Critiques: Turning Your Plot Upside-Down Since 1485

I want to start out by saying I'm sorry I didn't blog yesterday. I got so many ideas for posts from yesterday alone that I couldn't even decide which topic to address, and I was going to decide at the last minute, but then the last minute came and I laid down in my husband's lap at the early, early hour (for me, anyway) of 11pm and fell soundly asleep in the middle of an extremely exciting episode of Dexter (my new favorite television show). So I've decided to hold off on those genius ideas until next week, or possibly later, because I've been gaining new followers every day and I love that, so now I'll tease you with the promise of more excellent content. 

Now, onto the post: my workshop critique was Monday. I was very nervous. Although I've sent things out to people to read and critique before, it's never happened in real life, where I knew the people beforehand, then had to spend the rest of the week with them afterward.

For the most part, everything went very well in the oral critique. The worst part was that I didn't edit as well as I should have, so I had some tense issues, which caused my teacher, Stewart O'Nan, author of many books to say, "You change tenses so much it makes us want to stab you." Nice.

Once the group got going, they said they generally liked the premise, and no one picked on my writing (out loud, at least, but I'll get to that in a minute). They had some suggestions for plot improvements, one of which I immediately knew I would take, and others that I need to sit on...including one so major that it's literally given me a headache from thinking about it so much. Someone in the group compared the book to Farenheit 451, and I swooned, then realized he was kind of way off base...but it gave me a great idea for a new element to add, and I've been toying with changing that up, as well.

Here's the most frustrating thing that happened, and is a great lesson to you writers out there: I wasn't allowed to talk during the critique, which I thought would be fine. Then they started discussing Kaia's reaction to something that happens, saying they didn't think she would get that emotional because she didn't show emotion over an event that happened in the past. At first I was frustrated. I wanted to scream, "But she DOES show emotion to that other event, stupid!! You just didn't read it right!"

But after they spent three minutes discussing it, I realized something: if nine intelligent people (writers and mostly avid readers) who read the MS twice with the intention of critiquing it hadn't picked up on something, then it wasn't that they hadn't read it right - it was that I hadn't written it well enough. Instantly, I was thankful for the rule that I wasn't allowed to speak, because if I had pointed out the line which mentions it, they would have said, "Oh, OK," and moved on, and I wouldn't have fixed my weak writing.

Tonight, I started looking over the mark-ups and written responses. One of them in particular really stood out to me, because the critiquer literally rewrote a lot of the MS. I'm not talking a suggestion here or there - I mean crossed out half of the page and rewrote it using totally new words and descriptions. Yikes. I always thought that was stepping on the writer's toes a bit. Granted, this particular writer is very good with language. Still, if I think a paragraph or sentence needs work, I'll write something like, "Needs work" or "passive" or "not enough detail." I won't insert detail or rewrite the thing. I do suggest lines occassionally, but I thought this was a lot. Am I wrong to think that? Do most people rewrite a MS they get? (that wasn't my experience with anyone else).

Again, though, I saw a general fondness for my plot, with a few notes on holes (which can easily be patched). Two or three people said I still needed to clean up my writing, and that's fine; I know I'm learning, and that's why I picked this conference. It is great for people who really want to focus on craft. I honestly feel like I can learn to be a better writer, but I can't learn to have a great plot, so I'm very excited about this.

There were a lot of notes on how much they loved my opening, but I'm also thinking I might need to change it based on some other notes I got. I'll still keep the opening line in there, just move it a little later. It's such a great line, and it sets the novel up excellently, but I'm not sure it's perfect anymore. And the opening needs to be perfect.

This whole process was enlightening, though. I'd always heard writers talk about "killing your darlings," but I hadn't yet experienced that. Not that I thought I was so wonderful, but just that I hadn't found anything that I LOVED that I needed to kill. But it's definitely coming now, so I'm starting to get sad. I'll just file it away, though, and remember that it's not dead; it's just sleeping.

I learned, I learn, I will learn: Things got in-tense!

