May 10, 2017 | Author: Allan López-Negrete | Category: N/A
From The Editors of Writer’s Digest Books
The Craft & Business of
Writing
Essential Tools for Writing Success
Introduction by Robert Brewer, editor of Writer’s Market
The Craft & Business of Writing © 2008 by The Editors of Writer’s Digest Books. Manufactured in China. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published by Writer’s Digest Books, an imprint of F+W Publications, Inc., 4700 East Galbraith Road, Cincinnati, Ohio 45236. (800) 289-0963. First edition. Visit our Web sites at www.writersdigest.com and www.wdeditors.com for information on more resources for writers. To receive a free weekly e-mail newsletter delivering tips and updates about writing and about Writer’s Digest products, register directly at our Web site at http://newsletters.fwpublications.com. 11 10 09 08 07
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Distributed in Canada by Fraser Direct, 100 Armstrong Avenue, Georgetown, ON, Canada L7G 5S4, Tel: (905) 877-4411; Distributed in the U.K. and Europe by David & Charles, Brunel House, Newton Abbot, Devon, TQ12 4PU, England, Tel: (+44) 1626 323200, Fax: (+44) 1626 323319, E-mail: postmaster@david andcharles.co.uk; Distributed in Australia by Capricorn Link, P.O. Box 704, Windsor, NSW 2756 Australia, Tel: (02) 4577-3555 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The craft & business of writing : essential tools for writing success / from the editors of Writer’s Digest Books. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-1-58297-487-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Authorship. I. Writer’s Digest Books (Firm) PN145.C83 2008 808’.02--dc22
Edited by Lauren Mosko Designed by Claudean Wheeler Production coordinated by Mark Griffin
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Table of Contents
Foreword by Robert Lee Brewer, editor of Writer’s Market................................... vii
Part I: Introduction Getting Started............................................................................................................................ 1 General Business....................................................................................................................... 39
Part II: Fiction The Craft of Fiction.................................................................................................................. 75 The Business of Fiction.........................................................................................................140
Part III: Nonfiction The Craft of Nonfiction.........................................................................................................179 The Business of Nonfiction..................................................................................................203
Part IV: Children’s Writing The Craft of Children’s Writing..........................................................................................231 The Business of Children’s Writing....................................................................................275
Part V: Poetry The Craft of Poetry.................................................................................................................315 The Business of Poetry...........................................................................................................358 Contributors.................................................................................................................379 Index...............................................................................................................................388
foreword by Robert Lee Brewer, editor of Writer’s Market
T
he art of craft and the skill of business seem impossibly linked for those who have dreams of “making it” as professional writers. To sell your work, or at least to make consistent sales over a period of time, you have to master the craft of writing (which is more than just noun-verb sentences that have correct punctuation and don’t run on). The craft of writing involves plot, characters, dialogue, voice, and so much more. But even writers who’ve honed their craft find themselves unprepared for the business of writing, so their polished manuscripts go unread because they don’t know how to query an article or propose a book. As the publishing industry becomes increasingly competitive, the only writers who will see their work in print are those who know the mechanics of both the manuscript and the market. Luckily, this book has the answers you need to realize your dreams as a writer. The information in these pages was culled from more than eighty years of our Writer’s Market series of books, which now include Writer’s Market, Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market, Poet’s Market, Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market, Guide to Literary Agents, Photographer’s Market, Artist’s & Graphic Designer’s Market, and Songwriter’s Market. Our market guides have been used by successful writers and professionals since their inception, providing the contact and submission information for thousands of publishing opportunities. In addition to listing book publishers, magazines, literary agents, contests, and more, our guides have also included articles that inform and inspire working writers. This book is for people who wish to find success as writers—no matter what their genre or specialty. In fact, if you are unsure which niche you wish to pursue as a writer, this book will be incredibly helpful in your decision-making process. Fiction, nonfiction, children’s writing, and poetry are all covered here with articles explaining the craft and business sides of each genre. The range of genres makes this book
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comprehensive; the inclusion of both craft and business information for each genre makes it truly unique. I was first introduced to the knowledge of the Writer’s Market series when I was still in high school. My first copy was read cover to cover, and I started submitting a lot of unprepared manuscripts. While I had ambition, my craft was still in its infancy. Over time, I’ve been published and paid for my writing. I have Writer’s Market and these articles to thank for that. And now, of course, I’m the editor. As I’ve contacted professionals for listings, interviews, and articles in my book, I’ve found over and over that other publishing professionals—writers, editors, agents, and publicists—have found success using the listings and articles in the Writer’s Market series. When one of our readers suggested combining the best advice from the entire series into one volume that could be easily referenced, we finally had the “excuse” to resurrect years of hard work. So began The Craft & Business of Writing. I was lucky enough to help go through this massive archive of articles to provide you with the true timeless gems of writing and marketing advice that will help you realize your goals. This project took more than a year of compiling only the best information available. And now that you have this book in your hands, I advise reading it closely. Thousands of writers have found success by doing so. You could be the next. Until next we meet, keep writing and marketing what you write.
Robert Lee Brewer Editor Writer’s Market WritersMarket.com
The Craft &Business of Writing
Writing on the Run: Find Time To Write................................................................... 1 by
Allen & Linda Anderson
Nine Habits of Published Authors............................................................................... 5 by
Stephen Blake Mettee
Building a Writing Career............................................................................................ 9 by
Sean Murphy
The Writer-Editor Relationship................................................................................. 16 by
William Brohaugh
Making Manuscripts More Salable.......................................................................... 21 by
Glenda Tennant Neff
Overcoming Writer’s Block........................................................................................ 25 by
Anthony Tedesco
What to Know Before Your Book Comes Out......................................................... 29 by
M.J. Rose
The Scams Are Out There!......................................................................................... 34 by
Nancy Breen
General Business Literary Agents: What They Do and How to Get One............................................. 39 by the
Staff of Writer’s Market
A Writer’s Guide to Money........................................................................................ 44 by
Gary Provost
Smooth Starting for Full-Time Freelance Writing................................................... 50 by John
F. Lauerman
The Art of Negotiation................................................................................................ 58 by
Gregg Levoy
Book Contract Clinic: Quick Fixes for Bad Clauses................................................. 63 by
Stephen E. Gillen, Esq.
Getting Started/ General Business
Getting Started
Writing on the Run: Find time to write by
Allen & Linda Anderson
G
uilt slithers onto the scene, masquerading as a writer’s envious companion, and it reminds us every minute we spend writing could be used in another way. Guilt is why writers transform ourselves into brazen thieves of time. No one is completely successful at eliminating every twinge of guilt when the “shoulds” start raining down, but there are simple and innovative ways to decrease the intensity of push-pull thoughts and feelings. As a husband-and-wife writing team, we shared a strong desire to be published authors. Yet we were already busy people with complex lives and responsibilities. We often felt guilty for taking time away from our children, our jobs, and each other, but we knew that to be truly happy, we wanted and needed to write. Our passion for our subject, our willingness to work hard to achieve our goals, and our ability to find the inbetween moments in life helped us learn what we call “writing on the run.” We became proficient at writing anytime, anywhere. Allen’s day job required him to travel 80 to 90 percent of the time all over the United States, so his writing took place in airports and hotel rooms. Linda wrote at home, where she had to keep up with the responsibilities of an active family of growing children and pets, a day job in public relations, an aging house, and numerous tasks such as shoveling snow in the Minnesota winter (which seems to last all year). In order to write; find publishers for our books, articles, and columns; and publicize and promote them, we devised systems for building writing time into almost every aspect of daily life. Following are some of the suggestions we and other writers have discovered for finding guilt-free time to enjoy the gift of writing.
Writing at Home The person who writes at home tends to rise earlier than others in her household, stay up later, and write when family members are otherwise occupied. She cooks, cleans, cares for the children, and performs chauffeur duties while writing—at least in her imagination.
Getting Started
The home writer devotes drawers or shelves to holding writing materials. Notebooks and pens are easily accessible in every room, along with handheld tape recorders and laptop computers ready to capture her brilliant ideas for later transcription. She shields herself from interruptions by writing in the bathroom, in the corners of the bedroom, in the laundry room, and at the kitchen table while the kids and spouse are elsewhere. She writes while meals cook, while children do homework, and while her spouse watches television. She posts “Do Not Disturb” and “Mom Will Be Available Again at ___ O’Clock” signs on the door to the bedroom she has converted into an office space. She loses herself in fantasy worlds and creates white noise to eliminate distractions by running the vacuum cleaner or garbage disposal. The writer who is a parent of young children faces challenges to her aspirations that would seem to defy solution. Yet the writer can be terrific at creating ways to appease the guilt monster. Jennifer Scheel Bushman laments that, because she stays at home with her children, even though she is the author of Hard Sleeper, people don’t understand she works at writing. She’s found ways to be both a good parent and a published novelist. “I hire a babysitter, exchange babysitting with a friend, or write while my daughter takes a nap. I carry a notebook and pen and my work with me wherever I go. Most importantly, I’ve learned to push aside my guilt and steal away on the weekends to my home office with my husband tending to the children. I block out people’s remarks about our grass being too long or that they can’t believe I don’t iron. I’ve stopped feeling guilty for doing something I love, pursuing a dream, and trying to do it all.”
Writing on the Job Writers and best-selling authors weren’t blessed with any more time to write than most of us. They usually started out their careers, and often continued them, while holding day jobs. In I’d Rather Be Writing, Marcia Golub writes, “Anton Chekhov was a doctor, William Carlos Williams was too. Franz Kafka worked in insurance, T.S. Eliot in banking. Henry Miller was a telegram messenger.” In Women Who Write, Lucinda Irwin Smith reports Agatha Christie’s job in a pharmacy gave her free time each day to study bottles of poison. Armed with this knowledge, she went on to write her mysteries, having researched how victims could meet their deaths. Many writers think they shouldn’t use time at work to write, but the guilt of writing at work, when an employer is paying for the time, doesn’t have to be an obstacle. Every job requires taking breaks, and many people write during a portion of their lunchtime and through coffee breaks. The on-the-job writer doesn’t buy into the fallacy that he can’t write without having large blocks of time to devote to a project. Because he isn’t gifted with hours or days for writing, the on-the-job writer values minutes and transforms them into opportunities for incrementally achieving goals—he quickly researches a fact or statistic, or he writes one more paragraph, sentence, snatch of dialogue, or detail about a character. For quick and easy access, the at-work writer keeps in a desk drawer, on a bookshelf, or in his briefcase an array of writing materials: notebooks, pens, a computer disk for saving files to take home.
