Tag Archives: writing tips

Workshop Wednesday: Memoir Writing

27 Wednesday Feb 2019

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I’ve been contracted to do manuscript assessments on quite a few memoirs lately, so it’s probably timely for me to clear up any confusion over what a memoir actually is and how to create a good one.

We can all look back over photographs of ourselves and see how we’ve changed as a person, but how do we bring those changes to life in an engaging and compelling way for readers? A good memoir is so much more than an extended CV, and for that reason I’d like offer advice on how to create a really memorable memoir! First let’s start with:

Definition: “A memoir reads more like a novel than an autobiography. While an autobiography often covers a long time period and provides many details, a memoir deals with events related to a specific theme. Examples of topics for memoirs may include recovering from an eating disorder, dealing with an abusive spouse, or what it’s like to live with a chronic illness.” Diana Harris

Difference between a memoir and an autobiography: “A memoir is how one remembers one’s own life, while an autobiography is history, requiring research, dates, facts double-checked.” Gore Vidal

Purpose of a memoir: To make meaning of life experience and in the process, inform and entertain a reader.

Format of a memoir: Usually told in first person by a narrator who writes with complexity and layered thought – not just telling the events along with the accompanying emotion, but analysing them in retrospect.

Okay! Now that we’ve got the academic stuff out of the way, I’d like to put on my writing teacher hat and pretend you’re at one of my workshops. These are some of the things I’d share with you as being important in the development and drafting of a good memoir:

Memoir overview

  • Facts are not as important as the emotional truth of the scene and how you felt about it.
  • Memoirs are written less formally than an autobiography, conveying the “voice” of the author, whether that’s humorous, eloquent or blunt.
  • They are usually always written by the subject of the memoir.
  • They encompass only a portion of your life – focusing on the theme of the memoir.

Ways to generate ideas for your memoir

  • Go through your photo albums and let them trigger memories. Write notes of interesting events and what theme they might come under: romance, career, mental health, sexuality, etc
  • Read your diaries or journals if you kept them. Visit family or old friends and get them reminiscing.
  • Go to a school reunion.
  • Read your work CV and let that trigger memories of what was happening around your career.
  • Go through your mother’s cookbook if it’s still available or write a list of foods you ate back then. That will trigger memories.
  • Write a list called “Seasons” where you write every memory you have for each of the four seasons – sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures.
  • Make a list of ‘family stories’ that were handed down (struggling to find food during the depression for example)

Planning your Memoir Structure

  • The beginning should grab the reader’s attention.
  • The middle of a memoir shares important actions and details about the experience.
  • The end comes after the main action and needs to show what was learned
  • There should be enough information to make the reader care about the characters who feel real, but not so much that they’re bogged down with backstory or boring everyday details of meals, dressing, showering etc.
  • All scenes in the memoir should pertain to the theme.
  • Most authors will write in chronological order to build characterisation, momentum and tension, but examples of other plot structures are: writing a schizophrenia memoir in short sections that jump back and forth in time, fragmenting the story to simulate the challenge of comprehending life when you have a mental illness, or writing an amnesia memoir backwards to the event that caused the amnesia.

Writing your memoir in draft

  • Show don’t tell. Use descriptive words and phrases, incorporating all the senses to make the reader feel like they were present when the action took place.
  • Include dialogue that shows feeling. In this case, less often means more. Include only the most important dialogue that has the most impact.
  • Feature a beginning that catches the reader’s attention. Hook your readers immediately. A few ideas include starting in the middle of the action, having the characters talk, beginning with a surprising statement or fact or giving some important background information.
  • Add sensory details. These are words or descriptions that appeal to one of your senses. Sensory details provide a complete look at the story and make your memoir more interesting.
  • Share thoughts and feelings. This allows readers to understand how the experience affected you, and what you were going through. Thoughts and feelings help build a connection to the narrator.
  • Reveal why the event was important. Writers share what they learned from this experience, building a connection with the audience. Writers want to evoke an emotional response from the reader.

As a writing teacher, there is naturally more I can say on the subject, and I’m happy to share that as part of my mentoring service (via Skype or phone) helping writers who need more intensive advice constructing or editing their memoir. I also offer a manuscript assessment service for memoir and most fiction genres, and this is a great way to find out what’s working and what could be improved in the manuscript you’ve already completed.

So whether your memoir is as intimate as a family heirloom or as public as a bestseller that inspires thousands, I hope I’ve helped you along the way in making it as engaging and memorable as it can be!

