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Swear Words in Young Adult Fiction

At the last few conferences I attended, people have been very interested in swear words in young adult fiction. Now, a brilliant writer I know said to me, when I asked him for guidance on this issue: “A swear word is just another word. It has to be a choice, just like every other word in your manuscript.”

The Considerations of Swear Words in Young Adult Fiction

I completely agree. If you absolutely have to use a swear word in your manuscript, if there’s no other word it could be, then use it. You won’t get a squeamish look from me. (You may get an odd glance from a few people in my DFW Writers Conference audience, who apparently gasped when I dropped an f-bomb or two in response to this same question. What? The guy who dropped it first looked self-conscious, so I had to take some of the heat off of him!) You might also alienate yourself from certain libraries, school administrators, booksellers and editors who work for more clean-cut imprints and don’t publish edgy content, including swearing in children’s books. There will be parents who are too scared of their kids growing up, who are in denial of the words and ideas that fly around every middle and high school in every town in every country, too.

The thing is, kids are really good at figuring out what’s a good fit for them and what isn’t. If they are reading swear words in young adult and it makes them uncomfortable, they’ll skip that part or put the book down. The same goes for any other kind of edgy content. Parents, librarians, administrators and booksellers shouldn’t always presume to know exactly what kind of book is scandalous to what kind of teen reader.

Everyone Has Their Swear Word Limits

On a recent trip, I was getting really into a story, and dropped an f-bomb. Not loudly or rudely but, you know, sometimes I get carried away. The man in front of us, who was sitting with, no joke, a 17 or 18 year-old daughter, in a college sweatshirt, for Pete’s sake, turned around and hissed, “Can you please not say that? I’m traveling with a child!” He indicated his daughter with an angry nod of the head.

I can guarantee that his scowling teen was 500% more scandalized by being referred to as a “child” in public than she was by a word I said. Words only have power if you give it to them. (Of course, I shut my yap right after that. I may not have agreed with the guy but I’m not a jerk.)

Superfluous Swear Words

Speaking of which, there are certain times when I don’t think swear words in young adult fiction are necessary. If it’s every other word, that might be too much. If it’s peppered in to be hip or cool or edgy, then it will come across as forced. Some people circumvent the issue by creating their own colorful vocabulary. If the language is natural enough, this could work, but it mostly feels contrived to me. The important thing to remember is that nobody’s forcing you to do anything, it’s your manuscript. You can swear if you want to but, by the same token, if you don’t want to swear, you can write a clean manuscript and that’s just fine, too. There aren’t any hard and fast rules about swearing in children’s books.

Swear Words in Young Adult Writing Are Totally Up to You

If, though, as mentioned above, including swear words in young adult is a conscious choice, a careful choice, then there’s no problem with it. An editor or agent can always let you know if something is too much or not right. And if you do publish a book with any kind of content — like sex in young adult fiction — there will always be people who balk.

But you know what? Fuck ’em.

🙂

Come on. I had to.

Are you hitting the right young adult voice? Hire me to be your young adult editor.

ETA: WOW! Clearly, this is a very passionate issue. Lest anybody here thought that swearing in children’s books was settled, let them come and read the comments. The use of a swear word or an opinion about swearing, one way or another, has caused certain readers to lose their respect for me. It has caused other readers to gain it. This is powerful, powerful stuff.

My favorite part of keeping this blog and of teaching writers is ALWAYS how much I learn about my own subject matter in the process. In throwing up this post — and its intentionally cheeky last few lines — I’ve had so many new thoughts on the issue of swearing in YA. I’ve delved a lot deeper into this issue in my head. Watch out for another post about swearing in YA on Friday.

Lastly, as one reader pointed out, and to repeat the obvious, this is about swearing in YA fiction. The same rules do not apply for MG at ALL. (I would highly recommend NOT swearing in MG.) Thank you all for the food for thought!

Any Love Connections?

I am using up a valuable Monday post to make sure you all are reading and checking the Critique Connection post. There are about 90 people on there who are looking to find a good critique partner. It’s overwhelming, I know, but read through them. And let me know if anything you find through that venue works out!