The Craft & Business of Writing
The on-the-job writer learns to make better use of time spent driving to and from work. While making his daily commute, he speaks into a tape recorder or lapel microphone when inspiration strikes. He keeps a notebook handy and, while stalled in traffic or waiting at stop signs, quickly jots down notes. If he rides a bus, train, subway, or taxi to work, he writes paragraphs, poems, screenplays, and novels while on the ride. Writing at work provides rich resources for characters, plots, and experiences. We mentally record characteristics of co-workers and clients, listening for unique phrases and expressions and observing physical habits and appearance. These details provide fascinating quirks that can be mixed, matched, and adapted into fictional characters.
Writing While Traveling Writers often travel for business or pleasure, which enables them to write in airports and hotels during times that might otherwise be wasted or frittered away. These precious moments, when the weary traveler is relieved of other responsibilities, frees the imagination. While Allen traveled extensively for his work, many airline passengers became models for characters in his novel and screenplay. On the plane, Allen often edited one of our book manuscripts or wrote passages for them. Whenever he read a galley with its attractive cover featuring adorable animals, flight attendants and seatmates asked about the book. He started taking along promotional postcards that contained ordering information and release dates for the books. There’s no telling how many pre-orders online sellers and bookstores received for our books because Allen wrote during his travels.
Writing on Vacation Vacations take a writer away from the ordinary and stimulate creativity. In addition to rest and relaxation, vacations and holidays offer opportunities for mixing it up with new people, hearing different dialects, experiencing exotic settings, and eavesdropping on conversations. Joan Airey, a freelance magazine writer from Manitoba, takes a holiday every year and pays for the vacation by writing about the stories and people she meets along the way. “I enjoy having informal interviews with people, from artists to CEOs. One afternoon I visited a couple that had worked together for fifty years building their business. I took a walking tour with them of their orchards, market garden building, and gift store. I ended up with one main story and numerous mini-articles to sell. While on vacation, I always take my cameras and keep a diary.”
Writing While You Sleep Most people dream four to six times each night. So, why not put dreams to work by turning them into time for writing? Linda uses a technique that has worked well to help her transform dream time into writing time. Prior to going to sleep, she writes a question about a project on which
Getting Started
she’s working on an index card. The question may relate to a character, plot point, article theme, or other aspect of her work. Then she places the written question under her pillow. This cues the subconscious mind to find answers and ideas in the dream-state. Upon awakening, she quickly jots down her dreams and ideas for interpreting them. These dream ideas have led to improvements in her individual and our joint writing projects. In one case, a dream teacher instructed Linda to write a title on a chalkboard ten times so she wouldn’t risk forgetting it. Upon awakening, she did remember the dream, and the title turned out to be great! In Naomi Epel’s Writers Dreaming, award-winning novelist Reynolds Price says when he’s writing intensely on a book, he’ll often dream the dreams of a character that fascinates him. “I really feel as though, not only am I creating that person’s life in the daytime while I’m writing the book, but I almost seem to be dreaming that character’s dreams. I have literally transcribed some of those dreams and attributed them to the character.” Daily life is the best resource for a constant supply of writing material. Using minutes in between tasks and activities yields hours of extra writing time. By seizing overlooked opportunities to think, plan, research, and imagine, writing becomes a guilt-free, enjoyable pleasure that enriches and serves rather than takes time away from family, jobs, vacations, and sleep.
Busy Lives, Productive Writers Try these ideas to squeeze minutes of writing time into your busy daily life.
• Schedule writing time. As you plan your day or week, make appointments with yourself and put them in your appointment book or calendar. Be as diligent about keeping writing commitments as you are about other obligations.
• Co-author with your children. Rather than always reading books to your children at bedtime, try making up stories with and for them. Later, write the stories that elicited the most positive responses.
• Give yourself a deadline. Plan to enter your writing in a contest that has a deadline, or create an artificial deadline. For example, “I will write three pages by Wednesday.” Make the deadline stick by putting it in your day planner and telling a friend what you intend to accomplish and by when. Reward yourself when you meet your deadline.
• Give a twist to road rage. While you’re driving, observe the drivers in other cars. Are they friends or foes? Create lives for them. Turn them into characters. Give them dialogue to say.
• Bust the telephone time-wasters. Keep a notebook and pen by the phone. While you’re waiting for service or if you’re caught on the receiving end of a long-winded caller, jot down phrases and words that catch your attention. Compose a jingle or limerick to express how much you dislike being put on hold.
The Craft & Business of Writing
nine habits of published authors by
Stephen Blake Mettee
A
s I go about my vocation of publishing books and my avocation of reading everything I can get my hands on, I am often struck with the thought that writers who consistently get published share common traits. These traits can be distilled down to nine simple principles.
1. They learn what the market requires “I’m a writer, not a businessman,” we protest. But if you want to be published regularly, you’re going to have to grasp the fact that publishing is a business. At the most basic level, publishers simply supply products to consumers. In turn, you, as the writer, supply the product to the publisher. That’s the business. And here’s the key: You must supply product a publisher can use to satisfy the demands of its consumers, and you must do it in a businesslike way. Here are a few simple strategies you can use to help make the business of publishing your business.
• Put on your professional persona when contacting editors. Use crisp, clean paper for your letterhead. Never handwrite letters or manuscripts. Always be polite, concise, and nondemanding when talking on the phone to an editor. Always include a selfaddressed, stamped envelope (SASE) with each query or unsolicited submission.
• Know who it is you’re contacting. Use guides such as Writer’s Market to find the appropriate editor’s name and precise title, then check the publisher’s Web site to verify that this editor is still employed with that particular company and is still the correct editor to contact. Spell the editor’s name correctly (double-check this).
• Use standard format (8½" × 11" white paper, double-spaced, numbered pages) for manuscripts and book proposals.
• Let queries and other short correspondence sit overnight, then reread them before
• Learn as much as you can about the demographics of the potential reader for whatever it is you are writing. What gender is the reader? What age? Income and
sending them out. For manuscripts or book proposals, make it at least a week.
Getting Started
education level? What else is this person likely to read? Keep this reader in mind as you pitch your idea and when you write the article, short story, or book.
• If you plan on submitting to a magazine, obtain a copy of the magazine’s writer’s guidelines—the tip sheet prepared for potential contributors by the magazine’s editors. (These guidelines are often available on the Internet or by sending an SASE to the publisher.) After perusing the guidelines, pore over six to eight issues of the magazine, analyzing the nuances of content and tone.
• If it is a book you’re proposing, be sure the book publishers you contact publish books of the type and genre you’re proposing. (Like magazines, many book publishers prepare writer’s guidelines.) In your query or cover letter, explain why you selected this publisher.
• Synchronize your book, short story, or article’s length to your prospective market. If novels in your genre rarely exceed 150,000 words, it is unlikely a publisher will be interested in one that runs 300,000 words. This also holds true with nonfiction books. And if a magazine’s upper limit for short stories or articles is 2,500 words, 5,000 words will get a rejection slip.
• Pitch one idea to a publisher at a time, but tweak the idea and pitch it to other
• Do not try to chase trends. Remember that what’s published now is what editors were buying one to two years ago. Look for what hasn’t been done.
publishers at the same time.
2. They always write their best I know writers who always seem to be saving their best for later. Sometimes, it’s because they don’t allow themselves enough time to do the job right. They tell themselves the next piece will get the attention it deserves. Other times, it’s because they don’t feel they are being paid enough for what they are writing. “This is good enough for what they’re paying me,” is a common refrain. Yet, while a writer who turns in shoddy work may get it published, the editor certainly won’t put that author at the top of his call list. And, although low pay is ubiquitous in this industry, poor-quality writing does not build a reputation that attracts higher paying offers. Some writers feel that if they put their best effort into what they are writing now, when the big break comes along, they won’t have anything left in their creative reserves. The truth is, however, the better you write today, the better you will write tomorrow.
3. They know the rules and break them Don’t try this at home: In the Dan Fortune mystery Chasing Eights, novelist Michael Collins adroitly switches between points of view and from first person to third person. That’s the literary equivalent of trying to juggle six china plates while threading a needle. The most likely outcome is disaster. But Collins, a pseudonym for Dennis Lynds,
The Craft & Business of Writing
not only pulled off this bit of legerdemain, Chasing Eights is all the better for it. Collins had been writing for years. He knew the rules. And, he knew how to break them. Neophyte writers often weaken their writing—and pick up rejection slips—by breaking rules in ways they feel are clever but in reality are just inappropriate. You can get published regularly with good, sound prose that follows the beaten path, and that’s what I suggest you do until you are accomplished at staying on the path. But then, reach out, stretch for the virgin, the rare, the wonderful.
4. They exploit their passions Two things dominated my life in the 1980s, raising my son and developing my printing business. When I look back at the articles I wrote during those years, I’m not surprised to discover that they ran in publications with names such as Indy’s Child and Quick Printing Magazine. The reason I was getting published was because I was writing on subjects about which I was deeply passionate. Answer this question: What are the two or three things you are most passionate about? These are the things about which you will write best. Follow your passions, and editors will be passionate about publishing you.
5. They hook readers with strong leads Go into a bookstore and pull down five novels. Read the first three paragraphs of each, then ask yourself which book most entices you to read onward. That book’s author knows the value of writing strong leads. The lead—sometimes called the “hook,” because it hooks the reader—is the first few sentences or paragraphs of whatever you’re writing. The job of the lead is to get the reader interested in reading more. Use strong leads with everything you write, from query letters to book proposals, from romance novels to nonfiction articles. Strong leads should be found at the beginning of every chapter in both fiction and nonfiction and each time you transition to a new concept within an article. A strong lead for a short story may make the difference between selling it to an editor and finding it back in your mailbox. What kind of leads work? Creative ones. Anecdotes that set a scene or mood and intriguing or startling facts are common components of strong nonfiction article leads. Posing a question in your lead entices the reader to read on to learn the answer and often works well. In fiction, starting in the middle of the action often helps plunge readers into a story.
6. TheY don’t add to editors’ workloads Today’s editors are busy multitaskers. I know a senior editor at one of the big New York book publishing houses who says he doesn’t mind he has a two-hour-each-way commute to work. He says the time on the train is the only time he has to read and edit manuscripts. If you make an editor rewrite portions of your work or correct your spelling or double-check your facts or chase something you promised to have to him a
Getting Started
week ago, he’s not likely to smile with pleasant anticipation the next time you suggest a project to him. Make life easier for editors and watch your acceptance rate soar.