Characterization in three steps

23 Friday Jun 2017

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As a manuscript assessor with over 200 full length assessments under my belt, I’ve seen the whole spectrum of fictional characters, from You’re so real I can almost smell you to Oh dear, he’s made of cardboard. Pity…

We all want our characters to step off the page as living breathing individuals, so I’d like to give you my three most cited reasons for characterization failure and how to correct it.

Use of cliches

The moment I read He was so angry, steam came out his ears, I want to put the book down. Seriously? Do you not realize that readers are highly visual? Unless this is a fantasy/children’s book, your character doesn’t actually have steam lifting their cap, or daggers shooting out of their eyes.

Instead of giving us a cliche (and turning your character into generic angry man) show us how your character is unique. We all experience and express anger in different ways. Some people get theatrical and throw things. Others (scary people) go really quiet and just stare at you. When you’re writing a scene, spend time thinking about your character and how they’re likely to feel anger (physical sensations and thoughts) and how they’re likely to express it (dialogue and action). Then let that flow into the scene.

Sloppy Viewpoint

For those of you who don’t understand viewpoint, it’s the perspective of the character whose eyes/sensations/feelings/thoughts you’re choosing to filter the story through. I’ve grabbed an image from Grand Theft Auto to show you what I mean: your character looking at the world of your story (or their phone as the case may be):

GTA V Online

It’s your job as the author to pick a character in a scene and show us the scene through their viewpoint, along with all their opinions about what’s happening and why and what they think of others etc. When you leave us inside their mind for extended periods of time (not head-hopping from one character to the next), we grow comfortable there and drop deeply into the story, coming to understand that character’s natural biases, interests, memories, desires and fears. This is how you build characterization via the Show don’t tell method, and it’s also the reason that you try to give your main characters the lion’s share of the viewpoint, so their characterization will be strong.

What I don’t want to see is you stepping in as narrator to “tell” me:

Mary was fat and ugly unhappy. No man ever asked her out. She often gorged on food instead of taking time to care for her appearance.

(Note: this is a workshop participant’s example that I used to create a ‘make this into a scene’ exercise in class, not my own work!)

I’d rather you sit me inside Mary’s head and “show” me:

Mary slumped onto the stained couch and wondered if there was a spring loose before she dug a half-eaten Toblerone out from under her butt-cheek. She tossed it into the ashtray and reached for the sticky remote control. Nothing decent on the box, as usual. Only dating shows and they gave her indigestion. Stupid women spending ten hours in hair and makeup just so they could get on tv.

Bitches. Mary reached past the sleeping cat into the opened pizza box and took out the last slice of a family-sized cheesy crust. “Any loser can marry a farmer”, she told Princess Jasmine, who slept on, blissfully unaware of the mozzarella dotting her fur. “If they want to live in the middle of woop woop.”

Not exactly deathless prose, but the difference between what you “tell” the reader (narrative summary) and what you “show” them via Mary’s viewpoint (in a scene with setting, dialogue and action) is the difference between a cookie-cutter character and one that’s starting to come to life. It’s still a little generic, but as the story progresses, you’d have ample opportunity to make Mary truly unique as you show us the world through her eyes so we can really empathize with her. If you’d like to have a shot at creating a scene with Mary in the comments below, that would be fun. Try to avoid the stereotypes I’ve put in (single woman and a cat, unhappy and over-eating, single and hates dating shows, etc). And that leads neatly to step three!

Stereotyping:

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve read a character who’s so stereotypical they feel like they stepped out of a board game. You know the type: the sexy secretary, the big bad biker, the gruff boss, the dotty aunt, the feisty grandma, the cherub child, etc, ad nauseam.

I’m not saying kids can’t be cute, but no child is cute 24/7. Neither is every child ‘bouncing off the walls’ (see Cliches above) 24/7. Some secretaries are just good at their job and aren’t there to be lusted over or objectified. Ditto shirtless construction-workers.

Real people are never just one thing. Neither are good characters. For seat-of-the-pants writers, this can be a real problem because as they start the book they might not know their character very well. But by the end of writing a book in draft they should know their character inside-out, and that’s the time to go back and change anything that feels generic or stereotyped. If the secretary in your story is sexy, what if she’s also a math whiz or a kick-boxer or has a house full of adopted pets?

I’m not telling you to go mental with quirks, but try to think past the characterization shorthand we all use when we’re looking at characters from the outside, and get inside them, under their skin, inside their heads. Even sub-characters who never have viewpoint in the story should still come across as unique individuals.

