Category: criticism

The Micro and Macro– This is one of the ones were it’s especially important to have a really good sense of my readers. When it comes to criticism, any book is going to have two aspects to it. There’s the big picture stuff—did you like it? Did the twist make sense? Was Wakko’s overall motivation believable? Then there’s the smaller stuff—does this line of dialogue work? Does this description stand out? Is this action too detailed?

The catch is, there are things that can look wrong or odd on the small scale, but it turns out they’re correct when we look at the big picture. If I say “Hitler died in 1964,” that’s wrong. But if I say that in a sci-fi, secret-history story, maybe there’s something to it.

I need to trust my beta readers. If I’ve got any doubts about their abilities, their motives, or their work ethic… I probably shouldn’t ask them to read this. If I’m going to ignore what they tell me, or tell myself they just didn’t get it… I probably shouldn’t ask them to read this. We need to be open to the criticism we’re going to get, and we have to trust the people giving it to us.

Getting close to the end now.

I want to talk now about incorporating feedback. I know to some folks this doesn’t sound like a vital part of “writing my first novel,” but I personally think it is. One of the reasons my “college novel” (Trinity) crashed and burned was that I got really hung up on early feedback. I tried to figure out how to please everyone because I gave everyone’s thoughts equal weight. I still see that happening today—people who want to somehow listen to every voice and incorporate every note. Even contradictory ones. I’ve seen people spend years trying to do this.

Also I know it may also seem a bit weird that this part and the last one have been split into two posts. It might seem feedback and revisions go hand and hand. On one level, yeah, they do, but I think the criticism half of it is important enough to warrant its own focus for a bit. Being able to accept feedback from knowledgeable sources is a big thing for a writer. It’s taking a huge step forward. And I think it’s really, really tough to write a good book if I can’t take that step. So it really is a separate, important step in the process.

Plus, splitting them up this way gave me an even twelve parts for the A2Q.

All that said, let’s talk about incorporating notes

The first thing we need to talk about is sorting the feedback. Not all criticism is created equal and valid, despite what that guy on the internet shrieked at you. We need to take those fifteen page packets of notes, and the copies of your manuscript with notes up and down the margins, and figure out what’s what. You can do this on the fly, break it all down before you actually start the revisions, or whatever works for you.

I think the overwhelming amount of feedback we get is going to fall into one of three categories—opinions, advice, and facts. Being able to figure out which one’s which is going to be tough. It’s also going to be a skill you can use forever. It’ll help you throughout your writing career, and probably in other parts of your life, too. A lot of folks think their angry opinions are facts. Some folks think they’re offering advice when it’s just an opinion. And some writers (yeah, it’s on us too) hear facts and advice and think they’re just opinions.

Let’s go over them.

First up is opinions. An opinion is someone’s personal thoughts about a topic (in this case our clearly flawless werewolf manuscript). Opinions don’t need anything else behind them. They can just be a gut response. They’re super-subjective and they can carry a lot of baggage.

They’re also, by and large, the first thing to toss. If someone’s just scribbling “that’s stupid” in the margin or “werewolf stories are so overdone,” I tend to ignore them. I once had a beta reader cover The Suffering Map with red ink because they decided everything in the manuscript was wrong  because characters made decisions they didn’t like.

Now, I’m not saying opinions have no value. They do, but only in a “general direction” sort of way. An individual opinion really doesn’t mean much, in this instance, while a dozen identical opinions have a bit of weight. Maybe. If only one person thinks I telegraphed Luna being the werewolf too much, they’re probably just reading too much into it. I know some folks who have a bad habit of retroactively adjusting their awareness/expectations, so they “always” saw that twist coming (because if they didn’t, it means they got tricked like everyone else). But if most of my beta-readers (and agent and editor) think I telegraphed it… maybe I did.

Next is advice. In pretty much any sense, this is thoughts and ideas that have an actual rationale behind them. A big difference between advice and opinions is I can almost always explain the reasoning behind my advice in an objective way. I’ve mentioned this little factoid before—anyone can say “this sucks” but it’s a lot harder to be able to explain why something sucks. Sometimes advice is self-evident, other times it may need a line or three of explanation.