7. They are great readers Last year, when a local TV anchorman approached me about publishing his book, I asked him a trick question. I asked what he liked to read. His answer, as is so often the case when I ask this question, was, “Oh, I don’t have much time to read.” Because I’m such a swell fellow, I took a look at his book proposal anyway, even though I already knew it wasn’t going to be very good. I wasn’t disappointed. Am I prescient? No, I just subscribe to the theory that you’ll never be a great writer until you’re a great reader. Certainly, if you write mysteries, read mysteries, or if you write technical pieces, read technical pieces, but don’t just stick to your genre; read a broad range of literature. Read fiction, read poetry, read newsmagazines, read cereal boxes. The more good writing you feed your brain, the more good writing it will give back.
8. They continue to cultivate their skills When I present at writers conferences, I suggest attendees buy one book that I don’t publish: The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. I tell them to read Strunk and White’s delightful treatise before they write anything else. What I am actually telling them is to continually hone their craft. Elements of Style is a thin volume that provides concise instruction in the essence of good writing. Reading it and rereading it is an excellent way to keep the basics of superior writing at the front of your mind as your fingers dance on the keyboard. What else can you do? Peruse the information in books like this one; read magazines such as Writer’s Digest, Poets & Writers, and The Writer; go to writers conferences; join a critique group; take classes; listen to feedback from those whose opinions you have reason to respect (but beware of well-intentioned family and friends); and analyze what other writers are doing. Never stop learning your craft.
9. They spend money on postage Wouldn’t it be great if you could write the Great American Novel, leave it on a park bench where an (apparently bored) editor would happen by, recognize it for the brilliant work it is, then hunt you down to get a contract signed? Fame and fortune would follow. Best of all, your mother’s doubts would dissipate forever. Since real life isn’t the movies, submit to submitting. If you don’t submit your work to publishers, it isn’t going to get published. That’s a given. And, when your work comes back with that little note that starts, “Dear Writer, Thank you for letting us see this, but ...” send it out again. And again. While the first article, short story, or book proposal is out, write something else. Soon one will get picked up, then another, and then another. Eventually, editors will be contacting you.
The Craft & Business of Writing
building a writing career by
Sean Murphy
W
hen I was younger, I imagined the writer’s existence to be a calm, contemplative one. Lots of time to spin scenarios while staring out the window, long walks in the woods with the dogs, that sort of thing. I dreamed of having a life where no one bothered me much, other people handled my business affairs, and the bulk of each day was devoted to creative work. I had plenty of time to dream in this fashion, since my first novel, The Hope Valley Hubcap King, took me twelve years to complete—sandwiched between making a living and going to graduate school. I received a big wake-up call, however, with the publication of my first two books, six months apart from one another. Not only were my publishers, to my surprise, busy with other books and not solely occupied with promoting mine—but the advances I’d received had been spent in the writing, and there were no royalties in sight for at least six months. I had to come to grips with the fact that no one was going to make sure that my books sold if I didn’t do it—and certainly no one else was going to bring in an income. Clearly, a broader approach was necessary if I were to make a life as a writer.
Realize This: You’re No Hemingway I’m speaking largely here of the book business, but the general principles apply to writers in any field, whether published or unpublished. In today’s competitive market, we don’t have the leisure enjoyed by a Hemingway or Faulkner of gradually building up a career under the patient guidance of a beneficent publisher. In any case, this hallowed status enjoyed by authors of old is, at least partly, a myth. T.S. Eliot worked for years as a banker. Faulkner and Fitzgerald wrote for the movies. Wallace Stevens was an insurance executive, and William Carlos Williams a family physician—in both cases, for the majority of their adult lives. In the last few years, I’ve been taking my own personal crash course in how to build a writing career from the ground up, from selling my first book to placing follow-up articles, dealing with promotion and marketing, public events, the media—an array of activities I’d never imagined myself doing. I’ve learned that it’s important to use every
Getting Started
resource available in my life to develop my career. The reason for this is simple, if sobering: Most of us, unless we’re extremely lucky, are unlikely to make enough income from our writing alone to support ourselves. To truly live the writing life requires a broadbased, multidimensional approach to build a platform for your work—that includes many activities other than sitting in front of the keyboard, slipping into the seductive dream of the story. If you view the whole project, including placement, marketing, promotion—in fact, your entire career as a writer—as a creative act, your efforts not only become more effective; the process is also more enjoyable. So how do you go about building a life in which every element supports and enhances your goal of becoming a successful writer? I’m going to lead you through some areas worth considering, in roughly the order I encountered them.
Enter the Fray: Awards and Contests When I finished The Hope Valley Hubcap King, I faced the universal challenge of all unknown novelists: getting the manuscript before an agent or publisher. I reasoned that submitting it for competitions might be a starting point. That way I was sure someone would read the manuscript in its entirety (something I suspect rarely happens in the case of unknown authors), and I’d receive feedback that could improve it. Even if I didn’t win, I might place in the finals or semifinals, and could mention this in my query letter, which would make it stand out from the masses of correspondence editors and agents receive. I decided to enter every novel contest available. I ended up placing in three of these, which would probably have been enough on its own to attract an agent’s interest. Then I won the Hemingway Award for a First Novel, which included an agent as part of the prize, thereby solving part of my problem. I always encourage my writing students to enter competitions. There are many available, in fields ranging from nonfiction to short stories to poetry. If you submit work on a diligent, thorough basis, you’ll tend to get results, no matter how minor, that may help in acquiring an agent or publisher. If not, this tells you that you need to go back to the drawing board and hone your craft—either that, or you’re ahead of your time, in which case it won’t hurt to work on your craft some more anyway! And you’ll get advance warning of the obstacles you may face in placing your work.
Be Flexible: Use Success to Open Doors One of the first questions my agent asked, to my surprise, was whether I had any ideas for nonfiction books. As it turned out, I did have an idea I’d been nursing for some time. Being a practitioner of Zen meditation, I’d noticed that every few years a collection of Zen teaching stories was published, and met with some success. However, most of these assemblages of enlightening quotes and anecdotes (you might call them “Miso Soup for the Soul”) depended on ancient tales of Asian Zen masters for their material. Despite the fact that there were an estimated 1 million or more Zen practitioners in the
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The Craft & Business of Writing
United States, no one had yet written a book of Zen wisdom drawn from contemporary American sources. My agent thought this was a salable idea. We decided it would be a good strategy to try to sell this book before selling the novel, as a nonfiction book with a built-in audience would be easier to place than a novel by an unknown author, prize winning or not. The proposal went to auction, and within a month we’d sold One Bird, One Stone: 108 American Zen Stories, based on a twenty-five-page synopsis. Oddly, I’d sold the book I hadn’t written before selling the novel I’d already finished! This is an example of how being creative in one’s marketing approach can yield results. And having one book contract under my belt made placing the novel an easier task. I find in working with writing students that they often have more resources at their disposal than they are aware. Learning how to take advantage of these can be a key aspect in developing your career. For instance, I have a student who raises purebred dogs, belongs to various related organizations, and uses these contacts in pitching articles and securing speaking engagements. It is worthwhile to consider what areas of knowledge or expertise you’ve developed that might lend themselves to a book or series of articles. Classic automobiles? Jazz music? African violets? If you write books, these can provide material for articles; and many a successful article has been expanded to a book-length project. Broadening your scope can be an important element of career building. I’ve been able to spin off from my books to write articles for publications including Yoga Journal and Tricycle. These have not only helped promote my books, but have provided valuable contacts with editors who later published reviews and excerpts from my work. This is better than free publicity—you can publicize your work and actually get paid for it!
Quick Tips to Help You Develop a Multidimensional Approach
• Diligently submit your work to writing contests, if only to walk away with feedback to help you improve your manuscript and resubmit it to another contest at a later date.
• Consider the areas of knowledge or expertise you have, and use those areas to develop a book or series of articles.
• Attend events, writers conferences, book signings, book clubs, and readings that allow you to interact with other members of the writing community.
• Join a community of writers who share your thoughts and goals, and allow that group to help you develop your work and morale.
• Garner local media coverage by sending out press releases, making phone calls, and networking with members of your writing community.
• Become an active writer, not a passive one. If you want to make writing your career, you must make it a priority in your life.
Getting Started 11
Give help and take it: networking Bantam Dell expressed a strong interest in buying The Hope Valley Hubcap King, but were hesitant because its unusual mix of dark comedy, social satire, and the protagonist’s quest for meaning didn’t fall clearly into an existing genre (in publishing lingo, this means they weren’t exactly sure how they were going to sell it). They asked me to come up with a well-known author to provide a cover blurb. Two years earlier I’d met Malachy McCourt, author of A Monk Swimming, at the SouthWest Writers Workshop conference in Albuquerque. I’d prepared for the conference by printing postcards to publicize my novel. These featured a picture of a hubcap on the front and mock, humorous blurbs from “authorities” as diverse as Bill Clinton, Julia Child, and Winnie-the-Pooh on the back. McCourt got such a kick out of the card that he gave me his phone number and told me to call him if I ever needed anything. I did call, two years later. He read the manuscript, loved it, and provided me with a full page of praise—and Bantam Dell bought the novel. Successful authors, however, often have so many demands upon them that they may find it difficult even to find the time to write. If you go after these people hungrily, with the attitude of wanting something, they are unlikely to respond well. The important thing is to attend events where you can rub shoulders with members of the writing community, to be friendly and open, and especially, to help others. When I was finishing The Hope Valley Hubcap King, I met periodically with two friends, Daniel Villasenor, who was writing his novel, The Lake, and Mirabai Starr, who was working on a new translation of St. John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul. We read each other’s work, providing encouragement and suggestions for improvement. When Daniel’s novel was published, he shared his lists of agents and other contacts, and after my book was sold I referred Mirabai to my agent, who placed her translation with Riverhead Books. Our first books ended up coming out within eighteen months of each other. I cannot overemphasize how important it is to be part of a community of writers who can help and encourage one another. One of the most common ways agents and publications acquire new talent is through referrals from authors they already know. And friendship with fellow writers is one of the joys of the creative life.
