(In the links to that post someone posted a link to a similar discussion on their blog, here–also in a new window. It’s definitely worth a read, and don’t skip the comments; there’s some good stuff there, in particular “Mary”‘s comment at 10:25.)

Anyway, using Dr. Who as a jump-off point, I’m posting my little writing rules, the things that I keep in mind when writing and the things I, well, think make a book good. (There’s a whole big disclaimer on this in the original post, so I’m not going to repeat it here. I will repeat, though, that just because I’m disappointed with the writing, and feel that it’s in general bad writing, doesn’t mean I think the Who writers are bad writers. They’re not. I’m not sure why the writing has gone off the rails so badly, but I don’t think it’s their fault; I think they’re doing the best they can with what they’re told to do.)

So here we go, with the rest of my rules.

6. No Monologuing. Monologuing is Lazy. You know why? Because it means your character(s) can be stupid. It also very likely means that your pacing is off and the first half or more of your book is boring, because you haven’t planted enough clues as to what’s going on. Remember, with most books your main plot–if it has any kind of mystery/suspense/thriller type plot at all–is actually two parts: Whodunit, and WHY. You need to give us clues as to both of those. If you haven’t planted your clues well enough, your bad guy needs to monologue at the end in order to get us all caught up. That’s lazy; it’s you not wanting to do the work of letting your characters figure it out themselves.

Now as with the others, yes, there are places where this can work. I’m thinking specifically of Agatha Christie and all those great old-school mysteries where everyone gathers in the drawing room so Poirot can tell them How It Really Happened. I love those. And if you’re writing one of those, then fine. You still have to have given the reader all of the clues so they could figure out the mystery themselves. And really, you’re probably not Agatha Christie, or Josephine Tey. Odds are greatly against it. (A sidenote: this is where I get so hugely annoyed at people who try to justify their inappropriate adult/teen/teacher/student/whatever “romances” by bringing up LOLITA. Guys, LOLITA is not a romance. You are not supposed to root for Humbert Humbert; you are not supposed to dream he gets his happy ending riding off into the sunset with Lolita. You’re supposed to be disgusted by him [and by her, really, because she's not exactly pleasant either]. Please stop trying to claim it’s okay to write pedophilia because Nabakov did it. You are not Nabakov. End rant.)

7. Your characters must think and behave in a manner consistent with their character. This one is pretty simple, I think. If you tell us your character is smart, they need to not wander around acting like idiots. If you tell us they’re fun and likable, they need to not be dull assholes. Noble characters are not petty; kind characters do not laugh at others; caring characters do not shrug and walk away when others are in pain. This is another reason “Night Terrors” and Amy and Rory’s failure to look out the windows or realize sooner where they were was so frustrating. It was obvious where they were. They should have figured it out sooner. There’s been no indication before, really, that they’re a couple of dolts, so why did they behave that way in that episode? Did the writers really not think the viewers would figure it out? In “Night Terrors” it turns out the little boy is some sort of alien, and the Doctor just leaves the kid there with his hapless parents and no idea what might happen next time the kid gets scared, or if a teacher at his school or a bully or whatever upsets him. The Doctor is supposed to be wise and smart and caring, but in the last season-and-a-half he’s trampled all over lives, ignoring any possible consequences–and why not? There have been no consequences. Real life doesn’t work that way.

Which brings me to #7, which is:

8. Your Readers Are Not Idiots Either. I hate this. I hate this, I hate it so much. Do you know what you as a writer are doing when you have characters ignore obvious clues, when you skim over stuff, when you go back on the rules of the world? You’re treating your readers like idiots. You’re telling them you don’t think they’re smart enough to figure things out on their own. You’re telling them “This is good enough for the likes of you.” You’re taking for granted that they’re willing to just sit there and take whatever you throw at them. Again, to go back to “Night Terrors,” Amy and Rory were trapped in a dollhouse. The thickest viewer figured that out before Amy and Rory did. Additionally, they were in a dollhouse which somehow had these long narrow hallways; dollhouses do not have hallways. Rory said he couldn’t open a door because it had no knob, but it had handles, and last time I checked most dollhouse doors don’t actually have working bolts and/or locks. Not to mention other doors, later, had working knobs. Viewers were apparently expected not to notice or care about any of this.

Now, yes, I’m aware mistakes happen (hell, I’m the one who forgot where Chuck’s was located in Downside; no one has yet pointed it out to me, but yeah, it’s in a different place in the first book than in subsequent books. Sorry. I just fucked up there). But I think there’s a difference between a mistake which doesn’t matter–really, the fact that Chuck’s is at 55th and Ace and not 50th and Ace in subsequent books doesn’t change the story one iota–and a mistake which breaks the rules of the world.

(Interestingly–well, to me anyway–someone emailed me once to say I had done this, with psychopomps. Because psychopomps can’t be killed, right, but in UNHOLY MAGIC Chess kills one, and then again in CITY OF GHOSTS. Here’s why that’s not breaking rules:

Spirit psychopomps–the ones who respond to a witch’s summons–can’t be killed per se, no. But the psychopomp Chess kills in UNHOLY MAGIC is not a spirit psychopomp; it is a living bird (living birds act as natural psychopomps, remember? It’s explained in both books). Living creatures can be killed. The raven psychopomp Chess “kills” in CITY OF GHOSTS isn’t killed so much as destroyed; it’s torn apart, and so cannot move or carry out its duty. But it’s not technically “killed.” Had it been a dog the bullet probably would have just punched a hole in its skull and it would have kept moving, but a bird’s head is a lot smaller, so the bullet reduced it to powder, basically. There’s evidence all the way back to the opening chapters of UNHOLY GHOSTS that spirit psychopomps can be destroyed if the skull from which they erupt is destroyed. So there you go.)

Here’s the thing. I don’t write books for stupid people. (Again, the disclaimer: that doesn’t mean that if you don’t like my books you’re stupid, I’m not saying that at all.) What that means is, I have a target reader in mind, and that readers is smart. That reader gets my little in-jokes and references; that reader gets *me* and my work, and is clever and quick and can keep up or even be a step ahead. I like to let my readers figure things out along with the characters. I assume my readers will be able to do so. I assume they pick up on the little hints and clues dropped in there, even the offhand stuff. I assume they’re just as smart if not smarter than me, and I refuse to preach to them, to talk down to them, to overexplain, to head-pat, or to condescend. I assume that if my characters miss a big-ass clue sitting right in front of them, my readers will see it and be pissed. I assume if my characters are suddenly behaving in a way very different from the way they usually do–and there’s no reasonable explanation for it–my readers will notice it and be pissed. I assume my readers will notice, and be pissed, if there’s a difference between what I tell them about a character (i.e. “Lisa is smart and beautiful and everyone loves her”) and what I show them about a character (i.e. Lisa wanders around the plot like an idiot not doing anything, not solving any mysteries, having everything handed to her and being nasty and rude to everyone else).

