Wordswoman

It's writers' workshop day and I'm trying something new. Instead of approaching each story critique differently, I've put together a fiction critique worksheet to help me shape more consistent feedback on the key story elements.

This is only a rough draft, so I'd love feedback from my LJ writer friends.

Recently I had the happy privilege of critiquing

mmerriam's novel, working title The Phantom Streetcars. It's a lovely piece of urban fantasy that manages to combine Welsh mythology, heart-pounding adventure, mass transit, lesbian romance, swords, sorcery and zombies.

It's an unholy gumbo, in other words. By all rights it shouldn't work—but it does. Once he irons out a few rough spots, this one is going to sell.  (Remember, you heard it here first. I knew him when.)

Reading an entire novel with my critiquer's hat on, though, was quite different than experiencing a novel as a regular reader. I found myself noticing certain small issues in Michael's writing that I struggle with myself, and I suspect many writers do.

 

This weekend I checked out a writers' group that meets near my home. I already belong to a wonderful speculative fiction writers' group and workshop, but much of my writing doesn't fall into that category. So I thought it might be worth sampling a group with a broader focus.

In addition to its openness to all genres, this group had several other pluses:

• Longevity. They've been meeting for years, so they are long past the "growing pains" stage when a group is still sorting out its mission and methods.


• Frequency. They meet weekly, so missing one session doesn't mean a long drought in support/inspiration.
  


• Critical mass. There were at leat 15 members present, many of whom were longtime participants.
  

Unfortunately, I didn't much care for their approach to critiquing. Participants with work to share read their work aloud, after which the others were invited to offer feedback. That format is fine if the purpose of the group is primarily social, but I don't feel it produces very useful feedback. Off-the-cuff critiques tend to single out only the most glaring of faults, and it's too easy to be influenced by a person's speaking skills (or lack thereof). Many brilliant writers are terrible speakers, while a talented orator can make even a dreadful piece thrilling. And shouldn't critiquers experience the work in the same form that an editor will see it?

I'll probably visit once or twice more before I make up my mind, though. I'd like to get better acquainted with the individual members and learn where they're at in their writing careers.

I've been catching up on my critiques for Critters.org, an online workshop for writers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. This batch had several stories with my personal pet peeve: surprise endings.

Don't get me wrong, I am delighted when an author honestly surprises me. But the operative word here is honestly. A deus ex machina is not honest. You can't just pull a rabbit out of a heretofore unseen hat and call it clever.

If your ending hinges upon facts that you've never so much as hinted at to your reader, you're cheating.

A well-crafted surprise ending is a thing of beauty. It's the flowering of seeds skillfully planted early in the story, in plain sight of the reader, all unnoticed until the end. Startling, yet inevitable. Damn, I love it when somebody pulls that off. I want to applaud when a writer blindsides me with something that's been there all along, big as a house, if only I'd been clever enough to pay attention to it.

The playwright Chekhov said that if you put a gun onstage in Act I, you must fire it by Act III. Surprise endings require a corollary: If you're firing the gun in Act III, you have to show it to us in Act I.

This is abominably difficult to do well. If you're too obvious, you might as well hold up a big sign saying THIS IS IMPORTANT LATER. If you're too subtle, your reader will be scratching her head at the end, saying, "How the f--- could the butler do it? What butler?" If it can't be done elegantly, you're better off trying to craft a strong ending that doesn't rely on the element of surprise.

I think the acid test is that a bad surprise ending is only satisfying once (if that). A good surprise ending is satisfying even when you've read it before.

Miss Snark, the literary agent is conducting another Crapometer on her blog, this one devoted to "hooks" written by would-be novelists. Miss Snark skewers or sings the praises of each attempt; her moniker should clue you as to which response is likelier.

Submissions are now closed, so don't invite her wrath by sending an entry--but if you're a writer, do check out the entries and her comments. If you scroll down slowly, you can place your bets on Miss Snark's reaction before you read her feedback. Which ones make you want to read more? Do you think like an agent? Do you agree or disagree with her judgments?

Previous Crapometers invited submissions of cover letters and first pages. It's well worth wading through her archives to find them.

My submission is in her queue, but with 500+ ahead of me, she won't reach it for days. A cookie to anyone not already acquainted with my novel who can spot my style, though!

No, this isn't about holiday cooking. :)

I participate in both an online writers' group and a real-world writers' workshop. Last night as I worked on story critiques, I found myself repeating two comments:

• "Your writing style has good bones, but there's too much fat on them."
• "This story seems to take place in a white room. I can't see the surroundings or visualize the characters."

Hyperdescription is the condition that my friend Hilary Moon Murphy calls "being overdrawn at the adjective bank." Here's a deliberately dreadful example:

Lila removed her stylish blue cloque hat with one slender manicured hand, then carefully smoothed the shining auburn curls framing the perfect ivory oval of her heartbreakingly beautiful face. With a sultry wiggle of her shapely backside, she settled herself into the battered oak chair opposite my cluttered desk and suggestively crossed her long, nylon-covered legs.

Ugghhh. Hear those poor sentences groaning under the excess weight? That's 56 words just to say "Lila took off her hat and sat down." And the extra poundage is fat, not muscle. What does "beautiful" really tell us about Lila? Does anybody care that the chair is made of oak? More importantly, can the reader find an honest, active verb hidden in all that mess?

Hypodescription is just the opposite. There's little or no descriptive detail. Here's another awful invented example:

Bob showed up around half past five. "I don't feel like going to this party," he said.

"What?" Mary cried. "But you promised!"

Bob shrugged and sat down. "Changed my mind."

Mary stormed off furiously, slamming the door behind her.

Um...what door? And what did Bob sit on? Where are these people? Who are these people?

