Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 1

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SRHowen

I'll add

Simultaneous submissions ok?



Yes, if and only if the publisher says "simultaneous submissions are okay" in their guidelines.

Note: this does not apply to query letters. It applies to the submission of the entire ms.

Shawn
 

James D Macdonald

More Cussing

To quote from one of our own works (isn't a huge ego wonderful?):

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>
"Son of a wizard-glamored troll!" Kay yelled, and slammed his fist into the stone wall. "The hairy little wart isn't ever going to forget that I used to beat him up regularly when I thought he was just my baby brother!"
<hr></blockquote>

That's from "Holly and Ivy" in <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/0399225404/ref=nosim/madhousemanor" target="_new">Camelot</A>, edited by Jane Yolen.

Now special cases here. First, it's an Arthurian fantasy, for young adults. So we can't use actual nasty profanity. Yet we are trying to show Sir Kay turning the air blue around him with his horrid oaths and curses. (Sir Kay traditionally has a foul temper.)

So ... that bit. Throws in a bunch of backstory (Arthur's father, Uther Pendragon, was wizard-glamored at the time of Arthur's begetting) and a quick reference to T. H. White's <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0441627404/ref=nosim/madhousemanor" target="_new">Once and Future King</A> ("wart").

On the down side: Two exclamation points, and a 'said' word other than said.

Overall, I think it's a pretty fair example of YA/fantasy profanity. It gives a feeling, both for character and time/place, without keeping librarians from ordering copies.

(This dialog occurs on the second page of the story... it continues:)

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>
 

James D Macdonald

Career Commentary

In the course of my career, I've been published by:

Archway
Avon
Ballantine/Ivy
Berkley
Berkley/Ace
Byron Preiss Multimedia/Pocket
DAW
Forge
Harcourt Brace
Harper Junior Books
Harper
HarperCollins
Masquerade
Philomel
Roc
Rosen
Scholastic
Swordsmith
Tor
Troll
Valiant
Warner/Aspect
Warner
Wildside

In no case did I have to go to a bookstore manager to ask for my works to be shelved. In every case I found (when ego scanning) one or more bookstores with copies of each work already on the shelves.

Those who tell you that only 1% of authors see their works stocked in bookstores are fibbing; among tradtionally published authors, darn near 100% see their works shelved in bookstores without any intervention on the author's part.

How long it will be shelved, and where it will be shelved I can't tell you. But shelved it will be, since publishers only make money if they sell books to the general public.

As for the claim that publishers don't market the books of first-time authors:

Balderdash.

Ask yourself if this is likely: The publisher acquires the book for some amount of money. They then spend some amount of money on editing, a cover, printing, and warehousing.

Then ... the publisher makes no attempt to recoup that investment? Come on! They're throwing away that money for the fun of it? They'd be out of business in no time if they did that. They have to be doing everything they can to make a profit on those books. The only way they can make a profit is by selling them. The only way they can sell them is to get them into bookstores. So there you go.
 

jeffspock

An entertaining exercise

I just did this, for God knows what reason, for a workshop. Write a story (not too long, say 2k words max), that has:

- Only dialogue. No dialog tags, no exposition, no narrative, no description.

Ouch. You have to use dialog to convey not only the characters and what they are doing, but also action (fiendishly difficult), the passage of time (very difficult), the backstory (somewhat difficult), and setting (difficult).

- No infodumps, no "As you know Bob" permitted.

- Characterization--can only be driven by language, by responses, and by 'verbal tics.'
- Plot--You can't 'tell,' you can only 'show.'
- Setting--You can only refer to things (weather, surroundings, time, place) in ways that seem logical for the characters.

Okay, you ask, "Why the hell should I do that?"

What it did for me was to force me away from doing too much "stage direction" of my characters, which is a perennial problem in my writing.

Go ahead and try, it's actually a lot of fun.
 

SRHowen

yes it is

I did that once. And it was fun. It makes you think in new ways. The very next story I wrote after the exercise was by far much better than the one before.

Side note: next month WCP will be having an interview with James. I had a blast doing it, and learned a lot about our dear uncle Jim. I can tell you this he is a lot nicer and more open than Uncle Orsen. (Orsen Scott Card)

Shawn
 

James D Macdonald

Re: yes it is

"A lot nicer"? You didn't see me making faces, sticking out my tongue, and wiggling my fingers in my ears.

<hr>

Oh, yeah, and ego thing.... we've got a story that was written in pure dialog. Around 800 words. It's published in Vampires (Jane Yolen, ed.), and has been continously in print for the past eleven years. (Royalty checks twice a year, o yassss!)

Available used starting at $0.99. Buy one, better still, buy a dozen. They make excellent Labor Day gifts.

This, my friends, is why I prefer selling short stories to anthologies rather than to magazines. Magazines, one-time payment, it's off the stands in a month. In an anthology, same payment, but the chance it'll stay in print and earning money forever.
 

Joanclr

Re: Career Commentary

That works for me, but how does one get into an anthology? It's my guess that tends to be more by invitation, or having the published experience behind your belt - am I right?