As with the others, this bleeds into the next rule:

9. Being Clever Is Not a Substitute For Being Good, and Showing Off Is Boring And Distasteful. Okay. I know I’m going to get a lot of crap for this one. There’s actually a big subrule/adjunct to this one, too, which is

10. Good Writing Is Not Aware Of Itself; Good Writing Does Not Call Attention To Itself.

This is where my big issue with the Steven Moffat run on Dr. Who really gels. Yes, I get it, Mr. Moffat. You’re Very Clever. Good for you! But you know what? I’m pretty clever myself, and I get extremely annoyed when I tune into a TV show expecting to be entertained and instead am forced to watch someone repeatedly jerking himself off, writing-wise. There’s a smug tone to it, a “look how clever I am, la-de-da!” tone to it, and I hate it. I hate it. There’s a comic writer I won’t name whose work I find just as irritating, for the same reason; it’s aware of itself as writing, and it’s very concerned with pointing out its own cleverness, and as I read it I can see the writer grinning and thinking “Ha! That is hilarious! Look how great this is! I am so awesome, man, look at that!” It’s self-conscious, but not in the sense of being shy; it’s self-conscious in the sense that it knows it is just words on a page, and it is trying very hard to impress the reader with those words without thinking or realizing that the words shouldn’t get in the way of the story.

Neither should tricks. I strongly dislike watching something or reading something and having the distinct sense that the writer is fucking with me; that s/he knows the answers but just isn’t telling me. Kind of like the writer is one of those assholes at parties who like to say outrageous or offensive things just to see what people will do, and then insist they were just kidding when people get rightfully offended. As I believe I’ve said before here, playing mind games with people doesn’t make you cool or clever, it makes you an asshole; people are not toys. Playing mind games with your reader may not make you an asshole, but I think it’s bad writing, because it’s all about YOU; you’re not trying to entertain the reader with this awesome story, you’re trying to point out to the reader how awesome you are personally. Good writing makes the reader see and feel the story. Bad writing makes the reader notice the writing.

Plot twists are great. I love them. I put them in a lot of my books, be they large or small (I did an interview a while back for a German reader blog where I realized my attraction to plot twists may well relate to my childhood adoration of MISS NELSON IS MISSING, with its Big Twist ending. I loved that book–it’s the first book I ever read, and I learned how to read it by memorizing it from having it read to me so often–and I love twist endings. Seriously, if you haven’t read MISS NELSON, do. It’s a corker). So I am totally not complaining about the plot twist or twisty plots in general.

But again, there’s a difference between a plot twist that surprises everyone and a plot twist that just makes the reader feel stupid. There’s a difference between a twisty plot where the reader follows along confident that the writer knows what s/he is doing, feeling that they are safe in that writer’s hands, and a twisty plot where the reader follows along feeling as if the writer is playing tricks on them and snickering behind his or her hand. And again, to me the difference is in how good the writing is and how much respect it has for the reader, which leads me into

11. Good Writing Plays Fair. This sort of encapsulates many of the others; it’s sort of the same as #2, and sort of the same as #3, and very much the same as #s 4, 5, and 7. (Here I borrow a joke and say “Yes, but what if six was nine? Wouldn’t you mind?”) It is, I think, the ultimate rule. Don’t deliberately hide shit from readers so you can look like a smarty-smart at the end. Don’t cheat on what you’ve written before. Don’t pull deus ex machina out of your ass. Don’t expect your readers to sit through a bunch of boring nonsense just because you think it’s fun to watch them flounder. Don’t skimp on foreshadowing. Don’t turn your characters into idiots because you’re too lazy to come up with a real problem for them to face, and don’t have conflicts and problems just magically solve themselves because you can’t bear to explore some of the darker aspects of your characters or make them look bad for even a second. Don’t ignore the emotional consequences of your characters’ actions, or the actual consequences; when somebody fucks up they have to live with it, even if they don’t get caught. Good books are often about tough choices, and good writing shows those choices in a realistic light. You don’t just leave the alien kid with the “parents” who have no idea what may happen to him, when you don’t know either. You don’t let the human bomb just walk away into the sunset, where he can accidentally kill lots of people one day. That’s not a happy ending, it’s reckless irresponsibility, and it’s hard to see from a character who is supposed to be wise.

And don’t draw attention to yourself like you’re the star of the show instead of your characters. And all of the other stuff.

So that’s it. I’m pissed off at the bad writing in the last season-and-a-half of Dr. Who, and I’m pissed off at bad writing in general, and those are–mostly–my little rules.

Okay. Anyway. I have not been a fan of the Matt Smith/Steven Moffat run. Sorry, but I haven’t. At all. Moffat wrote a couple of the best episodes of the Tennant run, yes, like “Blink.” But I’m having some real problems with the writing in Series 5 and now 6, and here’s what they are.

The thing is, everyone has a different view on what is good writing vs. what is not. I’m aware of that. These are my opinions. I’m a writer; these are my little “rules” for writing what I consider to be good books. You may not think I’m a good writer and so don’t like my rules; you may think I’m a bad writer who doesn’t follow my own rules. I do think I follow them, but again, it’s all a matter of perception and taste and all of that, so…the point is, this is the stuff I work on and keep in mind. Some of my pet peeves. Things I consider lazy. But just how I also think beginning sentences with participial phrases is an evil thing and hate it with a passion, my feelings and opinions may not match yours (you’re wrong, though, at least when it comes to using participial phrases to start sentences).

I also want to make it clear that I’m not saying the Who writers are untalented. They obviously are talented. They obviously are good writers. But they’re being–I believe–forced into lazy habits, and bad writing is the result.

So. Many of these came up in tonight’s episode. I will tell you about them now.

1. Don’t Use Crutches. By “crutch” I’m referring to the fact that “Night Terrors” ended much the same way as, gee, pretty much the entirety of Series 5, and a bunch of episodes in Series 5, and “Fear Her” from Series 2 (written by the same guy who wrote “Night Terrors”), ended. Oh, you can solve the problem just by wishing it away! Look, the key is in your mind! Just think it right, and it’s right! Yay!

Now, there’s nothing wrong with this ending per se. The problem is after, say, the third time a major problem is solved by “wishing it so/unlocking the key in your mind” it’s a crutch. It’s the same damn story every time.

Not to mention that it leans so close as to touch #2, which is…

2. It Was NOT Just A Dream. How fucking lazy can you get? When people’s minds are going nuts and imprisoning people in some sort of jail built by their minds, or whatever side-gimmick you’ve added to make it seem like maybe you’re not using the exact same ending every time, it’s easy to just pull a “It isn’t real! Pretend it’s not real!” out of your ass and then boom! Everything is back to normal. It’s easy, and it’s lazy; it’s just as lazy as having that character wake up and realize it was All A Dream. This sucks. It’s a cheat.

3. Don’t Cheat. Oh, so much can be and is covered by this one. Cheating is BAD. Cheating is LAZY. Cheating is a deus ex machina, like suddenly the character wins the lottery and all of their problems are solved. Cheating is “You can bring it all back by remembering it!” or “You can save us all by wishing it!” Cheating is giving us a bad guy we’ve never seen before (more on this in a bit). Cheating is having your MC pull a new magical ability or tool out of her ass at the very last second when the reader has never seen or heard of it before, and what do you know, it’s exactly the skill or tool she needs to solve the problem.