Be a Joiner: Memberships and Affiliations Personally, I’ve never been much of a “joiner.” I’ve always hated meetings, elections, committees, and other such elements associated with organizations. Nevertheless, I’ve found that joining a few select groups has been invaluable, not only in terms of networking, but in practical areas such as health insurance, contract negotiations, and opportunities for readings and workshops. There are many writers’ organizations available, but just to provide an idea, here are the ones to which I belong:
• The Association of Writers & Writing Programs (www.awpwriter.org). They publish a monthly list of residencies, fellowships, and academic appointments.
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They also sponsor a dossier service, which submits recommendations, school transcripts, etc., on your behalf to any positions for which you’d like to apply. And their magazine, The Writer’s Chronicle, is one of the smartest writers’ publications around. • The Authors Guild (www.authorsguild.org). I signed up to get on their medical insurance plan, which is reasonably priced and, in general, excellent. I’ve since discovered that they provide contract consultations, legal services, and low-cost, easyto-maintain Web sites. Their Bulletin is an excellent resource for keeping abreast of such issues as copyright, e-books, and freedom of speech. • Local writers organizations. I belong to two of these, the SouthWest Writers Workshop (www.southwestwriters.com) and Society of the Muse of the Southwest (SOMOS) (http://somostaos.org). Their equivalent can be found in most metropolitan areas. Both organizations have sponsored me for readings and workshops. And they’ll print free announcements of member publications and other events in their newsletters. Groups such as these provide a built-in audience for your work, as well as a strong base for networking with other writers. Making an inquiry at a local library or bookstore is a good place to start looking for one in your area. • PEN (www.pen.org). This venerable writers’ organization and advocacy group is another good resource. • Alumni and religious organizations. They will generally print publication announcements for members in their newsletters.
Remember, every group to which you belong helps build community; and every community provides valuable contacts and an audience for your work.
Apply Yourself: Grants, Fellowships, and Residency Programs The U.S. government, as well as many states and local communities, has arts boards and grants councils, private organizations, and residency programs that provide financial assistance to writers. These often-overlooked resources were of tremendous help to me in the early stages of my writing career. Community organizations in California and Colorado awarded me grants when I was living there. Aside from the financial benefits, I found the application process enormously helpful, as it required that I focus and delineate my project clearly in the proposal. I also developed skills in presenting and marketing my work, which have served me well ever since. Many writers have made their start, and in some cases sustained themselves for years, through such programs. Although these can be competitive and time-consuming to enter, the rewards are enormous. A fellowship, grant, or residency can provide the freedom to write, while removing the financial pressure that makes it necessary to do something else for a living. What more does an author need?
Getting Started 13
Broaden Your Platform: Public Speaking Although you may not realize it, publishing a book or article makes you an instant expert. Teaching or giving talks on your subject can be an invaluable way of broadening the platform for your writing career, sharpening your own craft, and building an audience. I’ve taught writing and literature for the University of New Mexico in Taos, as well as the Taos Institute of Arts. I also taught for four years with Natalie Goldberg, author of Writing Down the Bones, in her writing seminars, and now conduct my own workshops at locations throughout the United States. I have assembled an extensive contact list of all my students. When my books come out, there is a built-in audience waiting, and I know how to spread the word. On the basis of teaching and publications, I’ve secured speaking engagements at conferences and on radio programs. These, in turn, have helped publicize the books. And the books attract more students, in a self-reinforcing circle. While not everyone has a degree that allows them to teach university courses, most communities have organizations that sponsor adult education courses. These may be a perfect venue for your talents. Churches and recreation centers may be interested in sponsoring you for a weekend writing workshop. Or you can set up your own events and publicize them by putting up posters or through the local media.
Make the News: Using the Media It’s taken me a while to catch on to this. Why give readings, I wondered, when your average bookstore event might only attract a dozen listeners? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that royalties from the handful of books sold is hardly adequate compensation for your time. So why do it? Building good will among readers and positive relationships with bookstores are worthy goals in themselves—particularly because hand-selling by booksellers is of central importance in getting the word out to readers. Word of mouth continues to be the single most important factor in book sales. People who enjoy your work are likely to recommend it to their friends, creating an ever-expanding web of readership. For these reasons, it’s not only worthwhile to schedule readings but also to visit booksellers and sign copies of your books whenever you have the opportunity. But there’s another quite compelling reason to schedule such events: the media coverage they generate. This not only promotes books, but also raises your profile in terms of getting public speaking engagements, teaching opportunities, and requests to write articles. When One Bird, One Stone came out, I did five readings in my area, which provided a “news hook” for me to contact local media. The result was three radio interviews and reviews or features in four publications. When The Hope Valley Hubcap King was published, I had my media contacts already in place, and they were eager to hear more from me—particularly since a new author publishing his first two books in the same year provided a newsworthy angle. I did four readings in New Mexico for Hubcap King, which
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generated six articles and a half-dozen radio interviews. I spoke to dozens of people afterward who mentioned: “I heard you on the radio” or “I saw that article in the paper.” Local bookstores couldn’t keep up with the demand. Regional media coverage can be achieved through press releases, phone calls, and referrals from members of your writing community. Everybody is fascinated by writers, and they want to read about our glamorous lives (no one seems to realize we spend most of our time alone in small rooms staring at computer screens). Many of these readers may go on to buy our work.
Keep Faith and Focus: Staying on Track When I began sending out my first manuscript, I was teaching part time and working as an audiovisual technician and projectionist for a local theater. Although these were interesting arts-related occupations, they were not directly allied to my goal of becoming a writer. In recent years I’ve realized the need to streamline my work activities so they reinforce one key area: my writing. Sometimes giving up a peripheral activity requires a leap of faith. When I quit working for the theater I wasn’t sure how I was going to make ends meet. But I soon made up the lost income by writing articles and giving workshops, activities that more closely supported my goals. Simply put, if you want your writing career to work, you have to make it a priority. It’s important to remember that when creativity is applied to business and promotion, the entire process is enlivened. The multidimensional approach is one I’ve seen used successfully by many writing friends and colleagues. There are other benefits too: Agents and editors are more likely to take on authors who will actively promote their work. It’s simple economics. They realize such authors are motivated toward success and will ultimately sell more books. All of this may sound like hard work, but it’s part of the package, particularly in today’s increasingly profit-driven publishing world. Remember that, in the largest sense, there is nothing in your life that isn’t a part of your career. Who knows? You may just find yourself enjoying the process. If not—well, if going through a little bother allows you to realize your dream of succeeding as a writer, isn’t it worth it? After all, writing beats working in a bank. Ask T.S. Eliot. He got out of there and never looked back.
Getting Started 15
the writer-editor relationship by
William Brohaugh
I
can roughly translate many of the questions I field from writers into a single question: How can I light fires under editors? The need for such editorial ignition stems from a variety of problems: the editors (or agents) in question are slow to respond, to take notice, and even to pay. The writers who encounter procrastinating, inefficient, or uncaring editors want responses to their queries and especially payment within a reasonable time. They also want to be given the courtesy they deserve as working professionals and the ability to have control over their situations. There are a variety of ways to solve these problems, to gain control, to light fires. Some of them involve specific negotiation tactics, which I’ll describe in a moment. Most, however, involve a general attitude you must employ in dealing with editors. It’s a businesslike, professional and distanced attitude that will first give you perspective on the problems you’re encountering, and will next allow you to handle the problems without placing a self-destructive fire under yourself.
The Writer-Editor Debt The first step in approaching problems with editors is to identify which situations warrant fire starting and which don’t. Sometimes you’re far better off ignoring a “problem” (because it isn’t one, or isn’t one worth correcting), shrugging it off, or dealing with it in a more constructive way. To make that identification, remember that there are two types of responses an editor gives you:
• those the editor owes you, and • those the editor does not owe you.
For example, an editor does not, in any sense of binding obligation, owe you a response to an unsolicited query. And here I’m not talking matters of courtesy. Professional courtesy does indeed dictate that the editor respond to you, as quickly as possible. But the editor does not owe you a response. You have approached him, without being asked,
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The Craft & Business of Writing
with a business proposition. If the editor isn’t interested, that’s the end of it. Nor does the editor owe you immediate response to unsolicited material. With all the proofreading, business meetings, budget work, correspondence with writers on assignment, personnel work, and everything else an editor does to get a magazine to press or a book in the stores, unsolicited material often must be given low priority. If an editor is slow to respond or doesn’t respond at all, take professional umbrage at the lack of courtesy, then calmly and systematically move on to the next editor. Don’t berate the editor for his apparent lackadaisicalness. Don’t try to light fires. In this case, you’re only heating up tempers. If the material was solicited, on the other hand, the editor does indeed owe you an answer. By asking you to send it, the editor has made an implicit commitment to consider the work and to let you know what he thinks of it—within a reasonable amount of time. Here’s where you can and should bring out the matches if you feel you’re not being treated well. Therefore, when you have a problem with an editor, first determine whether it’s a problem you can do anything about in the first place. To do that, translate the situation into something closer to home—at your doorstep, to be more precise: the traveling salesperson. Assume you’re not a writer, but someone selling magazine subscriptions door to door. Assume the editor is a customer behind one of those doors. Then ask what the editor should be required to do when the magazine salesperson comes a-knockin’. Ask yourself what you would do in that particular situation.
• If the salesperson leaves a flyer at your door detailing the magazines available, would you be obligated to specifically inform the salesperson if you’re not interested? • If you turn down the magazine offer, are you obligated to tell the salesperson exactly why you’re saying no? • If you buy the magazine and pay for it, would you be offended if the salesperson tried to dictate how soon you read it? • If you buy the magazine but don’t pay for it right away, does the salesperson have the right to demand payment?
The answers vary. But phrasing the questions in this way gives you some perspective on the writer-editor relationship, and helps you determine a reasonable course of action.