So, there you have it my friends. Three easy tips to make your fictional characters more realistic. If you’ve got questions or further tips, please pop them into the comments section below. And if you’re looking for a good book to help with fiction writing, I can heartily recommend this one. My copy is dog-eared!

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Procrastination. Don’t go there.

04 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by in Understanding Ourselves as Writers

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Writers want to write. Our heads explode if we don’t (or other messy things happen, trust me). But for some reason, when we get time to devote to our passion, this often happens:

WRiteTheBookWhat’s the answer?

Set an appointment.

Every day at an appointed time, work on your novel. If you’re writing draft and are suddenly not sure what to actually write, go back to your plot and character notes and do some What If-ing with a notepad to get back on track.

Half an hour a day can accomplish one page of 300 words. If you can do that five days a week for 50 weeks of the year (take a fortnight’s holiday on me!) you can write a 250 page manuscript of 75,000 words.

Most people fail to finish a novel because they waste time editing the opening. If I had a dollar for every time I’d heard an unpublished writer say “I can’t go on unless the beginning is perfect!” I’d be holidaying in the Seychelles right now! Published writers keep writing until they get to The End, and then they edit.

So, my “take homes” for today are:

  1. Write every day
  2. Don’t start editing until you’ve finished the book in draft

Arguments, insights, tweaks? I’d love to hear them in the comments below.

How do you build characterization?

13 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by in Uncategorized, Workshop Wednesday series

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I taught a workshop on characterization over the weekend at the beautiful Gold Coast, and was thrilled to be able to meet the local writers and share some of the craft lessons I’ve learned through assessing over 200 manuscripts. At the end of the workshop, one piece of feedback I heard over and over was, “Thanks for giving us specifics to work on.”

On the drive home, I couldn’t help remembering the first time I’d had feedback on a story I’d written. The competition judge told me that my characterization was “thin”, and I remember feeling really confused, because to me, those characters were very real. I clearly had to do something, but I had no practical method of making my characterization stronger.

If only I could go back in time and tell that young writer what I know now!

Of course I can’t. But I can share my hard-earned craft tips with you: so the first and foremost (with both characterization and plotting) has to be Goal Motivation Conflict (or GMC as we call it in the trade).

gmc

Write this out for every main character in the story. I keep mine on a file card next to my computer so I can pull it out each time a character is about to step into a scene. I want to remind myself about what’s important to this character and why. Here are a few tips for filling it in:

1. Clarify in your own mind who your main CHARACTER is and give them the lion’s share of viewpoint in the novel (if it’s a two-hander, say a romance novel, give them equal share of the viewpoint). The more viewpoint a character has, the more their characterization develops through the Show Don’t Tell method.

2. Clarify early in the story what GOAL the character is trying to achieve, and ensure there are serious consequences (either physically or emotionally) if they are unsuccessful. This creates a high-stakes novel with a clear thread for the reader to follow through the story (NOTE: ensure all subplots either help or hinder the main character achieve their goal. If they don’t, the plot can feel loose and unfocused).

3. Create strong MOTIVATION for the character to pursue their goal. You’ll want to put obstacles in their path to create tension and reader empathy, but that will only work if readers believe in the character’s motivation to stick with the goal. The last thing you want is readers wondering “Why don’t they just go home?”

4. Create a balance of Internal (emotional) and External (physical) conflicts for your character to overcome on their way to the goal. The genre of your novel will dictate some of this balance. At one end of the spectrum, Romance novels are usually heavy on Internal Conflict, while Action Adventure tales tend to have much more External Conflicts and less emotional angsting.

My next tip is that CHARACTER TRAITS MUST SERVE A PURPOSE:

AidenTurnerToplessYes, well, of course I’d prefer it if this picture actually had anything to do with the topic, but I suspect it’s simply a good looking man with no shirt on. The things you find while you’re looking for content…

Anyway. Character traits. Don’t invent virtues and flaws for your characters unless they’re going to serve a plot purpose. If you do, your novel will feel loose and unfocused. If a character’s virtue is honesty, put them in a situation where they’re forced to steal or lie (for some greater purpose, of course). The take home here is: A strong plotline tests the character’s virtues and highlights their flaws. Try not to forget that.

