The Finish Line

I'm happy that most of our posts have to do with writing rather than with publishing. Publishing is important to me, but in the end the writing is the first obstacle and the subject that we writers are most qualified to discuss intelligently.

Occasionally, we do talk about publishing. We talk about agents and genres and query letters and platforms and hooks and literary magazines and contests. Most of this has been centered on acquiring a literary agent. Step 1: write the good book. Step 2: get the literary agent.

But, what happens after that? We're getting a glimpse of Step 3 thanks to Scott and other bloggers. But, what's the last step? And, I don't mean in our lives (that, for me, involves being trapped in an elevator with a bullet wound in my chest so that I have exactly three minutes to tell one person one thing that will change their world view forever), but I mean for each particular project. When will we know that we have reached the finish line?

Book?

Agent?

Snazzy cover?

Publishing?

Awards?

Wide readership?

Movie deals?

Oprah?

Most of the time, I'm working to GET AS MANY READERS AND AS MUCH FAME AND FORTUNE AS POSSIBLE. The problem is, that's a completely unrecognizable goal--I'll never ever know if I've reached it.

Now, I try to be more specific, and this is what I've come up with: I'd love to get a $10,000 advance. I'd love to know that a few thousand people have read my book. I'd love to be on Charlie Rose. I'd love to get a good review by Harold Bloom. For my first book, I think I will be quite happy if I attain all or even one of these goals, which currently seem unreachable and a little embarrassing to admit. But, as impossible as they seem, I feel like they're at least recognizable. I'll know if I've been on Charlie Rose--I'll remember the color of his tie. I'll know if I get $10,000 because I'll own that new fire-resistant lab coat I've always wanted. (Okay, more likely I'll use 70% of it for self-promotion and put the rest in my Roth IRA.)

Perhaps, if I do attain these goals, I'll realize that they don't actually reflect what I wanted in the first place. But, at least I'll know if they've happened. I don't want to chase something that is impossible to catch in publishing terms. (I'm all for chasing the dream of writing that perfect novel.)

You? How specific are your goals, and will you know when you've reached them? What do you need to accomplish before you've made it to the finish line?

Story and Backstory

I am soon to begin some revisions on a novel at the behest of my agent. While I've been whining to a few friends that these revisions will either "dumb down" or otherwise harm my beautiful, sensitive story, it occured to me this morning that what my agent suggests is nothing more than removing a lot of backstory from the beginning of the tale and fitting it in later on.

Neither he nor I have put it quite like this before, because a) my agent isn't a writer and he just gives me his instinctive "gut feeling" comments, and b) I hadn't realized until very recently that my protagonist's youth wasn't the story, but was in fact backstory. It was quite an epiphany when I realized this. The actual story doesn't begin until the very last scene of the first chapter (and I write fairly long chapters, so my readers have to get through 60 pages before the tale begins to kick into gear).

While my protagonist's backstory is eventful and colorful and gorgeously-written (I tell myself), it does delay not only the beginning of the book's central action (which, frankly, I don't mind because I have read a lot of that sort of book), but also the protagonist's central desires and the motivation for his actions throughout the rest of the book. So I'll do some restructuring in July and August.

This might sound like another exhortation to grab your reader in the first sentence and not let go, but it's not. Nor is my agent asking me to do that. One of his comments, about 40 pages into the ms, was "I'm willing to read more about your MC's youth, but not much." It's fine to give background, set the scene (especially in alternate-world type novels; mine takes place in the 16th century, so some setting is necessary for the action to make sense), introduce characters. But, at some point you have to be telling a story and letting the reader know why they're reading your book.

So the point (finally) is that you need to think about where the actual story begins, and not lard on too much setting before that. Begin at the beginning. There is always a sort of "Chapter 0" before your book starts, and you should move as much of that as you can into chapters after the beginning. I'm going to work my MC's youth into later chapters (like Chapter 2 and 3, I think) so that readers will have met the main players first, found out the driving forces behind the action, and then get the history. I hope.

How do you know where your actual story begins? I think there is a sort of "story present," the "now" of the story when it seems to be happening, for the reader, in real time. Does everything that happens outside of that "story present" need to be cut, or shoved into the story and revealed along the way of the "now?" Not necessarily. Some writers, like Jhumpa Lahiri in "The Namesake," tell stories in chronological order, more-or-less, though "The Namesake" begins with a birth and then, while the mother is at the hospital delivering the protagonist, the story loops backward in time to give us the backstories of the protagonist's parents. Geraldine Brooks does something similar in "March," and this is the sort of thing I'll be doing with my own book.

In other words, be prepared for an editor or agent to tell you that your wonderful prologue needs to be moved into the body of the story, and be prepared to do that work.

Query Letters

Since the three of us are in different stages of submitting our novels to agents, we thought we'd offer some general comments about query letters. As always, these are just our opinions.

Davin: At first, I thought my query letter had to be perfect, which was a very intimidating thought. Now, I think of letters as just the door opener: the objective is to get an agent to request a partial or a full manuscript. After that, it's the actual book that they will pay attention to. To that end, present your project clearly and display some proficiency in your writing. Include a brief biography that explains why you are the best writer for this job. Then, let the agents decide if they are interested or not. If you have done your homework and found people who are representing the type of writing you do, they will be interested, even if you have a typo or two in your letter.

Below, Robyn offered up her query letter for a individual critique. Thanks, Robyn! It's almost always a good idea to get some feedback on how your query letter is working, and The Public Query Slushpile is a great place to post your own letter.

It’s summer, and Anna and Claire head out on their first-ever endurance horseback ride alone on the trails of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Anna is excited that she and Claire will be able to share the beauty that lies in the trails that she and her family have ridden her whole life. But a few hours into their ride, disaster strikes: they become lost. With night fast approaching, the insulin in Anna’s pump is almost gone. How will they survive the next seventy-two hours in the wilderness, fighting wild animals, and Anna’s diabetes?

Horse stories are always popular with girls obsessed with horses, but there are few survival stories with girl protagonists. I have combined those ideas and hope you will enjoy reading Seventy-Two Hours, an adventure story for older middle grade girls. It is complete at 34,000 words.

I have written for our state SCBWI newsletter, The Pen and Palette, and I am a member of SCBWI.

Thank you for your time and consideration. I hope to hear from you soon.

Warmly,

Robyn Campbell

Robyn, overall, I think this is a strong letter. It's simply written and presents the premise of the story clearly. We know the characters, the setting, the conflict and the tone of the piece in just one paragraph. We also get some good information about you. I'm missing the characters' personalities. We get a little bit of Anna's background, but I think a phrase or two about each of them could make the book feel more multidimensional. The sentence: "With night fast approaching, the insulin in Anna’s pump is almost gone" is a bit awkward to me. It implies some sort of causal relationship that isn't supposed to be there. The phrase, "Horse stories are always popular with girls obsessed with horses" also isn't working for me yet. It's a reflexive thought that doesn't feel persuasive.


Michelle: My advice is aimed at Robyn, but most of the things I say here can apply to queries in general.

The important thing to remember is, as Davin says, query letters do not have to be perfect. In fact, the more you revise a query, the more I've seen the author's voice and style simply slip away, leaving nothing more than a formal-sounding business letter that doesn't show the agent or publisher what kind of a writer you really are. The sparkle fizzles out. I can feel the sparkle in this letter, but I think you can give it more. More revision, you say? Well, I don't think it'll take much. This letter is strong already. It is concise and tells us almost everything we need to know. It does lack some focus, I think. Here's what I would do:

In my experience (which is limited, mind you), I've found that the section in a query that focuses on the characters should focus on two things: the main protagonist and the main character or force that is stopping that protagonist from reaching his/her intended goals. This focus is essential. Unfortunately, I've seen query after query slip out of this focus. Too may plot points. Too many characters. A query usually doesn't need all that.*

I think your letter is pretty focused, but I want a little more. It could be a matter of a few words. First, I'm almost certain your main protagonist is Claire - but, as Davin says, I think a phrase or two about Anna and Claire would help establish this. (Although you'll probably want less of Claire). Second, emphasize the main force going against them - the wilderness, the wild animals, Anna's diabetes? See, I'm not sure which one it is. . . . Probably a combination of all three, but usually one trumps the others. Too many villains creates confusion.

