Having just spotted another one, I decided to detail this particular peeve. I can’t say it’s a personal one, because I’ve never met an editor who said they didn’t mind it.
If you send in a query letter and/or manuscript and say that your work is copyrighted, I’m 99% certain to reject it. It’s very insulting and shows that you are an amateur. Continue reading
Sorry, Marvel. ALL heroes are super.
“Superpower” is a technical term used by some writers and editors, myself included. It’s awkward when used in superhero fiction, but generally speaking it’s a great term packed with a lot of information.
Your protagonist must have a superpower. Your secondary characters usually need them too. Your villain always has a superpower, but an antagonist doesn’t always need it. (Yes, there’s a difference between a villain and an antagonist. There’s also a difference between main characters, protagonists, heroes, and viewpoint characters, but that’s another blog post.) It’s advisable to have a kryptonite as well, but that’s not as important as long as you’ve practiced.
So what is this superpower thing? Flight? Super-strength? The ability to leap tall buildings faster than a speeding bullet while running alongside a train?
It can be, but it’s not necessarily supernatural. A character’s superpower is defined as anything they can do better than anyone else in the story. Similarly, a character’s kryptonite is that which forms an obstacle they cannot overcome. Continue reading
Just for fun, I thought I’d post ABE Books’ Literary Character Quiz. Who did you get? I got Sherlock Holmes. I am not unhappy with this result.
I can actually see this as pretty helpful when building your own characters. Put them in the quiz and find out who is most like them in literature., and then tweak your characters accordingly. Feel like your character is too much like that more famous one? You can fix that. Want to increase the resemblance? You can do that too.
I’m not usually one for rom-coms. Of course, I have nothing against them per se — and I’m a complete romantic sap in real life. But your average romantic comedy usually doesn’t appeal to me because they’re generally quite predictable and need to be based around some central element that makes them stand apart. Continue reading
So yes, I have an apprentice.
By the way, Rebecca hates this reference now.
Rebecca’s not to be confused with an intern. I don’t make her do any of my work, and I don’t provide any college credits. I do, however, occasionally assign homework.
One of the first things she learned was that an editor must know how to write. An editor must try her hand at writing, because there is no way to really understand how a story works without playing around with it yourself.
An editor, essentially, needs all the skills of an author: language, plot, character, research, setting — whatever it is, an editor must know how it works. The one thing that isn’t truly necessary is creativity. That spark possessed by all storytellers that makes them not only craft a great story, but want to tell it too.
Now, most editors actually are writers, if not published authors. (I’m joining the ranks of the latter group next year.) The job of an editor, however, is not to come up with the story in the first place. We make it better, and that means we must be experts in the art even if we don’t produce it ourselves.
And that brings us back to the matter of writing. There is always a story to tell. We practice this all the time, sometimes without knowing it. We just have to hone the skill.
I’ve told Rebecca that I don’t need to see her homework. I’m not even making her write. I just strongly recommended it. She’ll be attending my workshop (having done the grunt work of setting it up . . . okay, I guess I do make her do some of my work!), and I told her she’ll learn more about editing if she’s also got a story to apply things to. She’ll get her chance to practice critiquing other stories, including my own, but it’s important to have something to work on even if you’re never going to show it to another living soul.
I’ve encountered bestselling authors who tell me they get burned out on stories. I tell them pretty much the same thing every time: burnout and writer’s block can very often be cured by the same thing: starting another story. Both can come because the current work-in-progress is taking up too much real estate and you need to rest so you get a fresh perspective. Anyone who writes knows that this can be easier said than done, because we’re always writing in our heads.
So you just start a new story, something you don’t intend to be “serious.” Fanfic is a great tool for this, for example: no pressure, no stress of creating characters or settings, just writing and clearing the cobwebs. Or take your characters and put them in a different situation, even if it doesn’t make sense in the context of your story. What happens if your characters encounter something funny? What if your characters’ parents had an adventure that they never knew about? What happens if your characters have a day off — what would they do?
Artists keep sketchbooks to doodle in; writers keep a notebook or computer folder for the written equivalent. All artists need to relax and fiddle with their art to practice, to refresh themselves, or just for the sheer fun of it.
Never let yourself feel pressured unless you yourself want the pressure. Sometimes we work better with a deadline; other times, we just need to relax and let the story flow. You discover a lot about yourself and your art that way.
Well, sort of.
I just got word from my apprentice, Rebecca, that the administrivia has been settled. I’m officially teaching an extracurricular writing workshop this fall at my alma mater, Christendom College. It’ll be on Wednesdays from 6:30 to 8:30. Continue reading
Over at Minimum Wage Historian today, we have the story of Jackie Robinson. If you don’t know who he is, click the link. If you know who he is, you’ll be clicking the link anyway.
I remember reading his story for the first time when I was in sixth grade, and I didn’t understand it. I literally could not comprehend the idea that someone wouldn’t be allowed to play baseball because of skin color. I don’t mean that I just didn’t “get” it — I mean that I read the biography I was given in class and didn’t notice anything different about him. I concluded the other people were just mean. It was literally years before it finally clicked and I realized Jackie Robinson’s story was the first time I’d ever read about racism.
You’re at a convention, doing what everyone at such an event does sooner or later: waiting on the elevator. While engaging in small talk with the lady next to you, you find out she’s a senior editor at your favorite publishing house. You decide to pitch your book to her. Problem is, you’ve only got a few moments while you both step into the elevator — and she’s probably heard pitches about books just like yours. Can you describe your novel in thirty seconds and still make it interesting? Continue reading
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