This cartoon has nothing to do with my post, except that I think it's funny given many of my blogging friends' recent posts about their fears that their plot isn't 100% original. Comic from www.inkygirl.com

Before I get started on what I learned today, I have updated stats on how out-of-touch the rest of the literary world is with YA (at least at this conference):

• My MS was critiqued today (I'll be posting all about the experience on Wednesday, after I've thought about it and looked over my comments), and near the end one of the women - who, admittedly, is probably in her 70s or 80s - had to ask what "young adult" meant.
• During lunch, I was talking to someone about how Laura Lippman said we all needed to have a novel that was our "role-model novel" - the novel that we want ours to be. I said I've known for awhile what mine is, and the person I was talking to asked me what. I said The Hunger Games and got a blank stare. Then I mentioned The Handmaid's Tale and everything got better. 
• No comments on my age today, though. Well one, but I sort of said something about it first, and it was a polite mention, not a rude one, or the kind where everyone assumed I was in college.

I am still learning a LOT, though, even if I sometimes feel like not everyone gets me (I do have 1-2 YA writers in my workshop group, though). One of the things we discussed today was the importance of tense.

It all started during my critique, when someone casually mentioned that I seemed to be struggling with my tenses (ugh. I really thought I caught all of them, but apparently not. When I looked back there were so many I was mad at myself.) Stewart O'Nan, who's leading my group, literally said, "You change tenses so much you make us want to stab you." Nice.

But the classmate (who, incidentally, is having a YA novel published in Sweden, where she's from, next year) said something that really got me thinking. Basically she implied that the entire narration, tone, and story of my novel could change depending on the tense.

And she's absolutely right.

I have to admit...and boy is this going to make me sound like an amateur...but when I started writing this book, I picked first-person POV with a past-tense voice because that's what I like to read. I like to get inside character's heads, and I think past-tense sounds more natural somehow. I don't know, it just felt right to me, so I didn't think about it too much. I briefly played with present tense (with the result that every single person who looked at my frist draft commented on my inability to keep to one tense) but ultimately decided past sounded better. That was that.

But my classmate got me thinking: when you choose your tense, what you're really doing is deciding when your narrator is telling the story from. If you use present tense, then the narrator is telling the story as it happens - no problems. But if you choose past tense...well, that opens up a whole can of worms.

Past tense can mean the narrator is telling the story from so many different times - anywhere in the future, really. It can be five minutes from now. It can be at the end of the events of the book. It can be at the end of the events of the book series. Or it can be at the end of the narrator's life.

Now, think about this: if your narrator is telling the story from a time far, far in the future (or even after the book happens) that means they already know everything that takes place in the book. And although that doesn't mean they need to react any differently, that does mean certain things might stand out that wouldn't have if a story was narrated as it happened.

Let's consider this example: a girl and a boy go to the store, and on the way to the store they got mugged. The girl dies. If the boy narrates the story from the present tense, he might emphasize what seems important about the trip to the store, because he's living in the moment. So he might talk more about the fact that they're out of eggs and he's annoyed with the girl for not telling him before they wanted to bake a cake, etc. But, if he narrates using past tense, he already knows that she's going to die. Instead of being annoyed with her, he might point out some good things, too, (of course he still wants to show his annoyance, since that was part of the initial experience) or he might point out how the girl had her money hanging out of her back pocket, making her an easy target.

Maybe that's not a great example, but you get what I'm saying: the tense that you choose has a lot more to do with what sounds good. You also need to think about when the narrator is telling the story from. No matter what tense you choose, make sure you can answer these questions:

• When does the story take place relative to when the narrator is explaining things?
• If the narration is far in the future, do you want to play with omniscience? Just because the narrator knows all doesn't mean he or she has to tell the reader. 
• If you write in the future tense, you are probably writing something crazy, and I might want to read it. Unless it's crazy. 
  

So that's the explosion my mind has been going through today (along with a few more).  Am I the only person on the planet that didn't understand how important choosing your tense was? I'm not changing it; I like working with the past tense. But I do need to decide how far ahead she's telling from, and what she already knows, just to give context to what she's telling readers.

There were a few other things I learned, just little tidbits which don't fit in with this overall "tense" theme. They include:

• Don't describe your character's clothes just because; everything needs to have context.
• Example: Don't say "The 40-year-old was wearing jeans and a shirt from Hot Topic." have one character say to the 40-year old, "Aren't you a little old for that shirt? What are you, going to a rave?"
  
• Don't write for people with ADD, but always keep the story moving forward. It doesn't have to move forward like a bullet, it can move slowly, as long as it moves. 
• A scene ends when a character gets or does not get what they want or need. The novel ends when the character gets or does not get their super objective. (Dennis Lehane loves the ending of the movie Sex, Lies, and Videotape because it ends exactly where it should.)
  
