Laura M. volunteered to have the beginning of her novel critiqued, but I’m not compus mentis enough to do so, certainly not in public. I probably could critique Kate or Amanda with a simple “Grabs/doesn’t grab” but I wouldn’t go deeper than that, and even that they should take with a grain of salt.
So … how sick am I? Well, I’m well enough to know I’m sick. Honestly, I’m having one of my atypical chest things. All stuffed, but no cough except at night, but I feel like I’m sleep walking, can’t concentrate and have body aches. Yes, I did take the flu vaccine. This would seem to be a mild form of it. Very mild. Still, all I want to do is sleep.
To make things worse, I have these hormonal calibration meds I HAVE to take every day. I sometimes forget a day, you know, got up late, running, whatever, but this week I’ve skipped two days because I was so sick. This made things worse. If it weren’t for the occasional cough and the feeling my eyes were dipped in grit, and the chills, I’d imagine that this was ALL hormonal. The hormone crashes feel like the world’s worst flu anyway, normally, so I think they’re feeding each other.
Anyway, having heard from someone who just got his first critique and it was critique from hell and also having spent the weekend before last at a seminar for writers which had a lot of editors, both trad and freelance, I thought I needed to do a post on critiques in general.
I tried to inject some caution at the seminar. You see, it was all “you have to listen to the editor” and “the editor sees more clearly” and “if you think all your words are precious, you won’t get anywhere.” And yeah, that’s true… in some cases.
I would say that’s true in very few cases. In fact, in my entire career of mentoring/teaching/writing, I’ve met exactly two cases of this. And one of them was good enough to have a career, anyway.
Most writers have a dual issue: they love their books, yes, but they want to improve them. In that, they remind me of has two left feet and no ear for music and is not swift enough for soccer, his parents would have done better not to listen to the fashions of the time and put him in football.
I was struggling to express this duality and why it’s important to pick the right editor who will make this the best of YOUR books and not someone who tries to change it to be something else, when Dorothy Grant came up with the perfect metaphor “…but just as you wouldn’t ask a homeless person what’s the best way to shape your culture, and you shouldn’t ask a skanky tramp-stamped woman at the bar to be your wife after buying her a drink, writers need to be discriminating about the editing history and areas of expertise of the editor, eh?”
She right, of course – except for the eh. I’m not sure about that eh – and that’s the first step.
But there is more to it than that. I’m going to try to encapsulate it in points, okay?
1- Choose the right editor. If your editor reads mostly Romance, don’t ask her to do epic fantasy. She’ll miss all the genre markings. But it goes further than that. If your editor is an SF geek but UF is not her passion, don’t pick her. She might not miss all the markers (I wouldn’t, and UF is like my third down subgenre to pick up for fun) but your book is likely to get critiqued from a slightly different perspective. If I had got hold of the first Anita Blake book, as a first reader, I’d been driven insane by the fact she never explains and that history is the same, despite the existence of these creatures. It bothered me even while published, but I had to take it. As a first reader, I’d have said “I don’t buy this. You’d have to build an history to show why it’s like this, despite—” Well, she clearly didn’t. But I’m an SF reader PRIMARILLY and an alternate history reader secondarily so to me this is vitally important. To her readers… clearly not.
This means I wouldn’t be the ideal first reader for her. The same with Harry Potter. If I’d read it first, I’d have said “Must you steal every trope from boarding school mysteries of the Enid Blyton ilk? People will think you’re stupid.” Only Americans didn’t grow up on boarding school mysteries, so I was wrong, she was right. (And I like the books. Well, the first three.)
2- Even the best picked editor can have a ton of things in which they’re up their own a– behind without a flash light. This is very hard for a beginner writer to accept, particularly if this is a professional editor or even a friend who is more published than you are.
When I was first in a writers’ group, our group acquired someone we thought would be the BEST critique EVER. Remember we were all young (well, thirty something but young in writing) and totally unpublished. This person had published a novel ten years before. So, instant expert.
(Yes we were that green. We didn’t realize that if she were that good, she’d have kept selling.)
I’m not joking when I say her first line “critiques” just about delayed all our careers by two years. You see, her word was law, even if we didn’t get it.
