The Real Message in the Stars

I wish Amazon used a star system like Netflix, the rental business that ranks movies based on my preferences, not on what others say about them.

Netflix assigns attributes to each film, such as feel-good, steamy, understated, chilling.  Then it regularly asks us to rank movies we've seen and matches attributes of our favorites to create personalized recommendations--for example, 3.5 stars, its best guess for Carol.  3.5 stars usually means I'll like the movie.

Because of the huge book numbers, delivering a personal recommendation may be too difficult or impractical for Amazon, and it's certainly not possible for reviewers.  But without personalization, star rankings for books don't mean a lot.    

Then there's the other thing: some reviews and likes of reviews may not be legitimate.  I heard recently of an author with review blogs under several different names who trashes his rivals and praises the books he writes under a number of pseudonyms. This is a bad thing for his rivals as well as for readers!  Maybe it's an urban legend--I have no facts. But there's a scam for everything, so why not? Would a real reader finish a book he could give only one star?

Recipe and product reviews can be helpful--I've bought products (luggage, for example) based on reviews.  Occasionally I review a book and give stars, if the website requires it. Five stars to me means one of my all-time favorite books.  People give five stars too often--a five star review seems as suspect as a one-star.

For me, the best book recommendation still comes word-of-mouth from someone I know or a reviewer I follow who has preferences similar to my own. 

What's your take?

Too Much of a Good Thing

An enthusiastic reviewer led me to Divergent, Veronica Roth’s young adult novel of a girl coming of age in a tightly controlled society.  I loved the premise—at age 16, youth must choose their future culture or caste (overtones here of declaring a major, finding one's niche or lifestyle).  In Divergent, the cultures are called factions, and they resemble personal orientations we recognize:  Abnegation, Erudite, Candor, Amity, and Dauntless.  Beatrice is born into Abnegation, but her tests show aptitude for three factions instead of one.  She’s “divergent,” a dangerous quality she must not reveal.  At her choosing ceremony, she leaves her family and joins “Dauntless,” the reckless faction.  You can see where this is going.

I was bothered throughout by the fact that the faction names aren’t all noun forms.  But I can live with that.  More serious, about halfway the story changes its focus from the girl’s progress in her new society to her tentative romantic explorations.  For me, this emphasis was TOO MUCH.

Like the best science fiction, Divergent offers a view of contemporary society, and until it turns into a teen-age romance, the novel comes close to the effectiveness of The Hunger Games.  No doubt the repeated scenes of touching and feeling work for thousands of genre readers (maybe hundreds of thousands), but I think it causes the novel to lose appeal for a crossover audience.  A little bit would have been fine.

The second example of TOO MUCH in this story is the fighting.  Once the story shifts from training to actual conflict, the fight sequences seem repetitive and boring--blow by blow, like directions for the movie actors.  I started skimming.  Yeah, I skimmed the entire last half, so I allow that my judgment may be unfair. 

My point is emphasis and balance.  I doubt that any writer knows when enough is enough--we need astute editors and critics.  Critiquers have said to me, “You can cut this.  We get it.”  I’ve given the same critique when I think a sequence goes on too long, when I’m bored by silliness or banter or exposition or gratuitous anything. 

I suspect Divergent is a good seller.  I think it missed an opportunity to be a better novel.

Overcoming the Story Blues

I hate this.

Starting a new story is as conflicting as having a new baby with the older one crying for attention.  But worse:  my story offspring are not yet equally loved.  I have to force myself to ignore the older and nurture the new. 

There are a few good side effects.  I'm not obsessed with taking care of it. I sleep better.  I'm diligently reading, planning, writing--but find time to do other things.

It's a good thing our bodies take care of the first nine months of creating a baby.  If my mind had to develop a baby, I'd probably forget where I left it.

To shock me into a relationship with this story, I've put the first chapter up for critique. We'll see if readers stimulate any maternal instincts and if the story wants to breathe.  This is risky.  The story (The Legacy of Lucie Bosell) should be available March 28 on critiquecircle.com unless I come to my senses and pull it back to the womb.

Good idea?  Bad idea?  Death wish?

What do you know about the story blues?

Wanda, the sidekick who nearly stole the show

When I was told several times that my main character's sidekick was stealing the show, I decided to make her the main character of the next story.  In the first one (The Girl on the Mountain) Wanda is 13, abused and homeless, but resilient, wise, and strong-willed.  In that story she's a contrast to the older, somewhat naive main character (May Rose), who gives her a home and is inspired by her.

I like starting a new project with a character I know so well.  But almost immediately I'm confronted by the problem of maturity and change.  The new story takes place fifteen years later, and rough little Wanda has become a rough grownup. 

As an adult, Wanda can continue to be independent and outspoken.  Those traits can help as well as hinder the accomplishment of her goals in the new story.  But she can't retain the reactions of a child, or she will be neither loved nor a good main character.  I'm also wondering if her ungrammatical speech will make her less acceptable as a grown-up main character.  People do tend to associate ungrammatical speech with ignorance--not an accurate association, but true of our prejudices.

So help me out.  What do you know of "rough" main characters, especially female ones?  Main characters with poor speech?  What makes them lovable? 

Write Better: Get Another View

Another view.  We must have other eyes on our manuscripts no matter how painful the corrections and comments.  It's too easy to write alone, get lost in our own words, not see ambiguity, sentence weaknesses, lack of clarity.  We have to seek constructive criticism.  Without it, we can't possibly get better.