Cheating is creating coincidences. Not believable ones, like that the new people in town are evil or that the bad guy and MC both have been to see the only person in the city who has a particular piece of knowledge or information, but unbelievable ones, like that the villain and the MC happen to be shopping in the same store at the same time. Sure, coincidences may happen and characters may overhear bits of information, but you can mitigate that coincidence by having it make sense that what they overhear is being said in that place at that time, and having it make sense that the MC would be close by. Your MC overhearing, while in a bathroom stall at a party, two people discussing her, is a much more believable coincidence than the MC overhearing the villain discussing his or her Evil Plans while the MC is hiding in a public toilet stall at a state fair. You know what I mean?

Cheating is making the plot happen to the MC rather than coming from decisions the MC has made. Again, yes, every story is going to have an element of this, a “Something bad is happening? Maybe I should check it out!” sort of thing. But the MC’s decisions should push the plot; the MC’s actions should bring him/her to the attention of the bad guys, should lead to clues or make things worse. The MC should not be passive; things should not just happen to him or her, but be reactions to his or her own actions. To have a story where the MC just stands around and reacts is cheating. Cheating is not fully making your character and his/her problems part of the world; the story you tell should be a story only able to be told in that world, with those characters; if a character trait makes no difference to the plot, shows us nothing about the world, and matters not one bit to the story, it doesn’t belong there. If a rule of the world doesn’t actually effect the plot, story, or character it doesn’t belong there. Good writing inhabits the world of the story; it doesn’t just exist in it.

Cheating is more than that, too. It’s introducing a character who hangs around contributing nothing and then suddenly at the end is a genius at whatever esoteric task needs doing. It’s not giving the reader clues (more on that in a bit, too) as to who the bad guy is, what the bad guy’s plot is, or how it will be figured out. It’s having your characters make insane leaps of logic based on the most minor of clues and surprise! They’re exactly right! It’s having your characters suddenly know things there’s no way they could know. Or–and this leads into the next one–it’s having characters ignore information just because you want to do a Big Reveal. Yes, Cheating is also–can be also–part and parcel of

4. Don’t Make Your Characters Morons. In the “Night Terrors” episode, two characters who are supposed to be smart people find themselves somehow teleported into a strange house. They’re trying to find a way out. They walk through several rooms. All of those rooms have windows which are curtained or shuddered. Do our “smart” characters do what any halfway-intelligent human being would do, and open the shutters or pull back the curtains, so they can either A) escape; B) see if they can gauge their location; or C) both? No. Of course they don’t. Why? Because if they did, we–the viewer–would then know that they are in fact inside a dollhouse (which we all figured out well before they did anyway), and so would they. The writer didn’t want to tell us yet that they were in a dollhouse (although it was fairly simple to guess, even with the inaccuracies of design–dollhouses do not have hallways. But more on that, too, in a minute) so the writer simply decided to make the characters stupid, rather than coming up with a better way to keep that information from us (like having the windows boarded or painted over).

This is a hard rule to follow, it is. It’s hard to find a way to keep information from readers while still making it clear that the character isn’t a dimbulb. Tough, though. It’s your job to do so. If your character is supposed to be smart, you cannot have him or her running around missing obvious clues left right and center just because you don’t want him or her to know that stuff yet. (When the hubs read this he brought up The Usual Suspects and the Sixth Sense, both of which have twist endings in which we discover characters have missed Big Clues. Again, though, we’re talking about a different type of story structure. It was very clever writing, not lazy writing, that kept us from knowing about Keyser Soze and the truth about Bruce Willis. And, the whole point of both of those twists–well, not the whole point, but you know what I mean–was that Bruce Willis was in fact willfully blind, and Keyser Soze did in fact outsmart Chazz Palminteri. You can have characters miss clues, sure, but there should be a reason for it, not that they just didn’t think of that really obvious answer.)

This is where red herrings come in (and that’s one, too). You can use a red herring to throw the MC off the track, to give yourself time, etc. But it still has to be believable. Your characters cannot just ignore big glowing GUILTY signs and obvious clues hanging over the heads of others. Your character cannot just decide s/he doesn’t feel like chasing the killer that day or decide to keep that doctor’s appointment instead. Your character cannot fail to check the wallet s/he found for ID just because you’re trying to hide the bad guy’s identity for a few more chapters. Your character cannot, when tied up somewhere, figure “Oh, well, damn,” and not even try to untie the knots. This moves into the next rule, which is:

5. Red Herrings Must Be Worthwhile. The “Night Terrors” episode spends some time–five minutes, perhaps seven or eight–setting up the Evil Landlord and the possibility that, being Evil, he could be behind the Bad Things. The landlord serves no other purpose in the story except to threaten. About five or ten minutes after the Red Herring scene, we discover that no, the landlord is a victim as well. Which means that whole bit was a big-assed waste of time and effort.

You can’t throw in a red herring who does nothing for the story except just being a red herring. A red herring must exist in his/her/its own right; it needs to serve some other function. If the only time Mr. Green appears in the book is to say something suspicious and then wander off, and delivers no information/provides no clues as to the real bad guy’s identity/does not advance the plot/etc., your red herring is a waste of space and needs to either do something real or go away.

It also shouldn’t be heavy-handed. Just as it should not be obvious from the second he’s introduced who the villain is–if your bad guy walks into the book kicking puppies before him, twirling his mustache with one hand while writing racist graffiti with the other, you really ought to think about his character a bit more–it should not be obvious, either to the MC or to the reader, that your red herring is innocent. Your character should not be stupid, remember? An effective red herring is neither so obviously guilty that the reader won’t buy it when they turn out innocent (or loses interest), nor so obviously innocent that your MC just looks like an idiot for suspecting them. (Note: Yes, there are some story structures where the reader knows who the bad guy is right off the bat, and that’s different.)

Like I said, I’ve cut this in two because of length, so tomorrow I’ll post the rest.

Personally I think most of those rules are crappity-crap-crap. And I’m sick of them all being passed around like Moses brought them down from the mountain. The fact is, if you write well and have a strong, stylish, commercial voice you can get away with just about anything.

But here’s one I agree with; in fact, one I believe in strongly. And I feel that it’s sadly, sadly misunderstood by many, which is why I’m going to discuss it.

See, I think there’s a belief out there, especially amongst beginning writers, that “write what you know” means that if you’re a farmer you should write about farming, or if you’re an office manager you’re not going to be able to write about the life of a wizard.

That’s not what it means.

“Write what you know” means write what you know emotionally. It means write what you understand and feel. It means write from the inside.

Great stories are important, yes. Great writing–or at least good writing–is important, yes. But what involves readers, what really makes them understand, identify with, and care about your stories–your characters–is making sure your characters are three-dimensional, fully developed people, with feelings. Your characters have to have emotional lives, because your readers have emotional lives. Your characters have to let their emotions color how they see the world, because your readers’ emotions color how they see the world. And your characters’ feelings and emotions, and their emotional desires and needs, have to be real and important to them, because your readers have emotional desires and needs that are very important to them.