Obviously there's no magic formula here. Who's to say how much description is too much? Too little? A thriller with a hard-boiled hero may demand pared-down prose; a period romance might call for lush, detailed descriptions of every ball gown. But readers will notice if a writer veers too far toward either extreme, and beginning writers often do.

I'm a hypodescriber by nature--I have to make a deliberate effort to go back and work in visual/sensory details and character attributes. A writing teacher once called my descriptions "light and cerebral," and recommended that I work on appealing to all the senses. I try to, but it often feels forced to me.

Where do you fall on the spectrum, O my writer friends?

I got a sage piece of advice at yesterday's meetup of the Twin Cities Speculative Fiction Writers Network. After reading an excerpt from my unfinished "Quantum Ghost" (which seemed well received, or at least got no critical feedback), I wondered out loud why I was having such trouble finishing it.

"It's one of the few stories where I know exactly what's going to happen," I said. "I've got a complete synopsis, which I never do. I've mapped out every scene. But I still can't seem to get it written."

Michael Merriam smiled gently in my direction. "Maybe you need to put away the synopsis," he said.

Hilary concurred. "Your characters may want to do something different."

Jason pointed out that while some writers can't work without a complete outline, others work best by creating interesting characters and standing back to see what they do.

So simple. So obvious, in retrospect. But it never crossed my mind because I was so proud of knowing the beginning, middle and end for once. So many of my stories sit unfinished for weeks or months while I wait for a shadowy path to become clear to me, or a character to reveal a secret. A synopsis, I thought, would make the writing a breeze. A synopsis was progress.

Back home after the meetup, I started up my laptop. An hour and three pages later--three pages that resembled my synopsis not at all--I had to stop and smile gently in Michael's direction (northwest). The story still isn't finished, but it's unstuck, and that's exactly what I needed.

Thanks, guys.

" O would some Power the gift to give us
To see ourselves as others see us!"
- Robert Burns

Two chapters of my novel were critiqued yesterday at the SF Writers Workshop (a sub-group of TCSFWN). The feedback was generally positive, the criticism constructive. But I was struck in particular by some comments from male reviewers about a chapter dealing with a male character, Bo.

• One thought that what I considered a rather cruel remark by Bo's ex-girlfriend wasn't all that cutting. In fact, the reviewer thought less of Bo for taking it personally. My husband made a similar observation when he read the chapter. The woman was commenting on Bo's appearance, comparing his skinny beanpole physique to Ichabod Crane and a scarecrow. I considered this a pretty nasty thing to say in bed; I know women who would burst into tears if a lover made such a remark about them. But it seems that it may not be all that mean from a male perspective.
• Another man thought I might be feeling too sorry for Bo for his woman troubles (the chapter mentions several failed relationships). From a male perspective is commiserating over lousy relationships a "womanly" trait, I wonder?

On a similar note, another female critiquer and I were repulsed by a brief incident in a male writer's novel where a telepathic character uses mind control on a woman, sexually arousing her so that she won't realize he's helping a prisoner escape. The prisoner, a young man, looks on thinking what a handy talent that would be. Both of us women said, "Ewwwww! These are supposed to be the good guys? What does the kid think this ability would be useful for, rape?" None of the male reviewers commented on the scene.

Moral of the story: If your target audience is both sexes, make sure you have both men and women among your early readers.

The writers’ workshop that I participate in (and help organize) has a lengthy list of guidelines. But if I had to pick just one sentence to become the Golden Rule of workshop groups, it would be this:

“Honesty is essential; diplomacy is required; brutality is prohibited.”

Diplomacy is in the middle for a reason; it’s the dividing wall that keeps brutality from creeping into the honesty. But what is a diplomatic critique, practically speaking? My common-sense definition would be, “A critique that’s honest enough to help, but not so harsh that the writer is too wounded to hear or heed it.”

Diplomatic does NOT mean:

• Praising things that aren’t praiseworthy
• Encouraging a writer to submit something that’s not ready for prime time
• Glossing over serious flaws to avoid hurting someone’s feelings

That kind of diplomacy does nobody any favors, least of all the writers who aren’t getting the truthful feedback they need to grow in their craft. The goal of any writers’ workshop is (or should be) to help members do the best work of which they’re capable. That can’t happen if writers get unearned praise, spurring them on to submit work that isn’t ready for an editor’s eyes.

But while a critique shouldn’t come sugar-coated, nor should it be covered with poisonous barbs. A wounded writer isn’t going to write better; he’s going to either turn and attack, or go away to bleed in private. Neither makes for a happy workshop. As the Critter Captain (Andrew Burt of online critique group Critters) so wisely notes, “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.”

With that in mind, I’ve tried to draft some examples, and I hope other writers will share their own in the Comments.

• Brutal: “Your characters are completely one-dimensional.”
  Better: “I had some trouble seeing your characters clearly. Could you do X, Y, or Z to help the reader get to know them better?”

• Brutal: “I’ve seen Swiss cheese with fewer holes than your plot.”
  Better: “I started to feel a bit skeptical around page 3, when the hero was run over by a truck without getting a single scratch. I also wondered how he could have been married for ten years without his wife noticing that he’s a werewolf. Will you be adding some explanation of that in your next draft?”

• Brutal: “What drug were you on when you wrote this?"
  Better: “The psychedelic writing style was a bold experiment, but I'm afraid that I found it too hard to follow.”

• Brutal: "This is so unoriginal. I've seen this story a hundred times before."
  Better: "It's always a challenge to retell a popular plot while still surprising your readers. Have you considered giving this a new twist somewhere to really make this your own?"

• Brutal: "Your story put me to sleep."
  Better: "I found myself feeling impatient for the action to begin."

• Brutal: "I wouldn't quit the day job if I were you."
  Better: "This story just didn't work for me. Hey, look--cookies!"
  

Tags: critiques