Problem Solving I must stress that we aren’t speaking matters of courtesy here; we’re speaking obligations. You can’t ignite courtesy. It just won’t happen. “Be courteous to me,” you shout, shaking your fist. You can guess the response to that. You can ignite fulfillment of obligations, however. To do that, take these steps: 1. Inquire politely about the problem. Don’t place blame—in fact, you might want to deflect potential confrontation by shifting blame elsewhere. The post office, for
Getting Started 17
instance, is a common scapegoat. “I haven’t heard from you, and I wondered if you even received my query.” 2. Inquire more firmly. “It’s been some weeks since I mailed the manuscript, and I haven’t received a response. What is its status?” 3. Call or e-mail. Sometimes problems can be solved quickly and easily on the phone; sometimes not. Sometimes a situation prompts immediate action (it’s harder to dodge things in conversation than through correspondence); sometimes it only aggravates the problem, especially when the editor fields several nagging phone calls he doesn’t think are justified. It’s this very chanciness of using the phone that makes it inappropriate as a first step. 4. Determine if you want to pursue the matter further. If not, withdraw the manuscript or query, or back away from the situation as appropriate (obviously you don’t want to do that if money is involved). If so, make your third mail inquiry the firmest. “I still haven’t received a response, and though I’d like to work with you, I need to know if you’ll be buying my manuscript or if I should market it elsewhere.” 5. Look to others for help: Might a letter to the editor’s boss prompt some action? Go over someone’s head only as a last resort, however. Such a fire under an editor can burn a tender place, and he will blame you for it. It could mean the end of a relationship. Would someone with less authority (and perhaps a less demanding schedule) be able to check into things for you? For example, a managing editor—who monitors production schedules—might be able to answer your questions. Would an invoice to the accounting department spur payment? This is often an effective way of securing overdue payment. Would a letter from your lawyer open some eyes? The lawyer might not be able to do anything specifically, but no one, including an editor, wants to get into legal squabbles. Would a trip to small claims court be appropriate? Not if you’re seeking the contributor copies the editor promised, but perhaps if that payment check has been months slow in coming.
Pre-Ignition Perhaps one of the best ways of lighting fires is to have them burning from the very start of your working relationship with an editor. Give the editor every reason to want to work with you efficiently and responsibly, to respond and pay quickly, to treat you with courtesy. To do that, be a professional. Professionals want to work with—and are generally far more responsive to—other professionals. Here’s how to get editors to want to work with you, and to keep you happy:
• Though courtesy can’t be ignited, it can be bred—with courtesy. Certainly don’t genuflect before editors, but do treat them with the respect you’d accord to anyone with whom you have business dealings. • Try to eliminate possible problems early on. If the editor hasn’t said when or how much you will be paid, ask, and get the answer on paper. If you want to see the prepublication galleys, negotiate for that right before you finalize the assignment.
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The Craft & Business of Writing
If the article you’re submitting is timely, request an answer within a specified time so the manuscript won’t go stale. • Learn as much as you can about the business so you’ll know what to expect. What ways of handling things are standard operating procedures? What ways vary from situation to situation? What ways are unusual? Much of this education simply comes with time and experience; more comes from doing a little reading. • Enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE) in all postal correspondence. The SASE not only invites response, but also instills in your correspondent a feeling of obligation to respond. • Don’t whine, gnash teeth, moan, or scream during negotiations or even when complaining. State your case clearly and vigorously, but unemotionally. Remember that you’re two businesspeople at this point, not two temperamental geniuses locking creative horns. • Don’t go in with the attitude that the editor is trying to rip you off. Sure, some disreputable editors are out there. Some disreputable writers are out there, too. But not many, and not enough to worry about. Paranoia about having your work stolen only gives off the wrong signals to the people you’re working with, and wastes your time. • Don’t insult the editor by trying to trick or manipulate him. I once heard of a writer who submitted manuscripts single-spaced, typed to every margin, not because the writer didn’t understand the conventions of basic manuscript preparation, but because the writer wanted to preclude editing by not giving the editor space in which to make editing marks. Trickery and manipulation always backfire. As clever or as compelling as you think you’re being—from inserting a page upside down to see if the editor has read the manuscript to threatening to cancel your subscription if the editor doesn’t buy the piece—the editor has likely seen it all before.
Taking Control There are also ways to gain control that don’t depend on the editor. For example:
• Some writers complain of editors who lose or damage manuscripts. The solution: Don’t depend on the editor to send your manuscript back. Keep the original, and send a photocopy, one that, if lost or damaged, you can replace. • Some writers worry about editors changing the titles of their manuscripts without consulting them. The solution: Give the editor a choice of titles. Better yet, write a title that is very much in the style of the magazine you’re selling to. (You might also negotiate for the right to approve the title before you finalize the magazine assignment or before you sign the book contract.) • Some writers want to conduct business with great speed. The solution: Set a deadline for a response from an editor. But don’t force the deadline on the editor unless nothing else has worked and you’re ready to go into your “or-else” mode (“I need a response by the 15th or else I’ll be forced to withdraw the manuscript”).
Getting Started 19
In your own mind, set a deadline. If you don’t hear from the editor by that date, assume the editor isn’t interested and move on to the next. If the editor eventually says no, you haven’t wasted any time waiting for the answer. If the editor says yes, you have the choice of working with that editor or with an editor you moved on to who said yes. • Some writers get peeved by a lack of editorial courtesy. The solution: Just don’t get peeved. Decide on a list of things you Won’t Worry About. Sure, it’s aggravating when you send first-class postage for the return of your manuscript and it comes back fourth class. But why worry about it? You’re out a few cents, maybe a couple of bucks. Consider it a part of the business, and worry about something more important. That and supposedly filched paper clips and the like are inconsequential. This is related to the concept of knowing what editors do and don’t owe you. Yes, on an absolute bottom-line basis, they owe you that postage and those paper clips. But is worrying about it, fretting over it, complaining about it going to gain you anything?
In other words, sometimes putting a fire under the editor doesn’t solve anything. In the long run, the most important thing is for you to take charge, in a professional way, of your own writing career.
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The Craft & Business of Writing
Making manuscripts more salable by
Glenda Tennant Neff
W
hen writers receive rejection slips, some immediately send the work out to another publisher, magazine, or agent. Others agonize over revisions they can make; some quit submitting the manuscript at that point and forget about trying for publication. For a few writers, creative self-expression of their ideas may be enough, but most want to see their work in print. “Art and commerce do sometimes go hand in hand,” says author Raymond Carver in Michael Schumacher’s “After the Fire, Into the Fire: An Interview with Raymond Carver.” “When I first got something accepted, it gave my life a validation that it didn’t otherwise have. It was very important to me.” While you’re “creating art,” editors, copy editors, and writers say you also can improve your manuscript in ways that help sell it. Before you send an unsolicited manuscript or assigned article, be sure it meets the following criteria.
The Structure Test Whether you’re working on fiction or nonfiction, be sure you’ve chosen the best form for your writing. If your assignment is a 2,000-word magazine article but you have enough information to write a book, you’ll have to condense or—better yet—narrow the material to one aspect that is suitable for an article. Likewise, don’t try to stretch a small amount of information over a longer format. “If you find yourself trying to keep a gossamer thread of plot, stretched over too many pages, from snapping in your face, then reconsider your story,” freelance copy editor and proofreader Ann Finlayson advises fiction writers. “Maybe it needs a subplot or two. Maybe it needs cutting to 5,000 words.” Whatever your choice of forms, be sure that it’s the best one for the content. As the second part of the structure test, be sure that the theme is carried throughout your work. Does everything in the story or article contribute to that unity? Approach the manuscript from a reader’s point of view, eliminating any digressions and material that, however interesting, do not directly contribute to your nonfiction or advance the plot of your fiction. In Beyond Style: Mastering the Finer Points of Writing, author Gary Provost advises writers to place this sign over their desks:
Getting Started 21
A story is not everything that happened. It’s every important thing that happened. An article is not everything that’s true. It’s every important thing that’s true.
Good writers also learn to eliminate slow starts. Sometimes in a nonfiction article, the writer backs in to what should be the lead paragraph with unnecessary introductory sentences. Other times a fiction writer will include several pages of background material on the characters and the setting before beginning with the story. The message in publishing is plain: Make things happen from the beginning of your manuscript. No one will wade through several pages to see if it gets better or more interesting; you must make it that way from page one. If you are disappointed that some of your prose will be discarded, remember the comment of an expensive hairdresser when his client complained about the small amount of hair he trimmed for the price: “It’s not the amount I take away that matters. It’s what is left when I’m done.”
The Readability Test Editors, agents, and freelance manuscript readers see thousands of manuscripts each year. Some are assigned, but many are unsolicited, also known as over-the-transom or slush-pile submissions. Again and again editors emphasize that only “original” material will attract their interest. As a writer, you may think it’s nearly impossible to develop an article idea that hasn’t been covered in some way or write a short story with characters who have problems not dealt with before. Before you give up, thinking that an “original” manuscript is beyond your reach, approach it from a different view. Don’t insist on making the manuscript original in every aspect, but concentrate on making it unique. Work on a new slant for your article, add fresh information, and come up with a great lead paragraph to introduce it. In fiction, make your characters and the situation believable and interesting. Writer Adele Glimm says: “I try to invent a situation which reflects the reader’s problems and concerns but is much more intriguing than the reader’s life is likely to be. What will surprise readers, entrance them, make them curious, make them react strongly? I search for the meeting point between myself and the reader.” An editor or an agent, like any reader, won’t bother to finish a manuscript that is wordy (“in spite of the fact that” written instead of “since”) or redundant (current trend, exact opposites, major breakthrough). Go through your manuscript carefully to replace generalizations with specific images; you want to avoid simply telling your audience what you can show them. Also, be sure to take out clichés. The weather may be hot as blazes in your story, but you can find some other way to write it. In fiction, writer James N. Frey advises you to put your characters’ actions through the “would he really” test, which is outlined in his book, How to Write a Damn Good Novel. Readers must be able to believe, or at least have some previous indication, that the character would do what you’re having him do. “If you don’t make your people real, you stand small chance of ever being published,” Ann Finlayson says. That involves removing clichéd characters or giving them more dimensions. In rejected stories, she says often “people are either immensely rich or desperately poor, in which case they are
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The Craft & Business of Writing
cold and haughty or earnest and hardworking, respectively. Grandparents are invariably dear decrepit old ladies and gentlemen, retired and probably speaking in a hillbilly dialect. Villains are always perfectly mindless.” Finlayson counsels writers to be careful observers and chroniclers of people. “In slush stories, characters never seem to have facial expressions, and yet in real life you take much more careful note of a familiar person’s expression than at his features or build,” she says. Too many writers “don’t seem to pay much attention to what human beings really do: what their natural reactions should be to such-and-such an event, how they are likely to behave under certain circumstances, how they live, what they are apt to think of certain other kinds of people, the jobs available to them, and so on.”
