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Chapters and Scenes

August 30, 2010 in Writing | 11 comments

Dana wrote to me a few weeks ago to ask about chapters and scenes:

I would love to hear your take on chapter breaks, long chapters, very short chapters, chapters that start seconds after the previous one ends, chapters that start months later, etc. In a related question, I would also love to have you weigh in on scenes, and how they differ from, but are related to, chapters.

Chapters and scenes can sometimes be related, or the can be completely different. Sometimes, writers who use short chapters have their chapters represent, basically, a scene and some transitional material before and after to string the reader through the plot. Writers who write longer chapters can sometimes go for five or more scenes before giving the reader a chapter break. This, of course, also depends on the length of your scenes. If you have a few short school scenes where your character sees and interacts with people in the halls or in class, you can probably make those into once chapter. If you’re giving readers a climactic battle scene near the end of the book where everything comes together, I’d let that be the only big scene in that chapter.

I can’t give you a definitive answer to this question. Not only is it your choice how you want to structure your story, it also depends on the length of your scenes, the genre you’re writing in, the age audience you’re targeting (younger and reluctant readers do better with shorter chapters), and the overall pacing of your big story arc but also of the section of the novel that you’re working on at that moment.

You ask about transitions, too. If the timing of your story and the passage of time between chapters makes sense, then it’s okay to skip over months between chapters. As long as you ground the reader once you begin the new chapter — so the reader knows exactly how much time has passed and when/where the reader is — you should be fine. But again, as long as it makes sense to the story and to your storytelling style. I, personally, would never leave my characters in limbo for months between chapters, but that’s because most of my stories are set in pretty small chunks of time — a few days to a few weeks — and so there’s not a lot of time to gloss over. Again, it all comes down to the scope of your story and how you’re telling it.

The best thing about this question, in my opinion, is that it shows that chapters and scenes need to be crafted and constructed carefully, just like everything else. Chapter length, pacing, timing, content, and all that other stuff is part of the decisions you must make as a writer, and, ideally, you will have good reasons for each choice.

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Mature Voice for the YA Market

August 27, 2010 in Writing | 21 comments

Heather asked this question in the comments a few days ago:

I’ve been thinking a lot about and practicing different YA voices. I know what my friends and I were like as teenagers (dry wit, sort of like Juno - “older than our years” due to divorce and other challenges) but I think the perception is that most teenage girls have a more young-sounding “voice”.

From a personal standpoint, I totally relate to the older, jaded, sarcastic, witty, dry, Juno voices in YA. That’s the kind of teen I was. I thought I had it all figured out and, even when I didn’t, I pretended I did. It was a defense mechanism, of course, but isn’t everything a defense mechanism during high school?

The thing is, this isn’t the only kind of teen voice. And that’s a good thing, because there are lots of publishers and lots of editors (and agents) out there with lots of different teen sensibilities. And sometimes, one agent or editor can fully appreciate both the younger and the older teen voices.

I would say that if you write the older type of teen voice, the story needs to match up, and so does the age of the character. Make your character 16-18 and give them a story that fits the voice in terms of depth and darkness. Part of the fun of Juno is that the story is really pedestrian, and Juno’s voice carries her through a pretty average, white bread, middle America teen experience. But I feel like this is hard to pull off in a novel. The voice, first of all, will have to be pitch perfect, and then it will have to completely carry the novel. (I can hear the editor in my head saying, “Yes, the voice is great, but what happens? Something needs to happen. What’s the hook?”)

When you want to use this voice, match it to a romance, a paranormal, an urban fantasy, or a really strong contemporary realistic coming of age, where the voice isn’t the only thing the manuscript has going for it (think Sara Zarr). My favorite recent example, which you haven’t read yet but will, and should, is WILDEFIRE by my client Karsten Knight, which is slated for release summer 2011 from Simon & Schuster. The voice is killer, dry, witty, sarcastic, and the plot is explosive and killer, too. It’s kick-ass urban fantasy.

I say this all because one of the biggest mistakes writers make in YA usually has to do with this type of voice. I know this is true for my own reading, and I’ve heard lots of editors say this, but biting sarcasm alone does not a story make. Neither is sarcasm appropriate for sarcasm’s sake. A lot of hopeful YA writers (perhaps those with snarky teenagers at home?) make their main characters so dry, so sarcastic, so acidic, so unbearable…that I don’t want to spend a book with them. And then there’s nothing else in the book that would play along with the sarcasm (like, for example, a kick-ass urban fantasy plot) and make the manuscript a cohesive story. Worse, the main character is so acerbic that it turns the reader off and you lose that connection. (To see pretty sarcastic, mean, horrible characters who actually manage to win the reader over, try BEFORE I FALL by Lauren Oliver or the upcoming REVOLUTION by Jennifer Donnelly, out in September from Delacorte/Random House.)