For example, one setting in the werewolf book is the bar Phoebe works at, and some reader might point out “Should some people be wearing masks here at the bar? It’s your most crowded location, and even optimistically when this book comes out it’s probably still going to be a very common sight.” It’s the reader’s idea, but we can all see the logic and the chain of reasoning behind it. Or they might get halfway through the manuscript and point out “Wow, Phoebe is coming across as kinda dumb,” and offer a few examples that have happened so far.

Last are the facts. These are, well, I mean, they’re facts. No alternatives. If you tell me I spelled Jake Gillanhall wrong, it’s something we can both look up pretty easily because there’s a definitive answer. If the last words in my book are To Be Continued and you tell me there’s no ending, you’ve caught me dead to rights. If you tell me the full moon doesn’t actually last five nights and we traveled there in 1969, you’re absolutely correct.

Worth mentioning, sure, maybe those mistakes are there on purpose. It might be a clue that someone thinks we landed on the Moon in 1955 and there could be a good reason why I have a bunch of spelling mistakes. But (as I’ve mentioned once or thrice before), it should be very clear to the reader that these are deliberate mistakes, not accidental ones. I’ve always been very leery of “journal” books that have a bunch of misspellings and use the excuse of “it’s the character making mistakes.” I know this kind of thing gnaws at editors, too. So if my beta readers don’t get that this is deliberate, if they think it’s an actual mistake… I may want to think about that.

Now that I’ve got them sorted, the next step is weighing them. This is one of the reasons it might not be bad to have more than one person reading your manuscript. I still don’t think it’s good to get ten or twelve or more folks, but having a well selected five or six can still give me a lot of viewpoints—and possibly some opposing ones.

Then I just start going through them page by page. Personally, I like to do it all at once. Here’s everyone’s thoughts on page one, everyone’s thoughts on page two, everyone’s thoughts on… you get the point. Yes, it’s a bit slower to go this way, but it also lets me get reactions all at once rather than getting Reader A’s responses on this page right now, Reader B’s responses in three days, and Reader C’s sometime next week. This also saves me from spending a lot of time rethinking the page because of A and B’s thoughts, only to finds out later C, D, and E all really liked it. And so did I, hopefully, because I wrote it.

That’s how a lot of this will go. Weighing how people respond to different things. Everybody likes Phoebe and dislikes Luc (just like they’re supposed to). But everybody also thinks the description of Phoebe’s armor is just… bad. The unanimous ones are the easy notes to get. Everyone hates this, everyone loves that. The big thing is to actually read them, to not give in to that instinct to just brush the bad comments aside.

Sometimes, it’ll take a little more back and forth. If one of my beta readers thinks there’s a little too much sex and innuendo in this werewolf book, but two others have no comment and the fourth keeps adding comments saying “Ohhhhhhh yeahhhhh”… that’s kinda evenly split, arguably positive. One thinks it’s a negative, two don’t seem to mind either way, and one likes it. I should consider that and weight changing it appropriately

Likewise, if three of them hate it and one likes it… well, maybe this needs some work. Sometimes I just need to accept that sometimes things just don’t work the way I’d hoped they would. It sucks, but it’s better that I’m learning it from three or four people I know rather than a potential agent or publisher. Definitely better than hearing it from the two hundred people who decided to leave reviews.

A few other things to consider. If a lot of readers are suggesting something doesn’t work, they’re probably right. If they’re telling you how to fix it… they’re probably wrong. This is your project. Your art. People can suggest whatever they want, but the only person who knows what it needs is you. Don’t get bullied down a path you don’t actually want to go down. Look at the notes, look at your manuscript, figure out what’s going to make it work.

On a related note, yeah, sometimes we also just need to put our foot down and say “the space cantina stays in!” Because this is art (our art, anyway) there are going to be things that might not be totally logical. They may be a bit more excessive and flowery (or violent and horrific, or sexy and scandalous) than they arguably need to be, but in my mind this moment or this character or maybe this chapter needs to be there, Maybe it’s not necessary for the narrative or dramatic structure, but it’s important for the world. So even if everyone thinks it’s unnecessary and/or a bit distracting… I’m keeping the space cantina.