The Style Test Every writer has others whose work he admires. If imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, then it’s not unusual for us to imitate other writers in the same way. Little leaguers regularly practice mannerisms of the big leaguers they admire. As baseball players grow in experience, however, they learn to do what works best for them instead of what worked best for their idols. It’s the same in writing. There’s nothing wrong with admiring and learning from other writers, but you should work to remove any obvious imitations from your manuscript and let your own voice develop. After imitating others for years, author Ray Bradbury says in his article, “Run Fast, Stand Still,” “I finally figured out that if you are going to step on a live mine, make it your own. Be blown up, as it were, by your own delights and despairs.” In evaluating the style of your manuscript, it’s also important to consider the focus and the tone of the work. If it’s fiction, do the qualities you started with carry throughout the manuscript? A story with a cynical tone throughout but an unexpectedly idealistic ending will leave readers perplexed. That’s not to say that your characters can’t change, and with that change cause a change in tone, but you must give the reader some reason for it. If it’s nonfiction, do the focus and tone of the article match the audience you’re targeting? Editors are often very specific about the tone of articles they publish—whether it’s serious or chatty—and they demand that manuscripts are focused on the subject they assigned and written to address concerns and interests of their readers. One topic can be approached many different ways. For instance, a feminist magazine and a religious magazine may both have articles about abortion, but the focus and tone will be entirely different. Don’t underestimate this in affecting acceptance or rejection of your manuscript. “If the article is properly focused, I have a hard time turning it away even if there are other flaws,” says former Rider magazine editor Tash Matsuoka.
The Research Test Whether you’re working on fiction or nonfiction, your research must also be credible to anyone considering your work. Insufficient or incorrect data in nonfiction, as well as inappropriate clothing or dialogue in fiction, will be spotted, and editors almost always
Getting Started 23
take it as a sign of sloppy work habits. It’s not necessary to know everything you need for a nonfiction article before you accept an assignment, but you must be willing to do the necessary research before you start writing. Writer Debra Kent says in a Bloomington (Ind.) Sunday Herald-Times interview: “With every assignment, I get a new education.” You’ll find that producing a good manuscript often requires that kind of thorough research. If you have questions or are unsure about some aspect of your story or article, the reader probably will be, too, so don’t be afraid to ask questions. A tougher thing to spot in your manuscript is overuse of research. It’s possible to give readers so many facts, figures, and details that your work becomes textbook-like. Some writers are so eager to use all the information they’ve gathered “they submit a bibliography on the first page and then rub the reader’s nose in it on every page they write,” Ann Finlayson says. She cautions writers to “do so much research that you take it for granted: You don’t go out of your way to include something, but you don’t avoid mentioning it either.” Keep in mind Gary Provost’s advice, too, and make your article, story, or book every important thing, not everything your research included.
The Revision Test Some writers claim never to revise manuscripts; they pull the final page out of the typewriter or off the computer printer and send the manuscript immediately. While this may work for some, it’s rare that a manuscript cannot be improved by revision. Many writers even like to let a manuscript sit for a day or two before they begin to revise; the time away allows them to approach it more like an editor reading it for the first time. Poet Pat Parker says, “I see it simply as a task that must be done, like tuning up a car. With servicing, it runs better.” Although revising may not be as satisfying as the initial writing, rewritten portions can make the difference between an adequate manuscript and a good manuscript, a sale or a rejection. “The first draft is a surge of emotion,” says writer Suzanne Hartman. “Revising is approaching creation with respect and, one hopes, grace.” After you’ve submitted the manuscript, you may still have to make revisions to suit a publication’s or editor’s style. There’s nothing wrong with discussing changes or giving an editor reasons you think a passage shouldn’t be altered. You shouldn’t completely reject proposed revisions, however. As a freelance writer, you must be prepared to cope with styles that differ from publication to publication and editor to editor. You may be your own boss in some ways, but when it comes to writing and revising you have “as many bosses as there are projects,” according to freelancer Mary Alice Kellogg in her article, “It’s an Okay Life, Being a Hired Gun.” As a final note, be sure you are pleased with your work. A manuscript can meet dozens of criteria, but if it doesn’t please you, then you won’t want to send it out with your name on it. “As I grow more experienced and learn whose judgment to trust, I believe my instincts more and more,” says Suzanne Hartman. “If my work in progress moves me, I trust it.”
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The Craft & Business of Writing
overcoming writer’s block by
Anthony Tedesco
I
f you’re a writer and haven’t yet experienced writer’s block, you will eventually. That’s not some literary hex; that’s the truth—and an attempt to exorcise any unwarranted fear from you. Writer’s block isn’t to be feared; it’s to be expected and overcome. The trick is to figure out what’s causing you to falter so you can then choose and customize your cure. I’ve diagnosed five causes of writer’s block and put together a prescription of twelve antidotes.
Five Potential Causes Writer’s block is an idiosyncratic malady with a myriad of personal sources. I’ll spare you my amateur psychoanalysis and let you take a little alone time to consider whether any of these potential causes ring true.
1. Self-doubt Self-doubt can creep into your subconscious at an early age. Then again, it can also attack with one fell swoop of a crass, insensitive critic or an abruptly orphaned book. Regardless of how you acquired the self-doubt that sparked a fear of failure, those little looped critical voices will eventually translate into a knotted-up muse.
2. Perfectionism Make sure your perfectionism isn’t just a pretty name for “fear-of-failure-ism.” If you truly are a perfectionist, you’ll be able to point to writing you’ve done you consider good. It’s less a confidence issue and more a quality issue with your current effort. Perfectionists tend to get hung up on leads or even just opening lines—always going back to craft a better (and better) sentence.
3. Ill-suited subject or genre “Any writer who has difficulty in writing is probably not onto his true subject, but wasting time with false, petty goals,” says Joyce Carol Oates. Until you find your true subject, style, voice, or genre, writing will often feel like insurmountable work.
Getting Started 25
4. Fatalistic career outlook Kristi Holl, author of Writer’s First Aid, refers to this cause as “marketplace blues.” She writes: “After a few months or years of nothing but rejection slips, it can become harder and harder to keep pouring your heart into your work ... [T]he writer may feel unable to face another editorial comment, bad review, ‘lost’ manuscript, payment that never arrives, and stories that don’t get published. In other words, he’s blocked.”
5. Poor time management Writing takes time—for research, multiple drafts, recuperative breaks, etc.—and if you don’t leave yourself enough time to go merrily through the process, you’re going to crumble under the deadline pressure and deem it “writer’s block.”
Twelve Proven Cures Ideally, you’ve deduced the cause of your writer’s block and are ready to choose your perfect prescription. Even if you’re on deadline and desperately looking for a quick fix, one of these cures just might do the trick. Experiment. What might seem gimmicky to you now will seem 100 percent godsend if it works for you right at the buzzer.
1. Fight negative with positive “The first thing you want to do is identify the inner voice who talks to you all the time—the voice that fills you with criticism, self-doubt, and negativity,” says Rachel Ballon, PhD, the founder/director of the Writer’s Center in Los Angeles and a psychotherapist who has coached hundreds of writers on their personal and professional issues. “Realize the voice isn’t telling the truth, and take away its power to block you when you start writing.” Ballon suggests creating a list of positive statements about yourself as a writer and reading them until you memorize them. “Use these positive statements to silence the inner critic as soon as it starts. [It] really works if you read your positive affirmations for twentyone days—every morning when you wake up and every evening before going to sleep.”
2. Relax Clear your mind in six calming breaths, each consisting of five slow seconds in through your nose and five slow seconds out from your mouth. During each exhalation, gently place the tip of your tongue onto the roof of your mouth, right behind your front teeth. Are you doing it right? Yes, because any way you do it that feels comfortable is right. The main thing is to focus on nothing but your breathing. If your mind wanders, don’t worry. Just notice it, and bring yourself back to focusing on your breaths. It’s one minute of meditation to help silence those inner critics.
3. Get gratified Instead of reaching for the pint of Vanilla Swiss Almond Häagen-Dazs, seek gratification from a market that publishes short, swift pieces to write—fillers, jokes, postcards, shortshort stories, letters to the editor, etc. Online markets are particularly quick in their turn-
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arounds, usually moving to “press” far faster than print publications, and they often run short pieces to spare readers from having to continuously scroll down the page. To make your task less daunting still, you could even consider writing something for a publication that doesn’t pay. “Real writers don’t write for free” is a limiting myth, according to Jenna Glatzer, author of Outwitting Writer’s Block and Other Problems of the Pen. Glatzer understands the logic of not devaluing the industry, but knows it’s not so black and white. “I’ve written for national magazines, books, and major anthologies, and I still write for free sometimes ... I do it when I particularly want to support a publication that can’t afford to pay, or when I’ll get valuable publicity from my efforts.” Writing for free could just be the trick you need to break into the industry and to break through any block you may be experiencing from those marketplace blues.
4. Freewrite Whether it’s a grocery list or your favorite writing prompt, anything that gets you writing is a good thing. If you haven’t yet acquired a favorite writing prompt, fear not. The editors of Writer’s Digest magazine have prepared 365 “idea joggers and brain starters to get your writing going.” Visit www.writersdigest.com/writingprompts.asp for a new prompt every day, as well as access to all the previous prompts you may have missed.
5. Start in the middle The New York Post’s Phil Mushnick points out “writer’s block occurs most frequently at the very top of one’s work.” Mushnick goes on to say, “Lose that tortured lead you were laboring over—it probably wasn’t any good, anyway—and write it straight. Halfway through the piece it’ll come to you—and it’ll better rhyme with what you were after when you began.”
6. Write badly I’m serious about this. Write badly, really badly—a first draft with run-on sentences, incoherent dialogue, typos, and ludicrous plot twists. Let it be the worst first draft you’ve ever written because it doesn’t matter. According to Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, the only thing that matters about a first draft is that you finish it. She says, “All bad writing leads to good writing.” I know this advice sounds traumatic to perfectionists like me, but Lamott’s rationale is sound. No one ever sees this first draft, and it enables you to get your raw ideas down on paper where they can be tweaked. Plus, let’s be honest, it lets you actually finish something. It’s a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.
7. Allow more time I know, easier said than done, but your schedule will even out. Time allowed for pressure-free prewriting, brainstorming, bad drafts, and small goals will save you time previously spent staring at the screen or otherwise fearfully procrastinating.
8. Read “One thing I do to get my creative juices flowing is to read,” says professional writer Barbra Annino. “I read a favorite book or something about the topic I plan to write about.”
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There are also many self-help books dedicated to overcoming writer’s block. In addition to the aforementioned resources, consider Heather Sellers’s Page After Page, which helps writers push through writer’s block for both the sake of the stymied composition at hand and for the potentially successful career at risk. “Ninety percent of beginning writers stop practicing their craft before they have a chance to discover their talents,” says Sellers.