Thus, my promising foray into urban fantasy, back when I read it, was shot down because “the book doesn’t have an engine.” (Of course not. Metal bits are bad for paper.)
It took me three years to understand that she understood ONE type of story only: action adventure, of the sort that has an obvious McGuffin or a goal.
First, my stories tend to proceed more from internal development that moves the writer to something physical. Second, if there is a physical/obvious goal, there are usually five. Her critiques simply didn’t apply. For instance, Darkship Thieves was “too romancey” because the characters had “too many internal conflicts” – and so it went.
You can also, bizarrely and unexpectedly, hit someone’s hidden prejudices. You can know someone for years, and they can be perfectly sensible. You might not know that they really, really, really hate candy canes and think they’re a tool of the devil.
If you have your kid eat a candy cane in the first scene, she’s going to hate your story, and she might NOT know why. I’ve had critiques that start with “This is one of the world’s worst books” but then everything about it is extremely vague, “I don’t like your plot.” “Your feeling is wrong.” “Your MC is sexist” and so on, until finally candy canes (or their equivalent) is mentioned and the bilge pours out, in torrent “Horrible, rot children’s teeth. I can’t believe you’re so craven as to mention them. The candy cane industry—“and on and on. If you’re there in person, back off. Spittle WILL fly.
For instance, at a critique group, I presented my story Hot. This is a story of a bio-engineered future or rather a time traveling agent from some future. I got yelled at for half an hour by a man who decided I was your typical female writer (rolls eyes) and who screamed at me that guns don’t snick or hiss and had I ever fired a gun. And also, calling it burner was too stupid and no one bought that sort of slang. Then he went on to comprehensively tear everything apart, including the “beautiful lady without thank you, what is that?) (Belle dame sans merci)
Then he listened in huffy silence to the other critiques. Took him two days to re-read the story and figure out the gun WAS a laser burner and could make any noise I wanted it to. (I don’t know if he ever got the French.)
3- Then there’s the editor who is also a writer – this is even more common with first readers – and who wants you to write his book. This has happened to me even with professional editors and agents in the traditional industry.
If someone tells you the entire thrust of your book is wrong – particularly if they’ve written a book on how to write the perfect book – back away.
Look, if someone had told Pratchett the way to be a bestseller was to write Stephen King knock offs, how close do you think he would have come? And do you think he’d be a bestseller today? Or anyone of importance?
If someone tells you “To sell this book you must” unless the offer is so good you can put the kids through school on it, back off. Right now, you don’t must not’ing. You can always go indie.
For instance a well intentioned reader was the cause of the demise of one of my first trilogies (well, it will eventually be a trilogy) because he told me if books were over 100k words long, they would never sell as a first book. This, btw, I later found out, was in the golden age for goatgaggers. My book was 300k words. But he’d gone to conventions, and listened to editors. I cut it down to 100k. It was fatal. (I will eventually revive it and do it as a 3 book and send it out.)
This is actually another problem: people who have a theory of writing. I’ve run into editors who think you can’t cut too much and the way to improve a story is always to cut. I probably wouldn’t have been rude, if I hadn’t been very ill at the time, but I would still have said “Back off.” Some stories need every word. (Particularly short stories.)
Then there are the minimalists. They have really weird theories of writing. I once was in a group with a published female author who had issues with sentences like “raise your eyes” or “lift your voice.” You were supposed to use “looked up” or “spoke louder.” Don’t get me started. She would go line by line and make fun of your wording, including “Did he use a winch to raise his eyes?” Fortunately I had a degree in literature, had read way more than she had, and was immune. Others weren’t.
4- Sadistic first readers. This is often true if your first reader/editor is a failed writer or one who has given up on writing.
No piece of writing is so bad that it deserves a line by line of its awfulness. Not even eye of Argon. If someone is doing that to you, they have an ax to grind. Say thank you and walk away and don’t read the damn thing, unless you’re a masochist. Going line by line is designed to hurt. We had a thing in our group which was “mark punctuation and word errors, but don’t stress them.” This cut the sadists at the knees.
Also, making fun of your book is a tell. It’s okay to say “this book made no sense to me, perhaps I missed something.” (Always say that. Half the time you DID miss something.)
