How do POV changes alter our perception? Specifically, when each POV tells the same story a different way. Does this work?

If you want to hear my take on the answer you need to jump on over to Terri Bruce's website to find out. I'm doing some blog swapping with fellow Speculative Fiction Group members and so far it's been a lot of fun.

Guest Post: Terri Bruce on the 7 Things I Learned About Writing and Publishing in 2011

Please welcome Terri Bruce, a fellow writer on AQC. She has a great website with a blog where you can read her work, get her insights, and get to know her better. Thank you, Terri, for volunteering to do a guest post! You're all in for some great words of advice so without further ado...here's what she learned last year:

1.       Sometimes it’s out of your hands

You can write awarding-winning prose and still never land a publishing contract. Conversely, you can be nominated for the Kirk Poland Memorial Bad Prose Contest (www.readercon.org) and still be a New York Times Best Selling Author. Getting published doesn’t mean you write well. Not being published doesn’t mean that you don’t. You may never know why your big break never came. Talent and perseverance are only two of the magic ingredients—luck is the third. You have to be in the right place at the right time, hit the right agent at the right moment. Find a way to keep the self-doubt at bay, find a supportive group of peers to commiserate with, and, when you get really down, remind yourself how long it took some of the most famous works out there to get published. (http://www.examiner.com/book-in-national/30-famous-authors-whose-works-were-rejected-repeatedly-and-sometimes-rudely-by-publishers) and (http://susiesmith13.tripod.com/id12.html)

2.       There are many paths to success

If you focus on one particular outcome (i.e. traditional publishing contract) you may be closing yourself off to other opportunities. And I’m not talking just traditional versus self-publishing. By day, I’m a grant writer—I get paid to write, and write passionately, about a cause I love. You may or may not become a famous novelist—but ask yourself, is that the only type of writing you’re capable of or that you would enjoy? If the answer is no, then branch out and find other ways to incorporate writing into your life.

3.       You need four groups of people to succeed—cheerleaders, fans, peers, and mentors. Some individuals may cross groups, but most don’t. Keep that in mind.

A cheerleader is someone who encourages you, tells you that you can do it, picks you up and dusts you off when your courage and resolve flag. This is usually your family and friends.

A fan is someone who actually reads and likes your work (and would pay money for it). These people are usually strangers. Most self-published authors only sell 100 copies of their book because they tend to forget that family and friends are not necessarily the same things as fans. If you mom reads mainly James Patterson and you write YA Fantasy, your mom is a cheerleader, but probably not a fan. Be cautious about venturing into self-publishing until you know for sure that your work can generate genuine fans.

A peer is a fellow writer, usually writing in the same or a closely related genre. These are the people you go to for advice and information. This is where your critique partners should come from.

A mentor is someone who has experience and who has agreed to take a formal, active role in your development and growth. This person is there to kick you in the pants when you need it.

4.       Everybody and their grandma blogs about writing

By all means, blog about writing craft if it sets your heart on fire. But the market for blogs about writing craft is pretty saturated, so if you’re blogging to build a base, then write about something of interest to your fans—if you write historical fiction, blog about history; if you write techno-thrillers, then blog about technology. And, unfortunately, the story of your trials and tribulations on the road to getting published might be of interest to your existing fans, but it’s not going to create fans.

5-7.    Drafting, editing, and polishing is a ten step program

No, really, it’s ten steps—don’t argue with me on this. No, you cannot skip any of them. No, you can’t do them in a different order. No, your manuscript is not ready to be critiqued (and definitely not ready for beta readers!) if you skipped step two. And, no, editors don’t exist so that you can skip steps two through ten.

1)      Put words on paper—this is called the Zero Draft (I just discovered this term recently and I LOVE it). It’s rough, it’s ugly, and you never show it to anyone.

2)      Edit—go back over the Zero Draft and turn it into a rough/first draft—turn dialogue carp into stuff people would actually say, get rid of sentence fragments, ensure there are proper transitions between scenes, make sure the plot hangs together, and make a stab at proper grammar and punctuation.

