Well, till I got coffee spilled on me at dinner, but hopefully it'll wash out. There have been a few weird moments like that this week, but never all that bad--don't worry, the coffee wasn't too hot and things happen. I just hope my favorite shirt won't be stained!
I've been meaning to post all week, because we've had some very photo-worthy moments--housekeeping in my hotel folded my bathmat like a little shirt, for example--but I have just been so exhausted! Who knew there were so many teachers?
So it's been a great show, and I'll post pictures soon.
Meanwhile, it's a little late for this, but make sure to catch the second half of my guest appearance on Writing Excuses, where we talk about submitting to editors and they ask me about Hallowmere and other great projects I'm working on.
- Music:It's a Beautiful Day, U2
3. No access to bookstores or other retail outlets, because most bookstores won’t take non-returnable items, which my printed books would be. This further limits the chance that people who don’t already know me will find my work. This is a problem because I do in fact get a lot of my readers from people taking a chance on my books in the bookstores (for that I can thank my book and cover designers, who help draw their eyes in the first place). There are ways to get around this, but they take lots of time and effort.
Check it out.
As you probably know, Wizards of the Coast is known for its shared-world fiction--fiction in worlds shared by many authors. Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, and Eberron may be the most familiar WotC brand names, and outside of us, in adult and YA fantasy, there are novels in the Star Trek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Smallville, and many other universes. Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden are also shared-world fiction--and the models upon which a lot of shared world series build. (Notice how many shared worlds are media tie-ins. This is not always the case, but as I'll discuss below, movies and TV shows do lend themselves well to this kind of print fiction.) The challenges of writing within these already-established worlds are completely different from making up your own world from scratch--but at the same time, can be freeing in many ways, too.
Mirrorstone has several shared-world lines: Dragonlance: The New Adventures, Star Sisterz, and Knights of the Silver Dragon were our company's first forays into children's literature, and all of them were set in worlds shared by many different authors who had to coordinate between themselves and the editors to ensure consistency in style, worldbuilding, character growth, and plot. DLNA was set in the same world, Krynn, that Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's original Dragonlance Chronicles were set, Star Sisterz got their world from a game by the same name, and Knights of the Silver Dragon used the world and monsters of the game Dungeons and Dragons.
Writing in a shared world is a great way for beginning writers to increase (and show off) their writing chops--and get their name out there. Rather than having to come up with the world--and sometimes even the characters--on their own, the writer can play with plot and characterization within an already-established world, complete with its own rules. Rather than having to make up the world, the writer can focus on story arc.
The challenge of doing so, of course, is that you can't just say, "I think Buffy should now have wings and be able to fly about the planet." Buffy's world has rules, and (warning: spoilers in link) unless she specifically has an affair with a particular kind of creature, she's probably not going to suddenly sprout into a giant. But this is important in creator-owned stories, too!
Then again, the challenge of doing so can also be to see just how you can explain certain things within a given set of rules, such as how a kender might be able to do magic.*
But don't let that fool you--because writing in another world can be just as challenging as making up your own, but in a different way. Shared-world series have changed a lot since Nancy Drew, but we might learn a lot from the old girl sleuth, too. (Which won't be covered in this post, as I went off on a tangent, but definitely see Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women who Created Her for more information on the Stratemyer syndicate, who had a lot of shared-world mysteries for young readers in its day.)
I think the best way of looking at shared-world series is by using TV shows as a model. Multiple writers work on TV shows. Writers on a show may change from year to year, so the creative mix sometimes changes--but overall, the show must have a consistent voice, characters must remain consistent even as they grow (if the characters are meant to grow, of course). A lot of quality TV shows are made in this collaborative environment, and I think shared-world book series can have that same high quality of storytelling.
I often use favorite teen and fantasy shows as examples of storytelling for my shared-world authors (and for series in general), too--because shows like Veronica Mars (especially the first and second seasons) (also, created by a YA author), Firefly, Heroes, and Buffy use storytelling skills that can be easily transferred to writing book series. For example, look specifically at plot arcs. What kinds of plot arcs does a TV series like Veronica Mars deal with? First season, we had the season-long plot arc of the mystery of Veronica's best friend's killer. Then we had plot arcs that might last a few episodes, usually dealing with her relationship between her friends or boyfriend. Then there was the plot of the episode, whatever mystery Veronica was solving that night.
