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Should You Send a Slew?

August 11, 2010 in Advice, Agent, Queries | 14 comments

There is lots of good stuff happening over at WriteOnCon.com…lots of fantastic articles and chats and vlogs from editors and agents. (Seems like there were issues with the site yesterday, and now it’s back up, at least for me. I don’t know what that was about.) As a result of all the great content going up online, I’m feeling a little less-than-inspired about my own blog topic today. Ho hum.

Well, since you’re all probably learning about new agents and editors who you’d like to submit to at WriteOnCon, I wanted to tackle a submission question that came in from reader Siski a long time ago:

Is it worth providing an agent with a synopsis of several manuscripts so they can assess you as an author, rather than assess you in terms of one manuscript? Would that make rejection less likely? Or will an agent be able to see what you’re capable of from just one MS and therefore wouldn’t want to know of others?

I get this question a lot at conferences and through the blog. Should you send a slew of your stuff or charge into the great query yonder with just one project at a time?

I’m very adamant about my answer: send only your absolute strongest project out. No ifs ands or buts. I don’t care if it’s a ten word picture book. If it’s your strongest work, that’s what you should show the world. In most cases — especially with picture book manuscripts, but this could apply to novels, too — having a really great, strong submission will either get you an offer or at least get your foot in the door.

After the communication lines between you and the editor/agent are open, you can broach other projects. Or the agent/editor may ask to see what else you have. But the time for that is AFTER they show interest in your initial blow-the-door-off-its-hinges submission.

When we get a slew of submissions from a writer, either in one email or in twenty, we’re overwhelmed. We’re annoyed. We wonder why you have those twenty manuscripts sitting around on your hard drive and, yes, why you decided to unleash them on the world in one big deluge. It also makes us panicky. Do you want us to sell all twenty of those for you right off the bat? Are your expectations completely unrealistic?

So be patient. Really take a long, hard look at all the projects you have to potentially offer an agent/editor. Choose your favorite, the one you feel is most marketable or the one you’re most passionate about (ideally, it will have both of those qualities!). And send that one as a way to engage the editor/agent into asking for more. That’s the right way to do it. Sending your entire slew will have the opposite effect — you’ll get that agent/editor shutting the door of opportunity in your face instead of opening it wider

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International Writers and International Settings

August 6, 2010 in Advice, Publishing | 34 comments

This is a question I got on the blog a few months ago, about writers who either live outside of the US or write about locations outside the US, or both:

How do editors and agents feel about writers from other countries? I live in Canada and write using Canadian spelling and grammar. My latest young adult story is set in Canada so I have kept to the Canadian standards. However, I’m afraid that agents will see that and wonder whether or not I know basic grammar.

Do American agents consider the location of the story and/or it’s author when reading a manuscript? Do they require American spelling and grammar? Would an agent in the states consider taking on a story set in another country or would they prefer to change the setting to an American city?

I get this question a lot, actually. Thoughts:

If you want to shop it in the American market, adhere to American grammar and spelling standards. I see tons of submissions from around the world and am very familiar with what is standard usage in other countries. I give writers the benefit of the doubt and assume they know basic language rules, so don’t worry about your Canadian usage branding you as illiterate in our eyes. However, I also know that you will have to adhere to American standards if you manuscript is acquired in America. The best way to avoid a heavy line edit later on is to Americanize your manuscript before you submit to American agents or editors. You know what’s coming…just get it over it.

I see a lot of Canadian writers. They usually set a story in the place they know best, usually their Canadian hometown. However, international settings for novels published in the American market usually tend to be more…exotic. The upcoming novel by P.J. Converse, SUBWAY GIRL, out from HarperCollins in the spring 2011 season, is a romance intertwined with the bustling subway lines of Hong Kong. The upcoming Stephanie Perkins romance, ANNA AND THE FRENCH KISS, out from Dutton this fall, is set in…bien sur…Paris.