It’s not okay to say “You flip POV like a cheap cook flipping pancakes in a cheap greasy spoon.” (A rejection I received from a very respected agent, for DST. One of the gems he thought to put in FOUR handwritten pages. Finishing with “send me your next one.” I’ve since found that’s his style and also that he WILL make you rewrite your books several times. THAT letter was an expression of high interest on his part. My reaction? Particularly to the part where he told me that DST should take place entirely in the Cathouse? “OMG, no.” And I never submitted to him again, not even when he approached me years later, when I was a decent-selling midlister and told me he could take me to the top. If I ever decide to go full S & M I’ll do it physically, not with my books.)
To conclude, if someone is trying to make your book into something else, claiming insider knowledge (yes, even if they are in the industry) or tearing your book apart with malice aforethought (and often with snark too) tell them to go away. If they’re your nearest and dearest, and insist on reading everything you write, give it to them and tell them you want the results in writing. Then ignore it.
Yes, there are fantastic editors out there. And there are truly appalling ones. And sometimes they’re mixed. One of the best edits I had which strengthened the book plot, was awful on the line by line.
Remember it’s YOUR book. Yes, it might be much, much better if the main character were a transsexual alien reptile instead of a human female, but can you WRITE transsexual reptiles? And do you want to? If it kills all your joy and interest in writing, DON’T DO IT.
Again, remember: could Pratchett be a decent King knock off? Possibly. Or vice versa. But would he want to be a King knock off? And didn’t he achieve much more success by being HIMSELF?
The longer I live and write the more two truths become evident: 1- David Weber is right. It’s all about the voice. A confident, strong, enthusiastic voice will hide a multitude of sins. 2- Pratchett is right. The secret to success is to be yourself as hard as you can.
So, don’t hold on to every precious word (I only know two writers who do, anyway) but be aware of the function your words fulfill and how changing them might change the book. Pick which changes you take.
And when it comes to structural changes, never take those that will kill your book and your enthusiasm for it.
I don’t care if Fifty Shades of Alien would sell like popcorn. If you keep going “EWWW” at the thought of erotic chest bursting, it’s not for you to write. No matter how much the betas or your editors say it is.
Mad Genius Club 
91 responses to “Fifty Shades Of First Reader”
Re. #3. When your critique starts with “the title does not reflect the subject of the book,” it can be a hint (or a warning about the reviewer.) When the next sentence is “This has a lot of promise, but you could/should have taken this approach, if you change the emphasis onto these other characters, and add more material about Y and trim all those bits about X because they are not really germane to the story, and . . .” Yup.
I took the useful bits (and there were several, once I calmed down and winnowed the critique). Then I expressed polite appreciation for the time they’d put into reading and critiquing the book. Because they were very thorough. Just thorough in commenting on the book they would have written, not the book that I wrote.
I’ve done some beta reading, and, even when it’s for a very close friend whose manuscript you really want to read, it has an element of a chore to it. It’s not unlike having to do a book report of a book you got to pick out yourself. It’s now an assignment, not just one of the greatest self-indulgent pleasures known to man. So I’m very grateful to my beta readers, even if I grumble when they point out that I need to explain something better. I treasure each observation about any lack of clarity, but I haven’t had to grit my teeth through being told to write a different book yet.
That’s what spouses are for (“wouldn’t it be better if…” changie changie changie). Esp. the ones that don’t write.
I have a very literate and well-read husband, and he reads through my finished work, but he doesn’t mainline SFF like I do, so I get to hear about every new name or place in an alien language with “Tremafon? WTF is Tremafon? And what’s this Drilego shit?”
Ah yes…. you gotta love them because the body would be too big to hide.
🙂
Lol. One of my non-SF readers was fine with every word I made up (I’m especially pleased with “orbitat”–even if my back brain got it from something I read 20 years ago) but circled a whole bunch of words that are common usage in aerospace. Sigh.
Thank you. I’m struggling with my novel, in part, because I am nearly certain it will be 120K, with 150K not impossible. I have (to my surprise) a very clear outline. That outline has 20 chapters, and I’ve written 8, and I’ve got 60K. They’re the longest 8, probably, but that still points to 120K. And I’ve heard the advice: a first novel “must” be under 100K. And I’ve fretted, because this one needs every one of those 20 chapters, so I can’t cut structure. I can only cut words, line edits like “His eyes raised up.” That would be horrendously painful, and I believe it would kill the voice, too.