Remember, this is all my opinion. I've had a problem of too many villains in my current novel, and I'm sure I'll have trouble with that in the query letter. But if you feel that equally emphasizing all three is essential, you may want to leave it close to what you already have.

Nathan Bransford has a great post about the "sweet spot" in query letter word count. He's found that the sweet spot, for him at least, is between 250 -350 words. Yours is 172, so "adding a few phrases about Anna and Claire" shouldn't be a problem. You have lots of room to play around. Although please don't go adding words just to hit the sweet spot. Bad idea, haha. Also, agent Alexander Field over at The Mystery and The Magic recently did a post on 10 things not to do in your query, for anybody who's interested.

Thank you for submitting this! I hope we've helped a little.

*(Lynn, in the Just Ask section, gave you some good advice, but I think the questions she's asking don't have to be addressed in the query. Those are questions you want the agent to ask, in my opinion. All a query letter should do is hook that agent. If they ask for a full synopsis in the query, that's where you might answer those questions)

Scott: I'll repeat what Davin and Michelle have already said about queries not having to be perfect. The query letter I used to get an agent had a typo in it, but my agent never noticed it (or, if he did, he didn't care because he liked what I'd gotten right).

I think that main thing to bear in mind is that a query is a hook, an advertisement for your story. You need to find one or two (but one is better) sentences to "grab" the agent (like he's any other reader) and make him want to read the story. Which usually means showing your protagonist in some sort of crisis. In Robyn's example above, "How will they survive the next seventy-two hours in the wilderness, fighting wild animals, and Anna’s diabetes?" is very nearly a hook, but not quite. I think this would be stronger if it were recast from a question into a statement, something like "Anna and Claire must survive the next seventy-two hours in the wilderness, fighting [really? fighting?] wild animals under the threat of Anna slipping into diabetic shock." Don't make the heart of your story a question, because the reader (that is, the agent) might just shrug and say, "I don't know" and move on to something else. Declare boldly that there is a conflict that demands the reader's attention.

Other things to think about: 1. Your query should be in the same "voice" as your book. If you have written a spare, lean novel, you should write a spare, lean query. If you've written a novel with flowing, beautiful language, your query should reflect that. 2. Don't worry about pub credits and "platform." Just write a good book and be excited about your story when you write your query; let your excitement come through. 3. Be businesslike. This is a business letter. Don't be cute or overly familiar. 4. Don't write a query that doesn't reflect your actual story. 5. Do include the first five pages (at least) of your novel unless the agent tells you not to. 6. Don't query at random; research agents and target them. I only sent out a handful of queries before getting an offer of representation.

The Good Carpenter Versus The Bad Magician

She has since answered to her own question, but Traci from Words, Words, Words... asked us about those long passages that sometimes happen in books when a character speaks for pages to reveal some history that the reader needs to know.

"Hey, Charlie, I always meant to ask how you got that scar on your wrist."

"Funny you should ask, Felix. Back in 1962, I was a victim of a horrendous crime. It was a Thursday, the moon was peeping out from behind a polar bear-shaped cloud. The cold wind pierced through the thin tunic I wore as I rushed across Madson Bridge to get to my fiance's birthday party..."

We can all imagine this type of thing. Usually these long passages sound like anything but natural speech. The voice is the narrator's voice rather than a character's voice. The details usually have nothing to do with what the character would think about when revealing such information.

If we think about why a writer would choose to do such a thing, it's probably because she or he felt the need to get back story out, but didn't want to use the elementary device of going into flashback. Revealing back story through speech seemed like a more clever way of solving a particular problem.

But, what happens from a reader's point of view, in my opinion, is that we get pulled out of the story precisely because we've decided the writer is trying to be too clever. They're behaving like a bad magician who can't quite make us believe that the dove really flew out of a sleeve. We groan. Why did they even bother?

I think readers prefer a good carpenter over a bad magician. Instead of trying to be too clever in an attempt to impress the reader, consider telling the story as plainly and as simply as you can. Let the reader understand the structure, the scaffolding that you are using to build the story. If you need to get some history in there, for instance, you could use a simple transition sentence and then tell the information as you need to:

Charlie had a scar on his wrist because he had been a victim of a crime back in 1962. He had been rushing across Madson Bridge, trying to get to his fiance's birthday party when...

It may appear that you're writing childishly, but many times a reader will appreciate the simple solution. Just lay the story out for the reader to experience. Be sincere. Let the characters and the situation impress the reader, rather than the technique.

Of course, there is such a thing as a good magician. Some writers are excited by the chance to impress their readers by using clever tricks. If you can think of an unusual or ultra-interesting way of using a speech to reveal back story, then go for it!

Note: I just wanted to say that Tara Maya has an excellent post today on character-driven writing. Check it out!

Gourmet Gummies

Yesterday we had an agent visit this blog. She left an excellent comment concerning the difference between commercial and literary fiction. Thank you, Eva! Her explanation of literary fiction blew me away because it is, perhaps, the first time someone has explained literary fiction in terms that make complete sense to me.

Literary fiction . . . happens between the lines. The plotting may be as tricky as any thriller novel and the pace may be fast or slow, but what distinguishes literary fiction is what is left unsaid. Narrators may be self-absorbed or unreliable, things are pointed to without being explained. These are the novels that make you re-read every third paragraph because of they way it makes you think -- then you re-read the entire book and discover new things therein.

It seems like literary should be easier to write, huh? Just leave a lot of stuff unsaid! Not so. What is left unsaid is obviously the key. The gourmet gummies, I like to say.

I was riding in the car with my dad one morning. He had a package of gummy candy between our seats. On the back it said something along the lines of: "Gourmet Gummies! We choose the finest ingredients and craft our candy for the ultimate gummy experience." Sounds great! And they were good. Really good. Like discovering a treasure.

The ironic thing about this ride with my dad was that we talked about literature that day. My dad made it absolutely clear that he'd rather not read something if he feels like he has to go back and reread things, or even worse, read the book again just to understand everything about it! I made it absolutely clear that I thought a good literary piece of fiction could entertain and offer more to chew on in a second read.

I used to think the gourmet gummies I loved in literary fiction were: symbols, deep and meaningful subjects/characters, and layers of meaning. These are parts of literary fiction - and any fiction - that get me excited. But what it seems I really love is what is not there. The interpretive part of the genre. What is not spelled out. What is built into the story without being built into the story. Tricky. Tasty. Like fine ingredients crafted for the ultimate reading experience.

Questions For The Day: Do you try and craft gourmet gummies into your fiction, or do you avoid the whole "literary" aspect of writing? Do you feel like this "going unsaid" theory needs to be done consciously in literary fiction, or do you think I'm high on sugar?


~MDA (aka Glam)

Literary, Commercial, Mainstream: Are they all the same?

Ashley asked: "What's the difference between literary, commercial, and mainstream fiction? Mainstream isn't touched upon very often (and that's what I consider my WIP), so I wonder, is it not as prominent as the other two? And how is it very much different from commercial?"

Ashley, I don’t think anyone will say that the lines between literary, commercial, and mainstream fiction are at all clear. To answer your question, I decided to consult the sources that actually rely on this sort of categorization, and those sources aren’t the writers.

The two main reasons why you will need to fit your book into a category at all is because 1. you want to find an agent to represent your work and 2. you want to place your book in the corner of the store where interested readers will find it. So, let’s see how those two groups are breaking it down.

