Writers in the Storm

By Jenny Hansen

From our earliest moments, most writers are avid readers. We devour books – for story, for Craft, for new worlds and new ideas.

We have To Be Read piles (TBR for short) that are taller than small children. Our favorite authors and characters become our friends.

I don’t know if we become students of the written word because we love to read or if we read because we were born to love the written word. All that chicken and egg Zen is well beyond me.

I just flat out love books and every writer I know does too. You might even describe us as “obsessed with the printed word.” It takes a lot of love to go through what we must do to yank our stories from our hearts onto the page.

If you are a writer, there are things that I know about you that I don’t know about the other readers I meet:

1. I know you read odd things in odd places.
If you are stuck somewhere without a book, you will begin reading any words available – shampoo bottles, food labels, billboard signs. Whatever. Books and magazines are preferred, but in a pinch, any words will smooth your soul.

2. You read by flashlight in bed at night when you were a child.
When your person-in-charge confiscated it, you waited 5 minutes before pulling the back-up light from its crafty hidey-hole. If they were on to you and confiscated the back-up, you tilted the pages to try to read by the light from the hall.

3. When a book touches you, it is a safe bet that you will not only remember the details of that story, characters, etc…you will also remember where you were the first time you read it and what you were doing that day.

4. I am certain that if you named 10 best friends from the various periods of your life (and were being honest), at least half of them would be book characters, authors or titles.

5. You have different books for different moods. These are your go-to books when you’re in the grip of overwhelming emotion. You keep reading through that stash of books until the feeling gets a little more manageable.

6. Piles of free books by your most cherished authors gives you that same zing of attraction that you felt the first time you saw your true love.

7. When you go to a writing conference or a book event attended by your favorite author(s), your tongue gets tied in knots and the idea of speaking to them gives you an extreme physical reaction. (I blush, nearly every time.)

8. You have rituals associated with your books.
Whether it’s the way you clean them, sort them, store them or lend them, there is something particular you do with your books. And it makes you feel happy and peaceful when you look at your books after you’ve done it.

(For me, it’s the way I order them and which shelf or room they’re in. My husband knows: don’t be moving my books without telling me. It morphs me into the Devil Wife.)

9. On the touchy subject of lending…writers are quite particular about loaning their books.

I know that when someone borrows a treasured book from you and doesn’t return it – or worse, passes it on to someone else without asking you first – your friendship with them changes. You’re probably  still their friend, but you’ll either “forget” to loan them books in the future or you buy a copy from the used bookstore as a back-up and loan them that.

There is an A-List of book-borrowers in your life and you love to have coffee with these people.

10. When a book touches your spirit and transports you to a place you’ve never been, it’s not uncommon for you to read the last page, turn the book over and start at Page 1 to figure out how the author did that.

There are more things that I know about writers and their reading habits but I want to hear from all of you. What are your book rituals? Do you non-writers have book rituals too?? Which of the ten “habits” made you laugh?

Jenny

About Jenny Hansen

Jenny fills her nights with humor: writing memoir, women’s fiction, chick lit, short stories (and chasing after her toddler Baby Girl). By day, she provides training and social media marketing for an accounting firm. After 15 years as a corporate software trainer, she’s digging this sit down and write thing.

When she’s not at her blog, More Cowbell, Jenny can be found on Twitter at JennyHansenCA and here at Writers In The Storm. Jenny also writes the Risky Baby Business posts at More Cowbell, a series that focuses on babies, new parents and high-risk pregnancy.

By Sharla Rae

I'm fudging a bit and bringing back an updated craft blog that has been referred to several times at our critique meetings here at WITS. For our new readers and even for our long-time followers, I believe it bears repeating.

I preach Like With Like to my critique partners all the time and once in a while, they remind me to practice what I preach. So what do I mean by like with like? It’s not as easy to explain on paper as it is to point out the mistake in a WIP but here goes.

Like with like has to do with story flow.

I’m certain we’ve all read drafts and discovered that a certain tidbit of information was in the wrong place. It interrupts the flow of the scene and the action. Think of this interruption as a speed bump in the middle of a racetrack. If a race car were to hit one it would spin out of the action.

These speed bumps are not to be confused with a data dump, sections of lengthy description, background or character internalization that detour a reader off the path before returning them to the action.

Speed bumps are misplaced bits of information that amount to a word or a couple of sentences that need to be cut and pasted elsewhere. They’re more jarring than data dumps because they pop up out of nowhere. Readers may even reread a section or two because they feel they might’ve missed something.

So what causes speed bumps?

Here’s the kicker. To avoid data dumps, writers are told to dribble information throughout the story. However, dribbling it into the wrong spot creates a speed bump.

