Writers in the Storm

Holly Robinson

I am no fan of Halloween. Maybe that's because, as a young child, I started having waking nightmares about a cloaked figure with a pumpkin head that would regularly appear and sit in a rocking chair beside my bed. He never said anything. Just rocked and rocked, until I screamed for my mother.

This guy followed us to every house we lived in—a lot of houses, since my dad was in the Navy and we moved every couple of years. Who knows why that strange figure was my chosen metaphor for fear? I had never read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and there weren't a lot of scary movies on TV back then. Yet, there he was, my own bedtime monster, the product of an overactive imagination.

For years, I was an insomniac. As soon as the lights were turned off, I'd lie on my back and stare at the ceiling, afraid of turning over because I was so certain I would see, if not Mr. Pumpkinhead, a face peering at me through the window or at the side of the bed.

I'm still afraid of the dark. If my husband's out of town, you can bet I keep a light burning. And, if I'm dumb enough to visit a haunted house attraction with my kids, like that Ripley's Haunted Adventure in Myrtle Beach where they have an actual clown chasing visitors with a chain saw, it might be weeks before I get a good night's rest.

Still, none of this compares to a writer's fears. Whether you're aspiring to finish your first book, a debut author, or an old workhorse like me (my sixth novel, Folly Cove, was just published), I bet you suffer from the same night terrors I do—fears that may drive you to quit, as Orly suggested in her recent post.

Here are my top five fears. What are yours?

1. You'll never finish this book.

Many of us get about two-thirds of the way through a manuscript and despair about it ever coming together. And guess what? Sometimes it doesn't.

2. Who'd ever want to read anything you write?

There is always a black place in your mind where a little gremlin is whispering, “You're not good enough for anyone to want to read your writing. Give up!”

3. Nobody reads anymore!

Let's say you get lucky. You get an agent, an editor, and a publisher. Or you self-publish. Congratulations—but you're still not free of those night terrors. As you listen to friends discussing the many TV shows they watch, you can't help but ask, Hello? Is anyone even reading anymore, in these glory days of Netflix and Amazon TV binges?

4. My book won't get reviewed.

How many print magazines and newspapers do you actually subscribe to at your house? How many of those carry book reviews? And what happens to books that are never reviewed? Enough said.

5. The reviewers will hate it.

Oh, the trolls, the trolls. You know they're out there, waiting to descend in hordes to punch in their single-star reviews. Why should you escape their blood lust?

So, Happy Halloween, my fellow writers! It's time to stock up candy—you're going to need it to get you through the night—and your manuscript! If it's any consolation, keeping the lights on at night is a great way to get more words on the page and keep the monsters at bay...for a little while.

Your turn. What are your top 5 writing night terrors?

 

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About Holly

Novelist, journalist and celebrity ghost writer Holly Robinson is the author of several books, including The Gerbil farmer's Daughter: A Memoir and the novels The Wishing Hill, Beach Plum Island, Haven Lake, and Chance Harbor. Her newest novel is Folly Cove, available in October 2016. Holly's articles and essays appear frequently in publications such as Cognoscenti, The Huffington Post, Parents, Redbook and dozens of other newspapers and magazines.

She and her husband have five children and a stubborn Pekingese. They divide their time between Massachusetts and Prince Edward Island, and are crazy enough to be fixing up old houses one shingle at a time in both places. Visit her at www.authorhollyrobinson.com and on Twitter @hollyrob1.

Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Readers experience your novel through the eyes of your narrator. Sometimes this narrative filter is invisible and readers don’t perceive any distance between them and the point-of-view character, such as with a first-person point of view. Other times the filters are obvious and readers feel the space between them and the characters, such as with an omniscient narrator.

A point-of-view character by definition is relaying everything she sees, hears, feels, touches, smells, thinks—she’s already filtering for you; it’s just a matter of how obvious that filter is.

If a tree is described, readers know she saw a tree. Saying, “She looked at the tree” and then describing it is redundant at best, clunky and telling at worst. The filter words create a layer between the character and the reader you might not want.

Filter words are words that distance readers from the point-of-view character, and you often find them in prose using far narrative distance. These words can make the text feel detached. Filter words also remind readers they’re reading, explain things that are obvious, and often lead a writer into telling or crafting passive sentences.