Speaking of overwhelming, my schedule has been INSANE. I’ve loved meeting all of the blog readers (and welcoming any new ones!) I met these last two weeks. However, three consecutive weekends of travel (NYC, Dallas and Reno/Tahoe) have really taken their toll. I’ll be back with a new post on Wednesday.

Critique Partner Definition

In light of my recent Critique Connection post, where I encouraged readers to find a critique partner, I wanted to focus on critique partner definition. This was a great suggestion from MY critique partner, Martha, in the comments for my last post. (Thanks for keeping me on my toes, Martha.)

The Importance of Critique and Revision

So, if you’ve followed the blog long enough, you know that I can’t put enough emphasis on critique and revision. That’s where writing truly grows. First, because nobody can have a perfect (or anywhere-near-publishable) novel in one draft. At least not when you’re starting out and learning about writing. Second, because you cannot be anywhere near objective about your own work. Even if you’ve had many, many books published, you’ll still get feedback from a beta reader. All of the published writers I know do this for their first, their second, their tenth books. And I honestly believe that you learn so much from critiquing the work of others that it should be a required exercise for anyone hoping to get published.

Critique Partner Definition

Remember that if you want to find critique partners, you have to be a critique partner. So what’s the critique partner definition? You give more than you get. Lots of people go into a workshop or critique situation and sit there until the group gets to their submission. This is a waste of everybody’s time. If you’re going to get valuable critique on your own work, don’t miss out on the valuable learning experience of being able to critique the work of another person and do it well.

How to be a good critique partner: You don’t just focus on the what, you focus on the why. Sure, any idiot can say, “This part doesn’t work for me.” But when you articulate why something works or doesn’t work, you’re putting your finger on the writing craft and taking its pulse. Does a section seem clunky because there is too much description? Is there too much telling in a writer’s characterization of someone and you don’t actually get a clear sense of who they are? Is a writer’s dialogue clunky because they use a lot of adverbs and physical choreography in their dialogue tags? These are getting to be more concrete than just saying, “It’s slow” or, worse, “It sucks.”

Get and Give Constructive, Insightful Feedback That’s Not Prescriptive

Critique partner definition is that they don’t pass judgment and they aren’t prescriptive (check out some constructive feedback examples). Everyone who sits down at the page has got to start somewhere. Everyone writing today is on a different part of their writing and learning journey than the writer next to them. Good critique partners can see and understand the strengths and weaknesses of a particular piece and a particular writer in the moment, and work with that. They give constructive feedback, don’t judge the overall merit of the work (because you’re all there to improve, right?) and they don’t tell you how to fix whatever issue they’ve identified. A writer friend of mine says,

If they tell you what’s wrong, they’re probably right. If they tell you how to fix it, they’re probably wrong.

Critique groups can be sounding boards for the writers’ ideas, sure, but they should never tell the writer what to do or what to try. That kind of playing around and imaginative work is how the writer learns, on their own, to make their story stronger. So as you’re on the hunt to find a critique partner, keep these qualities in mind — both in terms of what they should bring to you, and what you should bring to them.

Critique Partner Definition: Look for a Balance of Skill Levels and Personalities

Balance is important in a critique group. You want one or two really amateur writers, but none more than that. You’ll also want one or two people on the other end of the spectrum, and a few in the middle, depending on size. Be careful of getting into a group of people who are all the same level. You need different abilities, strengths and weaknesses, or you won’t grow as much.

Personality is also important. If you don’t like your critique group or trust them, you’ll stop getting any benefits from the exercise very quickly and you’ll start to resent the whole process, which could leave a permanent block on your writing path. It’s okay to try several groups or several people… you want to find a critique partner who’s a good fit, not just the first person who’ll read your stuff.

“It’s Good” Is Never Helpful

Finally, the worst thing your writing critique group can say is, “It’s fine” or “It’s good.” Even if it’s good, your critique group should always be pushing you to new horizons in your writing. All my published writer friends who are in critique groups get feedback, tons of it, and it helps them take their work to the next level. And those are published authors, even bestsellers! Sure, they could probably get their first drafts published, some of them, but why would they want to?