Just like a fondness for math does not make an Asian-American character more realistic (ask me how many times I see the annoying and insulting cliche about an Asian-American best friend with wicked math skills and “brown, almond-shaped eyes” or “straight black hair”), and a fondness for donuts doesn’t flesh out a fat kid character (puns all intended), the addition of biting sarcasm to your voice doesn’t give you “Instant Teen Protagonist” for your novel.

As I said in my first paragraph…there was something behind all my sarcasm, then and now. Sarcasm, just like voice, is a very multi-faceted thing. So sure, your teen main character can have the Juno voice. And they can be mature for their years. The market will, of course, bear it, like it will bear a younger YA protagonist with a sunnier voice. But all of the sarcasm and voice and maturity considerations have to be there for a reason: they have to have both depth and a thematic tie-in to the rest of the story.

And if you can pull all that off, then sure, I’ll read it. I guess. Whatever. :)

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Grounding the Reader

August 4, 2010 in Writing | 15 comments

I promised a post on “grounding” the reader in my real estate post a few days ago. Let me explain further. The reader is someone who picks up a book to read a story and have an experience. Since you know your story much better than the reader, it is your job to curate them through the story, to transition them from scene to scene and moment to moment in such a way that they follow you and focus stays on the story…instead of on the transitions and work you’re doing to put it together.

As soon as a reader gets confused or starts to see the man behind the Oz mask, if you will, meaning how you’ve put your story together or if something you’ve done isn’t working quite right, they get pulled out of the story. Novelist John Gardner is attributed to describing the act of reading as entering “the fictive dream.” Whatever takes you out of this dream — a strange transition, confusion, a glaring error, character inconsistency, implausible plot — is disruptive to the reader’s experience.

A really common way to wake someone up from the fictive dream is to not ground the reader at the beginning of chapters or in times of transition from one scene/plot point to the next. This is why it’s so important to “ground” the reader in these moments. Whenever a reader reads the first page of a book, the first paragraph of a new chapter, or the transition between two beats, scenes, or moments, they want to know four things:

  1. Who is involved in this story/chapter/scene?
  2. When is this (for the beginning of the novel) and when is this relative to the last chapter or scene (for the rest of the novel)?
  3. Where are we?
  4. What’s going on?

By grounding the reader, you are answering these questions right off the bat, so that there is no confusion and the reader can dive into the novel, chapter, or next scene without being ripped out of the fictive dream by lingering doubt or uncertainty.

I see lots of chapters start with dialogue that is not attributed to anyone with a dialogue tag. That’s not grounding us because we don’t know who is involved right off the bat. It’s also really important to know how much time has passed since we last saw the action of the story. Does the next chapter/scene pick up right away or does it pick up next Wednesday? That’s important to the reader’s sense of story and pacing. I see a lot of opening paragraphs or scenes that take place in some nebulous setting. Whether it’s the same setting as the previous chapter/scene or a new setting, we have to know it and get a sense of it. If we haven’t seen this place before, we need to get some more meaty description. Finally, we should pick up almost immediately what’s going on. If the last chapter/scene ended with the reader expecting something — like the bully saying, “I’ll see you in five minutes for a beat-down,” we’ll be expecting said beat-down the next time we see the character — then tell us right away if our expectations will be met or if we’re in a different scene altogether.

Here’s an example I wrote of an opening paragraph for a chapter that grounds the reader in a way that lets them have their questions answered:

Donny waited until the end of bio period before leaning over to her again. He could almost smell her strawberry shampoo when he got that close. Mr. Stokes was still babbling on about photosynthesis, but it didn’t matter. None of it would matter until Donny did the thing he’d promised himself he’d do.

This obviously continues the story pretty soon after we last left off. We know the characters, the time elapsed (a little bit less than a full class period, we’re guessing), the setting (still bio), a little reiteration of what must’ve happened in the last chapter/scene (the “again” is a clue), and some of what might happen in this chapter/scene (it involves something he’s been planning on doing and the girl, somehow).

What I want to reiterate is that you are the story’s curator. It’s up to you to make sure your reader transitions from chapter to chapter and scene to scene and knows exactly what’s going on. Once you confuse your reader, you lose them. Our prime real estate locations are also prime opportunities for grounding the reader and creating transitions…and prime possibilities for losing your reader, if you don’t ground them in the fictive dream well enough.

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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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Shooting Glances

July 28, 2010 in Writing | 30 comments

There are a lot of glances being shot on the pages of most novels. Sarcastic ones, annoyed ones, angry ones…characters always seem to have meaningful looks and glances for each other.