Common filter words include: saw, heard, felt, knew, watched, decided, noticed, realized, wondered, thought, looked.

Filtering is one way writers control the narrative distance. How much of the point-of-view character’s experience is filtered can make the prose feel personal or detached. Using a large number of filter words can turn a shown scene into a told scene in no time at all.

The more filter words used, the higher the likelihood of the prose sounding told.

Let’s look at some examples:

• Bob could see three zombies shambling toward him.
• Sally knew she had to get out of there.
• I could feel the hard metal of the knife against my back.
• Jane heard a scream from the hotel bathroom.

Each of these examples has a filter word in it, explaining what should be obvious by the rest of the text. If Bob mentions shambling zombies, clearly he saw (or heard) them. Odds are some other details in the scene will have suggested that Sally had to leave. Describing the knife as hard against your back can only be done if you can feel it. The one filter word that lives in a gray area here is the word “heard.” Unlike the others, “heard” doesn’t jump out and feel redundant, though it’s still filtering the sound of the scream through Jane’s ears.

Look at these same sentences without those filter words:

• Three zombies shambled toward Bob.
• Sally had to get out of there. Or better: She had to get out of there. (Using the pronoun makes it more personal, and more like an internal thought)
• Hard metal pressed against my back.
• A scream echoed from the hotel bathroom.

Nothing is lost, and now these sentences feel more active and in the moment. They have a sense of immediacy that eliminates that told feeling.

Some filter words are borderline tells that depend heavily on use, such as the wondered, realized, decided, noticed, type.

• Bob realized he’d have to make a run for it.
• Jane wondered if they’d make it out of there alive.
• Sally decided they’d just have to jump and see what happened.
• I noticed the car was missing.

These summarize the thinking and decision-making processes. You don’t get to see Bob realize running is his only option; you’re told he does. The author tells you what Jane is wondering; you don’t get to see her wonder in her own voice with her own concerns. Sally’s decision reads more like an afterthought than someone making a hard choice. If you suddenly noticed your car was missing, your reaction is probably going to be stronger than realizing you “noticed something.” The importance in this example is on the noticing, not the missing car.

Eliminate the filter words and you get:

• He’d have to make a run for it.
• Would they make it out of there alive?
• They’d just have to jump and see what happened.
• Wait—where was her car?

Without the filter words, the focus is on what is thought and decided.

However, sometimes you want that filter word if it’s important to draw attention to the act (the feeling, hearing, watching, realizing), or it sounds more dramatic with that filter—this works well for chapter or scene enders. You might also want more filters if you’re doing a far narrative distance or an omniscient narrator and want to create a detached, observer tone.

For example:

• Bob watched the perimeter, eyes and ears alert for zombies.
• Jane closed her eyes and wondered if any of them would survive until dawn.
• I hoped for the best. Once in a while it worked out, right?

How much filtering you choose depends on which point of view you use and what narrative distance you’re pairing it with. An omniscient point of view with multiple point-of-view characters will likely have a lot more filtering as the narration floats from person to person. A tight point of view will typically have fewer filter words as everything is shown through the eyes of the point-of-view character.

Basically, ask yourself: Do you want to show more, or tell more? Then adjust your narrative distance and filter words accordingly.

For more on filter words, check out this earlier WITS guest post of mine on eliminating filter words for a tighter point of view.

How often do you use filter words? Do you have a preference?

Check out my new book, Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting it), and learn what show, don't tell means, how to spot told prose in your writing, and why common advice on how to fix it doesn't always work. Also, please enter the Rafflecopter giveaway (look down below my bio).

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About Janice

Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of The Healing Wars trilogy and the Foundations of Fiction series, including Planning Your Novel: Ideas and Structure, a self-guided workshop for planning or revising a novel, the companion Planning Your Novel Workbook, and Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft.  She's also the founder of the writing site, Fiction University. For more advice and helpful writing tips, visit her at www.fiction-university.com or @Janice_Hardy.

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*Excerpted from Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It)

Sierra Godfrey

I am a reader. Yes, I read books, but I mean an agent’s reader. I read requested manuscripts. I read your requested manuscript.

Readers are one of the secrets of the industry—most agents utilize them as there are simply too many manuscripts and not enough pairs of eyes. Some agents use one or two, some use eight or ten. For me, it was a fantastic opportunity to learn about both sides of the business.