How can we apply these plot arc ideas to novels? For one thing, a series has to have an overall arc, whether you're talking about a trilogy or longer. If you're a fan of the Wheel of Time series, you have probably been following my friend Brandon Sanderson's discussions of how he's working on wrapping up the tail end of the series. While that's not a shared world in the strictest sense--after all, Jordan always intended to finish his own series, but his health got in the way--this is similar in that Brandon must deal with writing in someone else's voice, finishing up story threads that he didn't lay, and working with characters and plots that he didn't create. Jordan planned the arc of the series years ago (and created the notes and outlines that Brandon is now using as his guide). And so it is with any series, including shared-world, though with something as open-ended as shared-world sometimes all you can do is plan an arc and hope the next arc fits in.
So then we go back to the TV show idea--the Lost writers, for example, say they've known generally where they want to end the series since they began it, but they couldn't know whether the first season would be the only one or not. So it is in shared-world fiction a lot of the times, so you have to break down your arcs a little bit so that readers can still be satisfied with the smaller resolutions, while still left wanting more. At the end of an episode (one volume), that episode's arc should be wrapped up. But questions might remain. Veronica may only have found one clue to who killed her best friend--and that clue itself might lead her in the wrong direction next time. But the high schooler who just paid her $500 to find out who planted fake test scores in his locker should find out by the end of the episode who done it.
The Hallowmere series is technically a shared-world series because Tiffany Trent, its creator, is not the only writer playing in this world. The books are being released at the rate of about three or four a year, and I fear what I might do to Tiffany if I tried to make her write three books a year all by herself! So we brought in a few coauthors who are taking on the points of view of the main character Corrine's friends. Books 1-3 have an arc all their own--Corrine goes to Falston, discovers the world of the Fey, and from there they head off to adventure in mysterious places as Corrine and her friends try to track down the Unhallowed.
But at the end of Corrine's arc in volume three, the story isn't nearly over. No, actually, the story only grows from there. In volume four, Maiden of the Wolf, Canadian author Angelika Ranger (
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
dragonegg), joins Tiffany Trent to write from the point of view of Ilona, the stubborn tomboy Hungarian. Each coauthor must coordinate with me and especially with Tiffany to make sure that her or his details match up with Tiffany's vision of the series and with where the series is going for each of the rest of the authors, to ultimately wrap up with Tiffany's solo conclusion in book 10, Ouroborous Undone. Each book has its own arc, revealing all sorts of mysteries, but supports the greater arc of the entire ten-book series.Oh, there's so much on shared worlds I could pontificate on, and I'm afraid this post is already long and convoluted, and I have work to do. So let's stop here and see where we go. What kinds of questions might you have on shared-world fiction? Does this help answer some of them?
*Kender are a hobbit-like race in the Dragonlance world which are considered, basically, so ADD that they can't learn magic, but also some people believe it's a racial trait for them not to be able to do so. Personally, I like that Dragonlance: The New Adventures turned a lot of those stereotypes on their heads.
Topic for a future post: Working with an editor in shared-world fiction, working as an editor in shared-world (coordination between authors, series bibles, etc.)
There's a new Writing Excuses podcast up today, as there is every week. They've had some good conversations and I think this is turning out to be a good resource for writers. So if you haven't stopped by, try it out.
Next week, they'll be interviewing me, so don't miss it. I'll post a link when it goes up. In the meantime, there's the YALSA podcast from Support Teen Literature Day in which Kelly Czarnecki interviews me about fantasy, teens reading, and contests. I can't seem to do a direct link, so look for #47. Heck, listen to them all--they're also a good resource for librarians especially, but also anyone interested in teens and their literature, because they talk about all sorts of important issues relating to YA lit and serving teens.
I'll be speaking there and then just generally participating, networking, etc. The title of my talk is “Passion or Practicality—Writing for Love or the Market."