Not to offend our dear friends up north, but for Canadian settings, I have to ask: is it 100% essential that the story is set in Canada? Is the Canadian setting absolutely crucial to the story? Does the whole thing fall apart when you take the story oot of Canada? I’m not sure American kid/teen readers will understand the nuances and glories of Canada. It doesn’t have the sexy allure of France or Brazil or Morocco in American popular culture. I read a lot of children’s literature and have yet to come across a pocket of stories set in Canada. Now, I don’t know if that’s the setting’s fault or if I’m not reading the right books or if it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, but the general lack of Canada-centric books in the US kidlit market makes me a little less eager to submit project set in the Great White North (unless the Canadian setting is absolutely imperative to the action of the story, as I’ve mentioned, and the book is completely amazing, of course).

This is a tough market. Editors don’t care where you’re from, but they do care about your work being able to attract the maximum number of readers. If you want to publish in the US market, your best, strongest bet, would be to cater more to American readers in terms of location and grammar/spelling. I believe in giving your work the biggest possible chance at publication, and if you can make these changes without wrecking your story, it might be smarter.

Either way, I don’t think a lot of agents will penalize a writer for being located internationally or for writing in an international setting right off the bat. It’s all about the writing and the story, at the end of the day.

ETA: Just so nobody misses the point — the setting has to be absolutely instrumental to the story. Novels are about choices the writer makes. If you’re just setting something somewhere just because, that’s not a strong choice. If you set a story outside of the average American reader’s frame of reference and you want to publish in the American market, one or both of the following must be true: first, it must be a location that the reader will be thrilled and excited to vicariously visit (think about action movies…they’re always set in some exotic world destination), second, it must absolutely be crucial to the story. You can’t have a Mayan story without some mention of Mexico, for example.

ETA 2.0: Perhaps my least favorite thing about having a blog is writing posts like these and then getting the feeling that, just because I write about this subject, that readers think I personally agree with it. I’m talking about international writers and settings and how they are perceived in terms of marketing a manuscript to agents and/or editors for the American audience. I’m not giving my own personal views about how the world should be. I’m not making commentary on American culture. I’m not saying that this is the only opinion on the issue. But an undeniable bias exists toward American settings in today’s kidlit. That is a fact. How do I feel about that personally? That’s not what this post is about.

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Writing Woes

August 2, 2010 in Advice, Writing | 22 comments

This email comes from an anonymous blog reader, and I think we can all relate to this concern:

Lately, I have been having trouble finding inspiration and the drive to actually write something. Instead of writing when I sit down with my computer, I end up checking my email, surfing the Web, and discovering other ways to waste precious writing time. In addition to being a bad procrastinator, I also have trouble finding good ideas for novels that sound interesting and appealing to my target audience. I feel like writing is constantly an uphill battle for me. How can you tell if you’re just not meant to be a writer?

Well, there are no guarantees in life, of course. You can never be 100% sure of anything, including whether or not you’re meant to be a writer. Or, I should say, you can be completely sure of it in your head but reality may not always match that conviction. There are several answers to this question, and I will strive to be as comprehensive as possible.

First, why do writers sometimes waste a lot of time and procrastinate when they know they should be writing? The good news is, all of the professional writers I know, many of them bestsellers with lots of books on the shelves, do this. They have good days and bad days, they celebrate and complain, they ride the highs and lows of creativity, just like the rest of us. But writing is their job, they’re getting paid, they have deadlines, so the most successful of them keep showing up to the page to write, even if they don’t feel like it. Because they are writers. So one piece of advice I can give you right off the bat is to keep writing and keep up your habit. If you find yourself avoiding a part in your novel that’s challenging or doesn’t feel right for some reason, skip that part and write around it. The temptation to avoid writing something and stay blocked is always there, but the trick is to keep writing past it, around it, underneath it, and the block will loosen up eventually.

The other part of the equation, of course, is the idea and the project. Sometimes, the writing urge may be there but writers get derailed by an idea that just won’t come together. So they stop writing, but the writing isn’t actually the problem. Writing a novel is a long process full of frustration and crisis (for the writer and the character, ideally). If you are losing excitement for your idea, you are going to be your own worst cheerleader. I say it’s perfectly fine to put a novel idea aside if it isn’t working or if inspiration has struck elsewhere. You can always open the file back up and start typing at another time. But if you have ideas you’re not excited about, how do you expect readers to get psyched?