I hope someone reading this post is a high school or college student who's angry or disillusioned by a harsh review of a beloved composition.  Maybe even a middle-aged new writer who has submitted a story to a publisher or a writing group like CritiqueCircle.com and been disappointed by a lack of enthusiastic response.  It's always a shock to discover our words did not reach a reader as we intended.

Get help.  Like other people devoted to their craft, writers all over the world willingly help each other. CritiqueCircle.com is a terrific (and free) mutual-help community.  Members can also learn by seeing mistakes and problems in the writing of others.

Don't accept every critique as golden.  There are as many different reading tastes as food preferences and varieties of dogs.  Take a look at the writing style and reading habits of the person critiquing you (found on the site in CC member profiles).  See what that person said about stories you also critiqued.  Critiques on a story often vary widely--many readers sense something wrong but don't know what it is or how to fix it.  Realize that the best they've told you may be that something doesn't quite work. Occasionally someone does not know how to give opinions in a kind or helpful manner, but I think those instances on Critique Circle are rare. Members on the site gain experience in critiquing.  In most cases writers can find the reactions they need (though not always what they want), often by knowledgeable people.  

Before you show your manuscript to someone else, give yourself a different perspective.   Look at it in a different format. Widen the margins so the page looks like the page of a book. Don't rely on the grammar and spelling checker--PRINT a proof copy. Mistakes jump out--typos, unnecessary repetitions, poor transitions, and so on. To save paper, look at the document in your word processor's two-page view. This view allows you to see across paragraphs and pages and spot all kinds of weaknesses. (After I edit in normal screen view, I go to the two-page view and spend time tweaking.  I love the two-page view.)

Finally, if you're going to show the manuscript to anyone--a friend or someone online--never say "I haven't had time to edit this but I just wanted to get your opinion."  I hope you see the problem in that.

Author branding: I am, I love, I believe (and I write)

In a guest post on BookBuzzr.com, Laurel Marshfield (Blue Horizons Communications) describes authors' brands as messages they put out about themselves.  Marshfield says "Your brand is your author story ... you need to consciously make use of the intersection between your personal life story and the story your books tell. And then, you need to use that intersection to dialogue with interested readers."  She cites author Jodi Picoult’s webside as an example of effective branding.

This may not be the ultimate definition of "branding," but it's one I think I understand.  So I ask myself, do I have a brand?  Maybe so.  My two novels-in-progress share some characteristics, and they do reflect who I am, what I love, and what I believe.  (Also the kind of books I like to read). Here's a partial list.

1. Appreciation for ordinary people in a distinct cultural setting--in my case, wilderness, rural, and small-town.  In my reading, this shows up in preference for books set in other cultures:  A Fine Balance (Mistry), Brick Street (Ali), Cutting for Stone (Verghese), State of Wonder (Patchett).

 My two WIPs, The Girl on the Mountain and Ridgetop are set 100 years apart in the same Appalachian region. 

2. Fascination with the mountain wilderness, maybe because much of West Virginnia's terrain and flora present challenges and difficulties to overcome as well as spectacular views.  I never tire of the view from my windows. 

3. Love of history, especially the history of industry and everyday implements used by our great-grandparents.  I love old things.

4. Respect for people, because all creation is precious.  I think this means I will never have a villain who isn't partly sympathetic. 

Enough about me.  How about you?  What's the connection between you and your stories?  What's your brand?

See Laura Marshfield's full post:
What's an Author Brand?

Breakup: When to divorce your project

Do you have at least one novel, short story or poem you've been editing for years?

Do you find tweaking words easier than starting something new?

If so, you may need to divorce that project.

Breaking up is hard to do.  Describing gamers' addiction to FarmVille in a Wired Magazine article ("Gamed," July 2011), Dan Ariely explains why it's hard to stop working on our creations.  "Once people take all the little steps to build a farm, they become invested in it--and thereby value it more highly.  The more complex and difficult and time-consuming a process is, the more we fall in love with our creation and the more we become interested in the game."

Complex, difficult, time-consuming, and hard to give up. Sounds like my addiction.  Does it sound like yours?

It's great to be invested and to love what we do.  But attachment to an old project keeps us from going forward.

Nine months ago, burned out from working too intensely on Wacky Road, I divorced that sucker and embarked on painful weeks of brainstorming a new story, The Girl on the Mountain, something very different.  I blogged about this earlier in Writing from Scratch.

Now Girl is undergoing the critique process, and I've transitioned to something new, inspired by John Locke's How I Sold 1 Million ebooks in 5 Months!   Locke says that a reader who enjoys your first book is likely to look for another of your books right away.  Therefore, bringing out two or more at the same time can give you a bump in sales.

Everybody acknowledges that generating ebook sales is tough, maybe next to impossible for those of us who don't write in highly popular, sensational genres.   We need all the help we can get.  But here's something encouraging:  Joe Konrath, in his blog A Newbie's Guide to Publishing mentions that ebooks will last forever.  Forget shelf-life.  Your ebook has a chance to sell over time, or at least until popular tastes change.

So now I'm happily romancing a story I divorced almost ten years ago.

Separation from your story doesn't have to be permanent.  You can fall in love again, and write better, the second time around.