3)      Critique—critique partners are other writers who read your manuscript with an eye to craft: grammar, punctuation, writing technique, point of view slips, pacing, plot holes, consistency, etc. Most writers opt to have their work critiqued as they write to help ensure the plot is moving in the right direction, but some wait until they have completed the entire draft. Critique partners will shred your rough draft. If they don’t, get better critique partners.

4)      Edit—use your critique partners’ feedback to revise your rough draft.

5)      Re-critique—if the critiques identified substantial character, plot, or pacing problems, submit the revised draft to your critique partners to make sure the problems are fixed.

6)      Read the entire thing—after you’ve finished the round of editing from peer critiques, and when you think you have a finished draft, print out your manuscript and read it like a book. You’ll find mistakes; trust me.

7)      Edit—fix everything you found wrong in step #6. Then put the polish on the manuscript—do a search and replace for almost all “ing” forms of action verbs, delete all your adverbs, change all your dialog tags to “said,” and cut all blow-by-blow details of actions by two-thirds.

8)      Read the entire thing out loud—now that you think you have a finished draft, read the entire thing out loud. No, really, read it out loud. You’ll find stilted language, bad grammar and punctuation, and awkward phrasing.

9)      Edit—fix everything you found wrong in step #8

10)   Beta readers—give the polished manuscript to beta readers (beta readers are people who read your FINISHED and POLISHED manuscript as readers with an eye to readability: is the story interesting, does it pull them in, does it make sense, does it flow well and hold their attention to the end, are the characters likeable, does the ending satisfy, etc.). If the beta readers find substantial problems with the work, then go back to step #4 and repeat from there.

Overall, the most important things I learned in 2011 were that agents are nicer than most people give them credit for (50 rejections and not one of them snarky or mean), writing is subjective and the person I most have to please is myself, and that there is always room for improvement. I can’t wait to see what 2012 has to teach me.

Saturday Link Special #11, Plus!

I hope your new year is off with a bang, in a good way. Whether you make resolutions and goals or not, most people have a pretty good idea of what they intend to aim for in the near future.

1. What are your writing goals for this week, month, or year? You can share in the comments or just sit back and really think about the question. What would you like to accomplish?

To be fair, I’ll share mine. I have another round of revision to do on a manuscript but I also intend to get to work on the second draft of an old NaNoWriMo project and if time allows, tear apart and rewrite the half-written draft of an old story using new ideas and inspiration I’ve had for it. That should keep me good and busy on the writing front. I’ll probably have some beta reading to do as well, but I’m going to cut back a lot on beta reading this year due to new personal obligations and responsibilities.

2. Have you done anything zany, fun, or crazy yet this year? Do you have plans to push yourself in any way, to improve a skill or gird up the courage to do or say something you’ve always wanted to?

Truthfully, I hope to finally dive into the query trenches. I’ve only queried once to publish a magazine article and got lucky on the first shot. I consider that more due to the subject matter and the angle I took on it than my query writing prowess. Query letters are not my forte. So I consider this next step to be both crazy and brave on my part.

3. Because curious minds want to know. What movies are you looking forward to seeing in 2012?

I’m eager for The Hunger Games, The Hobbit, The Dark Knight Rises, and will possibly try to go see Snow White and the Huntsman too.

And now for a little fun. We can’t start off a new year without some of that.

Lastly, the linkage! I know it’s been awhile since I’ve posted some. I can’t promise to keep on doing it regularly, but I’ll try to do it as often as I’m able.

GLA New Agent alerts!
Claire Dunnington of the Vicky Bijur Literary Agency. She's looking for: "YA fiction, and in particular looking for strong realistic YA fiction and literary middle-grade fiction. (For reference, some authors she enjoyed when she was growing up were Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, Louis Sachar, Jerry Spinelli, Noel Streatfeild, Zilpha Keatley Snyder, and Virginia Euwer Wolff). She is happy to consider dystopian and futuristic YA, but is much less interested in vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and the like."