So there are three issues at play: the writing, the point in the story that may be causing you to avoid it, the story idea itself. Diagnose which is making you stuck. Most likely, it is story-related. Jazz up your story or start another one. If it really is the writing, maybe take a break. If you miss it and want to come back, that will reinvigorate you.

One way writers tend to get frustrated, also, is by setting too-high goals for themselves right at the beginning. When I started writing, as a teen, I told myself that I would be completely unacceptable as a human being unless I published a novel by age sixteen. Did that happen? No. Did that put a lot of pressure on my writing at the time and take the fun out of it? Absolutely.

The fact is, not everyone who strikes out to publish a novel will end up reaching that goal. But there are many more writers out there than authors who have books on the shelves. If writing is something you are called to do for life, it you can’t think of doing anything else, then take the heat off yourself in terms of seeking publication. Take a little bit of time off. Get back into why you love writing in the first place. No matter what anybody says, publishing will still be there when you want to take another run at a book contract or an agent.

But if you find yourself churning out joyless, passionless stories or writing, day after day (and not just a brief block or period of depression), something is wrong, and you should fix it before you slog through to the query and then submission. If you’re not excited, it’ll be hard for us to get excited, too.

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Prime Real Estate

July 30, 2010 in Advice, Writing | 21 comments

I’m not a real estate agent, but I do know there are things that real estate agents do to sell a house: they play up the important features. Their other favorite thing to talk about, if it’s good, is the neighborhood and the location of the property. After all, isn’t it all about location, location, location? Well, these considerations are applicable to novel craft, because once you know the important information features and the prime locations for material in your story, you can play around and really present your reader with important information, in a way that seems important, and in places that will make it seem even more important. Let me explain…

The way you present information impacts the way a reader interprets its importance. For example, if a character goes on and on about the Thanksgiving turkey, describing its crisp brown skin, succulent aroma, the bedding of rosemary twigs upon which it rests, the legs tied together with twine, etc., and completely glosses over the conversation that reveals that the character’s parents are getting a divorce, what do you think will be memorable in that scene? The more descriptive (and scene) space you give something, the more characters think and talk about it, the more important it will become in the reader’s mind.

This can work against you — if you’re not aware of this and spend lots of time describing stuff that will not be important as the novel progresses — or for you — if you are aware of this and use this to craft where your reader’s attention goes. In other words, prime real estate in your novel is anything that takes up a lot of space (it’s good and noteworthy to have acreage, you know?). Readers will automatically equate space and words spent talking/thinking about something with its overall value to the book.

The other consideration is location. The prime real estate in any novel is: the first page of the novel, the first paragraph of a new chapter, and the last paragraph of a chapter. These spaces are special and should not be treated like any others in your manuscript. After all, a real estate agent who has a property with panoramic city views, a Central Park West address, or a location with a private beach, goes above and beyond when listing this special location. The ad is glossier, there is a whole album of pictures, the font is more refined, etc. You should lavish care on your entire manuscript, of course, but pay special attention, after you’ve polished everything, to the prime real estate listed above.

Whatever you put on the first page of your manuscript will seem really important to the rest of it. If you start with something that never appears again (and this is where prologues can get hairy) or if you give the reader all description and no character, that is a missed opportunity. The opening paragraphs of subsequent chapters are your chance to ground the reader in what has just happened or what will happen for the rest of the chapter (a post on “grounding the reader” later). The end of a chapter has one job and one job only, just like that house with the panoramic city view: sell. You need to give your reader a new detail, a cliffhanger, or just enough tension so that they immediately flip to the next page instead of using the chapter break as a natural resting point and putting the book down.

Most novels that have strong narrative really use the prime real estate as a special opportunity. It’s there to keep the reader informed, to highlight important information or characters, to keep the reader hooked, and to otherwise anchor the structure of the novel. Make sure you’re paying special attention to the prime real estate you’re working with, just like a real estate agent would.