And my final tip on characterization is on VIEWPOINT, sometimes called Point of View. The more you are in a character’s viewpoint, the more readers will learn about the way they perceive the world (what they actually notice of the world around them), what their biases and preferences are, what emotional baggage they’re carrying, etc. When you are delivering the story from inside a character’s viewpoint, the character’s internal life becomes obvious via their internalizations (thoughts) which Show Don’t Tell us why they’re doing what they’re doing and saying what they’re saying.

When unimportant characters come into the story, don’t give them viewpoint unless you absolutely have to (they have a piece of information to deliver that we can’t find out from inside the main character’s viewpoint). The more you hand out viewpoint in a story, the more you dilute characterization. You can’t bond us to everyone, so make damn sure you use viewpoint to bond us to the main character/s!

If you don’t understand what Viewpoint is or how to do it, please learn! Viewpoint is the most important tool in a writer’s toolbox. Learn it and use it carefully to craft your story.

I hope this is helps you develop your characterization. Naturally it doesn’t cover all the details I’d get across in a 2hr or a day workshop, but it should give you a few ideas to work with. If you have any questions, please feel free to pop them into the comments below. Cheers!

 

A short dream workshop with Sophie Masson

25 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by in Getting Published series, Uncategorized, Workshop Wednesday series

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I’m excited to be inviting Aussie fantasy author Sophie Masson to share some writing tips with us today. But first a little about Sophie:

Sophie portrait blue and redBorn in Indonesia of French parents, and brought up in Australia and France, Sophie Masson is the award-winning author of more than 50 novels for readers of all ages, published in Australia and many other countries. Her adult novels include the popular historical fantasy trilogy, Forest of Dreams (Random House Australia). Sophie has always had a great interest in Russian myth and history, an interest reflected in several of her books for younger readers. Her latest Fiction novel is TRINITY: The Koldun Code (Book One)

Sophie is also a teacher of writing, and her book By the Book: Tips of the Trade for Writers is full of practical and entertaining tips on the craft, business and inspirations of writing. From using your dreams to craft great fiction, to writing dream outlines to attract the attention of publishers, from knowing how to make the most of literary festivals to understanding how magical characters tick, from coping with reviews to being inspired by fairy tales, By the Book is bursting with practical, entertaining and illuminating tips on the writing life. Written by an author whose career spans more than twenty years and more than fifty books published, this book offers advice for writers both new, and not so new.

Sophie has very kindly offered to share an extract from the book:

A short dream workshop by Sophie Masson

From time immemorial, human beings have dreamed–every night we go into what one of my sons’ friends once referred to as ‘those brilliant eight hours of free entertainment.’ And from time immemorial, writers have used images or scenes from dreams, or entire dreams, to enrich and expand their creative work in waking life. I’m certainly no exception. My night-imagination has always enriched my day-imagination. Several of my short stories have started directly as dreams, for example, ‘Restless’, a chilling ghost story I wrote not long ago, began as a really creepy and unforgettable nightmare. Another disturbing story, ‘The Spanish Wife’, a vampire story set in the 1930’s, started as a dream in which someone said, very clearly, ‘No-one took any notice of him till he brought home a Spanish wife,’ and that turned into the very first sentence of the short story. Images and scenes from dreams have also gone into my novels, and in one case, a very vivid and intriguing dream inspired an entire six-book children’s fantasy series of mine, the Thomas Trew series. It’s not always fantasy or supernatural stories that have sprung out of dream-compost for me, though; everything from family stories to thrillers to historical novels has benefited from it.

Over the years, I’ve learned quite a few techniques on how to best use vivid, scary, tantalising or intriguing dream sequences in my writing, and how to investigate them for best effects. Here’s a short workshop based on some of the techniques I’ve developed over the years:

*Think of a dream you’ve had. Any dream. It doesn’t have to be anything exciting or unusual. Go back over the dream-scenes, as if you were a police witness being asked to remember an event. Who was in it? What did they look like? What were they wearing?

Were they people you knew or strangers? Were there any animals in it? What sort? What was the setting like? Indoors, outdoors? What could you see? Smell? Touch? Hear? Taste even? What were you in it—a participant, a helpless observer, a godlike figure?

*If you did something supernatural, like flying, what did it feel like, physically? (I’ve often had flying dreams and in them I feel a strong pull in the chest, arms stretching. Once I even woke up with what felt like an actual slight ache in the arm muscles—very spooky indeed!)

*Were there any machines in your dream? If so, what sort?

*Did anyone speak, and if so what did they say? Many dreams in my experience are like silent movies, with thought-subtitles and maybe some music, but a few have dialogue, even if it’s often minimalistic and quite enigmatic.