I think I mentioned in an interview once that what really struck me about the responses to the Downside books was the way readers seem to either violently identify with and understand Chess, or violently dislike and not understand Chess at all. And I find the differences in those people, and the comments of the few I’ve seen who dislike her, are pretty interesting (to me, at least), in that their outlook on the world and the way they present themselves is one I often don’t understand or care for, either. That’s not to say it’s wrong or they’re a bunch of assholes; it’s also not to say that the only reason someone might not like my books or characters is because they’ve never felt that kind of alienation/loneliness/insecurity/dislike of self-satisfied people/aversion to being “normal” or whatever else. But it is something I’ve noticed.

When I started writing UNHOLY GHOSTS one of my main goals was to write a heroine I could identify with and understand, because I hadn’t seen any out there, really. I mean yeah, of course I wanted to write the most kick-ass different type of UF I could, but the reason why I cared about the book and the reason why the characters in it mean so much to me is because I worked really hard on giving them the feelings and emotions and outlooks that matter to me, that are what I understand. I know those feelings, and I know that outlook on the world, and I believe that’s why they were able to come across as clearly and strongly as they apparently did; it’s why those books are, frankly, deeply personal to me.

In other words, I wrote what I know.

I’ve been asked before what sorts of things I can’t/couldn’t write and I’ve always said I can’t really write happy people. I mean, of course I can write people who have found some happiness, or who have fun sometimes; no one wants to read a book where all the MC does is sit around moping and contemplating suicide. I’ve been unfortunate enough in the past to know a few truly negative people, the kinds of people who when I finally got away from them I was an absolute mess because just being around them was like being trapped inside a life-sucking black cloud of misery. That’s not good, and that’s something we all have to be careful with; certainly I find myself editing out some rather depressing little rambles on occasion.

Everyone has emotions and feelings. Everyone has their own unique way of looking at the world. You have to dig deep inside yourself and really feel those emotions, really think about how they affect the way you look at things. That’s what you put into your characters, and that’s what makes them real. If you’re giving your characters emotions or reactions you don’t understand or simply haven’t really thought about, the reader will know it. It will feel false, because it will be false. And false work means nothing to anyone; lies don’t resonate in the mind or the soul.

No, you might not know what it’s like to walk on the moon. But if you think about it, you probably do know how you felt when you achieved something amazing, or saw something that filled you with awe and wonder–even if it was something as simple as telling someone you love them or seeing Lord of the Rings for the first time. Those are the feelings you know. Those are the feelings you use.

“Write what you know” isn’t about the outside stuff, the plot or setting. “Write what you know” doesn’t mean your character has to do the same job as you, live the same life as you, and look like you. What it does mean is that your character has to feel–and have feelings–like an actual living person. It means those characters have to behave and react the way real living people would, and do.

Does it mean your character has to be just like you? No. But it does mean that if your character isn’t like you, you’re going to have to figure out how you differ and how you’re the same, and adjust your feelings accordingly, because they still have to be strong and real.

“Write what you know” means write from the heart. It means don’t be afraid to expose what needs to be exposed. Don’t be afraid to share something truly important, something truly meaningful, with your readers. Writing and reading should be about sharing; it should be about a universal experience the writer and reader share. It should be about feeling something, no matter what that something is. And if you aren’t feeling it, neither will your readers; if you’re lying they’ll know it, and it will at first confuse and then turn them off. They didn’t pay good money for something that rings false to them, that feels like manipulation, that feels like the writer didn’t think they were important enough to really work for. They didn’t pay good money to be fobbed off with something fake.

Writing fiction is telling a story, yes. But writing characters is telling a truth, and it’s your truth; the truth you know. You have to tell it as strongly, as deeply, and as well as you possibly can.

And of course I have edits for Downside 4, as well, which you may or may not have heard now has an official title!

SACRIFICIAL MAGIC

I’m excited about it; it fits the book really well, and yes, that is sort of a hint, but you’ll never guess the big thing it’s hinting at/referring to, trust me.

I’m also working on a new project, which a few people have asked me about. I’m not saying anything about it, really, because I don’t want to jinx it. It’s something I’ve actually been sort of fiddling with for a while, but have had a bunch of false starts on, so I’m hoping this is the one that will stick. Keeping my fingers crossed, anyway. It’s called DREADFUL THINGS. Only about 7k words so far, but words I’m really pleased with. Lots of worldbuilding, which is tons of fun, and hints of Dark Doings in my heroine’s past, and murders and magic and rooftops and sewers and all those things that make books worth writing. So we’ll see where it goes, anyway.

Let’s see, what else. I was going to blog today about why we don’t get real men in movies/TV anymore, but I was so busy playing with the WIPs last night I forgot to write it. Or rather, by the time I got around to it, it was 4 am, and that’s my bedtime (I have started forcing myself to go to bed at 4, because otherwise I’ll never go to bed at all). Of course, since I go to bed so late, I also sleep late, which is why I try to do my blog posts the night before, which is why I didn’t do the Man one. So look for that on Wednesday, and then the long-promised Write What You Know post will be along very soon too, and I’m looking forward to that one.

Anyway. Since this is rather short and all, here’s a snippet from Downside Five, just for fun. I’m making the print white, because it does contain a very minor spoiler; it may be important to the plot or it may not, but just in case you don’t want even a hint of what sorts of things may happen in the fifth book, you can skip it.

This is from the second chapter, and Lex was waiting for Chess when she got home.

He walked the few more steps into her living room, plunked himself down on her new couch. Well, maybe not exactly new—she’d had it about two months—but it still seemed new.

Without asking she grabbed a beer from the fridge and handed it to him.

He nodded his thanks. “Coursen…now you mentioning it, could be maybe I got a favor you could do me.”

Uh-huh. She let the totally-not-fooled expression sit on her face another few seconds. “Really. Like what?”

“Thinking maybe you ain’t mind working me up a chatter with Terrible.”

If she’d had any liquid in her mouth she would have sprayed it everywhere in shock; as it was she just sort of sputtered. “What—but—why? Why would you want to talk to him?”

“Got my reasonings, I do.”

Oh, and happy Valentine’s Day and all of that if you’re into that sort of thing.

Anyway. My friend and I were discussing edits, and the fact that someone she knew got a set of edits where the editor actually wrote in new dialogue.

Editors are not supposed to do this.

It is not their job.

They can tell you that conversation/line doesn’t work for them. They can maybe suggest new lines, by saying “Maybe you could try having Character A say he hates that, and Character B can say he knows, and that might make the joke clearer?” But anything beyond that is them trying to write your book for you, and you shouldn’t let them do it.

It seems to me that, especially when you get into the micropress/epress area, the favorite excuse of lame publishers for why an author might be upset with them is “S/he refused to accept editing.” “Oh, Author A is only saying we’re a total high-school clique house because she refused to accept editing so we dropped her.” “All those authors are mad because they’re prima donnas who refused to accept editing.” That sort of thing.

And I think that atmosphere, that sort of Red Pen of Damocles hanging over every writers’ head, permeates the world of writers’ forums etc., and leads many to the belief that they have to accept all suggested edits, no questions asked. If the editor says “Change this,” it better be changed.

Sadly, I also have no doubt that at some little crappy places, that is indeed the case. I know I was required to fight tooth and nail about factual accuracy, against an editor who believed people in the medieval period used hieroglyphs to communicate in writing. I’ve heard similar horror stories from small- and micro-press friends; maybe not quite as bad as that, but lots of tales about style and voice being removed and replaced with plodding paint-by-numbers writing.