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Do Unpublished Writers Have to Blog?

July 21, 2010 in Advice, Publishing, Writing | 57 comments

ETA after reading comments: If you’re happy to blog, please do it. This post is geared mostly to people who are on the fence and who are feeling pressure to start a blog because they hear that’s what they’re supposed to do. The tone of this question is usually, “Do I have to blog?” I’ve changed the title to reflect the framing.

This is a question that comes up a lot at conferences and from people who email me. It’s the familiar scenario: You’re an unpublished writer chasing publication. You don’t have a book or a deal to blog about yet, but you’ve heard that writers need platform and Internet presence, and you’ve heard that blogs get you friends and traffic and riches and unicorns, and you’ve also heard about this Twitter thing. Yet it sounds overwhelming. And you wonder if you have enough to blog about. You wonder if you have the time to keep up with all these things.

But the online writing community you see other unpublished writers enjoying keeps bugging you — You have to blog! You have to Tweet! You have to Facebook!

What do you do?

I’m going to say, probably, the exact opposite of what you’d expect. See, I’m a person who blogs. And I have a Twitter. And I’m on Facebook. I also grew up in the Silicon Valley and worked for a bunch of Internet start-ups before I got involved in publishing. You think I’d be totally into unpublished writers blogging, Tweeting, flickring, Buzzing, Facebooking, and all that. Right?

Wrong.

I never look at the blogs of people who query me unless they can give me some kind of impressive fact, like “30,000 people visit this blog per month” or “I draw a daily web cartoon and have a following” or “I’ve created an interactive game that you can play” or whatever.

If you’re iffy on blogging and worry, already, that you’ll run out of material, I say don’t do it. There are too many bad blogs, blogs about people’s cats (I swore I would never blog about my cat…then she got sick and I freaked out and I blogged…at every conference I attend, people still ask me about my cat!), blogs about their word count for the day and what book they’re reading, blogs by people who think they need a blog. Don’t add one more to the pile. Blogs without good, useful information or blogs by a clearly reluctant author are the worst.

The thing about blogs is that they’re a living thing. Blogs take your most recent entry and post it first. For the savvy, content-rich blog, that’s great. For the reluctant blog, that’s bad. Readers can log on and see the exact date when you lost your zest for blogging or ran out of content. And I’d say that a blog last updated in September 2009 is worse than no blog at all. It makes you seem out-of-date, irrelevant…maybe even dead. (Old blogs frozen in time are almost creepy.)

Fiction writers don’t need to pay attention to that whole “You have to have a platform” myth as much as nonfiction writers do. If you’re writing a novel or a picture book…what is your platform? That you like writing and you’re writing a novel or a picture book. Just like all the other writers out there. Unless you happen to be an expert in a subject matter that plays into your fiction, or you’re some other kind of professional writer who is crossing over, you’re not going to have any more platform than that.

The reason why I’m so negative about unpublished writers blogging and Tweeting is that it’s usually not good content. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the Internet from actually working for it for all those years, it’s that users come to the Internet to see, “What’s in it for me?” They want valuable content that speaks to them. They Google: “How do I get this stain out of my white carpet?” “Is it okay that my baby is turning sort of purple?” (It’s probably not.) “How do I stop the hiccups?” “What’s a great summer BBQ recipe?”

Most writing blogs — and most blogs in general — are about the writer of the blog, not about the user. I have a blog, but you’ll notice that I try to keep myself and my life out of it (and I was doing a dang good job until my cat got sick!). I want to use this space to give you valuable content, because I know that’s what people want from me. At the end of the day, they have their own cats to worry about, but they would like some writing and publishing advice.

Unpublished writing blogs do one positive thing, usually: they foster community among other unpublished writers. You can come gripe about rejections, brag about word count, share your successes and frustrations and make friends. While that’s nice for you, it has little value to an agent or editor (and not all of us feel this way, so please take this as my opinion) who comes to visit. Unpublished writers also write about writing in their blog, and that may attract other unpublished writers, but it does have a limited reach. Published writers who write about writing usually attract a wider audience, as they have perceived authority.