• Finally, the quote of the day, "The best thing that can ever happen to writers are the accidents. Don't ever walk away from a character that speaks to you." - Dennis Lehane
  

On beginnings

Edit: I realized after I wrote this that this post is not at all witty, like I normally strive to be. Sorry. I literally got three hours of sleep last night. I'll try harder tomorrow. (Which shouldn't be hard, since I'm getting workshopped tomorrow!) But there is a LOT of great info here, so don't let the lack of my normal charming sense of humor deter you. ;)

Today's morning workshop was all about beginnings.

Gone are the days of the 19th century manuscript, where authors could spend page after page after endless page setting up scenes, themes, and motifs. The sad truth is, no matter how amazing the rest of your book is, the first 250 words better be the best writing in the entire thing, otherwise agents, editors, and eventually the general reading public will never get past the first page. Anita Shreve admitted that there is way too much emphasis on the beginning, but it's true; if your novel doesn't grab the reader right away, it will be auto-rejected, tossed to the side, or put back in the stacks. Worst of all, busy agents and editors are searching for reasons to turn your novel down; knowing they can put your book aside means they can easily move on to the next manuscript.

So what makes up a good beginning? The most important thing is arresting, beautiful writing. Anita Shreve admitted that wasn't particularly helpful, because it's mostly a gut-feeling kind of thing. She looks for the kind of beginning that leaves her with a shiver in a chest. She did read two examples of her favorite beginnings, one of which I've included below:

Mum says, "Don't come creeping into our room at night."
They sleep with loaded guns beside them on the bedside rugs. She says, "Don't startle us when we're sleeping."
"Why not?"
"We might shoot you."
"Oh."
"By mistake."
"Okay." As it is, there seems a good enough chance of getting shot on purpose. "Okay, I won't."
So if I wake in the night and need Mum and Dad, I call Vanessa, because she isn't armed. "Van! Van, hey!" I hiss across the room until she wakes up. And then Van has to light a candle and escort me to the loo, where I pee sleepily into the flickering yellow light and Van keeps the candle high, looking for snakes and scorpions and baboon spiders.

From Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller. There is a mistake, though, because you can't hiss the words "Van, Van, hey!" since there aren't any S's, but it took Anita Shreve five reads to notice.

 

There are several different ways to start a novel, including dialogue (which, incidentally, Dennis Lehane hates, because he likes to immediately know what's going on, but Anita Shreve is OK with it as long as she finds out soon enough what's happening), the telling of a tale, setting description, what the character is doing (AS's favorite), or a description of the relationship between the characters.

More importantly, though, are the ways not to start a novel. They include:

• Descriptions of the sky or weather, because it happens so often it's now an auto-rejection (Hilariously, when she was saying this, she actually said "awful" instead of "often" the first time)
• Waking up/dreaming, because it's a cliche, and with dreams there's a sense that you're cheating the reader because they're investing their time in something that isn't real
• Letters (AS's editor said he always skips over dreams and letters in books)
• A woman driving in the car with the wind blowing in her hair
  
• They were 50-50 split on whether or not prologues were OK

Then we played a game called "Writer Idol." Dennis Lehane, Anita Shreve, and Tom Franklin sat at the front of the room American-Idol style. An actress read the first 250 words of anonymously submitted openings, and if any of them heard something that would make them stop reading, they would raise their hands. If two hands went up, the reading stopped. These are the things that made them raise their hands:

• A bullet in the shoulder on the first line (arresting doesn't mean startling, it means well-written); it was too jarring and the author was coming in too hard. (Lehane said he doesn't like the beginning of Lethal Weapon 2 because it opens in the middle of a car chase with no context)
  
• "My own personal opinion," because it's a sign of weak writing since it's redundant times three (obviously your opinion is your own and it's personal)
• overwriting
• confusion; when they didn't understand what was going on
• sky/weather (one piece mentioned it three times in 250 words)
• waking up
• "shards of pain broke through his thoughts" (this phrase, on its own, was enough to get a work rejected since it has cliches and signs of weak writing)
• lack of character or action
• unspecific - the character had a thought but wouldn't tell us what it was. He was being needlessly coy.
• Adverb overkill (the example was touching a pet - the author wrote "lovingly brushing his fur." Lehane said if someone brushes the fur non-lovingly, then he'll take the modifier, because it's not expected) Use adverbs the way you use salt.
• Cliches
• Unrelated, today's tally on number of comments on my age: 2.5. (One was in reference to the amount of YA I read, which I said I do because I love it, but also because I want to keep up my genre, and she said, "Plus you're in that age group anyway." *headdesk*)
  

Finally, two quotes I love (though there were several - follow me on Twitter for tweets throughout the day!)