This is often a tic for writers. What do I mean by “tic”? Something you do in your writing that you’re not aware of. Something you usually do a lot. Some writers have favorite words, other writers have pet descriptions, and yet others have go-to actions and gestures for their characters.

Why do I think so many writers rely on “She shot him a glance” or “He gave her a look” in their writing? Because it’s a cinematic construct that we’re used to in movies and on TV. When a real life person or a movie character shoots a glance, we can read their body language, see the expression on their face, and interpret meaning from their eyes.

Right away, we can get the flavor of the look or glance and what it is meant to communicate to the target character and to us, the viewer. Loaded looks are pretty much the staple of soap operas and sitcoms. A lot goes without being said in words in these visual mediums.

But that’s just the problem. In prose, we don’t have the added benefits of seeing the character’s facial expressions or reading their looks as they give another character a meaningful glance. And if we can’t see the look…it loses a lot of its meaning. The glance becomes vague instead of specific, as it can be on the screen. And vagueness is the death of good prose.

What’s the solution? Try to wean yourself off of glances. Sure, you can use a well-placed glance or look if you have enough context to make it count. And you can always qualify the glance, ie: “She shot him a murderous glance” or “He fired daggers at her with his eyes,” but these are so overused that they’ve verged into cliche territory. It may be easier to just face it — a loaded look in prose will never carry the same weight as it does in visual mediums — and more on to finding a fresher way for characters to communicate, something that reads better on the page.

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Picture Book or Short Story?

July 26, 2010 in Agent, Publishing, Writing | 19 comments

This is a comment I make to writers often, and it’s a heartbreaking one, at first, but one that is encouraging if you really think about it. Often, I receive picture book submissions that are nice, well-written, tell a story or have a nice poem in them, and are, overall, pleasant to read.

But are they a picture book or are they a short story that’s more suited for the magazine market than the book market?

I assume that adult non-fiction editors see this issue all the time. They get proposals for non-fiction books that are too narrow in scope or too limited in audience and they suggest that the author pursue it as a non-fiction magazine or how to piece instead.

That’s never something a writer wants to hear, of course. But it is good feedback. That means the reader found something in you writing style that’s good and they liked your idea…they just don’t think you can carry an entire book with your concept.

I see this a lot in my picture book submissions with clever poems, poems about an object or character rather than an event, and stories that are just too specific to be universally appealing. The picture book market is really, really, really (seriously) tough right now. Editors are looking for the most universal, marketable, trade-oriented picture books right now. Sure, they want quirky and funny, but they also want character-driven stories that have a dramatic arc and are also something that the most possible readers will relate to.

So if I get a poem about swirling leaves in autumn, that might be too quiet and not have a character or story to drive it. Or if I get a story about a character who just couldn’t tie her shoes, that might be really character-driven, yes, but without a lot of story to back it up. Maybe I receive a character-driven story, but it’s about a family who lives on a maple syrup farm in Vermont (I just came from Vermont for a conference and LOVED IT!). That’s lovely, has a story, and has characters, but it might be too niche to appeal to a wider audience, and might be a better fit for a magazine (maybe for an autumn issue) or a regional press that could publish a very specific picture book and get it to a more targeted audience (say, Vermonters or maple syrup enthusiasts).

The most frequent question I ask myself, when looking at a picture book, after I see that the writing is publication-ready and of a certain level, is: Is this a story that will appeal to a wide market?

If not, I suggest that the author try another market, like magazines or a regional/small/specialized press.

The other ruler I use in my head is the fact that a picture book is about a $50,000 investment for a publisher. An agent told me this figure once and it has always stuck with me. What goes into this investment? This is obviously a simplified example with simple math, but it’s worth paying attention to. The $50,000 investment covers the author’s advance, the illustrator’s advance, the publisher’s overhead costs that pay the editor and designers who work on it, the costs of production, producing test copies and f&g’s, marketing, etc. And that’s before publication. Once the book is ready to sell, there are other costs, per copy, once the book is actually being printed, shipped, distributed, warehoused, and put on shelves.

A magazine has a much lower financial investment for each piece they publish. Sure, they pay much less money to run your piece and you’ll never get to see it fully illustrated or see royalties from it, but the magazine is also much more likely to buy your piece and do something with it than a publisher who is looking at that $50,000 figure in their minds when deciding whether or not to acquire your work.

In today’s really difficult picture book market, I am forced to look at stories like this, too. While I naturally have a more literary, more obscure, more quiet sensibility based on what I grew up reading, I’m seeing some quieter and more literary projects rejected once I go out on submission with them, so I have to look at commercial considerations. I have to think: “Is this a $50,000 story?”