On a similar subject - do anthologies publish stories that have been already printed in a magazine? Or do they usually need to be on their first run to be considered?
 

James D Macdonald

Re: Career Commentary

For anthologies -- first, you have to learn which anthologies are open. This may be a matter of networking, or it may be a matter of reading the trade magazines. When editors have open anthologies they put out the word in places where it's likely they'll find writers.

Cruise your bookstores. Editors who have put out anthologies in the past may be working on others. Write to them.

Some anthologies are open to previously published works. Query. (We've got one story that's been in three anthologies so far.)

The way this sort of thing usually works:

The editor proposes an anthology to a publisher, saying "I'll get Stephen King, John Grisham, Tom Clancy, and a few other people...." If the publisher buys it, they give the editor an advance to put together the anthology.

The editor sends invitations to Stephen King, John Grisham, and Tom Clancy, who all send back polite notes saying "So sorry, much too busy...." At this point the anthology opens up, and you have a chance to be one of the "few other people."

The editor pays you per word out of that advance he got.

Your story is edited by the editor, and, after the entire anthology is turned in, by the publisher.

Now it's published. Nothing much happens until the book earns out its advance. Then ... after the advance is earned out, the anthology editor keeps half of each royalty check and divides the rest pro rata among the authors. If the anthology is selling well, this can be ... an astounding amount of money. We had one 10,000 word story that sold for $0.05/word. That was $500. Okay, fine. The very first royalty period brought another $800. Things kept up like that for quite a while. That anthology eventually went out of print ... and we sold the same story to another anthology for a whole 'nother advance. I think that story's well over a dollar a word by now.

So, let's look for some open anthologies for you...

Go to Google and search on the following keywords: Submission Guidelines Anthology

Use the same standards you would for any publisher: Is this advance against royalties? If not, you aren't interested. Is this a publisher you've heard of, that has bookstore sales? If not, you're not interested.

Subscribe to various writers' newsletters. Open anthologies are announced there from time to time. Remember, sometimes the opening is very brief -- a month. I know of anthologies that have filled in a week. It's highly competitive. But so's all of commercial writing. Don't let that slow you down.

Do not ever pay to get published.
 

SRHowen

ROFLMAO

"A lot nicer"? You didn't see me making faces, sticking out my tongue, and wiggling my fingers in my ears.

Yeah, but you didn't see the interview I did with Card--he didn't answer the questions asked--I don't know what questions he answered --we did an email interview--but they were not the ones I wrote and he got nasty when asked certain things. I am not even sure WCP will use his interview, it makes him look like either fool or a jerk.

Shawn
 

JoannaC

A Question

Hi James and everyone

I have a question for you about backstory. I always find it tricky to work it in, and I would like some advice on a particular situation.

My main character is very distrustful of the police due to an incident that occured when she was a child. it is important that the reader know the incident, but they do not need to know it on page one. Anyway, during the story, there will be a crime, she will be a suspect and one of the police investigators will become her love interest.

So my question is when do I introduce the incident? There is a graceful place to do so at about chapter 6, when we first meet one of the other people who was involved in the incident (this person is my character's mentor figure) but at the same time I feel like I should save it for when she inevitably (but much later) tells the love interest, because I think it will be important characterization-wize for the reader to see how he reacts to the tale.

But that is much later in the story and I do not want the reader spending the whole time until then wondering what the heck her problem is :)
 

James D Macdonald

Re: A Question

Oh, dear, JoannaC. How can I answer your question without reading your novel?

General principles:

You're always in the middle of the story, yet you never have to explain everything that's gone before.

People refer to things. Have them refer to important information naturally. Avoid the dread "As You Know Bob" dialog.

The source of information and the source of interest should be the same.


<HR>

Mr. Earbrass had much the same problem in <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0151004358/ref=nosim/madhousemanor" target="_new">The Unstrung Harp</a>. How he solved it is never mentioned. This is a common problem. I've had it too.

Possible solutions:

Come right out and tell the readers, in your role as narrator. Maude, a pleasant, blue-eyed girl, had thumbs that constantly pained her since her accident at age twenty-five.

Bring in a stranger, who can ask another, more knowledgeable character. "What's the matter with her?" Fred asked.
 

maestrowork

Re: yes it is

Yup. Find a way to work your backstory into your scenes. Granted, sometimes it's just easier and better to do it in expository narratives. But it's always better if you can work it into your scenes, either through dialogue (but be careful not to info dump), or a reference. Jim gave some really good examples.
 

James D Macdonald

Re: yes it is

Fact is, if your characters are well-realized remarkably little backstory needs to be given explicitly.
 