Then there’s the matter of “house style,” which in a lot of cases can be downright lousy, and sometimes doesn’t make sense at all. “House style,” though, is unfortunately the one thing you’re probably not going to be able to fight with. You may be able to keep a comma here or a semicolon there if you can make a good enough case for it, but beyond that you’re going to need to let it go.

“House style,” though, isn’t generally messing about with your actual writing. It may be ridiculous things, sure, like completely interrupting the flow of a sex scene by inserting a hard break to indicate a POV switch (because we’re all so paranoid about “head-hopping” that we refuse to accept that readers are not in fact stupid, and are perfectly capable of dealing with one POV switch), or being forced to change every “start” in your book to “begin,” or whatever, because someone thinks “start” sounds “common.” But usually it’s just a few little bits here and there.

Editing is different, and editing is up to you.

It’s your book. You wrote it, and it belongs to you, and your name is on it. Yes, there is a line. An editor can refuse to accept the book, thereby requiring you to give back your advance and lose the contract, if you won’t make any changes at all. I’ve never heard of it happening, but then, most writers I know believe–as I do–that editors are generally awesome, and that it’s fun to work with them, and that they’re right most of the time with their suggestions.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t a line, and it’s a line you do NOT have to cross. It certainly doesn’t mean they’re right all the time. You do NOT have to accept every edit, every suggestion, every wording change. You certainly do NOT have to allow anyone to re-write part of your book for you, absolutely not.

Working with an editor is just that–working with an editor. It’s the two of you–and maybe your agent, or maybe the editor’s assistant might have an idea, or a friend of yours who’s read the mss might come up with something you like–working together to make the book as good as it can be. It’s not you handing your work over to someone else to change it and turn it into something that isn’t yours.

There’s a difference between edits, as in your editorial letter, and edits, as in line edits, too. When I get edits from my editor at Del Rey, it’s in the form of an email or Word doc with all of her thoughts, good and bad (I firmly believe a good editor tells you what they love about the book, too; they don’t simply assume that you know they like it since they bought it. A good editor wants to talk to you about your book and the things they love about it).

I go through and implement her suggestions, basically. I may disagree with one, and discuss it with her, but so far I can think of only one editorial suggestion I dug my heels in over, and that ended up working out just fine–a quick change of something else, and it became a moot point. Really? There shouldn’t even be many issues if any, because you should agree with most of your editor’s thoughts. If s/he’s a good editor, and you’re not a Speshul Golden-Words Snowflake, most if not all of the suggestions should fall into the “Oh, riiiiight!” category.

Then come line edits. (My last few books, my ms has been sent back to me with an editorial letter and some notes made on the ms, so it’s like a combination of the two.) Line edits are “This line makes no sense,” basically. I often get “What the hell is Bump saying here, because I can’t understand him at all,” but of course, that’s me. Line edits might also be “This paragraph is overkill,” or whatever. This is where “kill your darlings”–advice with which I disagree, frankly–comes in. Lots of those overkill lines? Yeah…those are probably the “Stacia knows this is probably too much but look how good that sentence is!” lines. So those have to go. (I often stick them into a special Word doc in case I have the chance to use them later. Of course, then I never open it and re-use them, but whatever. I still have them, my poor deleted darlings, and I can go frolic in the midst of them whenever I choose.)

There may be some typos tossed in throughout there, too. There usually are. No matter how hard I try to make the ms perfect, there’s always going to be something I miss before I send it to my editor, mainly because I’ve read the damn thing so many times I see what should be there, not what is.

There will also probably be some story inconsistencies or whatever to clean up, from my own edits. If I decide to switch from having two ghosts to one, for example, I need to make sure I’ve done what is called “Following through on the cut,” and removed every reference to “they/them,” “the two ghosts,” whatever. I often miss this stuff too, again, because I’ve been going through it so much/so many times.

My editor also catches the occasional repeated word, as in “Slowly the ghost moved toward her. It raised its arm slowly, the knife in its spectral hand catching the moonlight and sending it right into her eyes, blinding her.” I don’t always notice these when I’m actually writing, and while I catch most of them when I’m editing before I turn the book in, again, I can’t find everything. I hate repeated words, actually. They bug me almost as much as sentences that begin with participial phrases (dangling or not), which I loathe with a fiery and all-devouring passion, and will never, ever use, because they’re so awful I can’t even find a way to describe how awful they are. (Let me just say, though, that ninety-nine times out of a hundred, you find them in the mss of newbie writers, because they think that sentence construction is “writery” or professional, thus making them look very smooth and clever. It’s not, and it doesn’t.)

Anyway, enough of that rant. The point is, edits are something you do with your editor, not for or in spite of. You get to make the choice, and there is nothing wrong with doing so. I’d say when it comes to “regular” edits–as in editorial letter/line edits–I probably accept pretty much all of my editor’s suggestions, because I trust her, and because in most cases I agree with her. With copyedits it’s probably more like 50-75%, depending on how good the CE is, of course.

An editor is there to help you, and to help make the book as good as it can be. They are not there to rewrite your book themselves, and they are not there to remove your voice and turn it into something a third-grader would have written.

I can’t remember who said it, but I read an awesome quote a little while back. It basically said, “The only rule of grammar a writer needs to follow is to make himself understood. Everything else is style.”

It may not be true all of the time–well, it isn’t, not ALL of the time–but it is most of the time. You don’t have to let yourself be treated badly, you don’t have to let control of your work be taken from you, and you don’t have to agree to every edit.

Sigh, no bangs. But it's still cool.

There’s a blog, a review-and-interview-and-everything-books blog, called Floor to Ceiling books, and Magemanda, the lovely lady who runs it, has posted her Best Of… list for 2010. Guess who’s on it? Me! Well, me, for “Breakthrough Novelist,” which she says is in part because of YOU, and the fantastic little community you guys have made! So thank you all so much. Also–and I know this part will interest you far more–Chess and Terrible won for “Best Kiss.” Nice, huh? She doesn’t say which book it’s for, though, so I’ll ask you guys. What was the best kiss?

And I know you’re all dying to hear how my Twitter odyssey ended. It hasn’t. I did look into Destroy Twitter, which I liked the look of quite a bit–I loved that you could customize it and pick different themes. Unfortunately, not only is the info/FAQ/etc on the site really sparse, to the point where I had no idea what the thing would even DO unless I downloaded it and actually started running it, it was also a download program. Which makes me think it’s a opens-in-its-own-window thing, which as we know, I don’t want.

So it’s down to Hootsuite and Seesmic. I’m actually liking both of them. I’ve hooked up my Facebook page to Seesmic, so I’ve actually gotten a few FB updates in yesterday and today, which is nice. I don’t know if I’ll make Seesmic my only program, though. I do like it. The more I use it the more I like it.