9. Change subjects or genres “I don’t necessarily believe in writer’s block. However, subject block is another matter,” says Thomas Nixon, a writer, academic counselor, and author of Bears’ Guide to Earning High School Diplomas Nontraditionally. “If I find I can’t write about what I’m writing about, I work on my next book for a while. Still writing, still making progress, but using different information from my brain. Often, giving the other writing time to germinate will result in progress on both my book and the article.” Working with multiple subjects and genres can help you find the writing that flows naturally from you.
10. Exercise Ernest Hemingway was an advocate of exercise. He’s quoted as saying, “It is better to produce half as much, get plenty of exercise, and not go crazy than to speed up so that your head is hardly normal.” A ten-minute walk can get your blood flowing and, often, your ideas. Following Hemingway’s advice, professional writer Amanda Castleman suggests taking a twominute workout. “When fidgeting with a phrase, I sometimes crank out a few push-ups to get the blood flowing. Yoga postures also help, if I’m feeling less Hemingway-esque.”
11. Break from forcing it Castleman also says to give yourself as many breaks as you need until it’s absolutely necessary to work. “I once was pottering about, procrastinating on deadline, when I bumped into two architect friends. One ordered me to ‘stick my butt in a chair and produce.’ The other (more successful) architect said, ‘You’re a professional. You know you’ll get the work done, brilliantly, under last-minute pressure. So you might as well relax and enjoy yourself guiltfree, until the adrenaline kicks in. That’s what I do.’ The advice has proved invaluable.” Taking breaks is also a good way to treat yourself to nonwriting activities you enjoy, and to help you recognize yourself as a person as opposed to just a writer. This distinction is vital to staving off those “marketplace blues” mentioned earlier. Holl says, “Remember to keep your professional distance and separate yourself from your script, so when your writing is rejected, you just keep on writing no matter what happens.”
12. Set a deadline Set a deadline, or have a stern friend set one, and stick to it. Finish. Put a period somewhere, and call it the ending. Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, says, “All too often, it is audacity and not talent that moves an artist to center stage.” Instead of being envious, be audacious. Be brave and be done with whatever piece is stressing you and then move on to your next piece. The more you write, the faster you’ll be at recognizing and remedying writer’s block.
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what to know before your book comes out by
M.J. Rose
C
ongratulations. You’ve signed the contract and mailed it back to your agent. It’s real. You’ve sold your first book. Hopefully you and your family will pop the cork on a bottle of champagne and make a toast to your success. But what will happen when you wake up the next morning and the 364 mornings after that until the day when your book hits the shelves? Unfortunately, your publisher isn’t going to tell you, and while your agent will be happy to answer all your questions, she doesn’t have the time to educate you about the business. And that’s what it is now that the book is done—writing is an art, but publishing is a business. The more you know about how the business works, the better prepared you’ll be. Usually a book comes out twelve to eighteen months after it’s bought and the contract is signed. There will be periods in that year where you’ll have a ton of work to do, and stretches where you never hear from your agent or your editor and there’s nothing to do but start your next book. (Which you should be doing as soon as the contract is signed. Nothing is better than to be working on a new book when the first comes out—it keeps you centered and makes you more of a writer.) So what should you expect?
What? No Flowers? Don’t expect your agent or your editor to send that big bouquet when you sign the contract. While your agent is probably thrilled for you, she’s also probably sold hundreds of books in her career. She’s done her job, and she will have more to do, but in terms of hugs, flowers, or excited phone calls, she’s a businesswoman, not a mom. As for your editor, she’s also bought hundreds of books and probably has a roster of anywhere from twenty to seventy-five authors whom she works with every year. So while your book matters to her, she’s not going to send anything either—except the check. And speaking of money, you don’t get the money the day you sign the contract. You don’t even get it that week, or even the next. It can take from six to eight weeks until the
Getting Started 29
first payment comes. Talk to your agent if it goes longer than that. Knowing the payment schedule will help you figure out if you can quit your day job or not. Not is more usual than unusual.
The Author-Editor Relationship The most important thing you’ll do in the first months after the contract is signed is work on your book. Again. And maybe even again. And then once again. No one is quite prepared for how many times they’re going to have to read and revise their books, so I’ll do my best to explain it here. The first communication you’ll get from your editor in e-mail or snail mail is the editorial notes. These usually arrive one to three months after the contract is signed, but that time depends on when your book is scheduled to be released. The “notes” you receive are your editor’s big suggestions, changes, and requests. This is the time for the hard questions and decisions. This letter can be anywhere from one page to twenty pages. It isn’t the line edit; there won’t be comments about an actual word here or there. Rather, you’ll get notes like: “Add a chapter that shows how the character reacts to the murder” or “I don’t understand your main character’s motivation in running away from home. We need to set this up better.” Usually you’ll have three to six weeks to address these notes (sometimes longer depending on your book’s publication date). Feel free to call your editor and discuss her edits—she wants you to. She does not expect you to smile and accept every change she is suggesting. But she does expect you to take her requests seriously. Almost every author I know has issues with some of the suggestions in the notes—don’t hesitate to discuss them with your editor.
The Big Switch What do you do if you get shifted off to an assistant or your book is delayed? This can happen to the best of us. Know that the assistant doesn’t do anything without your editor knowing about it, and that delays do not mean the house has lost interest in your book. If this happens to you, talk to your agent. Let her help you through the process.
Cover Up or Down About nine months before your book’s publication date, you’ll get an overnight package that contains a cover for your book. Why so early? The publisher needs the cover for the sales conference and the catalog (which the booksellers get about six months prior to your book’s publication date). These catalogs are important. Often, they are the only way the book buyers will find out about your book. Do you love the cover? Like the cover? Despise the cover? Don’t call your editor in a fury. Call your agent. There are some things you can call the editor directly about (like editorial conversations), but complaints with the cover should go to your agent first. Let your agent argue and fight with your editor. It’s better for your editor to get mad at your agent than at you.
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What if your agent likes the cover but you don’t? Talk it out with her. Sometimes the publisher and the agent understand the market better than you do. Even if you don’t think the cover fits your book, it still may be the right choice. Unless you’re a book designer or a bookseller, it’s probably best to go with what your publisher thinks the cover should be like.
Edits Again? Yes, this is the year of edits. Once you’ve sent the revised manuscript back to your editor, she will read it again and mark it up. This is called a line edit. This edited version will include cut sentences, suggestions for word replacements, questions about specific phrases, or comments on weak transitions or chapters that end too abruptly. You’ll probably have two weeks to look over this edit and make changes. Do you need to make every change? No, but you do need to take every change seriously and come up with good reasons not to make the suggested changes.
And More Edits? About a month later—which brings us to about six or seven months pre-publication— you’ll get the copyedit. This edit is done by a copy editor, not your editor. It corrects the punctuation and grammar in your manuscript. You can break those rules and take issue with the copy editor’s suggestions, but again, you need to have a reason. Usually you’ll have two weeks to look over this version of your book. Do it carefully because you’ll only have one more chance after this to see your book before it goes to print.
The Last Read About three to six months before the book comes out, you’ll get to see first-pass pages. Editors don’t expect you to change much at this stage—a dozen words here, two sentences there. This is not the time for you to rewrite the book, but rather read the final book to make sure there are no typos.
When Do the ARCs Come? Advanced reading copies (ARCs) are created about six months prior to your book’s publication date and are sent out to reviewers and bookstores five months before the publication of your book. Lately, publishers have been making ARCs out of your pre-edited manuscript to save time. Talk to your agent after the contract is signed, and make sure she talks to your editor about getting the manuscript edited before the ARCs are made. Since the ARCs are what the reviewers see, you want them to be as close to the final book as possible. You also get ARCs of your book. Your editor or someone from the publicity department should call and ask you how many ARCs you want. This should happen about eight months before your publication date. If no one calls, you should call your agent and see if she wants to handle this, or see if she wants you to call your editor. How many ARCs to ask for depends on how many “big mouth” people you know. If you have ten friends who have newspaper columns or run big book clubs, you want to
Getting Started 31
make sure you give them all an ARC. If you are really friendly with your local bookstore owner, you want to give him a personalized copy. Ideally, you want five to thirty ARCs to give to people who can get buzz started for your book because word of mouth is the best advertising a book can get.
You Need a Marketing Plan As the number of books published increases and the size of publicity departments seems to shrink, it’s more important than ever that you have a marketing plan when you first approach book publishers. At the very least, it should include a list of what you’re willing to contribute in terms of time, energy, and exposure and what opportunities you’ve identified for speaking or signing appearances, as well as your personal and professional mailing lists and a detailed description of all built-in audiences to which you know you have access. (Are you a college professor or other expert in your field? Do you have a successful online newsletter or blog? Do you regularly speak to or participate in any national organizations?) It’s important to meet as many of the people working on your book as possible— even if only by tele- or videoconference—especially your publicist and the in-house marketing staff. Call your editor seven months before your book comes out and ask if you can have a marketing meeting. It is one of the most important things you can do for your book. The purpose of a marketing meeting is to find out what the publisher is going to do to market your book. The reality is that few books get enough publicity or marketing. It’s just the economics of the business. Publishers are publishing more books than ever and don’t have the time or money to support them all. If you can find out what your publisher is doing, you can figure out what you can do yourself to add to these marketing efforts. Some authors take their entire advance and hire outside publicists, while others take part of their advance and go on tours they set up themselves. There are hundreds of things you can do to add to what your publisher is going to do.
Sweet Dreams About three weeks before the your book’s publication date, you’ll get a surprise package. In it will be a copy of your book. Finished. All done. This means the print run is in the warehouse, and the book’s being shipped to bookstores. There’s a superstition among writers that when you receive that first copy of your book, you’re supposed to sleep with it under your pillow that night for luck.
Today’s the Day What will happen on the day of your book’s publication? Not much. You’ve waited for this day for two, three, four, or forty years, and you wake up on the release date and nothing happens. The editor doesn’t call. The agent doesn’t call. The TV crews don’t
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show up. Over three hundred books come out every day. So while your book is everything to you, it’s business as usual to the rest of the world. Plan your own celebration. Enjoy the day: Go to the bookstores and see if the book is out. Sometimes books don’t get unpacked in time and aren’t on the shelf on the day of the book’s scheduled release, but don’t worry— it will be on the shelves soon. It can be depressing, but remember: Writing is an art, but publishing is a business— and the course of business doesn’t always run smooth. What’s important is this book is done, and it’s time to start again with your next book.