If it’s not, it very well could have a life in print…just maybe in a magazine or with a regional publisher. The good thing about magazines, also, is that you only use certain rights when you publish, and you may be able to exploit that same story in other markets or the book market once it has been published in a magazine. Lots of food for thought for picture book writers. A great place to see some magazine markets for children’s work is the 2010 Children’s Writer’s and Illustrator’s Market, published by Writer’s Digest Books and edited by Alice Pope. Tons of magazines and smaller presses are listed there for your perusal…and submissions!

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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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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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Business vs. Art

July 9, 2010 in Agent, Publishing, Writing | 23 comments

Is writing a business or is it art?

Should a creator focus on one or the other exclusively?

How far into art do you go before you’re an idealistic hippie with no “real world” perspective or chance for success? How far to the business side do you have to lean before you’re a capitalist sell-out with no heart? Is there a happy medium?

This is a fascinating topic that brings a million different conversations to mind. Just for the record, I don’t believe any of the stereotypes I mentioned in the last paragraph, but a lot of people do. I think there are a lot of misconceptions about what art really is, about what business really is, and about the gray area where the two meet. But, as most working writers and publishing professionals will tell you, that gray area is more productive and beneficial to both sides of the debate (the art, and the business) than the fringes.

As much as writers and agents and editors want it to be all about the art, they need to make money for themselves, for their agency, for their house. As much as people like paying their rent and putting their kids through school, they also want to create something meaningful and fulfilling…that’s what attracted us to books in the first place.

I wish more people would see the creative calling as a mix between business and art, instead of thinking that this mix is somehow dirty. But people’s bad attitudes about either “stuffy business” or “flaky art” — and, as an agent, I’m biased — is that this is a delusional, destructive stance. Writers need to learn about the business end of things, even as they’re honing their craft. Not to sell out their artistic ideas but to be informed about how things work, what happens once you write your book. I agent. I’ve also worked at a publishing house. I believe that business and art can — and must — coexist. A book isn’t just a beautiful dream poured into paper and ink form. It’s not just creativity personified. It’s a product, too.

And that’s a wonderful thing. Not only is your creation out in the world (art), but others can buy it and read it and share in the experience of it (business).

One of the big shockers in my self-publishing debate on the blog seemed to be that I ask myself, “Can I sell this?” when considering a project. A lot of people were outraged that the question wasn’t, “Is this good? Is this well-written?”

Since part of my business is selling, I really don’t mind being labeled a sell-out by people who don’t know better. But this is a writing blog. I write mostly about writing here. And I just finished my own MFA in…yep…creative writing. Why would I possibly bother being so darn passionate about writing if the writing of my submissions or client manuscripts didn’t mean squat to me? A huge part of what goes into the answer to “Can I sell this?” is about the writing. Bad writing is severely grating to me. I can’t imagine reading a poorly-written manuscript once, let alone the four or five times it will take to fully revise it. So representing good writing to me is a matter of course. I should’ve mentioned that, I guess. I didn’t think I had to.

But I can’t just have the art, I need to think of the business, too. The truth is, not everything that publishers publish is fantastic art. Because a lot of fantastic art novels, the ones with lower projected sales numbers, are bigger risks for publishers. And I don’t think a lot of editors would be taking those risks if they didn’t have revenue from the less-artistic-but-really-commercial properties that are selling like hotcakes. So the “literary” books balance out the “commercial” books and vice versa.

This is the #1 reason why I have absolutely nothing but love for the Twilight saga. Is it great literature? No. My literary standards are much higher than that for most books. But has it revitalized YA? Did it pump money into the publishing industry? Did it get kids and adults into bookstores, where they discovered other kidlit to read? Yes! So while it won’t be remembered as a literary masterpiece, it has done a lot for the publishing industry, the children’s book biz in particular, at a bad economic time. And that bit of great business has enabled a lot of art.

There’s something out there for everyone on publisher’s lists. And that’s what I strive for with my own list. And there are publishing tools and technologies for every kind of writer — the one that wants to publish traditionally and the one that wants to self-publish.

I keep saying it but it needs to be said: this is all so subjective. What’s good writing, to me, could be too literary for someone else. Or it could be too commercial for yet another reader. I think the “business vs. art” debate is tiresome and short-sighted, just like the “publishing is dead, long live publishing” debate, just like the “e-books will completely replace printed books.”

No, no, and no. As everything changes these days, life and business and writing becomes all about the gray area. Not everyone has to be a businessman or an artist. Traditional publishing doesn’t have to be a writer’s only answer anymore, but the other route isn’t a magic bullet, either. Not every book has to be published in paper or in digital or vice versa. To get the most solid books, the most solid products, the most solid careers, you need to think of a blend. Both business and art, traditional publishing and self-publishing, printed books and e-books, are necessary and valid.

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