Author: Lane Diamond (Page 1 of 19)

THIS POST IS FOR WRITERS:

Prepare Well, and Elevate Your Prose

(This article originally appeared at another site back in March of 2011, from which it is now gone. Therefore, I re-post it here. NOTE: I may come back later [today is 25 September 2020] to update it, including how it applies to our standards at Evolved Publishing.)

I aim this post at aspiring authors who seek to publish, for the first time, via a traditional publisher.

I love to read fiction, and one of my greatest joys is the discovery of wonderful new authors. Yet they are not as plentiful as one might expect. If you’ve been trying to publish your first novel (and I don’t mean self-publish—anyone with a credit card can do that), you know precisely what I mean.

1) The traditional publishing industry is a notoriously difficult nut to crack.

2) Most agents require a referral, or preliminary contact at a writer’s conference, before they’ll take a hard look at a first-time author of fiction. Some agents express indignation at that statement but…come on…really? Who knew that just finding an agent who’ll read the manuscript would be such a daunting task—such a crazy concept? I didn’t…until I started the process. Yikes! Yet as broken as the industry is in this regard, first-time authors bear some of the blame—a great big chunk of it, in fact.

3) Most first-time authors are simply not ready for publication. Their work needs some…er…um…work. Most submissions that agents receive from first-timers are substandard. Agents, who are only human (Oh yes they are!), develop an auto-response psychologically: “Oh no! This submission is from a first-timer! Aaaaahhhhhh………” They must fight this tendency every day, I think. Some succeed—sometimes—and some don’t. The walls they erect against first-time authors of fiction are formidable, which makes our task of cracking that nut an insanely difficult one. Is anyone else losing his hair? Yeesh!

You must be a good storyteller, of course, but you must be more than that. You must be a WRITER. In other words, WHAT you write is important, but HOW WELL you write it is equally so.

4) Agents are unforgiving when it comes to the work of first-time authors. You can get away with much less than do established authors. Let’s face it: some poor writing makes it into print—but rarely from first-time authors of fiction. Do you think that’s unfair? You’d best get over it, and do what you must to break through those barriers. If you can’t accept that, please go back to your day job—save your sanity.

5) You must grab the agent on the very first page of the manuscript, preferably the first paragraph. In fact, why wait that long? Hook them with the FIRST SENTENCE! Front-load your piece; otherwise, they’ll never see all the brilliance that awaits them deeper into your manuscript. As a first-timer, and assuming you don’t have an “in” with the agent (referral, personal history, etc.), you have no reputation or track record to serve you. Therefore, grab them by the throat, right out of the chute, and don’t let go.

6) No spelling errors! No grammatical errors! Period! Do you want to be a professional? Outstanding! Then write professional prose. Oh sure, there are those moments when, for purely stylistic purposes, you violate the rules of grammar. Fine, but remember: you’re a first-time author. Agents will accept only so many of those “stylistic choices” before they determine that you simply don’t know how to write properly. Besides, if you minimize those stylistic flourishes, they’ll pack a much stronger punch (assuming you’ve executed them well); if you overload them, you’ll water them down, sap them of their effectiveness. Don’t be too cute by half, for the likely result may be the all too familiar: The agent stops reading your manuscript, perhaps with a frustrated sigh, and reaches for one of those wonderful little slips that start, “Thank you for allowing us to review your manuscript. Unfortunately…”

Good writing, even merely adequate writing, is an acquired skill. It requires rather a lot of work. Darn it! Yes, you must have some innate talent, but you must develop your natural skills to reach your full potential. You must work at it.

7) Read, read, and then read some more—fiction. If you write romance novels, for example, then read A LOT of romance novels. Know your genre. Know what passes as “publishable” material, but always keep in mind that the standards are higher for first-time authors.

8) Read, read, and then read some more—nonfiction. If you were going to be an electrician, you’d read books about electronics. If you were going to be an astronomer, you’d read books about astronomy. Need I say it? Well, all right: Read books about writing! There are some great ones out there. If you’re a first-timer, focus initially on those earmarked for beginners, and make sure that The Elements of Style, by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White (Macmillan), is part of your arsenal.

9) Finally, if you’re serious about publishing your work, find an editor. Every beginning writer (and most established ones) needs an editor. We’re too close to our own work. We often make mistakes that belie our skill level, meaning we know better, but we may read right over those mistakes when self-editing. A writer’s mind puts up psychological barriers, as if it assumes that, if she wrote it in the first place, it must be right. Why else would she have written it? It’s rather as the old saw says: “Forest? What forest? I don’t see no stinkin’ forest. All those darned trees are in the way!”

When it comes to your fiction, think of your prose as the trees and your STORY as the forest. If an agent can’t see through the trees to find the forest, your STORY will wallow in perpetual anonymity.

‘Til next time, remember this: Writing well is not easy. It takes work. You mustn’t be lazy.

THIS POST IS FOR WRITERS:

Narrative: 1st-Person vs. 3rd-Person

(This article originally appeared at another site back in March of 2011, from which it is now gone. Therefore, I re-post it here.)

It’s time, you tell yourself, to finally sit down and write that novel or short story that’s been burning a swath through your consciousness. Outstanding! Now you must answer the first critical question: Who’s going to tell your story?