Agents

I checked out the preferences of a few literary agents to find out how they are using the terms. The website QueryTracker.net, which serves as an agent database, has two of the three genres in question, commercial and literary fiction, among a host of other genres. Emma Sweeney from the Emma Sweeney Agency uses only the term literary fiction. Paige Wheeler from Folio Literary Management prefers both commercial and “upscale” fiction. Laney Katz Becker, also from Folio, prefers literary, commercial, and mainstream. Blogging agent Nathan Bransford considers commercial fiction to be a blanket term for all genre fiction. So, he would say that literary fiction is the un-genre, un-commercial stuff, which has nothing to do with the actual commercial value of the book. Sandra Dijkstra, from what I can interpret, also seems to go by this definition. She prefers both commercial and literary fiction, which I’m assuming covers everything—maybe I’m wrong. Interestingly, another agent from the Dijkstra agency, Elise Capron, says she prefers “character driven fiction,” “offbeat fiction,” and “debut fiction.”

So, my take home message from this short look into the agent side of things is that different agents interpret the terms differently, and you should do your homework for each specific agent before you query them. Decide if your book falls into the categories they prefer, and decide what you should call your book based on those categories. Don’t feel committed to any one category. You might end up calling your book mainstream fiction for one agency and literary fiction for another. For a third you could end up calling it offbeat debut fiction.

Book Stores

Genre categories are probably most important in that they help your readers find you. When going into a bookstore or shopping online, genres help to orient the customers so that they don’t look for Russian Classics next to Romance novels. This is especially important if they’ve never heard of you as a writer. I’ve discovered new writers in the literary fiction shelves of stores, but never in the sci-fi shelves, simply because I rarely go there. It would take forever to find anything if all of the books were just alphabetized.

Looking at the big books stores, Borders has only the literary fiction category, as does Barnes & Noble. Amazon, on the other hand, has both literary fiction and general fiction. None of these places have mainstream fiction or commercial fiction. In general, I would guess that the stores (and libraries) lump all three of these categories together.

So, Ashley, for you, I’d say to call it whatever the agent calls it when you are querying each of them. You probably won’t need to choose once it’s ready for publication, but I’m guessing—based on what little I know about your writing—that it will fall into the literary fiction shelves.

You Will Be Edited

As some of you already know, I have an agent with whom I'm working to get my book (current working title, "Horatio") published. My agent first read the ms in early March, and he came back to me with a suggested major change to the way I was telling the story. It was a good suggestion, and even though I thought I was finished writing the book, I revised for three months and at the end of May sent the much-longer ms back to my agent for his opinion.

Naturally, I assumed that the next time I heard from him, it would be a message saying something like, "This is amazing, and I've just sold it at auction in a significant deal and where should I mail the check?" Naturally, when I heard back from him on Sunday evening, that's not the message I got.

Mr. Agent, who has a well-earned reputation as a "hands-on" sort of guy, asks that I make further changes to the book. These will be pretty major structural changes and will take me about two months, I estimate, to complete. Darn, I say. I was hoping to get a decent start on my next book. But no.

The point is, even after I revise the novel again, I know I won't have seen the last of the revisions. Once it gets picked up by a publisher, an editor will go through it and make a list of suggested changes I'll be expected to do. Every published author gets this "revision letter" from their editor. Yes, even your favorite author, although they may claim otherwise.

So the moral of this little tale is that you should get used to revising. I don't mean the kind of revisions Davin was talking about in yesterday's post. What you'll likely see from agents and publishers are bigger, story-level things that will make you annoyed and wonder at what point your beloved novel became someone else's artistic property. The upside is that my agent is not telling me what story to tell, but is trying his best to help me tell that story in the best way possible. Still, it irks because I am a Creative Genius and blah blah blah. But that's part of this business, and you should be prepared for it.

Can you really revise everything?

I've been frustrated with my prose lately. I feel like everything I write--regardless of story or character or setting--comes out clunky on a sentence-by-sentence level.

I consulted a poet friend that I have mentioned once or twice here before. His name is Craig Cotter, and over dinner I asked him why he made certain word choices or phrase constructions in several of his poems.

For one of his poems, Craig brought his first draft along. This was a hand-written scrap that he had somehow decided to save. I compared this to the actually published poem, and what I found surprised me. Very little had changed. From the original to the final draft, he made about four edits, but the rest of it was intact.

What I realized was that Craig had initially limited himself to what edits he was allowed to make. The source of his inspiration, the motivation that got him to write this poem in the first place, he felt, was preserved in that first draft, not in the idea of that first draft. That meant that he couldn't revise everything. He couldn't start from scratch with the same idea, because that would be a different poem--one that he could write at a different time. By him staying true to what inspired him, he felt that this work captured a very specific idea at a very specific time. He was staying true to the experience of writing this poem.

I thought about my own work.

I thought about how sometimes revising too much can make a piece feel unemotional and dead. The fact is, when you write something, that piece is a reflection of you in that moment of creation. You build rhythms in your sentences based on the sentences before it. And, if you then go back and revise something in the beginning of a story, often times, that affects everything after it. So, you end up chasing that first revision and making hundreds or thousands of other revisions to compensate for it, even if nothing was wrong with the rest of the piece to begin with.

So, now I'm asking myself if it's sometimes better to stop. Maybe a clunky second sentence is acceptable if it keeps you from altering the rest of your story that may already be working. Can you really revise everything?

Whose Story Is This, Anyway?

Sometimes, writers don't know what they're doing. I'm guilty enough of that, and today I'd like to talk (in a mercifully brief manner for once) about a common mistake writers make: Wrong Protagonist Syndrome.

Wrong Protagonist Syndrome is exactly what it sounds like. You have told your story, written your book, but the focus is on the wrong character. In my most recent book, for example, the first draft was allegedly about a character who wasn't the narrator. The narrator was telling the other character's story, sort of like the Gospels being the story of Jesus as told by his pals. Unfortunately for me, I was actually intending to tell a story about the narrator but somehow had forgotten that along the way, getting caught up in the action of the other characters. A serious rewrite (first of many) was necessary.

It can go the other way, too. The narrator in a first-person story isn't necessarily the protagonist. To stick with the New Testament (best example I can think of at this moment of coffee-deprivation), suppose Matthew Mark Luke and John had written their own stories instead of the story of Jesus. Whole different set of books. Same events, but not the same story.

I recently read an unpublished book where the protagonist from the first 2/3 of the book more-or-less disappears and the last 1/3 is given over to the antagonist, who is then shown as a sympathetic character. The climax of the book is his, is about him. The book, really, should have been all his story; it's like parts of two novels were shoved together.

Even in novels where there is a huge cast ("Lord of the Rings," for example), there should still be--I think--a single focus character. You should be able to say, "This is the story of Person X." Lord of the Rings is the story of Frodo Baggins. Lots of other stuff goes on, but every other character in the book can drop dead halfway through the narrative and the central storyline remains.

My current work-in-progress has two main characters. I need to choose one of them as the protagonist of the book. This choice will make a great deal of difference to the way the book is written. If I go with Nathaniel, the story will be about a man who sees that there's more to the world than he imagined; a story about being surprised. If I go with Daisy, the story will be about a woman who's suspicions are confirmed; a story about being right. These are different stories. The events will be the same in either version, but the meaning will be different.

In Other News: I will not be blogging next week. Why? I'll be moving house and won't have internet access. Behave yourselves while I'm away.

When Less Becomes More

photo by Philippe Morin

Focus. Focus. Focus.

I've learned a lot about focus lately. In fact, I'm so serious about focus that I threw out the latest draft of my novel and completely started over. I'm on page 50, a point in the story that I didn't reach in my previous draft until page 170. Focus.