It’s all about growing and learning and evolving in the writing business. It’s up to you to find partners who are like-minded and who understand that. These are just some of the qualities that amount to a good critique partner definition. And once you get their feedback, it’s up to you to use it in your work and do the revisions. I may write a post sometime about processing feedback and using it in a constructive way, but I think I’ve given you some food for thought to start.

Ready to invest in an expert set of eyes? My book editing services will build on the work of your critique group.

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Critique Connection

A comment from Marybk on my last post reminded me of something I’ve been wanting to do again. It can be hard to find critique partners who are focused on learning, growing, and who also write in the same area as you do. I’ve always wanted to make sure my readers have access to critique partners if they need them.

A fair number of critique relationships these days happen online. Partners exchange manuscripts, give notes, talk on the phone or on email. It often takes several tries with several partners to get a good and mutually constructive relationship going. You want to look for someone who knows what they’re talking about, that can articulate not only what doesn’t work in a piece of writing but why, you want someone you can get along with, and someone whose writing you think is good and that you wouldn’t mind reading over and over.

I can’t guarantee that I can facilitate match-made-in-kidlit-heaven-style critique partners for everyone, but I did want to make sure you guys who are looking for crit partners had a venue to post. I have all of your questions from the last few days in mind and will get back to writing regular posts soon, but for now, let me make this a personals board for the critique-partner-less.

POST IN THE COMMENTS ON THIS ENTRY ONLY IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR A CRITIQUE PARTNER. Put your genre (fantasy, paranormal, realistic, etc.) and your audience (picture book, MG, YA, etc.) and what you want to work on (a complete manuscript of XX,000 words, a partial, a query, etc.). Let’s see if we can’t make any matches here. The worst that can happen is you could share your work with someone, get some notes, and decide it’s not a fit.

ETA: If you see anyone here that you think might be a good fit, leave a comment with your email address or a way to get in touch with you. I can’t look through the comments and match people up, you should take the lead if you think anybody’s stuff sounds good to you. Use this as a personals board! Lots of people are looking for critique partners… now reach out to each other and try to connect and run with it!

How Long Do I Have To Submit After a Literary Agent Request?

Beth asked a literary agent request question that I’d love to address. Here’s what she said:

My burning question: Is a week–or two too long to wait to get back to an agent requesting a partial? Based on a different agent’s feedback, I’d decided to do a huge revision of the beginning of my manuscript. Recently another agent (queried *before* my decision to revise) asked to see the beginning. Obviously I want it to be perfect before sending it, but I don’t want to lose the agent’s interest or have them think I queried them prematurely (which is actually the case, but it was an honest mistake).

literary agent request, how long do i have to submit, can i revise before submitting to a literary agent, full request, manuscript request from literary agent, manuscript submission — For those of you winding your pocket watches and working on a typewriter, some great news about literary agent requests.

You’ve Received a Literary Agent Request… But You’re Not Ready!

Honey, every writer I’ve ever known has made this honest mistake. OF COURSE you queried prematurely and now you have a literary agent request for your full. Why? Because, even though I’ve been saying not to f-o-r-e-v-e-r, you didn’t believe me. That’s fine. I don’t take it personally. I know it’s not fun advice, so I know most people ignore it (or think they’re the exception).

The only way to really learn this is to be in the situation where you’re sending a revision to a literary agent and to have that light bulb go off in your head. Even with things you’ve been told a million, billion times, it never resonates until you’re staring at the manuscript submission you just queried around and seeing all the flaws and you have that sinking feeling in your gut.

I won’t scold you any more about it, though. 🙂

Do Not Rush Through Revision

But now I will give you some advice that I really hope you (translation: everybody reading this who will be querying at any point in their future, and not just querying me) take to heart. If you’ve already made this mistake — to be clear, the mistake is rushing out a manuscript that wasn’t as fully revised as it needs to be — once, don’t make it twice.

DO NOT rush to complete this next revision just so you can rush it out to fulfill a literary agent request. How can you POSSIBLY do a “huge revision” in two weeks and have it fully percolate and marinate and settle?