"Read your first ten pages and find your most arresting sentence. Make that your first line." - Anita Shreve

"Any rule I give you, some writer, somewhere, has broken it beautifully." - Tom Franklin

As Anita Shreve Once Said to Me...

Today was the first day of my conference!! Sort of.

It was the first official day, but really all that was on the calendar was registering, a campus tour, and Anita Shreve's reading/signing (plus a welcome reception). But since I was way too excited for my own good, I went down to St. Pete and checked in at 3:15 - a solid 45 minutes before the campus tour began. Unfortunately, there were some clouds in the sky, and a little bit of ominous thunder, so the conference coordinator said the tour may or may not be canceled.

I decided to kill the time between the present (3:18) and the tour by wandering down to Haslam's bookstore, which I had Googled in anticipation of needing a way to entertain myself.

And...wow. This was seriously the coolest bookstore I have ever been in! They had a mix of used books and new books, and it was GIGANTIC. It was arranged a little haphazardly, but since my life is arranged that way as well I totally appreciated it. I walked out with two used books and one new for less than $20. Needless to say, I will be back.

Unfortunately, I missed the campus tour, which I found out later wasn't canceled. So I wandered aimlessly in my car for 30 minutes, almost got in an accident, then ate dinner at an Italian place where I was easily the youngest person by 60 years.

Finally, I made it back to campus, where Anita Shreve's reading was about to begin. Dennis Lehane introduced her and, as it turns out, he's absolutely effing hilarious! I can't wait for his reading on Saturday because I LOLed so much tonight! He's also seriously down to earth. After her reading (and the signing, where I risked a side-eye from Ms. Shreve to say "Please don't put my name on this book, I'm giving it away on my blog" (soon, soon! Calm yourself!)), we had a welcome reception, where I got to know a few of my fellow writers, as well as Laura Lippman, one of the faculty members, and the kind of writer who makes you a fan just by having an awesome personality.

Here are some highlights from the evening:

• Watching Anita Shreve (AS from here out) do her reading and seeing the rapt faces in the audience I knew - I want that.
• AS made me feel like I should write about things that matter. (She talked a lot about her time in Africa, since her new book takes place in Kenya.)
  
• AS lived in Kenya for three years in the late 70s, and always wanted to write a book that took place there. But she was afraid of it turning into a book about herself, so she had to wait long enough before she could remove herself enough that she wouldn't be writing about herself.
• Both Dennis Lehane (DL) and AS hate the question "Where do you get your ideas?" and they think all writers hate it. DL said, "We give these long, complicated answers, but the truth is, 'my ass.'"
• AS: "After 15 novels, you'd think I would have learned something, but I haven't. With each novel, it's like I've never written one before. The pleasure of writing is in changing the form, changing the voice, and that's why you never learn anything." 
• AS has a broad-strokes outline, with the three (or so) main events, and she knows how it's going to end, but that's all she goes in with. It also changes as she writes. 
• AS rewrites so much that she printed it all out for her son's class and the stack was well above her head (and she's taller than me, I think, and I'm 5'5")
• DL: "You think people confuse giving birth with raising the child? 'Well, I wrote the draft!' Yeah, but you didn't raise the thing!"
• AS: "I can always tell the point in the book when the writer got bored." (There was an audible sigh/groan in the room when she said this.)
• To follow up, DL asked, "Have you ever fallen asleep writing?" AS: "No!!!!" DL: "I have. And that's how I knew I shouldn't write that scene."
• AS and DL both talked about how authors always want to write the opposite genre, but editors either tell them no (AS) or say a sarcastic OK, knowing they'll lose interest or it won't work out (DL)
• Fun fact: AS is married to a man she met when she was 13 at summer camp. Years later, he saw her picture in a NYT ad and wrote her a letter. They had an old-fashioned correspondence, then they met and got married. (This has influenced her work.)
• When AS is writing a book, no one knows what she's writing about - not even her editor or her husband. She thinks it's like letting the fizz out of the champagne bottle. 
• AS thinks this time is the toughest it's ever been for new authors trying to break in. But for short story writers, e-books might be a place for them to find publication. (She sees eventual potential for new authors there, too.) She thinks e-publishing will change everything and will make writing more accesible to everyone.
  