Plot and Character Focus
Your reader is only going to see the picture you paint. If you describe a character’s shirt, does it have something to do with the story or the character? Or did you describe the shirt because it makes a pretty image in your head - and you wanted to show the reader? Relevant details are essential. Extraneous details pull things out of focus. The same goes for scenes and characters.

One of the things I like to do is shave down my story to its barest essentials. Break down every chapter, scene, and character into one short sentence. For example:

Chapter 1 (the trip from the train station) - Margaret sees the poverty of the town she is being forced to live in, and it frightens her.

John (secondary character) - The character who influences Margaret’s decision not to leave the town.

I’ve done this with my current draft, and ended up combining two characters into one character (they served the same purpose), deleted one character from the picture altogether (he’s still in the story, but we never see him), and cut about 20 scenes from the book (they were extraneous - their purpose was better told in two scenes)

Sentence-Level Focus
I’ll be bold here and say that every. single. word. counts.

Like the details I discussed above, if you narrow your focus onto every sentence and ask what it adds to the story, you’ll see what I mean. In my draft, I’m doing this as I write - editing as I go. I’ll write a sentence, ask myself what it adds to the forward action, to the development of the character, to the picture as a whole. If it feels weak and out of focus, I either rewrite it or cut it. (Be sure to read Davin's excellent post from yesterday about building important details into your sentences.)

Mostly, however, I’ve found that extraneous phrases are the culprit of weak sentences. For instance:

He shifted the truck in reverse and pulled out of the parking lot. A narrow, rutted road led behind the boathouse, past the inn, and to the other side of the lake.

I changed it to:

He backed out of the parking lot and followed the narrow, rutted road to the other side of the lake.

This is a necessary sentence to the scene. The reader needs to know that the character drove to the other side of the lake. Now, I could simply say: He drove to the other side of the lake - but that’s not my style. Don’t confuse style or voice with fluff.

Question Of The Day: Do you find yourself focusing on the wrong things in your story? How do you fix this problem?

~MDA (aka Glam)

Details That Imply The Bigger World

"What d'you mean, 'Leave it'?"

That's a line from the movie Gosford Park, and it's the first line spoken by one of the upstairs characters. I have the habit of letting a movie like this play in the background over and over again while I write, and so, in this case, I've probably watched Gosford Park hundreds of times. Whenever I heard this line, I thought I had missed something someone said before it. After all, doesn't it feel like we've jumped into the middle of a conversation?

What I realized was that this line was, indeed, the first line of the scene, but it implied the bigger world. It suggested that someone else had told the speaker to "leave" something, whatever that something was.

Details have the power to make the world bigger without actually describing the bigger world. This line of dialog implied that there had been a conversation before it. We can assume that the normal, "Hi. How are you?" has taken place, but that the director, Robert Altman, decided it wasn't worth his time or ours to have to watch it.

When we're writing, we can do the same thing. As we describe an object or scene, we can use the details of that description to create the bigger world that exists around what readers are actually seeing.

He walked in wearing jeans and a T-shirt.

This line describes someone and their clothing, but with only a few more words, we can give this character a lot more history.

He walked in wearing mud-covered jeans and a torn T-shirt.

With this, we know that the person who came in has been alive long before we've heard about him. Maybe he's just been beat up. Made he's just a rough-and-tumble type of guy. Either way, our experience is now of something larger than what it was before. Our story takes on a grander scale.

We can come up with other examples like this, and they don't always have to imply that time has passed.

The light through the stained glass windows made the apple look blue.

Technically, here, I'm describing an apple, but I've also used the same sentence to imply a church or something like a church.

When I am writing a scene, I try to enlarge my imagination and see the bigger picture before I crop it down. If a character is entering the room, think about where they have come from and what they were doing there. If you're describing an object, think about where it is located and how that location affects it. Our world is larger than what we are able to write down, but with a few well-placed details, we can still capture some of that vastness.

Who Are These People?

I haven't written a short story in about two years, but when I was writing them, I usually only thought about one personality trait of my protagonists--whichever aspect of human behavior I wanted to explore--and more or less ignored everything about these characters. That worked well enough in short stories, where you're almost always seeing a single episode in someone's life, focusing in on a brief moment. It's odd but true that you can have memorable characters in short fiction that are not well-rounded.

This doesn't work in long-form fiction like a novel, which I discovered to my great alarm when I wrote my first novel, lo these many years ago. There was the One Thing I really knew about my protagonist, but that certainly wasn't enough characterization to make this guy interesting for 300 pages. Like a lot of novice novelists, I filled in the rest of his personality with myself. He was a skewed version of me, which also wasn't that interesting because despite my immense ego, I'm pretty dull when you get down to it.

Yesterday at work we had a staff meeting with about 45 people attending. At the beginning of the meeting we all played one of those "getting to know you" games as an ice-breaker of sorts. Each of us was given a list of 60 or so behaviors, and we were to pick five of them that applied to us. They were things like "likes thunderstorms" or "plays guitar" or "kisses on the first date" or "closes eyes when watching horror movies" and the like. The lists were then read aloud, and we all guessed whose lists were whose. Oh, the fun we had.

Where's all this leading? I am wondering today about how we find our characters, especially our main characters. It's widely held that first novelists especially have problems writing compelling three-dimensional characters, or groups of characters who are all unique, different from one another and not cardboard cutout "stock" characters.

Certainly every word we write comes from us, out of our heads, informed by our personal histories and reading histories, and every character we write exists first of all in our own heads. That's not to say that all of our characters are necessarily aspects of us, or veiled versions of us, or idealized versions of us (though too often they are in some people's writing); it means that our characters are our creations and will be limited to what our imaginations can hold.

I know that people sometimes use "character questionnaires" that have a long list of attributes (physical, mental, emotional, biographical, etc.) which, if filled in, will supposedly give you a complete picture of your characters. I don't use these and I find even the thought of them annoying somehow. When my coworkers and I were going through our "ice breaker" exercise yesterday, it became apparent that even with fifty or sixty choices and I don't know how many possible combinations of answers, after a while all the descriptions seemed the same.

Nowadays I'm trying to figure out my characters through the story itself. I tend to see all of the novel (characters, plot, theme, setting, mood) as a single interconnected machine, so my characters are created to make the plot believable and the themes active. I don't actually tend to sit down and spend a lot of time asking "who are these people" so much as I work out who they are by working out what the story is and what the story needs in the way of actors.

Now to you: Do you put a lot of yourself into your characters? Why or why not? Do you use fill-in lists to figure out who your people are going to be? Why or why not? How do you figure out who your characters are, and how do you tie that into figuring out what your story is?

P.S. Happy Bloomsday!

Learning How To Read

There are at least two ways to read: the reader's way and the writer's way. The reader reads to get an emotional experience out of a story. The writer reads to dissect it. Being able to read both ways is essential because both ways teach you how to write better.

I can't provide many tips on how to read as a reader. All I'll say is that for me it's like turning off a switch. I have to be present to the book and not think about myself or my work. The learning that takes place from this way of reading occurs after the reading is done, when I can ask myself things like, Why did I enjoy the book? What did I enjoy about the book?

When reading as a writer, I've come up with a longer list of things I look for, techniques that I can use (or steal, if you'd rather). While the first way of reading addresses why and what, the second way of reading often addresses how.

1. Style-How do my favorite authors create a writing style that I enjoy? For me, I'm usually drawn to lyrical writing, writing that flows continuously. I try to look for how writers start and end sentences and paragraphs. I look for how they punctuate sentences and what kind of structures they use for these sentences. I look for the type of vocabulary they use, the sounds they use, the level of formality they use.