In other words, which narrative voice will you employ? You have options, but for our purposes, since a second-person narrative is so rare (and difficult to pull off), I’ll focus on the two primary options.

     1) First-Person Narrator

          a. This would be a character from your story, typically the protagonist.

          b. You could have multiple first-person narrators, each telling their own parts of the story.

     2) Third-Person Narrator

          a. The most common form is the omniscient narrator—the God-like being that sees, hears and knows everything.

          b. It could be a secondary, minor character, a witness to the critical story elements.

          c. It could be a separate “interested party,” such as a news reporter.

Important Consideration

The truth is that most agents and editors (publishers) dislike a first-person narrative. Why is that the case? The simplest answer is this: Few writers pull it off well. Authors have so worn down agents and editors with poor first-person submissions, many of those agents and editors have erected an automatic mental barrier to them. Some are reluctant even to consider it seriously, let alone review the manuscript.

Don’t think badly of them. Under such a barrage of poor work, their reaction is perfectly natural. They’re only human, after all. (Oh yes they are!)

I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t use a first-person narrative, merely that you have some hard work ahead of you.

We must overcome several challenges to create an effective first-person narrative. As the first-person narrator, we authors become the primary character; we personalize the narrative. That means we see everything through our eyes alone, which leads us into a few traps.

     1) We don’t remain consistent with the character-narrator’s voice, in both the main narrative and that character’s dialogue. She must have one voice, whether narrating the story, speaking to another character, or musing in silent monologue.

     2) We create a character-narrator with such quirks or limitations that they are no longer credible—believable—as narrator. If that happens, you’ve lost the reader.

     3) We offer insights into what other characters are thinking or feeling, even though the narrator, as one of the characters, can’t possibly know what’s in the minds of those other characters. When we insist on a first-person narrative, we trap ourselves into a single Point-of-View (POV), and we must adhere to it.

          a. You can get around this by having multiple first-person narrators, each telling their own part of the story. However, this is highly inadvisable in a short story, and in a novel, you must always break chapters when you change narrators. Furthermore:

                i. It would be advisable to include in your chapter headings the name of the narrator for that chapter, in order to prevent reader confusion.

                ii. You must establish a unique narrative voice, a distinctive style, for every one of your first-person narrators (no simple task), and that distinctiveness must shine through consistently in both their narrative and their dialogue.

     4) We tend to relay information, rather than bring the reader into the story. In other words, it becomes all TELLING and no SHOWING.

          a. I saw this, I heard that, I remember when this happened, I wish I had done that, etc. I, I, I, I, I….

          b. Every narrative struggles with SHOW versus TELL, but the problem is particularly acute in a first-person narrative, where the lines are grayer than the more black-and-white lines of a third-person omniscient narrative.

     5) There is a natural tendency to bring even a Past Tense story current, to jump into Present Tense, in order to indicate how the character-narrator now feels about what happened. This often smacks of Author Intrusion, and it happens much more frequently in a first-person narrative. After all, the author is the character is the narrator; it’s hard to draw distinct lines of separation.

          a. I’ll never forget those words.

          b. I wish I could have seen it coming.

          c. I remember that day as if it were yesterday.

          d. Looking back, I now understand how it all went wrong.

It’s not that you may never use such devices, but you must not do so within the Past Tense narrative. You may start a chapter or section with that sort of reminiscence, but only if the following are true:

     1) You use a story break (***) to separate it (the Present Tense Lead) from the main Past Tense narrative.

     2) Within the Lead itself, you must break paragraphs when you jump between Tenses.

     3) After the story break, when you’re back in the main narrative, as it were, keep it in the Past Tense.

     4) Only use this Lead mechanism if the character-narrator’s emotional and psychological states, as seen through her mind, is:

          a. Critical to the story, and;

          b. Something you visit throughout the story with some consistency.

          c. Be honest with yourself. If neither of these two is true, resist the temptation to utilize such Leads, and just stick with the main Past Tense narrative.

Ultimately, we should base our choice of first-person narrative on only one criterion: It cements a deep emotional bond between the reader and the character-narrator (usually the protagonist) that you might not otherwise achieve. That’s it—the only justification for a first-person narrative, in my opinion. If it fails to deliver on this, or if it detracts too greatly from the other characters, some of whom may be as critical as the character-narrator, we should revert to a third-person omniscient narrative, which offers certain advantages.

     1) It enables us to delve into every character’s mind, rather than just the character-narrator’s mind, to explore all of their emotional and psychological states.

     2) It brings the line between SHOWING and TELLING more into focus.

     3) It provides us greater flexibility in moving from one character POV to another.

     4) We’ll be less tempted to jump into Present Tense during an otherwise Past Tense narrative, and less inclined to engage in Author Intrusion.

In closing, let me say that a first-person narrative can be a powerful tool. It might make your work more provocative and thrilling, as you delve deep into the mind of the character-narrator at the heart of your story. However, you must recognize and meet the challenges that such a choice will provide. It will be more difficult to execute effectively than would a third-person omniscient narrative, but the payoff just might be worth that extra effort. If you don’t want to tackle those challenges head-on, stay away from the first-person narrative.

‘Til next time, remember this: To write well, you must work hard. To succeed in this tough gig, you mustn’t be lazy.