• Laura Lippman: "You can't take good reviews seriously because then you have to take bad reviews seriously, as well."
• Now, a funny story: A participant (who's not in my workshop, so she didn't read my MS) asked what my novel was about. I told her. Before I could finish, she interrupted twice and said, "Oh, that's just like ________ !!!" (Exactly what every writer wants to hear.) She did have a little smirk. Once I finished explaining, though, she said she liked the idea. Then I asked what hers was about. She wouldn't tell me, and said she thought like AS, that every time she talked about her story it was like letting the fizz out. Uh...1. You asked what mine was about, how did you not think I was going to ask back? 2. This is the piece you're workshopping. You could at least tell me about the first 25 pages (which is what I focused my description on....plus we all turned in summaries anyway.)
• I only met one person who's in my workshop. He looked at my name tag, then said, "Oh, you're the reporter." Me: "How did you know??" Him: "...." Me: (figures he Googled the whole class) Him: "I looked up some local restaurant reviews and saw your name in a byline." Me: (Decides to play nice.) "Cool." Him: "Sorry, I marked your pages up a lot." Me: "It's OK! I'm here to learn, so the more you mark, the better." Him: "But I did say at the end that I thought it was like a Stephen King fossil - it needs work, but it could be a great story." (And I think that's AWESOME. I can make/am making it better, so I feel great about that.)
• Number of jokes/questions about my age: 3.
• Number of times I was told being a journalist first is awesome: 5.
  

And finally, I leave you with this exchange between DL and AS:

DL: "There are a lot of aspiring writers here tonight, and I'm sure they'd all like to say at a party some day on their blog tonight, 'As Anita Shreve once said to me...' So, what advice do you have?"

AS: "Don't give up. The road is long and the obstacles are huge, but if you really think you've got it don't give up. There were many times I could have given up ... I wrote my first novel at 43 ... Don't get discouraged because it's tough in the beginning."

Now would be a good time to follow me.

I know your type. You stop by here every once in awhile. Maybe you follow the link from my Facebook or Twitter profile, or you click on my name when I comment on someone else's blog, only to find yourself facing that impossibly cool (if slightly out of focus...the jpg conversion didn't go well) Wordle header. You're a regular visitor, but not yet a follower, and I have to tell you...now would be a good time to scoot your mouse over the the right and click that little rectangle, my friend. 

Starting tomorrow, I'm headed down to St. Pete (a whopping 30 minute drive) for a whole week of workshops, lectures on craft, talks on how to get an agent or get published in a literary magazine, and more. And I'm going to share everything with you, which means I'll be laying all kinds of knowledge on your minds. (I'm more than happy/excited to do this. We get a two-hour break every day between dinner and the evening reading series, and there's no way I'm going to come all the way home and go back again, so I'll spend the time posting a blog update then reading, when I'm not spending time with my super cool new writer friends.)

Better still, at the end of the week (more like the beginning of next week, I guess, since the conference goes from Saturday to Saturday) I'll be giving away some signed books!! And in order to win, you're going to need to be a follower. So you might as well just get it over with now and clicky click on that little button over there. I know it's calling your name.

Still not convinced? Here's a schedule of events/preview of posts for next week (there are workshops every afternoon, so I didn't list those, and various social events thrown in, only one of which I listed because, well, it's a BOAT CRUISE):


Saturday: Registration, campus tour, Anita Shreve reading

Sunday: Anita Shreve's Lecture on Craft (Beginnings), Stewart O'Nan & Sterling Watson reading

Monday: Roundtable discussions (I don't know the topics yet, sorry!) and the day my MS gets critiqued in workshop session. CUE HEATHER'S FREAK-OUT. Ann Hood and Beth Ann Fennelly reading.