I’ve decided to just write it, and worry about the length if and when an acquiring editor says it’s an issue. You’ve made me more comfortable with that decision.
Once you’ve completed the novel you might find that some parts can come out that you thought were vital. Or not.
I am so grateful that self-publishing ebooks came in time for Rick Locke to publish his too-long novel. Imagine if he hadn’t written it because everyone told him it was too long to sell.
Right now, the only part that looks structurally nonessential is an 18K middle chapter. I really do like that chapter; but I must admit, virtually everything in that chapter can be learned from other chapters.
But… That chapter started as a novella in Analog last year. It will be in Year’s Best Science Fiction 31 AND Year’s Top Short SF Novels this year. Toni Weisskopf knew me by name at WorldCon last year because of that novella. It’s pretty much my hook to sell the book to a publisher. So though it may be dispensable structurally, I think I should keep it.
So as you say, I’ll finish it and then decide. But right now every chapter (except that one) builds to a purpose.
Don’t cut it without a good reason. I used to cut all the funny bits and silly bits out of my books. Let’s just say they do a lot better now.
YES!
Longer novels get published. Shut up and write.
Most recent data I’ve seen is that folks who buy ebooks PREFER the longer novels. And hey, how long are Correia’s MHI books?
Also, my first novel was 120k words. That advice is stupid.
However…
Nothing wrong with a long novel. But if you detect a “this is a neat incident I should tell about” that seems to be de trop for the main story, you might look at it as an opportunity for a related short story. Always useful to have fodder for that purpose.
Whenever I find myself introducing some backstory or other in passing, I try to keep an eye out for “would this make a decent short story sometime?” and add it to my “short story ideas” for that series.
Every writing has a “natural length.” (Except for “Rendezvous with Rama,” and “The wheel of time.”) I think Sarah will agree that it shows itself. If you write enough, you’ll, learn to tell pretty well. That DOES NOT mean it can’t be short or long, and you can’t tell. A good first reader can spot that tree amongst the leaves (usually). Where in the H–L Clarke and Jordan’s first, second, and third readers were, we’ll never know. Probably the same hellhole the editors were.
Baen’s guidelines advise 100k as the minimum, so that’s one place the “must” doesn’t apply.
(Personally I wouldn’t mind that rule as my first draft came out at 90k, so I’m contemplating where I can stick in a subplot without damaging it too much)
If you’re going indie, why worry? If you’re planning on Baen, I remember their guidelines saying 80K might be ok if it was fabulous. Also, by the time you go through the first draft and find gaps you might come close to 100K in any event.
I suspect he was using that as a guideline, and since Baen is the only publisher who seems to have any sense left, they would probably have a better notion of what people are buying.
Makes sense.
Hmmm, version of Baen guidelines I found lacks the 80k number. But I figure I’ll try anyway, and go indie if they don’t want it.
I just checked and you appear to be correct. I last looked at their guidelines two years ago, and maybe they changed it or it was one of those false memories.
No. It might be something I said, since it was what Toni told me.
Only one of my beta readers is a science-fiction reader, and she asked me if my book was really science fiction. It’s set in the second half of this century. We have habitats on orbit, seasteaders (first and second generation only–nothing as evolved as Sarah’s world), a functioning space tug industry, and interest in the Earth-Moon LaGrange points. We still haven’t got back to the moon. The plot revolves around an attempt to win a prize for de-orbiting deadly space debris and cleaning up the orbital environment. Maybe the only societal/technical/economic change I posited to reach this state of affairs is that the costs of launch have gone down, but it counted as science fiction to me. It did make me worry that I’ve got no one reading it who knows the SF tropes. She and the others have done a good job of saying “what happened with x?” “where did he go?” etc. However, the other three aren’t SF readers.
Sarah, if you are more comfortable giving me feedback off line, that would be fine. Also, if you are too busy or under the weather to do it, no worries.