This just happened to me, for example. I usually don’t talk about things where the writer will most likely be able to identify him or herself on the blog, but this is harmless. I asked for a full manuscript submission in, oh, October. I never ended up getting it. And I’m selective about the fulls I request, so I did remember that I’d asked for it, and every few months, I’d randomly think, “Hey, I wonder what happened with that one.”

Well, an email with a completely revised full showed up this week (April), with a note that the writer had done a serious revision and didn’t want to bug me before it was ready. You know what? Not only did I not forget this manuscript (a), but I now respect that writer, because they got a full request and were about to press the “send” button in their excitement, but they pulled back and really took their time on a revision (b).

Submit to Literary Agents Only When Your Manuscript Is Ready

I tell people at conferences the same exact things (are y’all listening out there from Dallas?!). Most likely, if you have a literary agent request for your full, you will not lose their interest. Let those new ideas percolate and settle. Take your time and do your revisions. Agents would rather see something good than something unpolished that comes quickly.

Let’s just say I prefer slow, gourmet food to fast food, because it takes a lot of time and care and craft to cook really delicious fare. (Edited in 2017 to add that I married a chef, so I take this metaphor super seriously!)

So, Beth, take your time with your revised manuscript submission. Don’t rush AGAIN. I know I’ll end up begging and pleading this particular point for the rest of my career, so here’s yet another entry into the Don’t Rush Out Your Submission Hall of Fame.

Let’s jump into your revision together. Revision guidance is at the heart of every one of my book editing services.

The Rules of Writing a Book: Genius at Work vs. Working Writer

There was an interesting discussion in the comments on one of the workshop entries a little while ago about the rules of writing a book. It’s very common that, whenever us agents mention something that doesn’t work well in writing at a conference or on our blogs or on forums, there are always a few devil’s advocates who say, “Well, what about VERY UNIQUE BOOK by Famous Writer? That broke the rules!”

The Rules of Writing a Book: Famous Author vs. Unknown Writer

Of course it did. But as I said in the comments thread, Famous Writer gets to do what they want because a) they’re well known, b) they have a history of book sales, c) their publisher felt good taking a risk on them. If you look at the publishing history of most genre-busting or groundbreaking authors, you’ll notice that their first few releases follow the rules of writing a book, in terms of craft and genre and structure. Unless, of course, they were already famous when they started writing novels, and the publishers took a risk on them regardless, because of the commercial value of their name.

Not a lot of first-time, unknown authors will get to publish their completely off-the-wall, genius masterwork that’s breaking writing rules the first time out of the gate. I’m definitely NOT saying that everyone should stop being creative or dreaming big. I am, however, saying that you should learn novel craft, genre, form, structure and what the “standards” are inside and out before you start to innovate. And you should prove to publishers that you can do well with a more conventional novel that follows the rules in terms of all these nitty gritty things (but feel free to be innovative in terms of plot points, story, language and characters, of course), before you try to recast the mold.

Everyone Has to Follow the Rules At First

There are, of course, some writers who only have one brilliant novel in them, like Harper Lee. “Wait a minute, ” you might say to yourself, “I’m one of those genius artists and my genre-busting, completely-unlike-anything-you’ve-ever-seen novel is going to take the world by storm and win me a Nobel Prize!” I will most likely counter with the thought that, if you sit around musing about what a genius you are, you’ve probably got a few delusions about your stories and your writing. Geniuses don’t spend their energies trying to convince everyone of their genius. They just do what they do and then the rest of the world is left scrambling to catch up.

Most writers follow a very predictable path through the publishing industry. They publish a few novels that fit in to the marketplace and adhere to the work of their peers. They’re not breaking writing rules at this early stage. Then, if they’ve got enough of a track record and if their publisher will give them the leeway, they can experiment and innovate. There’s nothing wrong with this. And, if you work hard and get a great track record, you very well could hit it big and write the exact kinds of books you want to write. (Not that there’s anything wrong with writing conventional books for your entire career, of course.)

For Example

Take a client of one of my colleagues at the agency. She has made her bread and butter for a long time by writing tie-in novels (like mass market paperbacks that use the characters from a popular TV series or movie), which some might say are the ultimate in adhering to the rules of writing a book for today’s fiction marketplace. A lot of people who write tie-ins or novels for specific publishers even get guidelines for, if not what to write, but how to write it. Talk about books by the book.