* Knowledge: Do you know why you were in that particular place, at that time? If you had some supernatural ability, did you know why? If there are interesting objects or gadgets in the setting of your dream, do you know what they can do, and why, and who made or used them? Backstory is very often missing in dreams, but is very important in a story, even if you only spend a few lines on it.

*Now, once you’ve written down as many descriptive details as you can about what was there in the dream, think about what wasn’t there, and write that down. While you were dreaming, did you know for instance why you or other people were doing things(even if it was a kind of weird dream-logic?) Did you understand the sequence of events? Was there a sense the dream was moving towards some conclusion, or just randomly jumping about? Motive, continuity and plot—all very important in actual stories—are often missing from dreams.

*Think of your own self in the dream, however you appeared in it: did you recognise yourself? Did you feel it was fully you or something that was only partly you, or a stranger? Did characters behave randomly? Character development is usually absent in dreams too though it very much needs to be present in a story.

*What about the setting? Were there things missing: for instance, if you were in a house, were there doors? Windows? Furniture? If you were outside, was anything odd: for instance trees growing upside down, or a wall of water appearing out of nowhere?

*Now put those two things together—the things that were there, the ones that weren’t—and you have the beginnings of a real story framework, where the wild imagination of the night and the more disciplined one of the day cross-fertilise and turn into something amazing and wonderful.

bythebookcoversmall_1Thanks Sophie! I’m so looking forward to putting these tips into action. If you’d like to buy a copy of By the Book by Sophie Masson, you can source it here:

Australian Society of Authors or via Amazon if you have a kindle eReader.

You can find Sophie Masson here: Website  Facebook  Twitter

And if you’ve every turned a dream into a story (as I know Stephenie Meyer did with Twilight) I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

Happy writing!

Prioritizing your Passions

28 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by in Getting Published series, Uncategorized

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As a writing mentor, I’ve heard plenty of clients say they “just can’t find time” to fulfill their creative dreams and write a book or even finish a short story. In the real world, aspiring writers might need to work a forty hour week to pay the bills, or fill their day caring for their family. That doesn’t leave a lot of time or energy to invest in what really lights them up.

If this sounds like you, and you’re wondering how you can carve out time for your own dreams when everyone else wants a piece of you, grab a coffee and watch this 5 minute video from the fabulously inspiring and vivacious Marie Forleo, on how to prioritize what’s really important to you:

Do you have a favorite way to prioritize your dreams and ambitions? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below:

Motivation + Time = Maximum Productivity

20 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by in Getting Published series, Uncategorized, Understanding Ourselves as Writers

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I’ve chatted to writers all year, and some have had a fabulous 2013. Some, not so great. One of the things I’ve noticed (not just this year, but every year) is that those writers who have a strong motivation to write, seem to get more done.

It sounds like a no brainer. If you’re dieting for no good reason, mud cake looks good. If your wedding is in three weeks (or your book launch) and you need to fit into that special dress, carrot sticks are the new chocolate.

So motivation – for characters and for writers – is key. And at the start of a story when the idea is fresh and the potential sales appear JK Rowling-ish, delusions of grandeur can take you far. As a mentor, I never knock writers off their lofty fantasy pedestals. It motivates them to get up early and work late (creating the time factor of the equation all by themselves). In fact, I encourage writers to pick a fantasy moment: walking the red carpet, getting a big advance payment in the mail, opening the box full of advance copies of their book and loving the cover, and then milking that fantasy for five minutes every day, wringing every bit of happy/ relieved/ satisfied/ thrilled emotion they can out of it. That builds motivation too.

The reality may end up looking like this:

The Bentley you thought you'd be buying with your first advance

The Bentley you thought you’d be buying with your first advance

Here Bentley, Here, Bentley. Good dog!

Here Bentley, Here, Bentley. Good dog!

So reality can dent your confidence, and therefore your motivation. How do you pick yourself up when you’ve had rejection in the past, you’ve lost perspective on your story, and you’re starting to doubt that it will ever get published, and if it does, that anyone will bother to read/ like it? Perhaps life itself has dealt you a crap year and those muddy glasses are making everything look terrible, including your writing.

Dear Manuscript, you look like this...

Dear Manuscript, you look like this…

Sometimes you have to start back at bedrock and just work at making yourself happy. My experience as a mentor has shown me that happy writers are productive writers and I reject the cliché that starving/troubled artists write the best work. We all experience life’s ugly moments. Some writers unfortunately have had more pain than others. And yes we do draw on memories of those dark times to bring our stories vividly to life. But we don’t have to be experiencing that pain now to be writing our best. We simply need to be good at remembering what it felt like, and luckily for us, really bad moments seem to be engraved in our memories!