So go check it out, and sign up if it sounds like just the thing you've been looking for.
One of the things an editor must sometimes do that isn't editing is to write copy--catalog copy, cover copy, and even sometimes ad copy and discussion guide copy. After all, the editor is the champion of the book in the publishing house and they tend to know the book best, so sometimes coming up with a summary or a teaser is best done by that person.
I've heard that this varies from house to house--sometimes your editor writes that copy, and sometimes someone in marketing or an editorial assistant might write the copy.
But as you can imagine, for the catalog to be interesting to the buyers (book buyers at both independent bookstores and chains, and mass market buyers too), the catalog copy needs to really give a great sense of what the book is about and why that buyer would want this book. They need to get a sense of the atmosphere and to know what the plot is all about, who would be reading it.
It can be quite a challenge, which uses an entirely different part of the brain than editing. In fact, I like it, exactly because of that. Sometimes it's nice to have the change of pace. It brings back some of my earlier days in newspaper and trade magazines, in fact. I've never considered myself good at titles and headings, so to come up with one tagline to describe a book can be mind-racking. Yet at the same time, the brainstorming process--listing words and key phrases which might be combined to interesting effect--is quite fun.
I think this process might actually help writers as they write cover letters and queries in the submissions process. Pretend you're writing cover copy for your book. What does the reader need to know to want to pick up this book? A good rule of thumb is "less is more" in cover letters--boil it down to one or two sentences. In Hollywood I think they call it "high concept." (Not that your story should be high concept, but that you can boil down your plot and characters to a few sentences for such purposes.)
An example of catalog copy from a previous season might help you know what I'm getting at. Here's what we had for Red Dragon Codex in our Spring 2008 catalog:
Mudd lives a peaceful life in his small town, tinkering with the mill and any mechanical devices that he can find. But his peaceful life soon changes when, out of nowhere, a red dragon attacks, burning the town and kidnapping Shemnara, the village seer. Only one clue is left behind—a cryptic note telling Mudd, “Seek the silver dragon.” In this first Dragon Codex, R.D. Henham spins a fantastic adventure where dragons take center stage.
Now, obviously, you wouldn't praise your own writing the way marketing copy might praise the writer's writing. But the point is the same: your cover letter or query is marketing copy. You are marketing your writing to an editor or agent. So briefness and the big concepts are what matter here. It gives the editor the hook and doesn't ramble on.
So it was a very full, very exhausting weekend! It was fun to stay with a friend and catch up and play with her two-year-old daughter, too, and to see so many good friends, and sad that I didn't have enough time to catch up with everyone. I had a great time, and thanks to the con organizers who invited me!
There are so many things I'd like to dispute in this thinking about the industry, not least of which that you only get PR attention if your book is already big (not true). While self publishing can be quite successful for very particular purposes--for example, independent comic artists tend to do better by self publishing (see my friend Howard at Schlock Mercenary for a great example)--and it can definitely serve writers who only have a limited audience in mind--as a family historian, I can tell you I'm looking forward to using LuLu or a similar service for several personal projects for which the only audience would be my family, and I know one friend who wrote a picturebook for her daughter and wanted to have it published in time for the daughter to be able to enjoy it, and felt that any other sales she might get would be a bonus--in general, for fiction, self-publishing is a sure way to ensure you spend a lot of money and that few people will ever see your book.
If you're okay with that and have money to spare, go for it. But if you want your book to sell to a wide audience, especially if you'd like to make a living at your writing, self-publishing is definitely not the way to go, even if you know someone at a PR firm who would do some google-bombing and social networking for you. There are some very few exceptions—very few. Out of the several thousand self-published books every year, about 5, tops, break out enough to actually make a profit for the writer and/or get picked up by a trade publisher, and few more are actually well-written*. That's not really very good odds, especially if the author is paying out of pocket for the PR and marketing.
Let's break it down and talk about why this is. I'm pretty sure the majority of my readers will have heard this kind of thing before, especially if they frequent blogs like Writer Beware. But let's assume a lack of basic knowledge of publishing for this post, because that's where these friends, most of whom fall into the 'would like to write someday" category, are coming from.