2. Structure-How do writers organize their stories? How do they introduce back story and conflict? Where and how to they reach climactic high points? How do they start and end stories?
3. Characters-How do great writers create characters that jump off the page? Critic Harold Bloom often uses a term that I connect with well. In talking about great characters, he often says that stories can't contain them. Why are people so drawn to Hamlet and Lady MacBeth? What makes Charles Dicken's characters so inspirational for people? Comparing characters and finding passages where a story can't contain the character usually reveals to me what makes them particularly vivid.

4. Subject matter-While I believe that any subject matter can be turned into a great story, critical reading helps me discover the types of subjects that are unusual versus ones that are more common. As an editor, I've really become conscious of themes that EVERY beginning writers seems to want to address: getting cancer, breaking up with a lover, childhood firsts. Stories about any of these subject matters have the potential to be great, but usually they have to overcome that initial feeling of, "Not another one of these." Paying attention to the subject matter of great writers usually makes you see other parts of the world besides those initial points of inspiration. It helps you see that subjects you might not thing of using can truly be developed into a moving story.

4. Transitions-How do writers move from one scene to the next? or one action to the next? What is the connective tissue they put in place so that a reader doesn't feel unintentionally jarred? If a writer is describing an action scene, how does he or she keep it from sounding like a laundry list? If a writer is shifting tenses or point of view, how do they do it successfully so that you're not distracted by the craft?

5. Dialog-How is dialog punctuated so that it feels like a character is talking naturally? What dialog is left out that makes it a distinct thing from real verbal interactions? How are characters differentiated through their dialog? How do writers use dialog to convey other information?
6. Descriptions-Different readers can tolerate different levels of description. How does your favorite writer create a time and place without annoying you?

7. Showing versus telling-All stories-at least all the ones I've encountered have some level of telling. How do writers decide when to tell and when to show? How and when do they show or tell effectively?

I'm sure that as soon as I publish this post, a dozen other items will occur to me. But, hopefully this list triggers some of your own technical difficulties that you can solve through critical reading as a writer. And, though this may seem obvious, I'll say it anyway, only because it's something I often forget: Your favorite writer hasn't necessarily mastered every aspect of writing. Use each writer for their strengths, and look to other writers to address things that you still can't figure out on your own.

Reading is essential to learning how to write, at least from my own personal experience. The more deeply you look at the work of someone you admire, the more you will learn from it. I often reread passages of Kitchen or Anna Karenina or Light In August. Often, just spending five minutes with a book I admire teaches me a dozen new things I hadn't noticed before.

Sagging Middles

I'm sure we've all read any number of books (maybe even most of the books we read) where the middle drags, and we have to give ourselves an extra push to get past that slow bit and find where the story picks up the pace again. As I say, I think the great majority of novels built on the standard 3-act structure tend to sag a bit in the midsection, much like certain middle-aged writers we won't be discussing here.

I have a theory that this isn't necessarily a fault of the writer, but is a function of the 3-act structure itself. I begin to believe that the normal form of the novel is a flawed structure, or at least an imperfect one.

Here's what I think happens: You begin the book with rising action and exposition to set up a dramatic situation, an inciting incident that happens somewhere during the first third of your story. You've done a job of work giving your reader compelling characters with needs and then you build up to a dramatic moment that changes the world of the story, creates a conflict that must be resolved, and then Act One is over, and your reader is hooked.

Well, that's all fine, isn't it? Except what happens then? Essentially, in many cases, the story sort of starts over again. You have Act Two to set up the even more dramatic moment of the climax, which means that your level of action has seemingly fallen off because there's been a new status quo established in the novel's world from which you must again build some sort of rising action. This entails even more exposition, and often we take side trips to explore our theme and subplots, so the new focus on movement toward the climax gets diffused now. It's like moving from a finished house back into an unfinished house that we watch being built around us.

In other words, the traditional 3-act structure has this slow middle section built into it, because after the first big BANG plot-point of the inciting incident, we must basically begin again, nearly from zero.

I don't happen to have a list of useful ways to avoid this. What I'm going to attempt to do in my current book is have the inciting incident open up an interesting and compelling idea to be explored, so that the reader will have something that holds their interest while I subtly build up the dramatic tension in the background again. Will that work? I have no idea, but that's my plan.

Has anyone ever found that their novel dragged in the middle, and fixed it? How did you fix it? Is is a widely-applicable method? Will you use it in the future? Can anyone think of any novels that don't drag in the middle? What do you think the writer did to keep things moving for the reader?

When Does Drama Become Melodrama?

Justus asked a good question in our Just Ask section: When does drama become melodrama?

First of all, I don't believe there is any fine line between dramatic and melodramatic (although straight melodrama plays are clear). Many different elements in a story, depending on the amount and how they are presented, can determine whether or not a work is more melodramatic than dramatic.

These days melodrama on the stage is rare, but more common in film and novels, that I have seen.

What is Melodrama? Melodrama means "song drama" or "music drama". It usually refers to a theatrical form made popular by the French at the end of the eighteenth century. Melodrama focuses on serious dramatic elements, storylines, and characters. It is similar to drama, but these dramatic elements are pushed over the edge - often becoming comic, and may even seem facetious in intent.

Is melodrama bad? No, it does not have to be. But it often is when an author doesn't realize that their work has been nudged from the dramatic realm to the melodramatic. I have noticed that when this happens, readers will laugh at scenes that are meant to be serious. They might wonder if this was the author's intention.

What is an example of melodrama? Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a modern example of something close to a full-fledged melodrama. Is the movie laughable? To some, yes it is. But does that mean it is bad? I don't think so, because the melodrama works for the story. Many audiences may not think the movie is any good, but it grossed over $126 million in box office sales its opening weekend - a big success. Obviously the general American public, at least, likes melodrama.

Now that I've given you some introduction to melodrama, you may wonder what an author can do in order to either avoid or create melodrama in their work. Defining what gives a work melodramatic tendencies should answer this question.

Characters
The characters in a melodrama or a work with melodramatic tendencies will typically be stereotypes that embody the forces of good and evil according to their role. You won't see them sitting down to ponder over their actions. Instead, they are good or bad through and through. Black and white is how I like to think of it, hence the picture above. These characters rarely change or grow, and their actions are predictable.

Oftentimes secondary characters in these stories and simple minded and flat, and provide comic relief.

Storyline
Predictable. Always predictable. Good wins. Evil loses. The hero saves the day. This is often the appeal of a melodramatic piece. It is basic and stable. These stories build and build, creating a sense of entertainment more than anything else. Drama tends to pull the reader in by reflection and identification with the characters. Melodrama merely gets the reader from point A to point B in an entertaining fashion.

The conflict of a melodramatic work often lies in the Hero vs. Villain, and is therefore predictable in nature. The hero always wins.

Intentions
In the end, what will make melodramatic elements work in a story is the intention of the author. Perhaps making a story more melodramatic can strengthen a weakened plot and flat characters if the author doesn't want all the fuss of fleshing things out. Perhaps adding a melodramatic flair to a piece will add some needed comedic elements. Perhaps it would simply ruin the story. Who knows. What matters is the author's intention. A friend of mine once commented that my novel was cheesy. I think that maybe she could have meant more melodramatic than cheesy. In any case, it isn't working, and I'm scrubbing out those elements as fast as I can because "cheesy" and "melodramatic" was never my intention.


~MDA (aka Glam)

One Plus One Equals One

Our brains are powerful things. Even though I usually advocate focused writing, sometimes creating a passage that reaches a bit of mania can energize a story for the better. One way to do this is to combine scenes or character interactions.

We’ve probably all written a relatively mundane scene. Suppose character A is having a conversation with character B (Traci, this might partially address your question about a character who has to tell back story). Suppose, also, that character A then has to go on to have a conversation with character C. Possibly, you could end up having two relatively boring character interactions back to back. In your revisions, one thing to try is to overlap these two scenes so that character A is talking to B and C at the same time.