Hannah Bowman of Liza Dawson Associates. She's looking for: "Hannah specializes in commercial fiction, especially science fiction and fantasy, women’s fiction, cozy mysteries, romance and young adult..."

Rachael Dugas of Talcott Notch Literary. She is looking for: "...young adult, middle grade, and adult fiction in the contemporary, paranormal, women’s, and romance genres..."

Jami Gold has a fun Pitch Your Shorts session beginning Jan. 10th. To get ready she has blogposts on Pitch Prep: How to Write a Pitch and Pitch Prep: What Makes a Great First Page?

Need a pick-me-up for the new year? Try reading the Intern's blogpost: dinner with literary agents. Sometimes it's nice to see things on the other side of the looking glass.

Writer Unboxed had a couple of good posts this week: First up is Jael McHenry's Finding the Lines, then for some perspective and a few good writing prompts try out Donald Maass's Warm vs. Cool.

Patricia C. Wrede has an excellent blogpost on Weaving (plot) Threads. Those of you with complex plots, multiple POVs, or several subplots be sure to read this one.

I've run out of time to post more but keep up the good work, those of you who blog!

Blog Spotlight #19: The Writer’s Resource

Today I’d like to point you in the direction of another blog, The Writer’s Resource created by Charissa Weaks.

To directly quote from the blog: “The Writer's Resource is a site that lists helpful blog posts and web articles by topic in an effort to make the writing process a little easier. The goal of this site is to lessen the amount of time aspiring authors spend searching for information therefore increasing the amount of time they have to actually write.”

This blog is a fantastic resource if you’re trying to surf the internet for a specific writing topic or are new to the publishing game and are trying to make sense of it all. It takes time to track down and share good resource links and I’d like to tell Ms. Weaks “thank you” for all her hard work.

Take some time to check her blog out and search around. She also has a nifty submissions page if you’ve written an informative post and would like to share. Another page has a listing of conferences and another direct links to other informative and good blogs that serve as a writing resource.

Disappearing Language

I'd like to preface today's post with a little video:

Seriously. Watch the video first.









Okay, here's assuming you watched it. Wasn't that fun? What did you think about those statistics regarding modern vocabulary versus common vocabulary even a hundred years ago? Children long ago had expansive vocabularies compared to adults today. It's a bit staggering to think about. I'm not saying I'd love to return to the lyrical stylings of Shakespeare but I do pause to ponder when I realize that we lose words from our active English vocabulary more and more each year, and with each passing generation. (And yes, we get new creative words each year to fill in the gap. I use the word creative loosely.)

What has this to do with books? Ever notice how whenever some literary bigshot puts out a list of must-read books most of the titles are for older classics? Kids and adults alike roll their eyes and yawn with boredom at the thought of trying to sludge through classic literature. Part of that reason is the language barrier. We're used to simpler language these days. With constraints and limits to our time, today's market calls for easy to read books that still deliver the rush readers' crave. To have to think or work to get through a book is frowned upon. No one wants to look up a few words in the dictionary, and dare we think of using any of these new—yet old-fashioned—words in our actual speech?

I suppose what frustrates me is when a writer naturally has a wider vocabulary (because writers presumably read a lot and have larger vocabularies than the average person on the street) and they submit their work to others to read and they get a lot of flack for making those readers have to think while reading. Reading today is primarily a pleasurable pursuit and yes, a lot of hype and big advances go to books that sell well because they are accessible to the masses. I'm not knocking on that. Publishing is a business after all. What strikes me as sad, is that in order to sustain the business side, some writers have to dumb down the vocabulary in their books. No one admits that's being asked of us (by the public mostly), but if we want stories to sell, the average person on the street shouldn't be expected to encounter any words that will make them feel uncomfortable because they do not recognize or understand them.

Okay, so some of you are probably thinking, "Yes! I have justification to go full-force in my manuscript and anyone who tells me differently is a vocabulary luddite." Um, no. Like anything, there needs to be balance.

For example, science-fiction is one of those genres where it is tempting and easy for any person of great learning to dive in and expound upon their knowledge within the thin shell of a fictitious story. I've seen it. Some of these types of stories do sell and have an audience—a limited audience, usually made up of other professionals in the same field (or aspiring amateurs) who grasp the terminology used in the story. In actuality, there isn't much story in these novels and many info dumps.