Tuesday: Dennis Lehane's Lecture on Craft, evening boatcruise, Tom Franklin & Peter Meinke reading

Wednesday: conference free day! (I might post Tuesday's entry today, since that day is pretty full, or I might use Wednesday's post to divulge everything everyone wrote on my MS pages)

Thursday: Dennis Duhamel's Lecture on Craft, Sherri Reynolds' Lecture on Craft, Dennis Duhamel & Sherri Reynolds' reading

Friday: Panel on editing and publishing, Michael Koryta and Laura Lippman readings


Saturday: Literary Magazines and University Presses, Finding an Agent, Dennis Lehane's evening reading

So if any of those topics sound interesting to you, or you'd want to hear what any of those authors have to say, then follow me now, and pay attention all week, because I will be taking notes and posting them here.

Until tomorrow...woot!

My editing process

I'm going to talk about my editing process today (since it has been consuming my life lately...although last night I took a break to read some other people's MSes and watch Secret Window, which I've had from Netflix for a month. Somehow, Johnny Depp is hot even when he's crazy.) But before I do that, I'm going to talk all about the shiny new award I got!!

Apparently, I make Shannon at Book Dreaming happy! (Which is great, because she makes me happy, too! She leaves comments and has a fun blog, and that little caterpillar is oh-so-cute!) In order to accept the award, I need to list 10 things that make me happy, then 10 blogs that make me happy.

So...10 things that make me happy:

1. My husband (most of the time)
2. My friends
3. My dogs
4. Chocolate
5. Wine
6. Reading
7. Writing
8. Snuggling
9. When people leave comments on my blog
10. Napping in the middle of the day

And now, 10 blogs that make me happy! If you're on the list, please feel free to post this on your blog, or not. I just picked some blogs that made me happy, mostly hoping to help more people to visit them and get happy, too. (Some of the blogs I know won't "pass it on," and that's OK. I'm just trying to spread the word about blogs I <3.)

1. The Babbling Flow of a Fledgling Scribbler
   
2. The First Novels Club
   
3. Carol's Prints
   
4. The Writer's Hollow
   
5. Reading is Sexy
   
6. Kimberly Franklin
   
7. And Anything Bookish
   
8. The Character Therapist
   
9. The One-Minute Writer
   
10. Bookie Woogie (how could this one NOT make me happy)

OK, now with that housekeeping out of the way...on to the post!

I enjoy reading about other people's editing process. It's fun to get a glimpse into other writers' lives, and I've definitely changed some of my ways thanks to what I've read. Because other people have helped me so much, I'm going to pretend that you all care about my process, too, even though I'm unpublished (hey, minus the character/plot stuff, this is more or less how I edit my journalism stuff, and I've had hundreds of those published! Right?)

After finishing the first draft of my manuscript, I took about a week off just to get away from the manuscript. During that time, I thought about it, and even created character boards. Since then, I've been diligently (for the most part) working on round 1 of my edits. So what does round 1 involve? *Cue boxing-match girl with sign* (I Googled a picture, but everything I found was way too inappropriate for this blog.)

During round 1, I re-read the entire manuscript from the beginning. I edit here and there, and anything I know I want to change (like major revelations that occurred to me during my week off, or plot points that I knew just weren't right while I was writing but I wanted to get through them to the next part) gets changed. I pay attention to grammar, but not like it's the end of the world - I have a hard time ignoring grammar issues (thank you, career in magazine editing), but I'm also not going to spend my time agonizing over how to eliminate that passive voice or kick that adverb to the curb when the whole passage might ultimately get canned, anyway. Mostly this process is just about figuring out where my strengths and weaknesses are, and re-connecting with my manuscript all at once (instead of over the months it took to write the first draft.)

For round 2, I focus on the plot. Is everything consistent? Where are the holes? Are there enough turns and suspenseful things going on? Do I keep the reader engaged? Am I ending every chapter on a note that makes people think, "OMG I HAVE TO KEEP READING!!! OK FINE, ONE MORE CHAPTER!" until before they know it they're done with the book? Are there subplots that are interesting and important but don't take away from the main plot? I choose to look at plot first, then character, because I don't want to change the character's reaction to a plot point that might not even exist later.

During round 3, I go through and look at character. Is every character meaningful? (I can already think of one character that is probably going to be cut as unimportant.) Do all the characters react appropriately to situations? Do they all have internal and external conflicts? Do the good guys have some bad qualities, and the bad guys have at least one redeeming quality? Do their motivations make sense? Do they have trademark phrases/actions, and do they keep up with them throughout the course of the novel? Do I care about the main character (more importantly, will readers care?)