Example: Let’s say a scene opens like this – excuse the paraphrasing:

Tom the race driver settles into his car. As a reader we’re riding shot gun, hearing Tom’s thoughts, seeing the inside of his car and watching him perform all his checks before the race. Then he takes his place on the track. The flag is waved and we’re off!

 Tom is dodging spinouts, speeding faster and faster and trying to get around Don Dingbat in car number 4. Tom thinks: Dang, that Don. The man will do anything to win, even if it gets another driver killed. Last month, he caused a three-car pileup that put two drivers in the hospital.

Caboom!

No, the car didn’t crash. Tom is still flying around the track. The reader, however, was thrown through the windshield -- figuratively speaking.

Okay, It's a silly example, but you get the picture. This is an “action” scene. Readers would have remained in the car for the thrill of the ride, but segueing into Don’s character background tossed them out of the action or in this case the race.

If Tom had seen Don strutting past his pitstop before the race or during his systems check, the info wouldn’t have been so jarring. Don Dingbat needs to make an appearance at the beginning of the scene along with the rest of the set-up information. Like With Like. Another solution might be to paste the rivalry between the two men at the end of the race where perhaps they air their differences.

Let’s try this again:

Tom settles into his car and is checking out the dashboard like the cockpit of a Leer jet. Through his windshield he spies Don Dingbat getting into his car to do the same. Tom Thinks: The man’s a wild card, a danger to every man on the track. He’d do anything to win a race and usually got away with it too. Last month, he’d caused a three-car pileup that put two drivers in the hospital. Tom scowls and yanks his safety belt across his body. This is one race Don Dingbat will not win.

  The flag is waved and we’re off!

 Tom dodges spinouts, speeding faster and faster as he tries to pass Don in car number 4. Don swerves back and forth across the track trying to hold his place. Tom races around hairpin curves, steadily moving ahead of the other drivers. It’s an exciting ride and in the end Tom flies over the finish line ahead of Don, and this time, the reader is still sitting right beside him.

In the second example we pasted the speed bump into the set up scene. Doing so actually enhances the action because now the reader is invested in the race. He/she wants to see Tom win and Don lose. The actual action/race was not interrupted. Details about both men can be dribbled in as the story proceeds. No data dump and no speed bumps.

In every scene something is happening. Conversation/dialogue and internalization may not be as exciting as a thrilling as an action scene, but they are a form or action and speed bumps are just as jarring in these types of scenes. Be on the lookout.

Split descriptions are one of the most common and overlooked speed bumps. Let’s say the scene begins in the POV character’s head -- we’ll call him Harry. A second character, Bob, walks into the scene. The writer describes Bob through Harry’s POV. A few paragraphs later, another description of Bob is inserted that really could’ve been linked to the original. It surprises the reader because it pops up out of no where and interrupts the current action, dialog, thoughts etc.

An out-of-place scenic description or the detailing of a room or building can cause the same kind of speed bump.

On top of their jarring nature, split descriptions often steal the power of the scene or words.

Example:

 The air shifted and teacher, Peter Hunk, glanced toward the door. A woman stood there, scanning his classroom. She was so beautiful she seemed a figment of his imagination. A gossamer dress better suited for a wedding than a classroom draped her petite form and short jet hair cupped the perfect oval of her face. Then her head jerked in his direction, her unusual eyes flashing with anger . . .

Blah blah blah . . . the woman gives Peter a piece of her mind, and he doesn’t understand what she’s talking about. Down the page we go. And Peter Hunk thinks it’s a shame she sounds so nuts because under different circumstances, he’d definitely ask her out. He hadn’t even heard her first words because he’d become lost in her eyes, eyes so striking they were almost spooky. It was like looking upon lovely blue lace curtains, then green and no, brown. But how could that be . . .

On the first read, this type of speed bump isn’t always as noticeable as the one in the race car example, but a smart reader, will stop and say, “Huh? When did that happen?”

Remember, the revelation about the woman’s eyes is half a page or more from the paragraph where she walked on stage. If the woman’s eyes had been normal, when she walked into the room, Peter wouldn’t have noticed them except for maybe their color and their angry expression. That wasn’t the case. Peter did notice they were unusual. So we must keep like with like.

The air shifted and teacher, Peter Hunk, glanced toward the door. A woman stood there, scanning his classroom. She was so beautiful she seemed a figment of his imagination. A gossamer dress better suited for a wedding than a classroom draped her petite form, and short jet hair cupped the perfect oval of her face. Her head jerked in his direction and he started. Anger flashed in her eyes, eyes so striking they were almost spooky. It was like looking through lovely blue lace curtains, then green … no, brown. But how could that be? Who was she?  . . .

He started, realizing the woman was yelling gibberish at him . . . And now Peter Hunk listens to the gibberish and we get his reaction and so forth without interruption.