Beware the tendency to unleash your entire vocabulary or professional terminology on your intended audience. Realize that these kinds of books are not usually best-seller material although they can have a faithful following in certain demographics. It doesn't have to be science-fiction. It can be in any field or genre. Words for the sake of words does not a good story make.

Now before anyone gets up in arms, I'm happy to say that there are many books that still get through to the public and do well, that have a sprinkling of abnormal words. Most readers encounter an unfamiliar word, take their best guess at its meaning or skip it. Anyone who tosses a book aside over a handful of unfamiliar words probably isn't the right reader for that book or who has given in to the dumbing-down effect. Don't think I'm calling for tar and feathers here, it's their choice.

Personally, I get a bit tickled when I encounter a abnormal word when I read (especially in middle-grade or YA books.) I also love it when I read an unpublished manuscript that uses direct terminology to describe something in an accessible way. For one thing, it helps to cut down repetitive words and promotes the use of stronger nouns or verbs that don't need extra adjectives and adverbs as descriptors. And yes, I'm not above digging out my hefty dictionary from time to time to really understand a new word's meaning. Afterwards I tend to run into those words in other places and then find myself using them in both writing and speech.

I've seen the same effect with my own children. I read age-designated fiction to them but I also have been reading out of older classics to them. They do pick up on the language and have grasped the meaning of words that go over the heads of their peers. (Plus there's nothing quite as charming and cute as hearing a four-year-old use big words in a sentence.)

There are two sides to the literary snob label. There's the valid argument: why say something with an unfamilair big word when a simpler word will do the trick? True, yet we also run out of simpler words faster and run into repetition issues or sometimes the unfamiliar word drives home the writer's point better than its simpler substitute. I get alarmed at the growing trend in writers to embrace the easy way, to dumb down their prose in order to be more marketable. Society grows stupid with it. We do have an influence. If kids back hundreds of years ago could grasp a wider language because their books taught them too, what are we teaching future generations with our simplier language?

It's important to make books understandable to readers but it doesn't hurt a reader to have to think a little or even stretch their vocabulary. Balance is key. Writers struggle sometimes over word repetition and phrasing that isn't passive. We speak in a passive way and with a restrained vocabulary. Suppose we unshackle that restraint and instead of sticking to basic slang, profanity, and clichéd phrasing we start putting more of our rich, powerful language to use? Sure, kids today speak the way they do. We're also influenced by the world around us. Stay in any environment for long enough and you begin to act, think, and speak like others in that environment. Step into another environment and perception alters because it is not the same world. Written language is no different. If all we produce is dumbed down books, we also help contribute to a dumbed down society with a short attention span.

Give a group of people from one environment the power of influence through literature and other media and watch the masses be influenced by that environment until it spreads and spreads. People forget that there were other environments. Some scoff at others from different environments. Other environments attack the growing mainstream. Hurt and anger rebound. Respect is lost and smaller environments are trampled into dust. Right now we're seeing a mainstream of accessible, easy-to-read fiction full of limited vocabulary and sensationalism. It's always had its place among environments. Yet, it is only one environment and shouldn't be allowed to stomp out the others. It's arrogance to assume any one person's environment should be the mainstream or unchangeable.

There are so many sides to this issue, I can't begin to cover them. I think the video shows the point well. At the end of my ramble here I'd at least like to plead two cases: first, don't ever crush a writer just because you can't understand a handful of words here and there in their manuscript. Grow smarter instead. And secondly, don't go overboard, as a writer, with complicated jargon that makes your story thin and puts the reader at a distance. We shouldn't get all purple prosey or try to show off. Sometimes simple words and terms can have a profound influence. Sometimes moving away from our Teutonic words to Latinate ones works better. We can't go back to Shakespeare's time in an instant, if ever. We live in the here and now. We also recreate the here and now each day. Everyone who writes and shares their words has more influence than they know.