If you have a blog where you can give people really valuable content, tips, and things to make their lives better (or at least to give them good cocktail party conversation), do it. If you are just thinking of blogging because everyone else does it or you heard that agents won’t consider you unless you have a blog, don’t.

Plus, Web 2.0 (social networking) is a time suck. You can go pretty far down the rabbit hole with Tweets and Facebook updates. Then you lose sight of the thing that’s really going to get you published: writing.

Focus on your writing. And if you feel the need to be online, which you should, at least in some small way, put up a simple three page site: main landing page with info about your work, about you page, contact page. That’s it, and it should be cheap to make a page that actually looks good and professional.

Once you’re under contract with a publisher, of course, everything changes. You’ll have stuff to say. You’ll have a book to sell. You’ll have events to publicize. You’ll have readers who want to know more about you. For now, though, don’t bow to the peer pressure if you really don’t feel comfortable blogging or Tweeting or Facebooking.

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Leaving Your Agent

July 19, 2010 in Advice, Agent | 14 comments

Writers splitting with their representation happens a bit more often than many would like to think. The thing is, we all want to have a long-term relationship with a client (just like clients always strive, I should hope, to have long-term relationships with their agents), but sometimes there is turnover.

Writers figure out that they don’t like their agent’s particular way of doing things, or their agent’s editorial suggestions, or they feel dissatisfied with how their submissions are being handled, and they move on. It’s for the best. This is your career and, if you’re feeling unhappy, you need to either try and fix things with your current agent or move on to find another one.

I see too many writers who are intimidated by their agent. I can understand it from a stars-in-their-eyes new writer’s point of view, sure. You have a busy professional who is close to the publishing industry. They hold your dreams in their hands, supposedly. They’ve given you the time of day and they like you, they really like you!

Many new writers are blinded by this and don’t take into account that their agent’s editorial advice doesn’t match up with their own vision. Or they sit there and take it while their agent takes forever to respond to emails or to read revisions. Or they are afraid to ask their agents questions via phone or email, so they hit the online message boards and ask the other writers the things other writers probably don’t know — but that the agent definitely would, if the writer could summon up the guts to fire off an email.

We’re just people, people. We strive to do what’s best for clients and strive to take on clients who are a true fit, but, at the end of the day, we’re human beings and sometimes all parties can make mistakes. Sometimes these mistakes are a short-term error in communication that can be fixed by coming to an understanding. Sometimes, these mistakes will mean the end of your agent/writer relationship, but it’s usually for the best. So don’t be afraid to ask your agent questions. Don’t be afraid to disagree with editorial feedback. Don’t be afraid to prod when your agent goes a while without a response you’ve been expecting.

Agents have a list of writers that we work with. And we have our own careers. You only have one career to worry about, and one life. There’s an old adage: “Nobody will ever care about your business as much as you do.” I believe that’s true. But it’s my job to be the person by your side who cares the next most about your writing business.

If you don’t feel that your agent is serving you and your career — the only one you have — then it’s time to decide whether or not you’re a good fit. There are lots of agents out there. There’s a good chance that someone will be more attuned to your work if you really feel neglected or misunderstood. Remember, we’re the ones with the authority and the connections, but we can’t do any work without you. So make sure the agent you take on to represent you is giving you the best that you deserve.

Also, if anyone is in Manhattan this Wednesday, July 21st, I’m teaching a class for the Learning Annex. Click here for more information.

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Boy Protagonists in YA

July 16, 2010 in Advice, Publishing, Writing | 44 comments

Reader Melissa asked this a few weeks ago and it’s one of my pet issues in YA. I talk to a few of my clients about this, and to anyone that asks, really, because it is a mystery, a frustration, a conundrum:

I am hoping you can answer a question for me. Recently, there has been a lot of talk about boy MC’s (YA) being a hard sell, yet many agents request boy books on their websites/blogs. Are boy MC’s a hard sell? My current involves a boy MC but with a romantic element to the story. Is this the same topic or are these two different types of books? To me, it would seem that boy MC books directed at boys alone are very different than boy MC books that have the romantic element so desirable to girls.