( A big ol' long list behind the cut )
*And believe me, I see a lot of the other kind in my slush pile. (DO NOT think that self-publishing will get you the attention of a real publisher. In fact, it will ensure that book will never see the light of day from a regular publisher in most cases except for the very rare exceptions.)
Also, one reader asks:
No doubt you don't need anyone to tell you this, but I wish SP folks realized that the places to advertise their book are not 1) editors--since if it's already published they don't need an editor (see Editorial Anonymous), 2) agents, since you can't rep a book that's already been published, and 3) boards for writers to discuss craft and traditional publishing. SP is not for me, but maybe a few pointers on where it IS appropriate to plaster your ads would be helpful to those who want to do it?
This is a very good question. Anyone want to tackle this in the comments? I'd say stay out of my inbox, stay off my Myspace, and please don't market to me as an editor, period. I don't want to see previously published stuff in my slush pile because I can't publish previously published work.
I do think that especially if you're writing science fiction and fantasy, you should be going to as many fan conventions as possible to market to actual readers. Sometimes school visits work. I know that Eragon did so well because his family packed up a van and traveled across the country selling it--I don't know where. Was it at flea markets? Something like that--someone correct me, as I don't have time to google it. Whatever it was, they did a great job and it ended up being successful for them. But just know that it's going to be a big, uphill battle if you go the self-publishing route, and that when you act as your own publisher, you're going to have to fill all the roles of the people I listed above, or hire them out yourself. That's a lot to juggle, and for most people, they'd rather just be in charge of their writing, period. They're willing to do the self promotion because it's a necessary evil in this market--and because it connects them with readers.
And don't forget, there is a new episode up of Writing Excuses. I haven't listened to it yet, but the last one had some good tips. This time they're talking about blending the familiar and the original.
Three friends of mine have started a podcast on writing. Brandon Sanderson, Howard Tayler, and Dan Wells discuss brainstorming in their first episode of Writing Excuses. New episodes will be published every Monday.
Also, it's 15 minutes long, "because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart." :)
I've seen them on writers' blogs, so I know they exist--those little graphics that you can post that show how far you've gotten in the current project? Anyone know where I might find one?
I have a project or two I want to keep track of and googling isn't helping me. But I knew you all could!
raisinfish explains today how her writing group has learned to prioritize critiques so that the most important information gets emphasized most to the writer getting critiqued. Check it out:In my writing group, we use the 3-2-1 system for giving critiques. We start off our critiques talking about good things. Then, when we're ready to jump into criticism, we start with level 3 comments--meaning comments that are such large problems that you would put the piece down and not pick it back up (if you were a reader), or you would reject it (if you were an editor). When we've gotten through those, we move on to level 2 comments, or things that bothered you, but weren't deal-breakers. Then we move onto level 1--the small things that probably don't matter that much, the copyediting stuff, the little itches you want to talk about but probably don't make a difference in the sale of the piece.
If you have ever been in a writing group that focuses too much on sentence-level problems and not enough on the big picture, perhaps this tip might be useful to you!
My essay on what I look for in a story and Mormons in the children's and YA field is up at By Common Consent. Note that this is written from a Mormon point of view for a Mormon audience, so it's not my normal blog fare, but I thought you all might be interested.
In other news, there is no other news. It's time for a vacation! I hope everyone's holidays will be lovely. I myself will be spending Christmas Day with my brother who lives nearby, and the rest of the time I'm not really quite sure what I'll do. I'm going to see the new National Treasure movie tonight with my roommate. (I am so strangely drawn by National Treasure. It got such bad reviews but it's just so fun.) I'm going to a boys' choir concert tomorrow night with a friend. Then I'll have my house to myself. I plan on rearranging and scouring my bedroom, perhaps hanging out with a few friends who will remain in Seattle over the break. I'll be helping a friend move later in the vacation. And I have some work to catch up on--when you have a week and a half off work, sometimes you fill the time by working. I'll be knitting a LOT (that's what I get for deciding "hats for everybody!" a month before Christmas), and perhaps doing a little of my own writing. So I might not even have time for it all!