No, if you don’t mind I’ll do it next week or Saturday. Just not today. Feverish. I’m likely to tell you the space lizards shouldn’t be pink, and why are they singing the banana boat song?
Because it’s a good song?
No, I don’t mind at all. I was just being neurotic. Thank you!
Want!
Nobody here but us pink lizards.
(flicks forked tongue)
must be good cold medicine 😀
Is EVERYBODY sick? Because I’ve been sick all week, and if finally got bad enough to stay home today. (And I really hope I’m well enough to go to work on Friday, because lifting the fin onto the plane is the most epic part of my job.)
I was in a long, hard recovery from a bout of flu that wasn’t so bad on the initial symptoms, but left me finding it hard to breath, and unable to do the physical duties of my job for a full workweek. (Which would be why I’ve been commenting more.)
Then I was… gifted… with a second, nasty and very virulent strain of flu, which has knocked me flat with high fever and lots of racking coughs. and I HAD the vaccine!
By the way, the CDC reports 2009 H1N1 strain flu deaths are at epidemic levels, and have been for a couple months. Funny the things that you can find out, but aren’t being widely reported, eh?
All right. That is epic.
Nah, I was sick last week, and a little before that. Yesterday was OK, today is just dust all, aler, aler-CHOOOOO! *sniff, sniff*
I mean Sunday. I’m not stepping on Cedar.
If you warn me so I can brace, I don’t mind being stepped on… well, if we’re like, running from zombies and you can’t climb over that fence, and you need my support… or we have to mount horses and ride off really fast because vicious wood elves are hunting us through the MirkWood… what? Just because I had a math exam today, teh creative brain is shorting out a bit.
Between Sarah talking about stepping on you, and Synova saying you killed her(?) brain, you aren’t being treated too well today, are you?
I refuse to take the blame for my vegetative half, even if I am a Dryad 😛
I don’t know about that. sometimes you intentionally leave me a smiling drooling idiot with no functioning brain
I would ask you two to get a room, but you already have one…
A whole house, even *wiggles eyebrows*
Yes, but that has nothing to do with MY pollen!
Over at Larry’s place, they’re calling her a wonderful person, a lady, and all sorts of honest and beautiful descriptors. So, some good, some bad…
Thank you Dorothy 🙂
Try to find a couple of beta readers that are SF fans, they’ll give you much more useful feed back. I would be willing to bet you could find a couple of victe…er volunteers here if you asked
I need beta readers for straight-out heroic fantasy. I’m happy to beta-read in return for SFF or Fantasy (all types). You can reach me thru HollowLands.com
That’s a great idea. If anyone wants to beta read, I can be reached at mntgmrylr@yahoo.com. Karen, I’m not conversant with the heroic tropes or I’d take you up.
You can also send me a copy. I’ve been reading F&SF for somewhere around 55+ years. To _me_ it is SF. I can’t tell you who said it, but the ruler I use is. “Does it start with, ‘If this goes on. . . and build on known/extrapolatable technology?” Unlike Romance/Westerns?Spy fiction, SF is a pretty loose designation. There have been/are: Westerns; Medieval; Romance; *Hard* tech; and Military SF. Granted, the line between Fantasy and SF can be pretty nebulous, but for that I fall back on Clarke’s Law. “Any sufficiently advanced technology, is indistinguishable from Magic.” For proof, how many actually understand how electronics _really_ work. Not even _Physicists_ agree on all the details, much less the whys. “You let out the magic smoke out,” is still as good as “you put too much power through the wrong port.” 🙂
Thanks, Walter. I’m closing in on what my beta readers sent and will have a new version soon.
We didn’t get through the first episode of Helix here. It was just too nasty.
I’ve been reading SF for forty years, and I knew it was science fiction. I’m still puzzling over why she thought it wasn’t. It’s got a strong romantic sub-plot, but I’ve read lots of SF with that. Go figure.
That’s certainly SF. And I was put in mind of an anime series called “Planetes” which follows a young woman as she joins the little-regarded debris collection department of one of the many space corporations in Earth orbit.
That was a great show. Watched it with my kids years ago.
LOVED that show.
DST taking place entirely in the Cathouse… that would not have been DST. It would, however, be an interesting way to build tension if you were telling some *other* story.
well, exactly — but that was NOT the story I wanted to tell.