When people request “boy books,” I find that they’re more often talking about MG, where boy readers are still more active. In YA, boy readers are almost extinct. They have a) stopped reading or b) moved on to adult sci-fi/thriller/fantasy, etc. In MG, adventure and mystery and especially boy/girl teams of siblings or friends are doing well in the marketplace right now, so editors are looking to add those types of stories to their lists.

Not so much in YA. When I’ve gone on submission with boy YA and boy main characters in YA, I have literally heard from editors, “Oh, we’ve already filled our slot.” That’s right. A single slot. Some houses usually do one or two boy-centric YA books per season and that’s it. Because that’s not where the readers are, unfortunately. As much as editors would like to change the reality of older boys not reading, most have found that putting more and more books out there for them doesn’t necessarily move the needle.

One way that writers with boy MCs in YA can be successful is if they take lots of girl appeal, as Melissa says, and apply liberally. John Green is a really successful test case. He writes boy MCs that girl readers want to date, simple as that. His boy protagonists are quirky, nerdy, in love with a girl, and chasing her with such passion that boys can relate, sure, but girl readers swoon.

Girl readers can easily see themselves in the role of that girl, and they want the geeky, cute, dedicated boyfriend type that populates John’s pages, even if he is a loner or flawed or otherwise damaged. Girls love a good fixer-upper in some cases, not just the blazing-hot romantic hero. Vulnerable boys, not just sparkly ones, really do appeal.

So I think Melissa’s on the right track with the romance element. More than 80% of your readers, even with a male MC or a mixed-gender or gender-neutral tale, will be girls. Give them lots to dig into. And a guy they can dig. Give the boy readers good stuff, too, and a character to relate to who’s not a total girl-pleaser, but know that your core audience will most likely be girls. And if you’re planning a book that’s totally boy-centric, it will be a harder push to get it on publisher’s lists, unless it is just really appealing and awesome for teen boys and you nail the demographic well.

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Short Stories for MG or YA

July 7, 2010 in Advice, Publishing | 12 comments

I had reader Dave write in and ask about the market for short story collections. This is a popular form of writing, whether you want to do a short story collection that features a lot of disparate work or a linked short story collection that tells one cohesive narrative over the scope of the manuscript.

It is arduous to break into publishing with a traditional novel as your debut. It would be exponentially more difficult with a short story collection. When we go to meetings with editors to discuss their tastes and acquisition needs, short story collections have almost never come up, except for in the sense of, “Please don’t send me any.”

There is an interesting new series coming out from Balzer + Bray and Walden Pond…the GUYS READ anthologies, edited by Jon Scieszka. I’ve read the first one, the humor anthology, that comes out this fall, and it does indeed feature a handful of short stories meant to be consumed in 20 minutes each and to encourage reluctant readers. I’m very curious to see how this line of anthologies does since, yes, short stories are more accessible to some readers, and they do have a place in the school curriculum.

But for someone who wants to sell to a wider market, for the trade, I would say that placing a debut manuscript that’s a short story collection would be extremely difficult. And, you know what? I’m perfectly fine with saying that something isn’t my specialty and that I wouldn’t be a good advocate for certain projects. This is definitely the case here.

I can’t dissuade any writer, obviously, and certain writers may find a home with a more curriculum-oriented publisher, but I wouldn’t represent a short story collection unless it was just the most brilliant thing I’d ever read, and then I’d probably ask if the author could turn it into a novel.

There are lots of other markets for short stories, though, from curriculum-based publishers to magazines. A lot of the time, the novel premises or picture book texts I receive read more like short stories than stories that deserve a longer execution. I know that’s not what any short story writer wants to hear, but there are lots of avenues that might not be trade publishers.

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The Nuclear Family in MG or YA Fiction

June 28, 2010 in Advice, Writing | 38 comments

A reader wrote in last week to ask me about family dynamics and wholeness in fiction. Mary said:

Can a manuscript be sold if the main character lives in a traditional nuclear family? Everything I’ve read has either a parent who left or disappeared, went to jail, or died–even in so-called humor novels. Being a single adoptive mother, I don’t object to a single parent household. But EVERY book?