The problem is, the more I use Hootsuite the more I like it, too. They both have things I really like and things I don’t like as much; the bad part is those things complement each other. Like I don’t like Hootsuite’s DM thing, because it doesn’t automatically show me the ones I send. But I like Hootsuite’s photo uploader much better. Plus Hootsuite has that cute little owl. But Seesmic’s FAQ etc. is more comprehensive. Seesmic allows me to quote part of someone’s tweet, and–I LOVE this–when you go to someone’s profile it tells you if they’re following you as well as whether you’re following them. So it’ll say, “This user and you follow each other,” or whatever, which I’ve always thought Twitter should do. But Hootsuite has some cool Google Chrome extensions available, whereas Seesmic has none. I love that neither of them force me to look at people they think I’d be interested in following. I detest that.

So I don’t know. For the moment I’m keeping them both open in separate tabs and switching back and forth between them, basically.

Also, an update on the Downside Market. I’m basically waiting to get bigger versions of the original designs, because some of them look really small on the shirts etc., and we don’t want that. I’m also going to get white ones to go on black or dark-colored shirts. I’m trying to make as many color options available as possible.

And I’m doing a few more with text, because that’s a bit cheaper, so again, lots of color options. I’m trying to get maybe a few Downspeech phrases in there, just some sort of fun stuff. And some of the really basic shirts are very inexpensive, which makes me happy. I’m also expanding the UF stuff a bit, more pro-genre/genre-related shirts.

And of course, if anyone out there wants to do some designs, please send them in! And if your design goes into the store I’ll send you a shirt. You can find the specifications right here, if you’re interested.

Oh, and I’m ripping out and rewriting like 40k words on Downside 4. More explosions! More violence! More dying! I’m hoping it’ll be a really good time when it’s done.

I think that’s all the updates I have for the moment.

Agent Miriam Goderich rebutted it here very nicely. So, I’m sure, have others, but I’m about to add my voice to the chorus simply because that’s the way I roll, baby.

Do you need an agent?

Yes. Yes, you fucking do.

Period.

Okay, sure. If you’re planning on having a career in epublishing, you probably do not need an agent. If you’re planning to self-publish, you do not need an agent. There’s nothing wrong with either of those things. I started out in epublishing, without an agent, and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I’m glad I did it and am grateful to Ellora’s Cave for treating me so well and enabling me to make some decent cash. Working with them was a pleasure for me.

But–no offense–I wanted more than that. I wanted books on shelves. I wanted advances. I wanted a bigger career. I wanted to move out of genre romance/erotic romance; not because I didn’t enjoy it or don’t enjoy it (writing and reading), but because the more of it I wrote the more a little voice inside me told me it was simply not quite the right fit for my voice or the kinds of stories I wanted to tell.

To accomplish those things (aside from moving away from writing romance, which of course is a huge genre in all forms of publishing: ebook, mass market paperback, trade paperback, hardcover, audio, whatever) I needed an agent.

Here’s what fascinates me (and infuriates me) about the original Galleycat article (aside from the fact that its author apparently also runs a website devoted to helping writers self-publish; again, legal, but certainly interesting). It’s this paragraph here:

One published author who asks to be unnamed disagrees, “What do you need an agent for anymore, really? Why? To negotiate a meager advance? You can’t get them on the phone anyway. You’re stuck promoting the book yourself because publishers don’t put any marketing dollars into your book unless you’re John Grisham. I don’t see the whole point when I can hire an attorney to negotiate my publishing contract for a flat fee or just upload the book to Kindle myself.”

Let’s take a look at these points, shall we?

1. “To negotiate a meager advance.” Hmm. Speak for yourself, buddy. My advances aren’t huge, but I certainly wouldn’t call them “meager.” And having been involved in the negotiation process–through regular discussions with my agent, every step of the way–I’m well aware of how much bigger they became once he started negotiating them. In fact, several surveys have been done proving that the average agented advance is something like twice the size of an unagented one; Tobias Buckell’s, for one.

2. “You can’t get them on the phone, anyway.” Dude, if you can’t get your agent on the phone, you need a new agent. (Or perhaps you need to stop calling several times a day; ever considered that maybe the problem is you?) I can assure you, each and every one of you, that if I picked up the phone right now and called my agent, he would take the call. He always has, and he always will. And you know what? He calls me, too. When I send him a proposal, he calls me to discuss it. When he sells subsidiary rights (yes, we’ll get to those), he calls me. As I said above, he called me every step of the way, sometimes several times a day, when we were negotiating the sales of the Downside books and the second & third Demons books.

He calls me when something happens, like when my release dates changed. He calls me when we get cover art so we can discuss it. He calls me to talk about ideas.

Do we talk every day? No. Do we talk every week? No. Do we talk every month? No. But we do talk. And we do email, and he always answers those too. My agent is THERE FOR ME. And I am not unusual in that, I promise you. Every single writer pal I have is in the exact same situation. We talk to our agents. All the time. About all kinds of things.

An agent who does not have time for you is not a good agent. Find a good agent and stop bitching.

3. ” You’re stuck promoting the book yourself because publishers don’t put any marketing dollars into your book unless you’re John Grisham.” First, this is about agents how? Second, patently unfuckingtrue. Those books you see on front tables, end caps, mid-aisle tables, and those little rotating shelf things in bookstores? Are they all by John Grisham? No. Are they all, even, by known, NYT-Bestselling authors? No again. I see debut authors on those things all the fucking time, and guess what? Marketing dollars buy those spaces. Marketing dollars that publishers, real ones, put into the books they sell every fucking day.

And again, this has nothing to do with agents, as promoting your book to the public isn’t their job.

Here’s what my agent does for me. You look at this list and tell me if you think it’s worth it:

1. Reads my work, discusses it with me, offers suggestions
2. Sells my work to editors for major houses (not just “sends” or “submits.” SELLS. Pitches. Anyone who’s ever worked a sales job knows that isn’t easy.)
3. Negotiates not just my advances, but my CONTRACTS. All those confusing things about royalties and schedules and payouts and subsidiary rights and non-competition clauses and options and exclusive- and non-exclusive? He knows what all of it means, and how to get the best possible deal for me.
4. Sells those subsidiary rights. I would not have a UK deal without my agent. I would not have an audiobook deal without my agent. Which means readers in the UK and those who enjoy audiobooks would not have access to those books without my agent.
5. Keeps track of what monies have been received and which haven’t. Follows up on checks.
6. Keeps track of royalty statements. Follows up on those, too.
7. Knows what’s selling and what editors are looking for.
8. Talks about me; lets editors know I’m available (if I am) should they be interested in working with me.
9. Discusses my career with me. Offers guidance. Helps me plan my schedule.
10. Is a third opinion in discussions with my editors, should either of us wish him to be. Should a problem arise, my agent will step in to help. My agent is always on MY SIDE.

These are all equally important, at least to me. These are things that MATTER. My agent is the lifeline between myself and the world of publishing. He is invaluable.

Sure, I could probably do those things myself. I could fly to New York regularly and try to build relationships with editors. I could submit over the transom and wait a year for responses. I could spend ages learning about contracts. I could fly out to Frankfurt and London for the book fairs there and try to sell foreign rights (after first thoroughly researching all the publishers in lots of other countries, to determine if they’d be good for my book, and hope they’ll be interested), and then I could spend a bunch of time figuring out exchange rates. I could mark my calendar to make phone calls to follow up on payments and statements and all that stuff. I could be my own, my only, advocate, and jeopardize my relationships with my editors should disagreements arise.