Moving the eye description delivers a more powerful description in that it screams to the reader, “Whoa, there’s something woo-woo about this woman.” Keeping like with like also prevents an interruption of the woman's actions.

The good news about speed bumps is that they’re an easy fix. While not all of them will fit into a set-up scene, most can be eliminated with a simple cut and paste to another location.

I hope my examples, silly as they are, illustrate how keeping like with like improves the flow of a scene. If you have examples of your own or questions to share, I hope you'll join the conversation with some comments.

by Orly Konig-Lopez

Is your manuscript good enough to hook an agent? Make a sale?

If you have the beta stamp of approval it just might be.

And no, I'm not talking about your critique partners.

A critique partner and a beta reader are two very different animals (and honestly, neither should be fluffy and soft.)

Beta Reader vs. Critique Partner

I'm very lucky to be part of two amazing critique groups. My CPs were a tremendous help during the drafting process of my last manuscript. Critique groups aren't for everyone, but I couldn't do without mine. Why?

A critique partner will:

• Nit-pick chapter-by-chapter
• Catch your tense shifts
• Find your missing commas and catch your typos
• Cajole fresh phrases out of you when you fall into the cliché pit
• Question why your character just walked out of the house when the page before, she was in the shower -- and you haven’t shown her getting dressed. Hello neighbors!
• Cheer you on when you're ready to torch the manuscript and get a job as a barista

And then one day, you're done with the draft. Woo hoo. Squiggle dance. DONE!

And that, my friends, is the point when many of us run head first into trouble. Because, let’s face it, we’ve poured our hearts into these books and we have blisters on our butts from hours in the chair. We want to query!

STOP! Send the manuscript to a few beta readers instead. Trust me!

I hear you whining … “but it’s done and I want to query.” After all, you’ve already gotten feedback from your critique partners. And your mom read it and said it was positively brilliant. Why the heck should you take more time and wait for more feedback that will lead to more revisions?

Because your manuscript will thank you for it. Mine did.

Why? Because your beta reader will:

• Read it from beginning to end without stopping and tell you what works and what doesn’t
• Find the plot hole or the thread that unraveled three-quarters of the way through
• Call you out on the main character who just can’t pull on her big girl panties and learn from her mistakes. Yeah, mine was wearing granny bloomers.

Finding the Right Beta For You

I have a few beta readers I turn to—there are the “writerly” ones and the “readerly” ones.

A couple of the writerly betas are actually my critique partners as well, but others are writer friends who I trust and value their feedback. My readerly betas are close friends who I know won’t tiptoe around the truth.

Why do I want both types of readers? Because they approach reading differently. Remember the days when you picked up a novel and just read for enjoyment versus analyzing what the author did right or wrong? I want to know both types of readers will like my book.

I’ve had a few people recently ask advice on finding beta readers.

First of all, if you’re in a critique group, ask one of your CPs. Not everyone wants to commit to reading a full manuscript, and that’s okay, but you might be pleasantly surprised. Don’t forget to return the favor though.

Writing groups are another great way to make connections. If you’re on a yahoo loop, for example, try sending out an email asking if anyone is interested in exchanging manuscripts.

Engage in discussions with other writers about where they are in their writing process. You might be surprised at who steps up with an offer to help if they know you’re looking for readers.

As for the “readerly” betas, ask a close friend or someone in a reading club or knitting club or whatever club. Just make sure it’s someone whose opinions you value.

I’ll fully admit that I was incredibly intimated asking friends to read my work. But guess what? The couple of friends I did ask were tickled at being part of the process. Those friends have become my loudest cheerleaders.

Feeding Your Beta Reader

So now you have beta readers lined up and they’re anxious to rip into the manuscript. Most of the time I season the manuscript with a few questions before tossing it over:

• Is the main character likeable?
• Does the story ring true?
• Is there a subplot that particularly works or doesn’t?
• Is there something or someone you wanted to see less of? More of?

Sometimes there’s one nagging question about a story, maybe a comment that came up during critique group and I want to make sure I addressed it properly in the rewrite. For example, in the manuscript I just finished, one of the characters has Alzheimer’s so I asked a reader with personal experience of the disease to read for authenticity.

There are times when I want a gut reaction.  In that case, I wait until I get the feedback before asking any specific questions. Regardless of who is reading, I want them to be brutally honest—they’re not doing me any favors by being fluffy and soft.

Chew Slowly and Swallow

When the feedback comes in, I read through all the comments once, and let them sink in. Then I read a second time and make notes in the manuscript. If a couple of people call me out on one particular point, I know there’s work to be done. Sometimes one beta reader’s comment perfectly nails what’s missing. Other times I’ll scrunch up my nose and discard a comment if it doesn’t fit with my story. Why?

Because at the end of the day it is YOUR story.

What about you? Do you have trusted beta readers who help make your manuscripts better? What kind of feedback do you look for?