I do need to keep track of how often I’m putting my foot down, though. If there are dozens of instances where my readers are pointing out logical, reasonable things about the manuscript and I think I need to put my foot down on every single one of them… maybe I’m not as open to feedback as I’m telling myself. Might be worth taking a few steps back, having that stiff drink we mentioned last time, and starting over.

Like I mentioned above, this whole process can take some time, but I really think it’s worth it. So much of writing is done alone (and let’s face it—a lot of us tend to lean toward the introvert side) that our internal empathy scale can drift a bit. It’s good when we’re starting out—and honestly, I think, even after we’ve had a degree of success—to have someone we trust help us recalibrate that scale.

Also worth mentioning… Your mileage may vary, but after I do all of these revisions, I try to do one more line-by-line read through. I’ve learned (the hard way) with all these tweaks and revisions, something often slips by. Just a little thread I didn’t snip or tie off. Like maybe at some point I gave a bunch of Luc’s dialogue to Quinn, but I forgot to change some pronouns and now trying to follow who’s talking is a mess. Or at one point I decided Luc would be called Etienne (to cut down on any possible Luc/Luna confusion) and missed a few here or there. Or maybe I cut a whole awkward (on many levels) discussions about safe sex between Phoebe and Luna from chapter four, but they still refer back to it in chapter fifteen. This is a big house of cards and it’s not hard for something to get overlooked when those cards get shuffled.

So hopefully this’ll help you put some of that feedback in perspective and let you sift through it.

There is one part left to the A2Q. One final lesson to impart, my young apprentice. Apprentices? Apprentici? How many of you are even reading this?

Until then, go write.

Random post with some thoughts. So very sorry about the title, but it was too perfect not to use.

A friend of mine got in touch lately. Should I say friend? Someone I talk to fairly regularly and have met in person? I don’t want to put too much pressure on anyone… Anyway, she got in touch because she and a few other writers she knows have hit a problem with their stories. Essentially, they’ve all become a little too on the nose. Possibly even questionable.

There are folks right now who are in the middle of books and stories about pandemics. I don’t mean they’re rushing them out, trying to take advantage of current events. They’d been working on their stories for months and suddenly there it is on the news, getting shoved in their faces every time they go online. And there are folks writing stories about deadly genetically-engineered monsters coming out of China, maybe even specifically out of Wuhan. There’s somebody writing a story about health care professionals dying as they try to save patients and probably a few somebody elses writing about corrupt politicians who ignore a threat as they try to consolidate power and enrich themselves.

These aren’t specific from the writing group, by the way. This is just me riffing on things based off the general problem. But you get the idea, don’t you? Sometimes the world conspires to dump a ton of extra baggage on your story, and now people are going to look at it–and maybe you–with a much  more critical eye.

Here’s a 100% true story that’ll help get it across.

As some of you know, I used to work in the film industry, and about twenty years ago I was working on a SciFi Channel show called The Chronicle. It was about the reporters at a tabloid newspaper that actually printed true stories about vampire Elvis impersonators, alien diplomats, demonically-possessed ovens, and so on. One episode we did was about a very low-level telekinetic who wants to be a superhero, so he stages crimes and accidents across Manhattan that he’ll be able to stop with his meager powers. His big one that our heroes rush to stop is he’s planted a bomb in a New York skyscraper, and they have to stop him and also stop the bomb before it blows up the building.

I’ll always remember this episode ’cause we finished filming it on September 10th, 2001.

Dead serious.

Look… the world sucks right now. It’s sucked for a couple of years, but the past month has thrown everything sideways. And it sucks even more if it’s spilling into your writing. This should be our chance to escape a bit, as writers and readers, and suddenly we’re finding out that the thing we’ve been working on for weeks or months is… well, it’s very topical. Not in the good way. In the “people point at you and scream like body snatchers” way except they’re all just screaming “Too soon!” and “What is wrong with you?!” and “J’accuse!”