Here’s a passage from Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated. In this scene, a Ukrainian tour guide, Alex, is having a conversation with his grandfather about trying to find a particular city. At the same time, Alex is also trying to talk with his American customer, Jonathan. On their own, either of these two conversation might not have had much life to them, but by combining them, a colorful scene is created, topped off by the Grandfather’s blind seeing-eye dog, Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior:

“How do we get there?” Granfather inquired me, who was in the front seat, because when I am in a car I always sit in the front seat, unless the car is a motorcycle, because I do not know how to operate a motorcycle, although I will very soon. The hero was in the back seat with Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior, and they were attending to their own affairs: the hero masticated the nails of his fingers, and the bitch masticated her tail. “I do not know,” I said. “Inquire the Jew,” he ordered, so I did. “I don’t know,” he said. “He does not know.” “What do you mean he does not know?” said Grandfather. “We are in the car. We are primed to go forth on our voyage. How can he not know?” His voice was now with volune, and it frightened Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior, making her bark. BARK. I asked the hero, “What do you mean you do not know?” “I told you everything I know. I thought one of you was supposed to be the trained and certified Heritage guide. I paid for a certified guide, you know.” Grandfather punched the car’s horn, and it made a sound. HONK. “Grandfather is certified!” I informed him, BARK, which was faithfully faithful, although he was certified to operate an automobile, not to find lost history. HONK. “Please!” I said at Grandfather. BARK. HONK. “Please! You are making this impossible!” HONK! BARK! “Shut up,” he said, “and shut the bitch up and shut the Jew up!” BARK. “Please!” HONK! “You’re sure he’s certified?” “Of course,” I said. HONK! “I would not deceive.” BARK! “Do something,” I told Grandfather. HONK! “Not that!” I said with volume. BARK! He commenced to drive the automobile that he was fully certified to drive.

As writers we may initially be scared to write such a scene, because we’re not sure that a reader will understand it. But, notice how our brains can deconvolve this mess and get all the information we need. Moreover, because the brain is constantly working throughout the passage, I think it becomes a more interesting read. Of course, there are multiple ways to revise a boring passage, but this is one way that might not come intuitively to us. And, it doesn’t only work with dialog. Action scenes and descriptions can also be shuffled together to give your writing new life.

Passages of Time

I am stealing the idea for this post from Tara Maya, who posted about the difficulties writers can have showing the passage of time in novels. Specifically, what to do when skipping ahead in the story. It doesn't really matter, in my experience, if you're talking about jumping an hour, a day, three years or three centuries. You need to keep the narrative flowing through these 'passages of time' (to coin a vile phrase).

What I think is important when skipping ahead is to keep the focus on the story, so that you are talking about the same thing (whether plot, theme, character, setting, mood or whatever) while you make the transition. Pick a story element and use it as your transitional device. Is a character waiting for news? Talk about the waiting while the time passes ("It took me three months to hear back from Derrick; I got his letter on the twentieth day of December"). Huge spans of time? Focus on something big that lasts through the eons ("As the years passed, the great Thorndyke mansion fell gradually into decay" or "Kingdoms rose and fell on the plains of Araxxara, and the great mountain outlived them all, standing imposing and some other adjective..."). You can also, for long leaps across the years, talk about an object ("The Vermeer Stradivarius passed through many hands before it found its way into those of Jakob Meerver...").

The point is to keep the narrative unbroken. What you don't want to do is have the story come to a stop at the end of one time period and then attempt to restart at the beginning of the next time period. The story must keep going during/across the time passage.

An exception to that rule is of course the chapter break, but only if your book is structured so that chapters generally begin further in the future than the last one ends. The reader will catch on to this structure quickly enough so you don't have to do much work aside from remaining consistent. I just read a lovely book where chapters alternate past/present consistently, and I wasn't confused ever. In my last novel, I think I was a bit clumsier handling passage of time than I could've been. My next novel will deal with it better, I swear.

I also think that this technique, of remaining focused on a story element through time changes, works with going backwards in time as well, for flashbacks (ugh) and whatnot. As long as the reader still knows what you're talking about, still is aware of the point of your narration, he will follow you along a great many tangents and timelines. But you have to give them something to hang onto while you gallivant across the years. So connect your timeline together with devices that form the backbone of the story. Don't think of your movement out of the story's "present" as breaks, but as digressions that are part of a larger framework, and tie them to your narrative present somehow.

The other thing to remember is that, very likely, any of the narrative/structural problems you'll come across have already been solved in any number of ways by good writers. I highly encourage you to look at books you admire and see how other writers have solved these problems in their own novels. Remember always to read like a writer, to learn from those who've come before us, and that there is no shame in standing on the shoulders of giants when we ourselves wish to rise above the crowd. That's a lame image but I'm tired, okay?

Caveat Lector: This all supposes that you write the sort of story that I write, in which a flowing and unbroken-seeming narrative is important. If your intent is to sometimes disorient the reader, or if you are trying to make the skips in the timeline stand out, you should ignore all of my advice. There are lots of types of stories, and lots of ways to tell those stories.

Writerly Advice from Mary Yukari Waters

I recently had a chance to have lunch and attend a reading with Mary Yukari Waters, a past teacher of mine that I have mentioned more than once on this blog. Mary’s short stories have been included in The Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Book of Short Stories: The Best Short Stories from a Quarter-Century of the Pushcart Prize, and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. She has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and has also been supported by the Corporation of Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and Hedgebrook. Her debut novel The Favorites is currently available.

DM: Mary, thanks for offering to answer some questions for us!

In your first collection of short stories, The Laws of Evening, you thank Tom Filer and his Goat Alley workshop for guiding your writing. Who was Tom and why was he such a help to you?

MYW: Tom ran, and still runs, a workshop out of his home. The workshop is a combination of regulars, who have been coming for ten or twenty years, and new blood. I attended Tom’s workshops for a good many years before I got published, and the most special thing about them was that they didn’t focus on publishing, but on the old-fashioned artistic spirit – something of an anomaly in this age of MFAs and conferences and networking. Tom used to read us bits from the letters of Tolstoy and Van Gogh and others, or Faulkner’s Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, or a host of other excerpts that he cut and pasted into an enormous scrapbook. I can still remember how it felt to drive home after those sessions, feeling excited and uplifted and reverent.

DM: Your new novel is The Favorites. What would you like our readers to know about it, or about your writing in general?

The Favorites takes place in Japan in the 1970’s and 80’s. It’s about an interfamily adoption in which a woman has to give up one of her babies to her sister-in-law. According to custom, the adoption is kept secret from the child until she comes of age. What complicates this situation is that both of these women live right on the same lane, and their children grow up together. The novel follows this family as these dynamics play out over the succeeding generations.

DM: This book deals with the complexities of Japanese social behavior as a young woman, Sarah Rexford, learns that she must think several steps ahead about her daily actions or risk offending her relatives. What is the purpose of a literary work for you? How important is the educational aspect of your story, or of a book in general? Do you view the explanations of Japanese life as a consequence of what you were trying to say, or was it part of your main message?

MYW: I was never a huge fan of lit classes in college. It seemed to me that they discussed everything but the heart of a story: what the dead rose or the stormy weather symbolized, what the author’s message was, what the theme was, what was going on historically and sociologically and politically when the work was written, etc. One great upside of being a writer is that you don’t have to do that kind of analysis on your own work. I think that creative writing requires you to rely less on left-brain analysis and more on what is subliminal. In other words, you steer by a gut instinct for what “matters,” even though you may not fully understand, at the time, how it works on a conscious level. So to answer your question, I can’t say I have any specific purpose, or message, other than the very basic one of wanting to share a story that I find interesting and moving, and hoping that the reader will feel the same way. The bits about Japanese life are there because I thought they would help the reader better understand the world in which the characters live.