This client, though, also writes her own fiction, with her own ideas. After years of writing tie-ins, she’s finally started selling her YA work to various publishers. On her most recent sale, she hit it big: she is going to be a publisher’s lead title with a trilogy that garnered a lot of interest and a high advance. This was already announced on Publisher’s Marketplace, so I’m not spilling any agency secrets, but wow! Can you believe that? After all her hard work and playing by the rules, she’s finally writing the books that she wants to write.

You Have to Know the Rules of Writing a Book Before You Can Break Them

It’s the same thing with M.T. Anderson, who wrote a lot of books before he got to write OCTAVIAN NOTHING. It would’ve been very difficult, I’d imagine, to convince a publisher to take a risk on something like that from a complete unknown. And I’m firmly convinced that you can only start breaking writing rules once you’ve internalized every single nuance of them and have adhered to them successfully.

When a first-time novelist “colors outside the lines” in terms of novel craft or structure, I don’t give them the benefit of the doubt that they’re a mad genius and that they’ve totally revolutionized the novel form. I assume that they don’t exactly know the rules of writing a book. You’ve got to learn the scales and the instrument before you can start to ad-lib and play jazz. That doesn’t mean that you can’t express yourself and make beautiful music, but this kind of OCTAVIAN NOTHING virtuosity only comes after putting in a lot of time and a lot of traditional work.

Would you rather be an unsung genius who’s breaking the rules of writing a book left and right or a working writer who is building their career toward their shot to produce whatever they want? That kind of thing is a hard-earned privilege and not really something beginners should be obsessing with.

I love coaching beginning writers. When you invest in my book editing services, I’ll help you learn the rules of the craft.

How to Layer Multiple Points of View

If you are writing a manuscript with multiple points of view (POV), ie: a first or close third person narrative through the eyes of different characters for different sections or chapters, how do you space them? Do they have to be evenly spaced throughout? Here’s a question that Kathryn sent in:

If I am doing a novel with a defined MC, but alternating POV between him and the supporting (but also very important) character, do I need to have this happen constantly? Because there are a few times in my book that I switch to ‘the girlfriend’s’ POV, but it isn’t like VAMPIRE DIARIES, for example where LJ Smith has each scene switch to a different character’s POV. Is this something that has to be completely consistent? Or can I put it in as needed?

Tips for Writing From Multiple Points of View

This is a relatively easy question to answer. When writing from multiple points of view, you don’t need to lock yourself into any kind of scheme. A lot of people think, if they’re splitting the story between two POVs, for example, they have to alternate always POV 1, then POV 2, then POV 1 again. This isn’t always the case. If your two POV characters have almost equal “screen time” in the novel, maybe you can keep it that consistent, but there are no rules that say you have to.

Especially if your story has a MC and then the POV of a supporting character, you can use her when you need her. A few things to consider, though, for any manuscript with alternating point of view:

Give us the first instance of the “other” POV pretty early on, so the reader knows to expect another POV throughout the story.
Don’t go too long without hearing from your other POV characters. You don’t want us to forget that their voices are there and we will if you go for like 50-70 pages without changing POV.
It’s all about balance. You don’t want to switch POV every 4 chapters at the beginning and spend 70 pages in one POV near the end. Make sure multiple points of view are somewhat evenly spaced, even if they’re not totally consistent.

Don’t Include Adult Characters When You’re Alternating POV

Finally, one thing I would urge all of you to consider with alternating POV: do not include adult POVs in manuscripts that have predominantly kid or teen POVs. I’ve seen a lot of writers try this, and it never works that well, unless yours is a very specific type of story (and yes, I expect mentions of THE BOOK THIEF to pop up in the comments, but that is a very specific type of story, more on this later). Besides, a kid who is reading a book targeted to their age group is going to be SO BORED dipping into the head of their teacher, their parents, their minister, their librarian, their whatever. I’ve read manuscripts where we dip into Dad’s head while he’s fretting about the mortgage… his marriage… troubles with his manager at work… Yikes. A lot of adult writers want to reinforce to teen readers that adults have problems and to be more sympathetic to them. Probably because they’re raising teens at the time and feel unappreciated. This is not the way to help teen readers empathize because this type of moralizing usually doesn’t get published and reach teen readers. Even if they’re dipping into the head of the adult villain, it’s still not advisable to do this. You don’t want to alienate your reader, and adult POV does that more often than not. I see the adult POV issue most in fantasies and mysteries, so people writing in those genres, take extra caution.