Finally, I take a last careful look at the whole thing and do line edits. I cut all the words I don't want to use - eliminate extraneous "that"s, get rid of adverbs, put a check on my flowery writing, do my darnedest to cut out the passive voice (which is sometimes SO hard because I'm writing in the past tense, but sometimes passive is correct...just not usually).

After all that, I'll send it to a few crit partners and beta readers, apply their input, then hopefully send it to some more partners and gamma readers, then do a final edit before querying!

And that's my process. Sound impossibly long? It is. And it's exhausting to write it out and think about it. But it's working for me so far, and I love feeling close to my novel and really getting my hands dirty. If you want to try editing your novel in one pass, read this. It's an interesting idea, and I might try it sometime, but for now I like my way-too-complicated method...because I'm a complicated girl.

Does this sound like how you edit? Or do you have a simpler method?

What is Hollywood doing to our books?

This weekend, I went to see the movie adaptation of my favorite novel of all time.  (I've mentioned it a few times, but it's Youth in Revolt by C.D. Payne. And yes, it does pain me to no end that you can no longer get a copy of the book that isn't a movie tie-in edition, as my old copy is 100% falling apart and held together with tape. My best friend bought me a new copy so I would have a "Heather Loaner" to give out to people in addition to my "Heather Original," but she said all she could find was the one with Michael Cera's face on it. I love Michael Cera, but, as you're about to find out, I hate movie tie-in editions.)

It was a FAIL. Big time.

They totally changed the ending, a lot of the plot, cut out key characters, and prevented other characters the opportunity to be developed into the hilarious comic relief they are. I'm not going to get into it further (I could go all night), but suffice it to say I was very disappointed in what Hollywood did with the book.

And unfortunately, this isn't the first time that I've been thoroughly disappointed by the movie version of a beloved novel. Parts of the Harry Potter series (particularly the ending of the Half-Blood Prince movie) were just awful. The Golden Compass was a phenomenal book - too bad they totally ruined it with that joke of a movie. Part of what makes Jodi Picoult books powerful are her twist endings, but that all changed with the ending to My Sister's Keeper, the movie. And Stuart Little? I'm sorry, but I don't remember Stuart looking like this...or driving a convertible...or wearing Converse:

What upsets me the most about all this, though, isn't that creative liberties are taken. I even understand that. When you're working with a novel that's 400 pages or more, and you have to get it down to two hours, some side plots and minor characters have to go. But what I don't understand is when the entire ending of the original work is changed, or when the plot is so distorted that it barely resembles the original work in the first place. It just breaks my heart that kids think Stuart was a skateboard-riding, meatloaf eating mouse, or that Matilda's powers were actually magic and didn't just come about because she was smart but not being challenged.

Maybe these movies, changed plots or not, are getting people to pick up the books. Maybe they're not. But if a writer/director/producer/film studio sees enough merit in a book to adapt it to the screen, shouldn't they want to leave the major plot points alone? It truly makes me worry for the future movies for books I love (don't get me started on the trailer for The Lightning Thief). What's going to happen to Katniss and Panem when The Hunger Games is adapted? I have high hopes for that one with Suzanne Collins at the script-writing helm, but who knows.


I will admit that one of my favorite movies ever, The Notebook, was way better as a movie than as a book. There was more character development, and I liked the ending a lot better. So I guess Hollywood gets it right sometimes.


Oh, and a note on movie tie-in editions, because I said I would mention them, and then the post went in another direction (aka it became me ranting for several paragraphs). I don't really like them. I understand that it's all marketing, and I suppose it's smart. But when it's time for my amazing novel to be adapted to the big-screen, I hope that I can go the way of J.K. Rowling and say that I want to keep the books and movies separate. (Because, for all my ranting, I will absolutely not turn down a good movie deal. I could see my novel! IN THEATERS!!! And maybe even meet Johnny Depp or George Clooney...which reminds me, I need to write some devastatingly handsome middle-aged men into my MS.)


What do you think about film adaptations of novels? Does it bother you as much as it bothers me when they deviate from the original plot, or do I just need to shut the heck up? What's the best one you've seen? The worst? Any you're looking forward to? Will you let your film be adapted, when the time comes? And when the heck is it going to warm up in my house, anyway???