Publishers and agents want to work with productive writers, those who can create saleable novels year in, year out, building readership and thereby sales and profits for all. If you can get happy and stay happy, you’ll have your best shot at being that author. The delightful side-effect is that you’ll also be a fab person to be around, and family and friends will stop doing this when you walk in the room:

Has she made her word count? Is her eye twitching. For godsakes, Marg, whatever you do, don't mention the manuscript.

Has she made her word count? Is her eye twitching? I can’t look.

So here’s my tip for the end of the year, to wash away any unpleasantness from 2013 and set yourself up for a cracker super-happy ultra-productive 2014. Make up a list like mine (takes five minutes in Microsoft Word) and sit down with a pen and paper and fill it in. Honestly, I had thirty done in ten minutes:

One hundred fabulous memories from 2013As you remember each fabulous thing that’s happened to you in the year, no matter how small, it will trigger happy feelings, and before you know it you’ll be glass half full instead of glass half empty about everything, writing included. My list included everyday things like:

  • Standing on the verandah watching a thunderstorm
  • Eating a perfect lime slushy on that really hot afternoon
  • Watching the Aussies win the Ashes on tv (cricket, for those who don’t know)
  • Laughing at the cat that time he rolled in his sleep and fell off the chair
  • Watching Meg’s eyes light up when she talked about her new home

I also included some personal peak moments that really meant something to me. So you get the idea. Fill up the list, really feel the emotions, reliving all their splendor as you write, then make time with your morning coffee each day to have a glance through it again and let the happy memories make you smile.

I pinky-promise it will help you let go of the negativity that weighs you down and squashes your creative inspiration. Then you’ll be all set up for a fabulously successful, productive, satisfying and fun 2014.

Go for it!

Perseverance: One Writer’s Journey

18 Wednesday Sep 2013

Posted by in Getting Published series, Uncategorized, Understanding Ourselves as Writers

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I’d like to introduce a client of mine, Alison Mather, who’s recently signed with a prestigious literary agency in the UK. She’s had an interesting journey (to say the least) and has agreed to share it with you. I think you’ll find it inspiring:

Perseverance. It’s a word most commonly used when telling a person’s story of triumph, after they’ve triumphed – which is all well and good and serves as a reminder that your goal can be achieved, but is utterly horrible when you’re actually trying to do it: being perseverant. At least it is to me. I find it very much akin to what I imagine being lost in the wilderness to be like (without the constant threat of sudden death). What direction should I take? How do I know if this step is the right one? What if I’m just going around in circles? Why are the signposts so damned hard to find?

Okay, so that’s where the analogy ends because most people know that the best thing to do if you are physically lost is to stay still and that is absolutely, positively the worst thing you could do if you ever want to be a published author.

During my own journey as a writer I have asked all of these questions every step of the way, and a heck of a lot more. The results can be stultifying and very damaging to your chances if you are the sort to give up easily.

I am one of ‘those’ people who took time off to write. I am very lucky to have an extremely supportive spouse who encouraged me to do so. If you are now thinking that means I’ve had it easy, think again. Six months into writing my first manuscript I was diagnosed with thyroid disease, my husband was retrenched from his job and a 24 foot tree fell on our house during the big Brisbane storms. Add to that, I received nothing but rejection letters to every single query I sent out to publishers and agents. Things were not going to plan and it was very, very hard.

Somehow, though – and here is where the perseverance bit comes in – I managed to write a second, and much better, manuscript and tried again. Now, five years later, I have just signed with a literary agency and am starting work on editing the story – for what feels like the billionth time – in the more real hope of interesting a publisher.

Not the ideal journey to becoming an author, perhaps, but here’s what I’ve learned:

Your writing is key – do everything possible to ensure it is the best it can be, and I don’t mean asking your family. They will always be on your side and that’s not what you need. Join your local Writer’s Centre and find a manuscript assessor. I edited my own work three times and then hired Louise to edit it again. Is it really worth the expense? I sent my work, edited by me, to every publisher in Australia and it was rejected. I paid for professional advice and now I have an agent.

Listen to everything that’s being said to you by the people who know. I was rejected by a tonne of agents earlier this year but one actually took the time to write a personal letter of explanation suggesting that I was aiming at the wrong age group. I was so cut up about the rejection that I almost missed the significance of that particular crumb of advice. And they will be crumbs and you have to fall on them like they’re nuggets of gold, even if all you can hear is the criticism.