This is a good point, and steals one of my jokes about MG or YA, which is: The parents (often mother) in a middle-grade or YA novel have the highest mortality rate in all of fiction.

And from reading what’s on offer these days, you really do get a sense that it’s true. Parents are always dead or missing or in jail or abusive or otherwise highly dysfunctional. Almost too much so.

Personally, I feel like there’s room for a more peaceful or normal family unit in MG or YA novels. However, fiction thrives on tension and conflict (not melodrama, mind you, or hysterics, but real conflict). Fiction can never be static, or your readers will put the book down (if you even get as far as having a book in the first place).

So you can feature a close-knit, whole or loving family in your novel. And nobody has to die or go on a drug binge or murder anybody. However, you can’t have a whole manuscript of Pollyanna love and family moments. The conflict has to come from somewhere.

There’s one good reason that families usually explode in MG or YA novels, I think. It’s during your teen years that you start to look around and realize that your parents aren’t perfect, as you originally thought when you were a kid. You start to see them as flawed human beings instead of superheroes. You also start to get to know them in new and different ways. Family members are also especially high stakes because they’re people you’ve known the longest and are the closest to, for better or for worse. And since the best fiction reflects universal truths of being alive, writers tend to hone in on family relationships as especially dramatic since…let’s face it…they often are.

A successful novel manuscript has to have two sources of tension: internal and external. Internal tension is the character’s struggle with being themselves and existing in the world around them. (Feeling alone, like a loser, feeling like they have no friends, wanting something really badly, etc.) External conflict is the conflict of a character and their relationships or with a situation in the outside world. (Parents divorcing, sibling rivalry, betrayal by a friend, an impending apocalypse, etc.)

So, even if things are hunky-dory at home, your character must have both external and internal conflict to be a compelling fictional person. Nobody wants to read a book that’s 300 pages of, “Everything is great and awesome!” But the conflict doesn’t 100% have to come from a dysfunctional family, either. In fact, in this market, having a functional family might actually set you apart, as long as there is enough tension and the stakes are high enough elsewhere in the story.

ETA: Of course, as is hinted at in the comments, having a family with missing members in it makes it easier for characters to break out of the house and get into shenanigans! One common complaint about MG and YA is: “How in the sam hill did these kids get into so much trouble? Who was watching them?” That’s easy to get around when you off mom and pop. Of course, murther most foul is not the only way to let your fictional kids have more room to roam.

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When To Tell Instead of Show

June 23, 2010 in Advice, Writing | 58 comments

Sometimes it’s better to tell instead of show. Yes, yes, I know. Everyone has heard of, “Show, don’t tell.”

I think I’ll get into this subject more in future posts, but let’s just say that a lot of convoluted, cliche stuff happens when a writer desperately tries to avoid telling (like hammering hearts and foot-tapping gestures, instead of just saying, “She was nervous,” or “He hated when she was late,” or whatever). For now, though, I want to give you a fantastic introduction to why (and when) telling can work.

I never pretended to know everything about writing, but I’ve never posted in-depth thoughts from a reader, either. Today’s the day. A few months ago, a reader sent in a very thought-provoking, well-written essay on just this very issue. Here are some of Melissa Koosmann’s thoughts on Good Telling, as she sees it after reading some HARRY POTTER and the thoughts of Scholastic editor Cheryl Klein. This is brilliant stuff. I could’ve talked about it, but she just did it much better.

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I’ve been looking for, and finding, Good Telling in books for some time, but I couldn’t find a pattern in it until a week or two ago, when I stumbled on a transcript of Cheryl Klein’s speech “A Few Things Writers Can Learn from Harry Potter.” In this speech, Klein discusses J.K. Rowling’s use of showing and telling–including the Good Telling I’m so curious about.

Good Telling, according to Klein, often appears in topic sentences–like the ones we all learned how to write in fifth grade. Klein makes a great example of a topic sentence from a descriptive paragraph and claims that there’s a pattern of that sort of sentence throughout the book. I’ve been going through a copy of HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE, and she’s right.