Experiment to See What Works

Other than that, feel free to experiment with alternating POV. You’ll probably be rewriting a lot if you end up changing your mind but really nailing the balance of POV in writing is important. And, also, do keep in mind that you should vary the voice. If you have a few different characters providing their POV but they all sound the same, use the same words, use the same imagery, etc., then what’s the point of multiple points of view? That’s what makes this technique very difficult.

When you invest in my manuscript critique service, I’ll help you strengthen your main character’s POV.

Publishing Business Chat: Writing For An Audience

I got an excellent question from a reader about the publishing business. This is actually something I wanted to post about myself, because it’s a frustrating disconnect about the whole getting-published process. There’s also stuff here about critique groups and writing for an audience.

Writing for an audience: Friends and family may love the words you’re cranking out, but will they pass muster with professionals in the publishing business?

The Question

I have been satisfied with the vast majority of my MS (YA Paranormal Mystery Romance) for many weeks and my “critique group” (mostly avid readers not writers) feels the same. My struggle is this: Who am I writing for?

My critique group, all readers who spend actual money to buy actual books, all have (gasp!) individual tastes! Their feelings about my MS are very much tied to their personalities, educational level, interests, etc. My friend who adores TWILIGHT loves the funny voice and the beginning and insists that TWILIGHT started out slow and so did HARRY POTTER. My English professor friend with a Master’s could take or leave the funny teen voice but prefers the vivid descriptive prose. My young adult niece finds the voice a tad grating and the beginning a bit slow but adores the entire rest of the book. My brainy teenage niece, in contrast, likes the funny voice of the first chapter and says the rest isn’t her genre but her friends like that sort of thing.

I feel torn. At the end of the day, not all writers have Masters Degrees in English. How do I resolve that when my readers like what I am pretty sure agents would reject?

Writing For An Audience: Professional Readers are the Gatekeepers

Here’s the thing when writing for an audience. Before your book can get into the hands of casual or even very experienced readers like the friends in your critique group, it has to get through the gates of PROFESSIONAL readers in the publishing business. First, agents, then, editors, the editors’ bosses, their bosses’ bosses, the sales team. Once all those readers who read professionally and with an eye toward the marketplace love your book, only then will you get a publishing contract. Then your publisher will pitch and win over the professional readers who work at bookstores and who will stock your books on shelves for those hobby readers to finally get them.

Ideally, you should be writing for an audience that’s your end user: teens (or adults who read YA, of course). However, to get to those teens in the first place, you’re going to have to volley over lots and lots and lots of people who AREN’T casual readers at all. And those are the people you’re going to have to impress years before your book comes out. So, even if your end user, the reader or teen, doesn’t have a Master’s degree in English, the people who decide whether or not that teen or reader is ever going to see your book often will.

The Importance of an Experienced, Objective Critique Group

I urge you, seriously, to get a critique group of other writers or at least a couple of critique partners. Writers who are not friends and especially not family. (What are they going to say? That it sucks, to your face?) Not only is yours not a critique group (If they don’t write, what are YOU critiquing? We learn as much about our own writing when we critique the work of others as when our work gets critiqued.) but you might be doing yourself a disservice by getting feedback from people who aren’t intimate with the writing craft. If you can swing it, get feedback from people who have some connection to the publishing business — like they’re contracted to be published or already published (some constructive feedback examples here). You learn and grow by putting yourself in a challenging situation. Writing for an audience of readers-but-not-writers sounds like you are being easy on yourself, sorry to say.