At any rate, I know it will be a lot of fun, and I hope yours is too. Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it, and definitely a happy new year to all!
- Mood:
pleased
I'm on MySpace too, in a more professional capacity. I generally use that account to promote Mirrorstone (but now that we have a Mirrorstone MySpace, it's less necessary) and to participate in groups like the Readergirlz chats. The Mirrorstone MySpace lets librarians and others on our friends' list know about author appearances, contests, and other important information. On my personal account, I love connecting with teen readers and with writers published and unpublished on a social level to talk about literature and recommend both books that I've worked on and others' books.
I personally use social networking sites, in other words, to network socially. There's a professional aspect to it, but mostly it's about the fun of, in one case, all sorts of things with my personal friends, and in the other, all things books-related.
The complications come when someone expects personal attention because they're a "professional" in some related industry. (Perhaps they know graphic design, or they are in the magazine industry, etc.) But if they don't know children's books--and there are a lot of really great people on both sites who aren't published but who know the industry--generally their lack of understanding of this very particular industry shows, and they're just as likely to tell me all about the illustrator they found for their picturebook, or to ask me, a perfect stranger, to read their manuscript.
So here are a few guidelines for connecting with an editor on a social networking site. Just some friendly advice that hopefully will help you avoid annoying the person you might like to help you. For most people who know children's books, this will be obvious information.
We editors tend to be a cynical bunch, because we've probably seen the same thing a hundred times before in our slush and at conferences. So it's best to treat an editor online the same way you would in person.
It all comes down to basic professional behavior. Just because you're on the same social networking site as the editor and 50,000 or a million other people (and ESPECIALLY if you don't even have a friend in common!), don't think that somehow it will give you any kind of edge. If you ask me a question about publishing on a social networking site, I'll give you the same information I give anyone on this blog, on my blog at Gleemax*, on the Mirrorstone blog, and pretty much at any conference I might speak at. I don't play favorites, especially with perfect strangers.
Know the industry. Write well. These are the secrets to success. There are no magic bullets.
* I've been meaning to post about that blog at Gleemax for a while, but I haven't really gotten it up and running yet. Mostly my plan is to copy over important posts from here for a while, but I haven't really had the time to do a lot of copying yet. Gleemax is Wizards of the Coast's new gaming social network, which is in alpha right now. Several staff members keep blogs there. Most of them are from the gaming side of things, though I and an editor from the adult imprint keep blogs, too.
Background: I have been roped into a church talent show for this weekend. I could have offered a number of my talents--photography for the display portion, singing a song or playing on my trumpet--but I don't have enough time to prepare anything interesting. I'd have to spend money to print and mount my most recent photography, etc. So I volunteered to read something. I know. What was I thinking?
But I figured I must have something I could read. Just now I was rereading a partial manuscript of a story I've been working on forever, and I have a chapter that, reading it a year later, I wondered if I'd really written. It's actually pretty good!
So I'm polishing it tonight, making sure it's ready for a reading. And I run across this sentence:
She might not be squeamish of blood or manure or any number of farm-related things most people found disgusting—Maggie knew she stood out in a crowd, especially at lunchtime--but bugs were the one thing she couldn’t stand.
Just what I was thinking when I wrote this sentence? The world may never know. I have no idea, that's for sure.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it? Make this sentence fit. Give it context in which that clause in the middle actually makes sense!
Go!
She addresses how her background as the child of Christian missionaries and how her everyday faith today affects how she writes.
At least, that's what I remember her addressing. Now that I've tried opening the file, it appears to be in a format that I can't access. :( I'll go ahead and post this anyway, and if anyone knows what program would play that file, let me know in the comments.
Sometimes a writing breakthrough comes in dreams, I've heard, but never experienced it until I woke up this morning. I don't have time to go into detail, but basically I had the weirdest dream that involved a party at Cheryl Klein's house (who I've never met) and an old friend from Boston who I never talk to anymore. I woke up completely weirded out, but then as I was thinking about it I knew it was the key to how I would write the rest of a story I've been working on for a little while now. Different people and different motivations will be involved--meaner people than the utterly nice Cheryl and old friend, who laughed with me at my clumsy mistake in the dream--but it will be a key scene that, changing a few things around, will work nicely.