There’s a Good Telling sentence at the beginning of most descriptive paragraphs. Consider this one in chapter two, when Harry is thrilled he gets to go to the zoo: “Harry had the best morning he’d had in a long time.” Kind of bland, eh? But it’s followed by a neat couple of sentences that show Harry keeping out of Dudley’s punching range and eating a dessert Dudley doesn’t want. This does a double job of showing: it makes Harry’s life seem pretty dismal, and it makes him seem like a nice kid. Without the Good Telling topic sentence, those neat details wouldn’t pack as much punch. As Klein puts it, “Sometimes readers need the plain straightforward direction of telling to elucidate the point of all that showing.”

So far so good–but that’s description, and I’m most interested in how Good Telling works in action and dialogue. So I stepped back and looked at the telling that happens in those areas, and I found that Klein’s topic sentence observation applies there, too. It’s just that the Good Telling sentence directs the reader through a whole beat of text–a bunch of paragraphs rather than a single one. When a Good Telling sentence shows up, it usually marks a change: either a physical jump in time or space, or a subtle shift in mood or focus. Check out these Good Telling sentences from Harry’s trip to the zoo, still in chapter 2 of PHILOSOPHER’S STONE:

1. “But today, nothing was going to go wrong.” Something immediately goes wrong. Harry makes the mistake of saying he dreamed about a flying motorcycle, and Uncle Vernon gets mad.
2. “But he [Harry] wished he hadn’t said anything.” The narrative shifts to internal thoughts as Harry reflects that his aunt and uncle hate him talking about things acting in ways they shouldn’t. This segment is part showing and part telling, but it ends with a Good Telling sentence, too. More on that later.
3. “Harry felt, afterward, that he should have known it was all too good to last.” Gulp! There’s a small place shift to the reptile house as well as a big mood shift because the reader is prepared for something truly terrible to happen. Not long later, Harry makes the glass on the snake cage vanish.

After I started to see this pattern, I could detect it more often in places where a lot of dialogue and action were happening, where the Good Telling sentences weren’t so eye-catching. And guess what? There’s a web of Good Telling working its way through the whole novel, supporting the narrative shifts that carry the reader from one emotional beat to the next. Rowling dispenses with these sentences at times when crisp, clear action and dialogue can carry the story forward on their own, but it’s rare for her to go more than a couple of pages without an instance of Good Telling.

I like the way Klein calls these types of sentences “topic sentences,” but it’s normally only in the descriptive paragraphs that they actually state a topic. Otherwise they act as invitations to the reader. It’s as if J.K. Rowling is saying, “Hey, over here! Harry’s stepping into a new room now, so why don’t you come on in with him?” or “Hi again! I just wanted to let you know Harry’s disappointment is about to shift to full-fledged anger” or “Watch out! New character stepping in!” Obviously the actual writing is far more subtle than that, but the Good Telling is instrumental in carrying readers along with the flow of change in the story.

Good Telling doesn’t always show up at the beginning of a beat. Rowling varies it on occasion, usually by beginning with a few flashy lines of dialogue–followed by a straightforward Good Telling sentence. Good Telling also leads out of an emotional beat of the text almost as often as it leads in. After showing a whole string of actions, along with punchy details that illuminate how Harry feels about them, she often makes use of a pause in pacing to state that Harry does indeed feel the way we think he’s feeling. Klein calls this “a confirmation for the reader, directing the emotional takeaway from whatever happened.”

Once you’re looking for it, this lead-in, lead-out pattern of Good Telling pops up in many books. And thinking about it makes writing easier. It doesn’t make for a very pretty writing rule, though: Show and Good Tell, don’t Bad Tell.

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Can you find any examples of Good Telling? Talk about them in the comments. I’ve been wanting to mine my theatre/actor training and how it relates to writing for a while, and Melissa’s discussion of beats, above, is just one more reason for me to put on my thinking cap. I’m so happy that Melissa took the time to share her thoughts with me, and now I can share them with you.

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