Don’t Rely on the Feedback of Laypeople

That’s why I’m skeptical of sites like Authonomy (Yes, the site is run by HarperCollins but the majority of people who gather and comment there are laypeople and not editors or people connected with the publishing business). So what happens there? Writers post manuscripts. Hobby readers go on there and rave about these manuscripts. Then the writers who produced those manuscripts query me and give me “blurbs” from people who loved them on Authonomy. When I see that, I ask the writer, in my head, “So what? Someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about is talking. Great.”

Let me put it another way. I know nothing about cars. That’s why I’m in trouble if I ever go car shopping again. If you show me a car and it’s shiny enough, and has a sunroof, I’ll think it’s good. Only someone who knows what happens under the hood will be able to tell me whether it’s actually a lemon or not. A person who doesn’t know all of the complexities of writing a novel can usually be won over without much effort. It’s easy to impress the easily-impressed. Don’t stunt your own growth.

When you hire me as your freelance book editor, you’re investing in an objective set of eyes that will give you constructive, actionable feedback on your work.

Workshop Submission #8

Here’s a submission from Tricia. Here’s what she had to say:

Does too much happen too soon? Is there enough detail or too much? What (if possible) turns you off and would stop you from reading more?

Let’s take a look at the material. First, without my notes, then, with.

***

The voice invading Jeremiah’s head must be Darrah, the woman who called herself messenger of the gods. Jeremiah tried not to listen to the voice or obey; it was useless. She’d put something in his arm when she scratched him. It throbbed, the pain spreading through the rest of his body. Darrah had control over him for as long as she wished.

Jeremiah took one of the torches that framed the crude doorway. The door needed no lock. A cold breeze smelling of decay greeted him. He hid his mouth and nose in his red cloak. The smell remained. Darkness swallowed the stone staircase. It wound down into the mountain under the castle to the dungeons.

Bloodthirsty monsters found the mountain’s caves a most agreeable home. Some came out of the shadows. Jeremiah spun in a superstitious dance, touching the torch from hand to hand, foot to foot, then over his head. Hot embers spilled down his scrawny neck. He brushed them off. As long as he swung the torch the creatures kept their distance. Sweat covered Jeremiah’s goose-pimpled flesh.

Even if Jeremiah didn’t get caught freeing Lord Dennison’s prisoner, he’d probably be thrown out of the scribe guild.

***

The first line here is distracting. We get a fact that sort of grounds us in the story — there’s a voice in Jeremiah’s head — but then we’re whisked off to a character introduction and some facts. Starting with the voice also raises a lot of questions. What does the voice sound like? Is it normal to hear voices in this world? If she was a messenger, why didn’t she just TELL him things instead of scratching him and gaining control? Or is this how messengers and the gods operate? Also, instead of hearing about a voice and hearing about the commands its giving (telling), I’d love to see some actual dialogue.

The transition here is a bit jarring. And we still don’t quite hear the voice ourselves, even though it seems like it’s pretty insistent. I’m not quite grounded here. If there’s a door to dungeons, why wouldn’t it have a lock? Or is he standing at some other door? I seem to think that underground air is stagnant, not breezy. I’m also losing Jeremiah’s interiority a bit with these descriptions. Instead of saying the remote, “Darkness swallowed the stone staircase,” try something like (and I’m not trying to be prescriptive, I’m just trying to provide an example to illustrate a point) something like, “Darkness swallowed the stone staircase directly in front of him.” This a) grounds the reader (he is standing in front of a staircase), b) puts the focus on Jeremiah, c) implies action (that he is about to go down this staircase).

Be careful of narrating around your action instead of narrating your action. What do I mean here? As with above, you said, “Darkness swallowed the stone staircase.” What was really going on, however, was that Jeremiah was either about to go down the staircase or actually going down the staircase. But the description of the staircase only vaguely implied the action going on there. Here, again, we have, “Some came out of the shadows.” But it isn’t until the sentence after that we find out that Jeremiah is in the dungeons and getting spooked by the monsters. Don’t be afraid to give us pieces of simple narrative, like, “Jeremiah descended to the first level of the dungeons” to keep us apprised of what’s going on. When you say something like, “Bloodthirsty monsters found the mountain’s caves a most agreeable home. Some came out of the shadows,” you could be talking vaguely, theoretically, in general about these dungeons. Instead, you’re trying to say that Jeremiah is already in the dungeons. Transitions us through the action more directly. I do like the physical detail of “Hot embers spilled down his scrawny neck.” We get into his body a little bit. You might want a comma between “torch” and “the” in the penultimate sentence here.