Here’s how it works: when you get a material request from an agent, that manuscript is read by several different people, including the agent. The overall consensus helps the agent decide whether to keep reading—and get to that no or yes quicker.

Being an agent’s reader has been illuminating, and I’ve learned several things already. But before I tell you what those things are, there’s something you need to know: just because we readers have thoughts on what isn't working doesn't mean that you'll get a specific rejection naming what those things(s) are.

So here is what that rejection-speak could mean:

1. You should have started your story at chapter 4.

This is the problem I see most often. The action in the first few chapters is slow, and I’m talking a slug-who’s-taken-Xanax-slow. But by chapter four, bang! The action really starts.

I know. I know. You need to set up your story, and you need those first four chapters! You also need to take some the energy that often resides in chapter 4 and pull it into the first chapter to create and build that tension right from the get-go.

Try this: take a moment to think over your first four chapters. Can you identify the break—where things really pick up? As an experiment, can you delete the material up until that point? Now, do you feel the difference in energy? If your characters can think back to earlier that day when things were calmer (and boring), and work that into the action, would that still be the same story?

2. You whispered.

There are many beautiful and wonderful manuscripts out there. But the ones that really stand out are the ones with a terrific sense of voice. Those make you stand up and notice. You know this already, because you’ve been told a thousand times.

But what I am telling you is that agents see so many manuscripts that it’s mind-boggling, and the ones that stand out are the ones with a great voice. Does your story come alive right from sentence one? I don’t mean your work has to be stylized or contain a southern accent. But there should be a sense of atmosphere, tension, and personality.

If you struggle with this idea (and believe me, I know), then just remember that if you whisper, your work won’t get heard over the reams of other manuscripts in an agent’s inbox.

Try this: Rewrite a chapter in another point of view. If you wrote in third person, write in first person. If you wrote in first person, write in a stream of consciousness, as though your character was sitting across from you in a café and telling you his or her story as a friend. Does that change anything?

3. You didn’t cover all your story bases.

Your prose is great; your mechanics are all there. But something’s missing. Plot! Structure! Everything hinges on it. Your characters will fall flat if there’s no underlying structure to carry them along. Be sure that your opening chapters aren’t just snapshots of your characters la-dee-dahing. There should be an underlying sense of SOMETHING that is ABOUT TO HAPPEN that will SHAKE YOUR CHARACTER’S WORLD. (Often, that something occurs in your chapter four. See above.)

Likewise, if you have structure and your writing isn’t clean, it will still fall flat. And so on.

What I see as I read is that everything ties together, and if you’re missing just one of those elements, your manuscript could earn a rejection. Readers and agents will sense there’s something missing, but they won’t be able to tell you what it is.

Try this: Match up your plot to the Save the Cat story beats, invented by Blake Snyder. There are actually a bunch of story structure formulas out there, but Save the Cat is simple (there are 15 total beats in a story) and clear. You can check those out on www.savethecat.com or get his book. I’ve also created a beat worksheet that you can download here.

If that’s too rigid for you, then how about breaking down your story into acts: Act 1 (the set up), Act 2A, Midpoint, Act 2b, and Act 3 (the finale). Are there clear acts in your story? Is there a sense of a clear break between acts?

Finally, a last word on submissions

The three problems above are the most frequent ones I see. But readers and agents really, truly are looking for a great read. Really! We want to read something wonderful and we’re pulling for you. If your query made it to the request phase, then you’re doing something right. I’m genuinely bummed when a manuscript doesn’t work for me, because I know the writer put in his or her blood, sweat, and tears into it. I know how hard writers book, because I am one, too.

Agents know that, too.  So we’re all pulling for you. Writing is hard. Story-telling is hard! You are valued, and your work is appreciated, whether it ends up getting you signed or not. That’s something that I finally got to see and understand as a reader, and I’m grateful.

What is the best or worst rejection you ever received? Do you have any tips to add to mine?

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About Sierra

Sierra Godfrey writes fiction with international settings and always a mention of football (soccer) or two. She is a member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association and a quarterly contributor to Writers in the Storm. She writes weekly about Spanish football for various sports sites, and is also a freelance graphic designer. She lives in the foggy wastelands of the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.

Come visit her at www.sierragodfrey.com or talk with her on Twitter @sierragodfrey.