And let’s be honest. It’s tough to write now without imaginary people shouting at you. It’s so much easier to crawl into a bottle or a bag of Doritos or that little thatch roof cottage Tom Nook loaned you money for. I’m not going to lie—I’ve lost more than a few days recently just reading news articles and texting friends and building little toy soldiers because… well, you know. I’m sure a lot of you are there, too. So once you add in that extra pressure of an idea that’s suddenly super-topical (and may be for a while)…

So. What do we do? I’ve written what I thought was going to be a really cool/creepy/thought-provoking story about a super-virus sweeping across the world, and now I’m sitting here staring at the screen thinking “…am I the baddie?” Do I toss it? Do I keep going? Do I tone it down or change a couple key elements?

Okay… look, I wish I could reassure you and give you a solid answer. I think we’d all love some reassurance and solid answers these days. But the truth is, what I do when I find myself at a point like this is going to be a very personal choice. It’s going to depend on how confident I feel about my abilities. The parallels between my work and the real world events. Honestly grasping how people will view my work in light of those events. How much conflict I want to deal with. How much of my artistic vision I’m willing to compromise. And probably more things. This is just what came to me while I’m writing in a sort of train-of-thought manner.

In some ways, this is like dealing with any similar idea cropping up. It doesn’t matter if it’s another writer or, well, reality. The way I deal with something and talk about it is going to be unique to me. My story isn’t going to be like real life because it’s my story.

And I’m not so sure about changing things. I mean, if you’re honestly inspired to alter some aspects of your story, cool. But I think forcing a change is always going to feel… forced. Especially if I’m kind of doing it under duress. I wrote this story this way for a reason, and if I compromise that reason it’s going to show.

Ultimately, this all comes down to an art vs. business discussion. If I’m just writing for me, I shouldn’t worry about what’s going on in the world. I should just tell the story I want to tell. The story I, hopefully, needto tell. Don’t compromise, don’t bend at all, just be bold and brave and beautiful and let that story out into the world.

However… if my long-term (or maybe even short-term) goal is to sell this story, I may need to keep a few things in mind. Like I mentioned up above, there are those writers who leap on every trend and news event, so there’s a good chance the market will be glutted with pandemic stories in the next month or three. They may be rushed, they may be bad, they be self- or traditionally-published. One thing we can say for almost-certain is they’ll be there.

Also… geeez, am I an insensitive monster or what? People are dying from this. Right now. And—sad to say—there’s going to be a lot more dead people by the time I get my book out. Do I want to be rubbing it in people’s faces? Do I want to profit off their pain and suffering?

This one’s tough, and how I deal with it’s going to be personal, again. What I’d ask you to keep in mind is that people wrote war stories during pretty much every war fought at any time. They’ve written disaster stories during every natural disaster you can imagine. They’ve written AI stories during all three (failed) robot uprisings. People tell stories. Storytelling is art. Art reflects life.

But that reflection brings conflict. There are always people who want to comment on stories, and a topical story is going to get more comments than most. Some people don’t want to have current events pushed back at them, even in a fictionalized form. Some folks don’t want to be reminded of what they’ve lost. And, in all honesty and fairness, some publishers would prefer to avoid that conflict.

And I know nobody wants to hear this but… there’s a time issue, too. Maybe I’ll finish my story and just need to put it aside for a while. Things that are horrifying and taboo today will be mildly scandalous in a year and blasé two years after that. I mean, twenty years after WWII we were making sitcoms about Nazi prison camps. Actual sitcoms. That ran for years.

And that episode of The Chronicle I told you about? They put it on the air. Just five months after 9/11. My story might feel inappropriate now, but in a year or so… people might smile at the idea that I felt nervous about it.

We’re going to get through this. You’re going to get through it. And—if you want it to—your story’s going to get through this. So be true to it where you need to be, change it if you think it needs to change, and write the story you need to write.

Thursday I’m going to continue the A2Q and talk about first drafts.

Until then… go write.

And wash your damned hands.