Well, what could you expect from a story taking place in a cathouse? 😀
Fleas?
#3 I had a “friend” in college who wanted to be a newspaper editor. He was of the opinion that everything, always, no exceptions, should be succinct. I had some poetry accepted in our school literary magazine and then had to endure a 30 minute lecture about how bad it was and he couldn’t see what the editors were thinking. At that point I started yelling about rhyme and meter and that words had souls…I was 18, sue me. We stopped being friends after that.
#4 Or if the only other writer they know is somebody who bullied them while they were growing up and they’re *trying* to be helpful but, well, they can’t let it go so they must crush your dreams since they can’t crush the other person.
My most recent critique was “There were a few typos but I forgot to write them down because I wanted to find out what happened. I’ll get them to you by this weekend.” I think I finally found a good critique partner 🙂
When they were finished I asked my betas the questions Sarah posted a couple of months ago: Did anything throw you out? Were there any spots where you would have stopped reading if you didn’t know me? Those are nice broad based questions that help you figure out if you are succeeding at a general level. I’d already asked them to give me any persnickety nits and circle typos if they felt like it.
I also laughingly advised them (ha, ha, ha) that they need not recommend adding aliens or anything like a large scale structural change. If something didn’t work, I’d fix it, but I wasn’t looking for advice on how to write their story. Sometimes people feel they shouldn’t bring up a problem without also offering a solution because they’ve been trained to that at work, but that admirable impulse can morph too quickly into a request for aliens to liven things up. My friend who also writes was a good sounding board and delivers suggestions very softly, so she was helpful when I was looking for solutions.
Succinct is good. I like succinct, in non fic. I can enjoy it in fiction if done properly. I tend towards succinctness in my own style. However, rambling is good too. At least half the reason I read Sarah’s . blog posts is for the pleasure of her meanderings into her childhood in Portugal or her kids or her friends whose names I don’t even know. Everything has it’s place
You know the story I mentioned the editor wanted cut. I was ALMOST as sick as I am right now (yes, that’s how bad I am) so I had you and the other accomplices double check my feeling he was killing the story.
It took me a week to realize that I was going about like the walking dead because the cedars had bloomed. We had snow last week. How was I supposed to realize that my brain had quit because I needed antihistamines?
If your brain quit, it would be kind of hard to tell, wouldn’t it?
I know!
Braaaaaaains? Where did you go? Braaaaaaaains? Wait, don’t shoot meeeeeee! I’m only looking for mine! I don’t want to eat yours!
I recognize #3 in myself, and I fight it. Usually I end up putting in some “if I were doing this…” remarks, but I do try to make it clear that I’m not saying how it SHOULD be done, just offering an example of a different approach for sections that I don’t think are working as well as they could. I used to be much worse, I would tell people how to write their stories, and it never ended well.
“erotic chest bursting”
I am never, ever, ever going to google that. Ever.
Stay strong!
Too late, by the rules of the internet, there’s already a fetish site for it, and by Ugol’s Law, at least two people into it.
That’s exactly why I’m not looking.
You do not want to use that phrasing in this context. Really. 🙂
Bah, the first link was just a link to a lingerie site. Sometimes context is required to make something awful.
Ah — I meant being “into it.” Somehow mixing that with chest bursting caught my funny bone. Or something 🙂
BTW, Ugol’s law is:
If you ever ask, “Am I the only one who (insert bizarre kink here)?” the answer is invariably “no”.
I personally live by his “Household Rule #2” which is “If you can’t laugh at yourself, somebody else is going to do the job for you, and you’re not going to enjoy it nearly as much.”
Would it be appropriate to see if anyone would be willing to do an alpha read on my ‘An & Mattan’ story? I have links to it on my blog, or I can use Calibre to send something in a different format. I know it’s not anywhere near finished yet. (If not appropriate, you can delete. I won’t be hurt. Much. 😉 )
I liked the romance in Darkship Thieves. But then I like romantic subplots in my SF&F.
Me, too.
Me three.
This is one of the things I like about my writer’s group. I have a pool of 20-30 people who know SF/F, some of whom have been published. Over the years I’ve learned when to take their advice, and when I can ignore it.