Cast a wide net – as in global wide.  My agent is in London. By all means go local to begin but understand that there are a handful of publishers and agents in Australia and a shedload of writers – unless you’ve written that must-have story in which case I’m struggling with my resentment. I smashed the internet doing research and you really have to look. I strongly recommend the following websites: www.literaryrambles.com for agents that rep in your genre, www.writersdigest.com for new agents alerts – you have far more chance with agents who are looking to build their lists, Sarah’s blog at www.greenhouseliterary.com for tips on query writing and many more that I can’t fit in here.

Remember, I was totally green, I knew nothing about the industry that I was hoping to carve a career in, but I dedicated myself to it utterly and I’ve made it this far. You can too.

Alison Mather signing her agency contract

Alison Mather signing her agency contract

Writing success really is one part inspiration and ten parts perspiration. Keep at it, and if you’ve got any tips on how to keep motivation up while persevering, do share them with us below. Cheers! Louise

Writers: The Power of Viewpoint

21 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by in Getting Published series, Uncategorized, Workshop Wednesday series

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Last year 7 of my clients were contracted for the first time by some pretty prestigious publishing houses. In the current publishing climate that deserves a Wahoo! But it also warrants a bit of analysis. Why did those 7 manuscripts get across the line and not manuscripts from the other 15 clients who I either mentored or did manuscript assessments for. In a word, their strength was…

Viewpoint.

Each of those 7 ‘lucky’ authors had a strong grasp of viewpoint hold (sometimes called point of view) and as a result their characters came alive on the page. We saw the world through the filter of the character’s senses (sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing) and were privy to the character’s internal life (thoughts and feelings) which revealed inner conflicts that upped the ante of the external conflicts the character was already facing. Each genre has it’s own formula for how much of the character’s internal life should make it onto the page. Action adventure novels at the low end, romance and women’s fiction at the high end. But wherever your novel fits into that spectrum, you do need to understand and use viewpoint to make us care enough about your characters to read a whole book about them.

I recently assessed a manuscript that had viewpoint problems and I’d like to share here a small section of that report:

iStock_000017868898XSmallTo create an internal life for the characters and thus build characterization, we need to know what characters are thinking and feeling. If the majority of the novel is action and dialogue with hardly any thoughts and feelings expressed, it doesn’t help us get to know your characters. And if we don’t know him and care about his journey, why should we bother to read about it?

The proviso here is that you only give us the thoughts of the character who has viewpoint at the time. Stay deep in their thoughts, feelings, physical reactions, to help us bond with them and feel as if we are them for the period of time that we’re reading.

We need to feel the character’s fear, not just see the circumstances that would inspire fear. And I don’t mean to write He was scared. In a story written for adults you have to pull us into the character’s emotions by ‘showing’ them, not ‘telling’ us about them. Does his pulse jump when he’s excited? Does his heart slow when he’s scared? Does it thump unevenly when he’s terrified? Can he stride when he’s confident and stagger when he’s overwhelmed? Show us how his emotions affect him, and above all keep us in the loop with his thoughts. Not just thoughts about what’s happening right now.  Memories, and visualizations of what you think the future may hold, both have the power to evoke emotion. You need to create a depth to the story because action and dialogue just skims the surface of the character’s experience of what’s happening. You have to make us feel if you want us to care!

Whenever I meet agents or publishers and ask them what they’re looking for, they always give me some version of “An interesting story with characters that I care about.” Every time. Interesting story (plot). Characters I care about (characterization).

Your number one tool to build characterization is viewpoint. Learn it (there are heaps of resources on the internet to help you and I’ve got one on my website here). Practise it. Get published!

Getting Published Part 4: Using critique to hone your manuscript

22 Wednesday Aug 2012

Posted by in Getting Published series, Uncategorized

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When you’ve finished writing your manuscript and have edited it to the best of your ability, you need to make a judgement call about whether it’s ready to submit to publishers/agents. This is a particular challenge for writers because it’s very difficult to be objective about your own work.  We can all use some critique to give us perspective. Fresh eyes can pick out things we’d easily miss, particularly when we’re so close to the story.

