She reads page one and then skips, randomly thirty pages or so forward. The first page tells her about the writing. The skip forward tells her if the writer has buried the interesting stuff deep in the book. (Mine is guilty as charged.) She said that was the number one mistake that new writers make. Too much back story at the front of the book.
The interesting thing to me was that I had added the backstory after feedback from several writer's groups. When I told her that, she rolled her eyes. What she said was, "It sounds like they used plot to fix a problem with character. If the characterization is good, then you don't need backstory to know where the character came from."
She also -gasp- recommended a prologue. I know! That was my reaction too. She said that while it was true that a prologue was often an indication that the story was starting in the wrong place, it could also act as foreshadowing.
And a bit about wordcounts. Use the wordcount in your wordprocessor. All of the formulas we read are apparently only useful for short stories. She judges novels by page length, which is pretty consistent with standard manuscript formatting.
Granted this was only one editor, and we're talking about children's lit. here, but it was still an interesting conversation.
[This message has been edited by GZ (edited October 30, 2004).]
Aside: When you get a chance we'd love to know how things are going with your new career. This week I think I saw a little girl dressed up as a character from your show.
Further aside: I was thinking about you last night while I worked on my costume for a party tonight. I'm going as a marionette from Team America: World Police. My costume is about nine feet tall, counting the clear acrylic tower supposring the elastic strings on my hands and feet. Even though I knew I had to be careful, the first time I tired it on I got completely tangled in the strings. I cursed myself under my breath, and wondered: "How do people like MaryRobinette do it?"
You puppeteers make it look easy. I only had four strings, four strings that didn't even have to work, and I was a hopeless mess. Some puppets have multiple operators with lots of strings and rods and wires . . . how do you keep it all organized?
Anyway, how do we keep strings from getting tangled? Heh. The stories I could tell of badly tangled marionettes in performance. When I was an intern my mentor threw a marionette on the ground and taught me to untangle. The secret is to not panic; panicing just makes the knots get tighter.
I was thinking as I read it that this is one problem with critiquers prescribing solutions to problems that they often don't understand. It is always for more benefitial to me, the writer, to have the critiquer clearly spell out how they felt about something and why they think it bothers them than to prescribe solution. In fact, the latter only works in the presecne of the former. (By that I mean that I have found prescription to be useful but only when the diagnosis is there so we first understand the why and second know if the how works for our story or if something else would work better. Often, readers miss something or read something in a certain way that creates an underlying problem and none of their prescriptions will be accurate from then on out.)
Ok, enough about that. I didn't realize that plot fixes covered up character problems. I'm thinking about that and it may very well be true, although I have seen a lot of cases in which complicated worldbuilding also leads to those plot fixes/backstory. The solution to that, IMO, is also in characterization rather than plot. You need to seemlessly intertwine the world through the POV character's eyes as something real and natural, and not as a contrast to our own world. If the writer just lets us watch the world and figure out for ourselves the uniqueness of it through the character's experience it works much better.
In a world where magic exists, then magic should at least be treated as an everyday thing. In a world where strange beasts live, well, why look twice at an elf unless there was a reason why that elf should not be where he/she was.
We see what the character(s) see, and we feel what they feel. That should be enough to know their world.
Oh, and another good way to learn how to untangle marionettes is to buy one for your four-year-old. Haven't had to clip a string yet!
quote:
If the characterization is good, then you don't need backstory to know where the character came from.
This simple statement says so much so well. Between the speculative fiction stories that I find fun to read and the ones that I find a chore to read, characterization is a significant dividing line. For a couple of years now I have wondered why I didn't like Barnes's Mother of Storms. At first I thought it was the oddball narative style, but the style was a clone of Stephenson's Snow Crash which I enjoyed immensely.
But characterization . . . I think that's the key.
Edit: In case you care, I eventually figured out how to live with the strings, and my terrorist fighting marionette costume won an $85 prize!
[This message has been edited by Doc Brown (edited November 01, 2004).]
Mary,
Thanks for the info; I can think of a few projects where I could apply those concepts. I actually recieved a proper diagnosis of characterization issues, but I think I've probably tried applying a prescription for plot.
Click here for Doc Brown's Geocities page. I usually use this page for another purpose, but if you look in the lower right you will see a link to one picture of me in my Team America costume. Because the costume was nine feet tall the photographer had a difficult time, this is the only picture that really shows the marionette aspect.
[This message has been edited by Doc Brown (edited November 01, 2004).]
I suppose the lesson to learn here is that you don't visit often enough these days. We miss you.
In light of your conversation with that editor, I looked back on my own current project. I can see how I have been through exactly what you have been through. My characterization is dull, and (with the encouragement of various critiquers) I have tried to make up for it with plot and technological window dressing. "This st5rategy makes sense" I tell myself, "because this is a milieu story."
But as I add more and more of this junk my story just gets worse and worse.
Last week I saw an old rerun of Northern Exposure in which Adam Arkin played a super-abrasive yet lovable gourmet chef. If I can made a character as interesting as that, my readers will devour my milieu like Halloween candy. Right now I'm force-feeding my milieu brussel sprouts to a kid.
. Cute![This message has been edited by Robyn_Hood (edited November 01, 2004).]
[This message has been edited by Doc Brown (edited November 01, 2004).]
Great advice that, thanks. Reading about a character and their actions is so much more interesting, and easier to read, than descriptive text on the world.
" It is always for more benefitial to me, the writer, to have the critiquer clearly spell out how they felt about something and why they think it bothers them than to prescribe solution."
I did think that's what I'd do at first when giving feedback; but I think I got caught up with other people's style. I'll make sure I stick with describing how I felt whilst reading for future critiques.
quote:
The secret is to not panic; panicing just makes the knots get tighter.
Although actually, it's panicking, I believe, which is admittedly strange.
[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited November 09, 2004).]