that our adventurer pestered in the first novel may come back with a band of cutthroats later in the series. The pair of diamond earrings the professional thief took in the first story may be a precious heirloom that the noblemen will stop at nothing to get back. The story arc of the characters will be longer as their relationships develop and become deeper as they are thrust further into each other's lives.

     So far, the novels I've written, am writing or am planning are all single novels, but it occurs to me that I may eventually find myself writing a series. The questions that naturally come from that assessment begin to approach. What does that involve? What kind of planning would I have to do before starting a series like that? Do I have to have the entire cast of characters figured out already or do I just have to have a few substantial ones, the hero, antagonist, love interest, and a friend? (I read about that list of relationships somewhere recently.) Do I focus on the book that I'm writing now, or do I plan out the entire series before I start the whole thing?

     When I was fourteen I learned how to juggle. I found some tennis balls and with much throwing, some catching, and much more dropping, I eventually got a feel for how to keep the balls in the air. It wasn't like in the cartoons, where they all follow each other in a circular patter (what jugglers call a 'shower' pattern, but a figure-eight 'cascade' pattern. When I learned to juggle, I learned that it's a game of multi-tasking. You've got to focus on the ball in your hand, catching in and throwing it back into the pattern. But you also have to be aware that you have two other balls in the air, and you've got to know where they are so you can know when they're going to land. When you're juggling, you can't follow one ball with your eyes all the time, otherwise you'll drop the other two.

     So what does juggling have to do with writing? Simple. It's about principle - multi-tasking. The ball in your hand is your current project. While the ball is in your hand you focus on that one and work on getting that draft finished or revised or whipped into shape to send to your beta readers or to the publisher that you hope will take the hook.

     At the same time you stay aware of the idea that you still have 2 or more books that you may be writing, and a long-term story to deal with. From what I've heard of some publishers, some will sign an author with a written book and an outline or summary of the series. If you are an author who is looking into getting published or writing a series, do some research, see what's out there; what publishers put out novel series, in what genres? What authors do they sign? Do they take unsolicited manuscripts? (Books publishers haven't asked for. Some publishers will the manuscript back without opening it, so be sure you know what the publishers are looking for and if they take unsolicited manuscripts, or if your manuscript is solicited.)

     The other thing I have read about series is that publishers are eager to pick up a series of books rather than a single novel. This is for a number of reasons. First, a series of books with have natural momentum. When the second book is published, it will be advertised as the second book, drawing attention to the first book. People who know about and like the first book and hear about the second will keep their eyes open for it. This also means that the publisher is, essentially getting a two (or three or four...) -for-the-price-of-one. If the publisher has one author contracted to write multiple novels, they have to work less to find another new author or novel.
    
     After considering a few of the different things involved when writing a series of novels, what is the conclusion that we come to as authors? We know that every novel we write has to be self-contained and have a proper story arc- Beginning, Middle and End. Acts I, II, and III. We know that a story-line and characters will have to be consistent throughout the series. We'll have to keep the long-term goals and consequences in mind.

     My conclusion is that writing a fiction series would be very rewarding. To see a story come together on a large scale as characters' relationships deepen, sever, heal - these will drive your story forward and, if used properly, and send your series soaring forward into the unknown.

Setting

In writing fiction, setting is a tool which I think can be easily undervalued. Setting is any means whereby the author gives indication about the space in which the events in the novel take place, whether this is a single room, across the globe, or in alien galaxies.
          

  As I’ve studied writing over the years, I’ve found that authors have a lot of advice about setting the scene. For example:

·         Don’t interrupt the story to tell the audience where they are

·         Find creative ways to set the scene – straightforward telling gets old after a while

·         Don’t start a novel talking about the weather

           Now as long as you have authors, novels and publishers, you’re going to have writers who break the rules. There will be writers who interrupt themselves to give you a tour. This is a bad idea, since you want the reader turning the pages as they follow your story – not trying to pick up the lost thread when you find it again.

Sometimes describing the scene as it is will be the most efficient way of getting information to the reader. But this is probably not going to be very interesting. If you can show them what it is as your protagonist or antagonist goes about their work – in short, multitask – you can give them the essence of the setting and keep them interested in the story at hand.

Talking about the weather is cliché, and I don’t recommend it unless it is important to the story. If, for instance, that twister Jeb and Earl are talking about is the same twister that Dorothy was sucked up into last week when she claimed to have seen munchkins, and men made of straw and metal – then yes, I’d say this would be a good place to talk about the weather. If, however, you take a good 500 words to tell us that the sun was shining, pare it down and keep the plot moving forward. Remember, conflict drives the plot forward.

One question buzzing around your head may be whether setting the scene is necessary. In answer, I’d like you to take a look at the passage below.

“Tara glanced over her shoulder down the dirt path. There was nothing there.  Turning her attention forward, she strode onward. Tara knew that she had to find some shelter before the night was out. The woods could be dangerous at night.”

            Not necessarily very exciting. We have a woman wandering through the woods alone at night. This passage is simple reporting, the author is letting us know what happened. But the intention is that the scene is supposed to be tense, if not foreboding or frightening. Let’s see if some details can’t give some life to this piece of prose.

“Tara glanced over her shoulder down the dirt path. The moon shone from the heavens, dousing the earth in a weird, otherworldly light. There was nothing there. Turning her attention forward, she strode onward, feeing the gravel bite into the bottom of her soft-soled sneakers. She couldn’t see far into the trees on either side of the path, and they pressed in towards her, stifling her breath. A piercing howl sounded and she stifled a scream. The echo sounded all around her, refusing to settle in one spot. She didn’t know what a wolf sounded like, but this sounded otherworldly. Tara knew that she had to find some shelter before the night was out. The woods could be dangerous at night.”

            Hopefully this second example proves my point. While the first paragraph reported what happened, this second paragraph drew the reader in. What any author is striving for, when they write, is to get the reader involved with their book. How do we do that? We aren’t reporters or we would be looking to write for local columns. Writing fiction is something different. The key to engaging readers is that whether they like the protagonist (Hero) or not, they must feel some kind of sympathy for him.
           

 Giving the reader tangible details is always a great way to draw them in, if used in moderation. In the first paragraph, the woman looks over her shoulder. But if we don’t know what she sees, the usefulness of this information is limited. We might think she’s a little nervous, that’s all. But in paragraph 2, we start seeing talk about “Weird, other-worldly light”. Even though they can’t see anything dangerous yet, the reader’s internal radar begins to ping with danger signs. Something isn’t right. What’s worse, the reader doesn’t know what isn’t right yet, leaving him in suspense.
           

 The other important thing setting does for a novel is that it gives the reader emotional context for the story. To be clear, the setting is more than the physical surroundings. It’s the description of the physical surroundings as well. I could mention that the protagonist is standing in an empty room and move on with the story. But that isn’t specific enough for the reader, unless I want them to be unsure about what to feel.

If I mention light filtering in through old glazed windows and thick dust on the floor, I could give the reader a sense of forsakenness that the room might have. If, however, the windows are boarded over, large holes in the floor, and one door which is now locked by an unseen enemy, you may well guess that this is supposed to be a place where the characters are going to feel terrorized.
           

 It’s important enough that I’ll say it again: specific, tangible details will draw the readers into the story, if they are used in moderation. Drawing attention to specific elements will provoke reactions by the characters and the reader.

Conflict drives a story forward. Characters are the agents whereby the plot is enacted. But without a setting on which to act out this story, the characters are standing on a blank canvas, acting out their scene in pantomime – though they speak and move their actions may not have much depth without a space to perform in.