Macleay Island Inspirational Writers critiquing each other’s work

WHO TO ASK: This is important.  Don’t trust just anyone with your manuscript. There are other writers out there who will savage your work so they can feel better about their own, and they don’t even realise what they’re doing.  Make sure you know and trust the writers you give your baby to. Also don’t ask family/friends who have a vested interest in making you happy (or miserable as the case may be). They can’t be objective, and in many cases aren’t even readers of the genre you’re writing in, so their opinions might muddy the water. If you want to impress them, wait till you have a finished product to put in their hands!

Writing support/critique groups can be fabulous (either face to face or online) in developing a support network. Wait a while before you ask for critique – that gives you time to find other members who are writing the same genre as you, and also allows you time to see if they’re going to be able to take their ego out of the equation. Try trusting them with a chapter to critique first, and see if you feel that they’re being objective.

WHAT TO ASK FOR: Being critiqued isn’t a passive exercise. You don’t just hand over your baby and hope for the best. You have to work out what you want to achieve from the process and ask for the sort of feedback that will most suit you at that time. If you’ve just written a rough first draft and aren’t even sure if it’s working, you can ask for generalised comment on the interest level of the plot, whether there were any boring bits, and if there were any characters / situations that weren’t engaging and interesting. It’s also helpful to ask for the critiquer to specify what they loved about the story, so you’ve got something emotional to hang onto while you embark on your edits (“At least I know I got that right!”). You might have a particular area you feel weak in (perhaps dialogue or characterisation), and you might want them to particularly hone in on those areas in their critique. If you’re pretty sure you have the structure right and want line/copy edits (grammar, punctuation etc) perhaps in preparation for submitting to a competition or agent/publisher, be specific about that, giving the critiquer permission to point out ‘every little thing’ that’s a glitch for them.

HOW TO RECEIVE IT: It’s easy to feel defensive when someone is telling you that your baby is ugly! Resist the urge. This isn’t a suggestion. This is a commandment. If you start pointing out why you wrote it that way and why the person critiquing didn’t understand what you meant, you’ve negated the whole point of critiquing. When your book is published you can’t run after each copy and wait until the reader gets to page 94 so you can lean over their shoulder and say “What I was trying to do here was…”. The book must speak for itself. So if a crit buddy didn’t get what you were trying to do, it’s your job to say “Thanks so much for pointing that out” and then when you get home look at how they might have misunderstood what you were doing and how you can fix that. If you’re convinced that 99% of readers would be fine with it, then leave it. But don’t be precious. You asked for crit, so listen and be grateful! Don’t justify yourself, just keep saying “Thanks so much for pointing that out.”

HOW TO GIVE IT: Make sure when it’s your turn to critique someone’s work that you understand exactly what sort of critique they want (see above), and do only that. You might mention in passing that you think the viewpoint needs looking at too, but if they didn’t ask for comment on that, don’t detail it! Also, frame your critique as ‘areas for improvement’ rather than ‘things that are wrong’.  Remember, this is just your opinion, and many books that were rejected by influential editors have gone on to make millions. You are not an expert. You are just another writer trying to be helpful.  Above all, praise what’s working. I can’t reiterate enough how helpful it is to get ‘positive strokes’ when you’re learning your craft. If a particular line of dialogue sparkled or you had an emotion surge through you while you were reading a section, mark that on the manuscript. Let the author know they moved you. They need to find out what’s working beautifully, as well as the areas for improvement.

THE BENEFITS OF CRITIQUING: 1: It’s free! 2: Picking areas for improvement in someone else’s manuscript will hone your editors eye so you can see those problems in your own work. 3: You form emotional support networks with other writers which will help you through the submission / rejection / acceptance process.

THE DOWNSIDE OF CRITIQUING: If your crit buddy doesn’t know any more about the craft of writing than you do, it could end up being ‘the blind leading the blind’.  So if your crit group have done the best they can and you’re still not finaling in competitions or are still receiving form rejection letters from publishers, it might be time to bite the bullet and invest some cash in your writing career with a manuscript assessment or mentoring.

BETA READERS: If you know readers (non-writers) who adore books in the genre you’re writing, ask them if they’ll give you feedback on your manuscript. They notice completely different things to crit buddies and might say things like “This is where I thought he was the killer,” or “I got such a shock here, I didn’t see this coming,” which is really helpful in gauging the success of your plotting.

Well that’s my advice for this week on how to move towards publication. We’ll be back to Workshop Wednesday next week with best-selling crime author and multiple Davitt Award winner Katherine Howell who will be discussing how to create suspense. See you then!

There are more Getting Published blogs to read, and if you’d like to share your experience of being critiqued or critiquing, please drop that in as a comment below!