Anyway, weird dreams: put them to use!
sarazarr just pointed out, the Utah Arts Council's Writing Competition is open for submissions. For my Utah friends, this is a contest for your novels that have NOT been published. I am thinking of at least two different people I know who should be submitting their novels or collections of stories. And this year is the year for the young adult category.So the Dresden Files book #1 is becoming a good example of both good points and bad. While I love--love--the TV show, the book is giving me mixed feelings. I have only read 2 chapters so far, so you're getting the benefit of my slow speed in my reactions between reading the first two pages and the next 20. I'm sure it's wonderful--I'm just reading it at the end of every day as time permits, which it doesn't really permit much of lately. And I look forward to reading more (though I must admit the prose is a little wooden in the intro dept right now, but perhaps that's crime novel/hardboiled detective novel convention that I'm not familiar with--certainly the TV show makes those parts over into much more in the ironic postmodern dept.). The following is a minor issue that calls attention to something that writers might want to be aware of in their own writing.
Remember that "My name is Harry Dresden" paragraph I referred to earlier? Right in that same paragraph, the narrator goes on to say "I work out of an office in midtown Chicago."
Nobody works out of an office in midtown Chicago, because "midtown Chicago" doesn't exist. You would say, "I work in the Loop," or "I work in Bridgeport/Lakeview/Lincoln Park/Pullman/Wicker Park/South Shore/Hyde Park" or any number of other neighborhoods. If you're a Chicagoan (which I was, for two years, and am a native Illinoisan) you'd know this terminology, so I'd want Harry to know it. Or at least use the regional terms, like North Side, South Side, West Side, and the Loop. (No East Side, which would be Lake Michigan.)
If you're going to set your fantasy in a contemporary real-life location, you still need to pay attention to little details like that so that readers familiar with that location won't be thrown out of the story . In other words, don't do anything that would severely challenge their suspension of disbelief.
With the Dresden Files, for me, the TV show is engaging enough and I already know the concept. I want to like the books, want to see how they compare . So I elide over geographical nitpickery, but it still niggles at me. And if I were reading a manuscript cold, it would bug me even more. Not enough to reject something just for that kind of error, but enough to make me wonder if the author has paid attention to other details and make me keep a sharper eye out.
Exceptions
There are many, many examples in both literature and film where geography is played with to serve the story. Certainly Jack didn't walk Lucy home to Oak Park from the riverwalk on Wabash--a distance of at least 10 miles--in While You Were Sleeping. And, I might add, they were walking toward the lake near the Tribune Tower, which means they were headed the wrong direction anyway, east instead of west. It made for a prettier shot, I'm sure. And it works for people who don't know Chicago, and even if you do, it's still a good movie. Same for Sleepless in Seattle and a number of other movies.
So of course you can play with geography if you need to. However, just keep in mind that especially when you use a location to provide flavor in your first few pages, and even later when you use locational details to establish setting, you need the little details to be accurate. If, in that paragraph, Butcher had had Harry Dresden say, "I work out of an office on the South Side of Chicago," I would have happily continued on my way reading, without needing more specific detail about which neighborhood, because at least he used the right general term. He wouldn't have called attention to the possible fact that he might never have lived in Chicago. (He may have, for all I know--his bio doesn't say one way or the other, just says he currently lives in Missouri.
I don't care if you've never lived in a setting you're writing in (though of course I'd rather you have at least visited, though sometimes that can't be helped, especially with foreign countries). But if you've never lived there, be sure to do your homework.
Question
Any other examples where this kind of situation brought you out of the story? Anybody who this doesn't bother? Why or why not? Can a good plot overcome bad geography? (I give a qualified yes: bad geography is an editable offense.)
*Despite being obviously filmed in Vancouver--sad that, because Chicago is an AWESOME town to see, and you should spend time there if you haven't. Oh, and speaking of Chicago, tltrent is there today and tomorrow for Support Teen Lit Day for YALSA, so watch your local news on the 19th to look for an interview with her!