What I probably couldn’t do, if I were doing all of that, is still have time to write.

If you want a real career, you need a real agent. You need an agent. YOU NEED AN AGENT.

Anyone who tells you that you don’t is either wrong or is trying to sell you something. Or both. Don’t believe them.

The C Word

It’s a perfect word.

It’s evocative. It’s short. Its roots go back over 15,000 years. Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Casanova were among its most famous literary champions.

And yet, cunt still gets the short end of the stick. So to speak.

In erotic romance, “cunt” is generally considered the division between sensual and erotic. Do you have forty sex scenes in your 25,000 word story? Do your characters say “fuck” and watch each other masturbate, do they use vibrators and have so much oral sex their jaws lock up? Great. That sounds sensual to me.

But do you have only three sex scenes and use the word “cunt” to describe your heroine’s love canal? Yes? Then you’re writing erotica, my friend.

Why is that? Why is it that one small word has the power to change sexy to erotic, to change arousing to offensive? And is it that offensive, really?

Most women seem to think so. Studies have shown that women find “cunt” to be the single most offensive word in the English language. (Seriously.) It’s forbidden. It’s absolutely taboo.

But what is forbidden is often what is most erotic, as well.

I never used to write it. I didn’t like to read it. Until I found a few erotic romances that used it, to great effect. My dislike of the word changed to–not indifference, because I don’t feel a word like cunt can ever inspire indifference–but more like approval. The word was forbidden. The word was direct. The word was a little shocking.

In short, the word was pretty hot.

Remember that episode of Sex and the City where Charlotte is trying to woo that painter to her gallery? It’s an old man, and he proudly informs her that he’s been doing a series of paintings of cunts. Charlotte is, of course, stunned by this. He asks her to sit for him, and you can see she’s about to refuse when the old man’s cute-little-old-lady wife enters the studio. She’s holding a tray of lemonade and says sweetly, “I bet you have a beautiful cunt, dear.”

Think about that for a minute. “A beautiful cunt.” Think how you might feel if someone said that to you, in an obviously complimentary and admiring tone. Or a deep, dangerous, sexy one. Maybe if we think of cunt as a strong word, an arousing word, a descriptive word, instead of a nasty one, we can replace it in our vocabulary and our books and hold our heads high. Just hearing the phrase “beautiful cunt” made a difference to me, since we so often associate the word with less pleasant adjectives. But if we think of the word—and the objects—as beautiful…as something that deserves its own special, grown-up word…

That’s what cunt used to be. Chaucer used it in The Canterbury Tales, spelling it “queynte”. According to Charles Panati’s Sexy Origins and Intimate Things, “Chaucer believed the word was derived from ‘quaint’, which meant ‘a many-layered, in-folded mystery’.” Now really, what better way is there to describe a woman’s sexual organs than “a many-layered, in-folded mystery”? Can you think of another description as poetic, as accurate and lovely?

Of course, pre-Chaucer, cunt was a name. There are many families on the rolls in thirteenth-century England named “Cuntles” or “Clawcunte”, or many variations thereof. There were “Gropecunte Street”s or “Cunte Lane”s in medieval England as well. Clearly, the word’s meaning was fixed even over 700 years ago—it first appears in written record in 1066, but seems to have had a different meaning then, although “cunt” is derived from early language, when “kuni” or words like it were used simply to mean “wife” or “woman”.

Which is all very interesting, except it doesn’t mean much to us or help us. Women don’t want to see cunt. There’s an implication that if they do, they’re the type of woman who likes really graphic, nasty sex—the hardcore erotic stuff—instead of the lighter, sweeter, gentle-spanking kind of sex. (Which I think are the best kind of women, but hey.)

What’s a writer to do?

See, the problem is, “cunt” works so well. As I said above, it is evocative. It does give the reader a distinct message: this is going to be pretty graphic. This will be pretty hot. Isn’t choosing words to set a mood part of what we do as writers?

I decided to try using cunt. I wanted to see what t felt like to actually write it, to actually put that forbidden word on paper. Could I still turn people on when I threw a cunt bomb into my work? Could I still write scenes people would enjoy, even if a cunt bobbed up at them from the page?

To my surprise, it worked. And it wasn’t too bad. It was actually pretty sexy. And so exact! We’re always looking for words to describe or identify female body parts. Aren’t you tired of writing about slick folds or swollen entrances? Or channels, or tunnels, or whatever? Isn’t it hard to use “pussy” to describe both the vagina and the vulva (a word I don’t like, btw)?

This is where cunt fits in. I can talk about pussies and cunts as two separate (but obviously closely related) entities, and I can describe a vagina without adjectives but with a word that everyone can visualize. The many-layered, in-folded mystery of a woman.

I don’t use the word much; overuse deadens the impact and feels overdone, just as with any other word. But of late I’ve been abstaining, and I have missed it. All those folds and entrances just can’t compensate for the brevity and clarity of cunt.

I think it’s time we take “cunt” back. It’s time we allow ourselves to think of our sexual selves, our sexual parts, as deserving of an adult word (rather than the kittenish—and kind of childish—“pussy”). As able to see that some words have more than one meaning, and there’s nothing shameful in reclaiming such a rich history? There’s nothing shameful in possessing something as strong and powerful as a cunt, in saying that yes, we have this incredible body part, and it’s capable of amazing things, and we’re going to use a real, strong, mature, and age-old word to refer to it?

Say it loud! I have a cunt and I’m proud.

.

We all know getting critique can improve our work. Critique partners or beta readers can ask questions we didn’t realize were there, or point out weak areas we didn’t see. They can helps us show not tell or clean up dialogue or whatever, depending on our own individual skill levels.

But what often seems left out of the gotta-get-a-crit race is how important it is to critique others, and how that process helps us become better, more critical, more thoughtful writers.

How many times have you bought a book because it looked promising, only to discover, a chapter or two in, that it wasn’t at all? For whatever reason, it didn’t appeal to you. Maybe you thought the characters were wooden and insipid, or the writing didn’t sparkle, or the plot was cliche, or too many characters were introduced at one time and you never could keep them straight because they all seemed exactly the same, or maybe the writer kept using the word “unctuous” over and over again until you wanted to slap him or her in the face repeatedly with a bowl of oxtail soup.

There’s almost nothing in the world more disappointing than a bad book.

But bad books can teach us a lot. Bad writing can teach us a lot. Because your work came from you. Yes, we can and should learn to distance ourselves and be objective enough to see it as a piece of work separate from ourselves. That’s important.

But the way to learn that distancing and objectivity, the way to learn to take critiques, is by giving them.

When it’s someone else’s doc open on the screen, we’re not emotionally attached to it. We can view it for what it is: a piece of writing. Not somebody’s “baby.” (UGH.) Not somebody’s soul. Not their heart. Just a piece of writing, which can be judged on its own merits.

Does that mean we can forget that it’s a real human behind that piece of writing? No, of course not, and as we’ll see when we get to the mean-ass crits, it’s very possible to really hurt someone. Comments like “This sucks. Give it up,” are no help to anyone, especially not–surprise!–you.