DM: Many writers are working on their first novels or are trying to find an agent to represent their first novels. Can you tell us about how you came to be a client of agent Joy Harris? What qualities should a writer look for in an agent?

MYW: I was lucky in that it was pretty simple. A very kind teacher of mine, who was also a client of Joy’s, thought we might be a good fit. She suggested that I send her a query letter and a manuscript, so I did.

My sense is that the agent you get will probably be determined more by the quality of your manuscript than by any special strategy or personal connections. Believe it or not, this aspect of publishing is still pretty democratic. Someone once compared it to the Field of Dreams: if your work is sellable, then the agents will come. If you’re fortunate enough to have several reputable, competent agents from which to choose, then I would apply the general gut-test. Which one feels most likeable, trustworthy, considerate? Around which one do you feel the most relaxed? And, most importantly, which one really loves your writing?

DM: You also teach writing, and I know from personal experience that you do an excellent job at it. In working with so many beginning and intermediate writers, what are some common problems you encounter, and how can they be fixed?

MYW: Oh gosh, that would take an entire class – which, incidentally, was the class I was teaching when we met! I’ll make one general suggestion, though, and that would be to write about something that matters very deeply to you, that evokes powerful, even uncomfortable and painful, feelings within yourself. I’ve come across a lot of student stories that were well-written, had fine dialogue and fresh images, etc., but I haven’t always gotten the sense that the writers were deeply, personally invested in the stories they wrote. Maybe they wrote those stories because a deadline was coming up, or they wanted to experiment with point of view – and that’s fine. But my feeling is that one powerful, deeply felt story is worth ten competent, lukewarm ones. It’s true that you’ll pay a higher price for that one story; the creative process will be more emotionally intrusive, and you’ll make yourself more vulnerable to the reading public. But I greatly respect personal risk in a writer, and my feeling is that editors do so as well.

DM: Lastly, your work has appeared in some highly respected literary journals such as Zoetrope: All-Story, Glimmer Train Stories, and Triquarterly, as well as in very respected anthologies such as The Best American Short Stories. What, for you, are the key elements a piece of fiction must have before it will be accepted by these publications?

That’s a really great question. I think, though, that it’s sort of like asking what key elements a woman must have before a man will fall in love with her. One could come up with a list: beautiful face, intelligence, sense of humor, great body, etc. And these are all helpful elements to have. But ultimately, what makes a person fall in love is some unique, deeply personal quality that transcends such bread-and-butter qualifications. Similarly, an editor will pick a story not because it conforms to some preconceived list of requirements, but because he’s fallen in love with it – because it has some unique vision, some unique and deeply honest sensibility, that affects him on a personal level. One stumbling block for beginning writers is that they mistakenly hold back from being completely honest, completely themselves, because they think it’s safer to adopt styles and sensibilities that “editor types” will like.

Note: This interview first appeared on SmokeLong Quarterly.

Michelle McLean on Genre Definitions

This week The Literary Lab presents a series of guest posts exploring the conventions of different genres and what writers love and loath about each of them. We're continuing with Michelle McLean on...

Genre Definitions

Genre – basic definition – a literary term used to describe a group of works with similar characteristics such as characters, themes, and setting.

There are more genres than you can shake a stick at – really. So this list is nowhere near completes the possibilities, but these are the most common.

Action/Adventure: Often, though not always, aimed at a male audience. Contains elements of physical action, violence, danger (physical, global, etc), hazards, travel to exotic locations (jungles, deserts, tropical islands). Storylines often contain use of weapons, technology, martial arts. Can and often do contain elements of humor. Examples include the James Bond films, Indiana Jones, the Die Hard movies, the Rush Hour movies, The Mummy movies.

Chick-Lit: geared toward women, often urban settings, includes elements of romance, humor, professional struggles, relationships. Examples include Bridget Jones’s Diary and Sex and the City.

Contemporary: Mostly used to denote the setting. If you have a mystery that is set in present time, on this planet, etc, you could call it a Contemporary Mystery.

Experimental: Usually edgy in style or content. Pulp Fiction would be a good example.

Fantasy: Fantasy stories are set on other worlds or in other realities. You can have vampires or werewolves or fairies, but in general, fantasy creatures tend to be more…fantastic, mythological – dragons, gryphons, three-headed dog beasts. Magic is a huge element of fantasy stories. Here is a little test: if you can take away the “weird” in the story (i.e. the beasts, the magic) and the world you are left with is still not the normal, everyday world you know, it’s a fantasy story. Lord of the Rings is a fantasy.

--Urban Fantasy – this genre is actually closer to a paranormal than a fantasy. These stories deal with magical or paranormal elements in a real world, contemporary (or urban) setting. Many paranormal books could also be classified as Urban Fantasy, including Twilight, Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake and Merry Gentry series, and The Dresden Files.

General: This is kind of a blanket genre for anything that doesn’t fit in any of the other categories. On Golden Pond is an example of general fiction.

Historical: Portrays fictionalized accounts of real life historical events or people. In non-fiction and fiction, a story set in the 1940s or 1950s could be considered historical, and definitely anything set early than that. Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Sister and Anchee Min’s The Last Emperor are examples of historical fiction. This does not apply to Historical Romance. For Romance, anything after 1910 is still contemporary (for now…this may change the farther into the 2000s we get).

Horror: The plot usually contains threats to the main characters that include things like death, mutilation and torture. Horror stories try to create a sense of horror, terror, and revulsion in its readers and have a tendency to be gory. The hero doesn’t always make it out alive in a horror story. Stephen King's The Shining is a great example. Well, any of Stephen King’s books.

Humor/Comedy: The purpose of this genre, as you can probably guess, is to make the reader laugh. Often combined with other elements such as romance and action/adventure. Fletch, Men In Black and Get Smart are examples of humor.

Inspirational: Mostly Christian-based storylines, though points of view of other religions are becoming more popular. Stories contain elements of faith and religion; working through life problems with a focus on a character’s beliefs and religion. An example of inspirational fiction is Janette Oke’s Love Comes Softly series.

Literary: This one can be hard to define. Nathan Bransford has an excellent post about this. Literary fiction tends to be more geared to the characters, the inner workings of their minds and hearts. It does need to have a plot, but as Nathan states, the plot is often beneath the surface, whereas in commercial fiction, the plot is on the surface. Examples would be Out of Africa and Gilead.

Middle Grade: Geared toward preteens. Often have a moral message or lesson; the character learn about self-esteem, confidence, friendship, etc. Charlotte’s Web and Nim’s Island are examples.

Mystery: The plot is geared toward the solving of a problem, often, but not always, murder. Subplots are fine (many have a romantic element), but the “problem” (i.e. the mystery) presented at the beginning must be resolved. The Sherlock Holmes stories are an example.

Niche: This type of book will only appeal to a certain niche of reader. For example, if I wrote a fiction book about frogs that lived in Texas, and that was all the book was about, it would only appeal to those that liked frogs or the state of Texas. So, I would query my hypothetical book Frogs of Texas as Niche Fiction.

Paranormal: Paranormal stories are set in the real world, the world as we know it…with a little extra thrown in. Vampires, shapeshifters, fairies, elves, witches, demons, gargoyles, ghosts, psychics, mediums, telepaths, time travelers…these all belong in the paranormal world. Use the same test as we used for the fantasy worlds…if you can take away the “weird” factors and you are left with our everyday world = paranormal. For example, if you take away the sparkling, gorgeous vampire, or vengeful ghost, or the time portal the main characters travel through, and you are left with everyday Earth – your story is paranormal fiction. Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files and Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse vampire books are examples of paranormal fiction.

Romance: The plot of a romance centers around a couple that fall in love and have a “happily ever after” ending. This is a must; there are no exceptions. If your couple is not happily in love and together at the end of your book, it’s not a romance. It might be a love story (in which case, it would go under women’s fiction) but a romance has to have a HEA. You can have subplots, but the main plotline must be about the couple’s romance. Now, there are so many subgenres to the Romance genre (many totally unique to romance) that I will do a separate post on these next week, so stay tuned.