Even if Jeremiah didn’t get caught freeing Lord Dennison’s prisoner, he’d probably be thrown out of the scribe guild.

This comes out of nowhere. We have no idea he’s even in the scribe guild or what it means to him, so we can’t really feel the high stakes of him possibly getting thrown out. Don’t tack it on like this or it won’t seem significant. Also, my biggest overall issue with this is we get all action and no motivation. A great place to say, “He was going to the dungeons to free Lord Dennison’s prisoner” would be with a command from the messenger in the first paragraph or so. We need to know WHY he’s going down into the dungeon. It’s more important than the fact that he is. Otherwise, we don’t care about it. Or we think he’s an idiot for putting himself in danger when we can’t figure out a good reason for him to be there. Motivate your character so that every time we see them in action, we know why. BEFORE we see them actually in action. That will give you maximum opportunity for stakes and tension. If we know what they want and why they want it, we start to actually get invested in whether or not they’ll get it.

***

My advice here would be to really narrate the story. Don’t hop from image to image and moment to moment. A big part of storytelling is knowing when to guide the reader. Give us a motivation, then show us a bunch of action. Tell us what the character is doing, then show him doing it. There’s a huge balance between actually giving us information we need to know and letting the story unfold. Here, tip it back a little more to the informational side. The reader will thank you because they’ll know what’s going on from moment to moment.

And that wraps us up for workshops. It seems like a lot of you found this a very useful exercise. Like I’ve said many times, it helps to see pieces that are in process, not just polished pieces that win contests. I think a lot of you have also come around to realizations about your own work from critiquing the work of others. That’s a very valuable skill and one of the reasons that critique groups are so valuable. You really hone your editorial eye that way and, one day, after a lot of work, that’ll translate to seeing your own stuff as objectively as possible.

I know some of you who submitted didn’t get chosen for critique. I wanted a diverse sample so that I could make a variety of points. My decisions weren’t based on the quality of the samples but on what I could say about each one. For some, I had more to say, so those are the ones I chose.

Because of the time this took, I don’t know when I’ll be able to offer another critique scenario, but it will be sometime this year, so do stay tuned. Now, I’ll be posting questions and answers, articles, and otherwise going back to normal on the blog.

How to Define Revision

Many writers and editors have struggled to define revision over the millenia. Make sure you know the difference between editing and revising. This definition of revision came from brilliant YA author Laurie Halse Anderson’s Twitter, and I agree wholeheartedly:

Revision means throwing out the boring crap and making what’s left sound natural.

This reminds me of a great Elmore Leonard quote about the same topic:

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

You can find ten more witty tips along these lines here.

define revision, editing, self-editing — No matter what you consider to be the definition of revision, the point is that you DO IT.

How You Define Revision Doesn’t Matter

Writers like to sit around and come up with a witty definition of revision because, perhaps, they’re procrastinating about doing revision. I find that, no matter how you talk about it or what you call it, it matters that you do it. Novels are written in revision, after all. (More concrete thoughts on the revision process here.)

Some writers really get excited to write (looking at you, pantsers). They don’t tend to want to stick around after the fact and clean up the mess. If you have an adversarial relationship with revision, I’d recommend an easy exercise:

Read your entire manuscript aloud.

I’m serious. Don’t just think about doing it, actually do it. (Just like with revision itself.) There’s no better way to dive right in, kick start a revision, and also hone in on your writing voice to ferret out those parts that “suck” or feel overly written, per our mentor quotes, above.

Plus, it gets you out of your head and puts your project more into your body, which might just be enough to get you excited. No matter how you define revision, just do it!

Let’s all mediate on that today!

If you’re struggling with your novel revision and want concentrated feedback from an expert source, hire me as your book editor and we’ll tackle it together.