JoannaC

Re: A Question

Thanks James :) That was pretty much what I was thinking, but I have to admit, I find backstory very tricky. In my previous novel, which I wrote for Nanowrimo last year as practice knowing it would likely not be publishable, several of my readers commented that I was too cagey, that they felt I was crossing the line between "being suspenseful" and "hiding things from the reader." In fact, one of my readers broke down all the conversations in the novel by topic, and three of them were "character X and character Y discuss the fact that they need to have a conversation about topic Z, but they do not actually do so." I thought I was saving the dramatic suspense for later, and really my reader was shouting "oh my g-d just TALK already, you idiots!" at my characters :)

I think that this time around the reader will know she has a history based on her actions. The mentor character runs a group she is part of, so a brief mention of how she has known Althea since she become involved in the group several years ago after a childhood incident brought them together should be fine. I can then elaborate on the incident later.
 

reph

Re: A Question

Joanna, besides the guidelines already given, the way you introduce the backstory will depend on who the POV character is (the traumatized woman's or somebody else's) and how intimate/subjective the POV is.
 

JuliePgh

Re: yes it is

<blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr>Bring in a stranger, who can ask another, more knowledgeable character. "What's the matter with her?" Fred asked.

"Nerves," Bill replied. "Ever since her skiing accident in '98. Can't go past a goalpost without yodeling. Dreadful thing."
<hr></blockquote>

What exactly constitutes Information Dumping in a scene where, for example, characters A and B come across a police report about character C. The details are intricate and can't be summed up easily without doing a disservice to explain character C's behavior. Not everything is as easy as referring to a ski accident and letting the reader's imagination go from there.
 

HConn

Re: yes it is

It's only info dumping if the reader isn't interested in the exposition. If the reader is primed to find out why character c is acting strangely, the exposition will be fun to read.
 

SRHowen

or if

the two characters are talking about something both of them know--the Well, as you know, she had a bad accident in '72 and ever since then she has blah blah--

When both characters already know the facts, this becomes a bad device used by the author to inform the readers.

Shawn
 

SimonSays

when two characters know

SR - one of the ways around that is if the exposition comes out in the framework of conflict.

For example:

"We can't afford to go if it's just the two of us. Let's ask Carrie"

"She won't come, you know how she feels about long car trips.

"But her accident was 30 years ago, she should be over it by now"
 

SRHowen

Re: yes it is

Same thing, different wording. The characters are still talking to each other only to inform the reader, not each other--they already know the info.

Better to keep it out of the dialog completely.

If you want to (need the reader to know about the accident or whatever) better to frame it in character thoughts.

"If we split this trip three ways we can afford to go."

John thought of asking Carrie. No, Carrie wouldn't go, ever since her accident she refused to get in a car.

It's logical that John might in a momentary lapse consider that Carrie might go, then rethink it. But it is not logical that two character's would discus common knowledge between them. And it has the advantage of showing us something about the relationship between Carrie and John--

Better yet:

"Carrie, she'll go," Sam said.

"No, she won't," John countered.

Sam grunted. "She will, she told me she wanted to go see the flying saucer."

"Fine, we'll ask her--but I'm telling you she won't go."

John and Sam took the short trip to Carrie's and knocked on her door. When Carrie answered she hung onto the door frame and peered out at them. She wasn't wearing her prosthesis today. What the car accident had left of her right leg stayed hidden under her skirt.

Info in this case is given by inference. The reader assumes that she won't go because of the accident--and it can be reinforced through dialog that makes use of back story, but doesn't spoon feed it to the reader.

Shawn
 

SimonSays

exposition and dialogue

I still say that if you are going to use dialogue as a way to get out exposition, then it is best do it through conflict. Obviously there are other ways to get out expostion. But if dialogue is the route you take - USE CONFLICT.
 

JoannaC

Re: or if

Okay, this might be a dumb question, but...

Why is exposition necessarily a bad thing? Sometimes the reader does need to know about stuff that you either can't or should not show them. For example, things that happened before the story. Or things that would be boring. Or time lapses where you suddenly jump the the next morning without showing how your character spent the night.

"Show don't tell" is a useful guideline to keep in mind, but you can't have a novel that is ALL show and NO tell, anymore than you can have one that is all dialogue and no things that are not dialogue.

On a somewhat related note, has anybody read "Bitten" by Kelley Armstrong? She has some beautiful language and interesting characters, but she also has long paragraphs of exposition about things that happened before the story started. She deploys these in what i think are the right spots, but I kept having flashbacks to the reader response to my own work from nano last year, where several people commented that the backstory sounded more interesting to them than the current story. Her main character is an orphan who never had a family and longs for one, yet all that is taken away from her prior to the beginning of the story when her werewolf lover impulsively bites her and turns her into a werewolf. We do get to see some of this in flashback later on, but honestly, I kept checking the author bio page to make sure this really was the first book, and that we never got to see this other stuff. As for the current book---most of it seems to be "Elena verbally spars with her boyfriend, then they go running in the forest, then they turn into werewolves and have sex, then they turn back into people and finisht he sex, then something happens, then they verbally spar..." etc. It is all very pretty and nicely done and such, but doesn't the backstory sound a little more fun?
 

HConn

Re: or if

Why is exposition necessarily a bad thing?

It's only a bad if it's not handled correctly.

For instance, you shouldn't include the boring parts. And your backstory shouldn't be more interesting than the actual story.

There has already been several pieces of good advice from others here. Just remember that exposition should not fill in back story; it should be advancing the story you're telling.
 
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