Science-Fiction: This one is actually pretty self-explanatory. It’s fiction about science. The plot usually has something to do with science or technology and has to be within the realm of possibility. Stories are often set in the future or on other planets. Star Wars, Stargate and Star Trek fall in this category, as do I, Robot, Starship Troopers, Dune, Ender’s Game, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, A Wrinkle in Time, and Jurassic Park.

Suspense: While often lumped together, suspense novels are generally not as intense as thrillers. The threat is often directed at the main character. Can include many elements but often includes mystery, murder, a little romance, danger, action.

Thriller: More intense than suspense; the threat is often against a larger group than just the main character (threats against the community, a city, a country, the world). Usually about life and death situations where ordinary heroes are up against mastermind villains. Generally lots of action and plot twists. The Da Vinci Code, The Hunt for Red October and Enemy of the State are examples.

Western: These are generally set in the Western United States before 1900. There are also contemporary westerns. An example of a Western is The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.

Women's: There are several different sub-genres, but in general this genre is geared toward women; a woman is the main character and her development, life, experiences, etc, are the backbone of the story. Think Fried Green Tomatoes or The First Wives Club.

Young Adult: These books can include any genre but the main character should be the same age as the readers the story is geared toward (teens, 13-18). There can be romance but this element is usually on the tame side. Examples are the Harry Potter books, Twilight, Vampire Academy, and Wicked Lovely.

Once you have your genre down, you can pick your subgenres if necessary. However, do not list your book with more than three genres. If at all possible, keep it to two. You have to be able to narrow your book down. What shelf should it be on in a bookstore? You might have six different elements in your book, but stick to the main two.

Really the only two instances three genres might be necessary is for historicals and Young Adults. One because it tells the time period and the other because it tells the age the book is geared toward. My current book is YA Urban Fantasy. This isn’t overboard, but querying your book as a Mystery Thriller Urban Women’s fiction with romantic and science fiction elements is a bit much. Your book may contain all of those but you don’t need to give it all away.

Erin Anderson (aka The Screaming Guppy) on Science Fiction

This week The Literary Lab presents a series of guest posts exploring the conventions of different genres and what writers love and loath about each of them. We're continuing with The Screaming Guppy on...

Sci-fi you say?

The Screaming Guppy here, weighing in on what makes science fiction (both in reading and writing) awesome!

I needed to come up with a clever and educated opening. So I went to Wikipedia. ;)

Science fiction (abbreviated SF or sci-fi with varying punctuation and capitalization) is a broad genre of fiction that often involves speculations on current or future science or technology. Science fiction is found in books, magazines, art, television, films, games, theatre, and other media. In organizational or marketing contexts, science fiction can be synonymous with the broader definition of speculative fiction, encompassing creative works incorporating imaginative elements not found in contemporary reality; this includes fantasy, horror, and related genres.

Science fiction differs from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically established or scientifically postulated laws of nature (though some elements in a story might still be pure imaginative speculation). Exploring the consequences of such differences is the traditional purpose of science fiction, making it a "literature of ideas". Science fiction is largely based on writing entertainingly and rationally about alternate possibilities in settings that are contrary to known reality.

These may include:

• A setting in the future, in alternative time lines, or in a historical past that contradicts known facts of history or the archeological record
• A setting in outer space, on other worlds, or involving aliens
• Stories that involve technology or scientific principles that contradict known laws of nature
• Stories that involve discovery or application of new scientific principles, such as time travel or psionics, or new technology, such as nanotechnology, faster-than-light travel or robots, or of new and different political or social systems (e.g., a dystopia, or a situation where organized society has collapsed)

There are subcategories as well, but the biggest divide is what could be called “space opera” and “hard sci-fi.” All of the above pretty much applies to both, but hard sci-fi focuses more on real science and making up things inside the scope of what is actually-maybe possible. Space opera is more about cool ideas, epic storylines and made-up science without taking the time to explain things on a deeply scientific level. It’s like watching Star Wars verses watching the Discovery Channel (but with a plot).

I fall into the “space opera” side of things, with a strong aversion to actually having to justify my fake science with chemical equations and physics (of course, there is a balance to keep things believable within the world you create. More on that in a sec). I think this comes from my roots – I used to write almost entirely high fantasy. The draw of the genre (the broader umbrella of “speculative fiction”) for me was that I could create my own worlds, my own magic, races, and societies. Then I realized that guns can be a lot of fun. And I can write sci-fi and still create my own worlds.

The real world is fun, sure. But what happens if the world as we know it collapses? What happens when we met aliens from light years away? What happens when the zombie apocalypse starts? And how do people – humans and humanity – handle the pressure of the world we know becoming something different?

I like big questions, character dilemmas, love, loss, struggle and triumph. I like throwing obstacles in front of my characters and watching them crawl through and come out with cuts and bruises, or, um, dead. Of course, any genre can have these things.

It comes down to world building for me and my fascination with all things fantastic. I live real life everyday, so when I write and read I’m looking for characters I can relate to – in a world different from my own.

World building is a challenge. Anyone who writes fantasy or sci-fi knows what I mean. It adds a new dimension to the creation process. I build my plot; I dream up my characters; I see the conflicts. Now, I get the added amazing task of creating the ENTIRE universe that they live in. But with it comes great responsibility, young Jedi (sorry, too dorky? And I’m not even that big of a Star Wars fan, I promise).

Building your own universe, with your own rules and everything else requires dedication and consistency to trap your reader. Writing in a genre like this means you have to explain everything – and do so in the careful craft of writing something without making it sound like an info dump. Immersion is important in any genre, and I enjoy the challenge of making my reader believe that humans now live only in spaceships and have no planets, or that broken cities now make up arenas for zombie gladiators.

A cliché, but part of the excitement of writing and reading sci-fi is to boldly go where no man (or woman) has gone before. To take your characters to places yet unknown to people outside your own head and then take your readers with them on the journey. To make your characters face the complications of this new reality. The what-if beyond our backyards and the Earth we know. That’s what keeps me interested in this genre: all the depth beyond the pew pew pew.

I like most of the conventions of my genre, though I don’t feel like sci-fi is restricted to space and aliens. And I don’t think sci-fi can’t tell a deep and meaningful story just because you’re zooming around on spaceships blowing up people…rather, biped humanoids.

A few good examples of the type of sci-fi I enjoy reading (and attempting to write):

Bright of the Sky by Kay Kenyon

This is one crazy book – it’s almost like a sci-fi fantasy hybrid. But, the point is, the world building is amazing! It didn’t matter if I was in the alternate universe or the future Earth. I believed it.

Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card

Bigger ideas, neatly wrapped up in a floating space station school for elite children in an alternate future of Earth.

Helix by Eric Brown

A completely CRAZY idea about a fictional structure of a solar system. Insane, impossible, but the way he wrote it made me believe I was there.

Dune by Frank Herbert

The Dune world is a new venture for me, but the first book was enough to hook me into the world.

Some other things that tackle the genre in an awesome way include:

Star Trek – the series and the new movie

Star Wars – the original space opera (referring to the first three movies)

Sunshine – movie, alternative/possible future of Earth, with space ship and character trauma

28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later – technically horror movies, but fall under the umbrella of speculative fiction

Mass Effect – video game. It doesn’t get much more epic than this storyline. Period.

Babylon AD (the movie) and Babylon Babies (the book the movie is based on) – bad ending, but the world building is so cool. I’m still reading the book (it’s a French author, so some stuff is a little strange) but so far the world building, again, is very neat.

The Island – perfect example of a sci-fi dystopian future, with big guns, complicated characters and awesome world building.