Jasini, I’ll take a look. (Grafxmanus at yahoo dot com). Warning: I will look at motivations. If the character is confused about something, I will point it out. Sadly, there are some things that society has smothered in idiotic theory, especially in Europe. For example, “All violence is BAD,” can’t tell the difference between a sheepdog and a wolf, and even “State control is the only way.” Some readers of Sarah’s blog will recognize “message fiction” in these examples. The problem is that “message fiction” _can_ be written, and well, but very rarely is.
Sarah, I have to respectfully disagree on “multiple pages of editorial comments are always bad.” _Many_ years ago, I published/edited a Fanzine. I got one story with good bones, and the rest bad. I sent back pages of notes on needed improvements/look at this/etc. There were inconsistencies, missing info., etc. Sometimes you need (as an author) to hear that. Especially if you’re a new one. IF/when I do a comment on “this seems to be the character’s problem,” I also explain why I see it.
If it’s something like the MC has a problem with women, it may be clear to _me_ it’s “pride/arrogance.” Once the author knows the problem, she/he can then decide if it’s immoveable, or will get better/worse. For lack of a better example, “Immoveable” describes many of the current Dumbocratic Leadership. They have their head so far up their a– that they look out their necks.The Taliban are another example. These types of characters can’t change their viewpoint. They can’t even adapt to changes in circumstances.
I’ll leave with a final example. That abortion of an Sf show, known as “Helix.” My “suspension bridge over the Chasm of disbelief,” broke (actually disintegrated) _4_ times in less than 40 minutes, during the first episode. I refused to watch it after that. I would have sent that back with *pages* of notes on what they did wrong, why, and how to fix it.
My point is that in a villain/proto villain, character flaws are expected. Darth Vader’s flaws were evident at the start, and part of who he was/would become. Had Lucas not recognized that problem/flaw, the whole arc would have fallen apart. Just as Luke had flaws that he had to work through. Sometimes an author may not see how to get from A to D, because they can’t see the basic flaw that has to be worked out by the character.
Just my few thousand electrons worth. 🙂
I don’t know if the goo was grey, but Helix had way too much of it. Literally.
[…] via Fifty Shades Of First Reader. […]
I treasure the memory of one convention writer’s workshop where a critiquer tried to ding me for not using “hypothermia” — but instead a made-up term a barbarian culture might reasonably come up with, given the symptoms. In a scene from the barbarian’s point of view. I was very good! I thanked her for her input–but I’m afraid the other workshoppers got a bit savage 😉
Wha t about the people who insist that characters who speak with an accent (southern, english, pinoy, etc) shouldn’t actually be written with that accent
Me. Because I can’t understand them then, see?
Have to be exceptionally careful that it’s understandable to someone who doesn’t know what that accent sounds like. Or, alternately, be content with readers treating the character(s) like Boomhauer from Family Guy or Chewbacca from Star Wars, picking up what they didn’t understand based on the reactions/responses of the other characters.
I have no idea how to convey the “Mouth full of marbles” sound of a Russian accent in normal letters. I content myself to having said character simply abuse the shit out of the Gerund, not because that is a typical Russian grammar formulation, but because she as a person emanates such an aura of terror that nobody ever dared to correct her English.
I’m always so paranoid when I read writers talking about what a good beta reader does. Especially when I’ve beta’d for them. >____>;
You were fine!
<333
(Woke up sick today, that's the best I can do right now!)
I was going to say “mingle your bugs with mine” but that might be scary?
LOL. Is this where I flutter my eyelashes and blush with a coy look? Hubba hubba.
The older of the two niece-monsters is a troll. She loves getting reactions out of people and she has taken to licking people to get these reactions. The other day, she licked me from jaw to cheek, over the corner of my mouth. My brother let me know, “Oh yeah, she’s been getting everyone sick. Congratulations!” Sure enough… So sinusy that I’m having balance issues while sitting.
Everyone who got sick at the seminar was joking about licking one of the guys (who was sick.) But I didn’t lick nobody!
Now you have reminded me of an incident at junior college. Gaming friend said to someone who was not in our group, “Walk with me, talk with me, share some diseases.”
*shocked silence*