Because when you look at something and simply dismiss it, you’re not learning anything. You’re not putting on an editor monacle and really studying why something doesn’t work. And sure, sometimes a piece will have so many problems you don’t know where to start.

But most won’t, at least not if you’re finding appropriate partners. Most will be close. And what you’ll learn in trying to make them hit the mark will teach you how to fix your own work.

Maybe the word “was” keeps leaping out at you in this particular piece. And it irritates the fuck out of you for no discernible reason (this happens. See my “unctuous” example.) It drives you do crazy, in fact, that soon all you can see is “was.”

Then you open your own book. Lo and behold, you have “was” strewn about like crayons on a playroom floor. Oops! Maybe you should try to rework some of those sentences, huh? Figure out a way to show all those things you “was”ed instead of telling them?

(That’s not to say “was” isn’t useful or should never be used. It’s just an example. But we should be careful about “was”ing.)

Here’s an example:

The night was dark. (Hey, it’s an example. Shut up.) Lucy was walking down the street, past the pub, which was filled with drunks playing darts. Lucy shivered. It was so cold outside, and her feet were (ha!) so sore. She was desperate to get home, but it was still so far away.

Now. This is not great. It’s rather dull. And something feels off about it, at least to me. There are a few issues with it, but all those wases jump out at me first. So how do we eliminate them?

We figure out how to show the dark, cold night, the pub drunks, Lucy’s desperation and sore feet, without telling them. Perhaps we try something like this:

Lucy pulled her ragged jacket closer around her shoulders, but it didn’t help much. The wind cut through her like shards of ice, whipping around the lonely buildings to shred her soul. Up ahead home waited for her, warm bright rooms and her mother’s smiling face. But here on the street only the echoes of her footsteps kept her company.

She passed through the square of pale gold light on the street made by the pub window. Inside men shouted and laughed, lifting pints, slapping each other on the back when one of them hit a bullseye. If she only had some money, she could walk in and have a drink too, defrost her aching extremities by the gentle coal fire.

Now. This isn’t great either, for another reason. Can anyone tell me what it is? Go on, critique this paragraph.

When you’ve done that, think about it. You’ve just read this opening looking for flaws. You’ve been specifically looking to find something wrong. You’ve (hopefully) taken your undoubtedly very warm feeling toward me (ha) out of the equation and examined the openings just as openings, and tried to decide the following things:

1. Is it well-written on a basic level? (i.e. are there no obvious grammatical flaws or spelling errors; is the character named Lucy throughout, does it make sense, etc.)

2. Is it well-written on a more advanced level? (Are the sentences clunky; are words repeated; do all the sentences start with “she” or “it” [that's one of my personal bugbears].)

3. Did you get a sense of character, place, and/or time from it?

4. Most importantly, would you keep reading?

There’s more, of course, and we’ll get to it in time. For now, take a look there and tell me in comments what your thoughts are. And be honest! You’re not going to hurt my feelings.

In fact, as a bonus today I’m going to offer the sum total of my wisdom on accepting critiques. Keep repeating this to yourself:

My work is not me. My work is not me. My work is not me.

Have fun!

Here’s the thing. A critique partner or beta reader will do different things for everyone. I personally think that the better we get and the more confident we get, the less we actually need critique and the more we just need a second pair of eyes; this is something I’ll be discussing later.

There’s another name for this beta reader person, once you’re published. That name is EDITOR.

See, when I write a book, and make it as shiny and perfect and clean as I can–and yes, I am the judge of that–I send it to this person who works at my publisher. That person is called an “editor,” and that “editor” will actually read my book, every single page, and will then point out things that perhaps aren’t clear, the occasional pacing issue, or simply an area my “editor” would like to see expanded or feels was expanded too much. Maybe she (my editors so far have all been women) feels I didn’t hit a certain emotional place hard enough. Maybe she feels I hit it a little too hard, and the scene has become a bit depressing–or rather, more depressing than usual, ha.

What’s my point? My point is that A) Working with beta readers or critique partners is a good way for some of us to get used to dealing with editing suggestions (I never had a problem doing so, and I love edits, but some do); B) Every single book on the shelves–every decent book–has been through this process and has thus had at least one other person making suggestions to the author, suggestions we usually take; C) That that extra pair of eyes is necessary to make a book the absolute best it can be; and most importantly D.

D is that it is my job to make my editor’s job as easy as possible.

How do I do that? By turning in the cleanest, tightest manuscript I possibly can. I accomplish this by working hard. By writing and rewriting, editing and editing, by thinking of hardly anything else for weeks on end. I accomplish this by neglecting my family so I can write, reread, edit, change, rip out, add in, polish polish and polish some more.

And I accomplish it, when I’m done with all of that, by sending the ms out to a few people I trust, to see if they spot anything my editor might spot. Anything I can fix before I turn that book in. Any slow spots or areas where I know the story so well I forgot I was writing for people who don’t, and so have neglected to fully explain a character’s reasoning or whatever.

My book is one of dozens my editor may be working on at any given time. I want to make her job easier. If I may, I’m going to tell you something one of my editors once said to me: That she was looking forward to my ms because she knew my work would be clean and tight, that it wouldn’t require a lot of heavy lifting.

That’s the kind of shit I live for, people. And that’s why I have beta readers–aside from the simple fact that it’s FUN to share your work with your friends, and that often in exchange you actually get to read their mss too! I love my friends and I love their work. Why wouldn’t I want people I trust and admire to read my books? Why wouldn’t I want to read theirs? Do you have any idea how good it feels to actually be able to discuss your work with someone? And if all that reading fun means I also get to have a reputation with my editors for turning in clean work? (Which I would have anyway, as I generally change very little based on my betas’ comments?) So much the fucking better.

Once you’re contracted, one you’re published, it’s not just about you anymore. It’s about the people who depend on you, too. It’s not “asking a committee” or wimping out. It’s the business of professional publishing. Period.

But that does bring me to an interesting point, the one I originally planned for today, which is, who the hell is giving you such crap advice?

Here’s the thing. Finding people willing to crit you is good. And a lot of this is covered when you see theirs; you get an idea of their skill level and thus how reliable they actually are.

But some people post work online, like in the Share Your Work forum on AW or any number of other places. And those are great places, they are. But watch who you listen to.

Not everyone who offers you comments will know what they’re talking about. Some people get bugs up their asses about silly things that don’t matter. Some people will argue based on nothing. (Years ago I posted an excerpt from a historical. I got excellent feedback, and really appreciated it, except the one or two people who insisted my years of meticulous research were incorrect. This also happened in a nightmarish way later and elsewhere, at a place that no longer exists, but that’s not really a story I can share here.)

My point is, yes, you need to trust yourself, and you need to be careful who you listen to. Just because someone sounds like they know what they’re talking about doesn’t mean they do. Just because they have several people who agree with them doesn’t mean any of them know what they’re talking about. Check their credentials. Are they published? In your genre? By whom? For how long? Do they normally make sense? Step away from the work and the crit for a while and come back to it.

Does it still seem unreasonable? Forget it. Don’t take every bit of advice you’re offered. Learn to pick and choose; it’s part of the process.

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