What Should I Ask? It’s important to find out what the marketing staff is doing to promote your book, but you need to do it without being antagonistic or sounding like a prima donna. So this is what I suggest you say: “I know you guys are great and know how to do promotion, but I also know the realities of the business and know how many books you have in-house. So what are the things you think would help my book but that just require too much time or personal attention for you to do in-house? I really hope you’ll be honest with me—I won’t be upset. You guys have a hundred books a quarter, I only have one a year, so what can I do to help?” After you make your pitch to the team, you can use the following six questions to help you navigate through the meeting:
• How many ARCs are you printing?
• When will the ARCs go out?
• Are you planning any kind of book tour?
• What are you hoping to do for the book?
• Are you taking out any ads? If so, where?
• Are you doing any kind of follow-up mailing to the ARC mailing?
Getting Started 33
the scams are out there! by
Nancy Breen
A
re you one of those writers who worries about being ripped off? While most industry professionals are upstanding and trustworthy, there are individuals and operations that prosper at the expense of naïve writers eager to see their work in print. Such disreputable activities result in criminal investigations, class action lawsuits—and millions of dollars bilked from those unsuspecting writers who don’t know how to spot an unscrupulous publisher, literary agent, or book doctor. How do these things happen? Could they happen to you? With basic knowledge of how scams operate and the obvious warning signs (not to mention a well-developed sense of skepticism), you’ll be better equipped to detect a scam before you get taken.
How Scams Work Publishers: They’re called subsidy, or “vanity” publishers. They recruit authors through display ads in writer’s magazines, spam sent to online newsgroups, or even through unsolicited letters and brochures sent by regular mail. “ATTENTION: WRITERS WANTED” they trumpet. When you respond with a query or manuscript, you receive a letter awash with praise for your writing and chock-full of promises of success and exaggerated claims for all the wonderful things the publisher will do for your manuscript, from printing to promotion. Then, when the contract comes, you notice the clause that states how much YOU are expected to contribute, usually a significant sum of money. For this you will receive X number of books out of X number printed, your book will be widely distributed and promoted and you will all live happily ever after. Don’t bet on it. These kinds of publishers make profits from the fees they charge writers, not from sales of the books they produce. The finished books are often of dubious quality, there’s actually little or no promotional effort expended by the publisher, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find your book in major bookstores (or even small ones). The publisher may not even print as many total books as promised. Without sales there are no royalties, and the hoodwinked writer ends up with little to show for a considerable investment except stacks of unsold books.
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Literary agents and book doctors: Shady agents recruit writers much as subsidy publishers do—through ads, online spam, and direct mail. When you submit a manuscript, the agent responds that the work isn’t quite up to standard and could use some editing. But don’t despair! The agent gives you the name of an excellent book doctor who understands just what that agent, and today’s publisher, is looking for. For an inflated fee, the book doctor works his “magic” on your manuscript. You resubmit the work to the agent, but wouldn’t you know it? In the meantime, the market for your book has changed, or the agent represents an entirely different genre of writing, or ... Well, the end of the story is you wind up with an unpublished manuscript that wasn’t even particularly well “doctored,” you have no representation in the marketplace, and you’re out of a big chunk of change. Anthologies: You see an ad calling for writers or announcing a competition that offers thousands of dollars in cash prizes. You submit a poem or story and, lo and behold, you receive a heartening letter: Your poem didn’t win, but it’s so good it’s been chosen for inclusion in a special anthology of only the best poems submitted. What a feather in your cap! Now, you don’t have to purchase the anthology if you don’t want to; but should you wish to see your poem among this treasure trove of literary gems, it will cost you only $45 (or whatever—could be more). Deluxe hardbound edition, mind you.
If You’re the Victim of a Scam ... ... or if you’re trying to prevent one, the following resources should be of help:
• Contact the Federal Trade Commission, Bureau of Consumer Protection at 1-877-FTCHELP (382-4357) or log on to www.ftc.gov. While they won’t resolve individual consumer problems, the FTC depends on your complaints to help them investigate fraud. Your speaking up may even lead to law enforcement action. Contact them by phone or enter your complaint through their online submission form.
• Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (1 East 53rd St., New York, NY 10022) is a group of volunteers from the legal profession who assist with questions of law pertaining to all fields of the arts. You can phone their hotline at (212) 319-ARTS (2787), ext. 1, and have your questions answered for the price of the phone call. For further information you can also visit their Web site at www.vlany.org.
• Better Business Bureau (check local listings or visit www.bbb.org)—the folks to contact if you have a complaint or if you want to investigate a publisher, literary agent, or other business related to writing and writers. In addition, you should contact your state’s attorney general with information about scamming activity. Don’t know your attorney general’s name? Go to the National Internet Fraud Watch resource site (www.fraud.org/info/links.htm#agsoffices) for a wealth of contact information, including a complete list of links for each state’s attorney general.
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Won’t you be proud to show it to your family and friends? Why, they’ll probably want to buy copies for themselves. When you receive this grand volume, you may be disappointed in the quality of the other poems “chosen” to appear in this exclusive publication. Actually, everyone who entered was invited to be published, and you basically paid cash to see your poem appear in a book of no literary merit whatsoever. These are the most common scams out there, although enterprising con artists are devising new ones all the time (modern technology, from “display” sites on the Internet to print-on-demand schemes, have opened up lots of fresh possibilities for emptying your wallet).
The Warning Signs How do you protect yourself? It’s important to learn the warning signs common to most publishing scams. Spotting even one of these danger signals should be enough to make you pause and ask some appropriate questions. Here’s what to watch out for: A request for money. Here’s how the legitimate system works: An agent sells your work to a publisher and takes a percentage of the sale amount as commission. A publisher agrees to publish your work and makes money off the sales of your book. At no point in the process should you be paying anyone for anything. That goes for “reading fees,” “marketing fees,” “contract fees,” and so on. What about contest fees? True, many literary magazines, small presses, and literary organizations (such as state poetry societies) conduct contests that require entry fees (also sometimes called “reading fees”), and most of these are legitimate. The fees they charge go toward the expenses of conducting the contest, paying judges, and putting up prize money, not lining someone’s pocket. Also, entrants often receive a subscription to the magazine or a copy of the prize issue in exchange for the entry fee (or a copy of the winning book or chapbook in the case of small presses). When in doubt, consider the reputation of the press, magazine, or organization, how long it’s been in existence or sponsoring the competition, how dependably winners and entrants are rewarded, and the quality of the winning entries. If a competition asks for money but does not pay in cash, contributor’s copies, or some other tangible prize, enter your work elsewhere. One more note about money: Do expect to pay for professional services, such as personal editing of your manuscript. However, be sure what you’re being charged for (simple copyediting vs. deep revision, for example). If there’s a contract, read it carefully and take pains to make sure both parties understand all points. And never pay the full cost of the service up front! Referral to a specific agent, publisher, or book doctor. Unscrupulous agents, publishers, and book doctors could be in cahoots. For instance, an agent or publisher might suggest he will look at your manuscript if it’s worked on by a certain book doc-
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tor. An agent might suggest that a certain subsidy publisher is your best bet to see your work in print. And so on. If you’re referred to just one individual or company, beware! Phrases like “joint venture agreement,” “author’s contribution,” and “copartnership.” It’s that money thing again. Beware of any wording that even remotely suggests your financial participation. Your “contribution” will be bigger than you ever imagined and bring you far less than you ever wanted to believe. Extravagant praise or unrealistic promises. Does the publisher or agent just rave about your work? Does he go on and on about the incredible success and financial rewards you can expect upon publication? Are you fed glorious visions of promotional campaigns and massive distribution? Don’t be a chump. He’s setting you up for the kill. Legitimate publishers and agents aren’t going to gush all over you; and those spiels about promotional campaigns and widespread distribution are blue-sky come-ons that never materialize into anything. Great stuff for feeding your ego in the beginning, but later you’ll wonder how you ever could have been so gullible. Vagueness about details. If a publisher, agent, or book doctor seems reluctant to provide basic information about her business activities or suggests sharing such “confidential” information could compromise the business’s operation, be on guard. It’s not crossing the line to ask about sales figures or how royalties are calculated and how often they’re paid, to request a client list (i.e., references), a complete breakdown of costs to you, and whatever else you’ll need to help you make a sensible, well-informed decision. Broad, inaccurate statements about the publishing industry. This is especially true of negative statements that make it seem as if you have no hope of ever selling your manuscript; at least, not without that party’s assistance. If an agent, publisher, or book doctor makes claims such as “publishers don’t edit manuscripts anymore,” kick your skepticism into high gear. While it’s true many editors are less involved in the nuts-andbolts editing than they used to be, do some research on your own to find out what’s really going on in the publishing world. Knowledge is power, and you’ll be better able to detect the distortions in a scammer’s spiel. Display ads for agents, publishers, contests, and anthologies. You’re better off resisting these ads entirely. Legitimate, successful agents and publishers don’t need to advertise; they’re deluged with more writers than they can take on. What’s more, these ads are misleading. Study them carefully and you probably won’t find any mention of a fee, but you can be sure that requests for money will be introduced once you respond to the ad. As for contests and anthologies, these ads are tempting with their promises of big cash awards. Even if the awards are actually paid to the winners, what you’re more likely to receive is an invitation to buy an anthology. Understand that writer’s publications do run display ads for entirely legitimate contests, but these are usually sponsored by literary magazines and small presses. Those ads with the grandiose titles that appear in both writer and nonwriter publications are what you really have to watch out for (“The Best Damn Poetry in the Cosmos Competition” or “Universal Library of Literary Giants Competition” or ... well, you get the idea).
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These are just a few of the tip-offs to scams that prey on writers. When searching for an agent, publisher, or book doctor, apply the same common sense that you would to finding a good mechanic, caterer, or carpenter. Request a resume and references. Check with the Better Business Bureau. Talk to clients past and present. Search the Internet. You can even generate a professional background check (fees for this vary, so be careful here, too).
Don’t Rush to Publish Writers serious about their craft should never be so impatient for publication that they rush into dubious business arrangements. Devious publishers, agents, and book doctors understand the vulnerability of unpublished authors who feel anxious—desperate, even—to see their work in print. If you’re good enough to be published, you’re good enough to be the payee rather than the payer. On the other hand, if you really are not ready for publication, paying someone to rush things along isn’t going to earn you the reputation and success you desire. So put away your checkbook and credit cards and dig out your manuscript. Concentrate your energies into making your writing the best it can be. If your work deserves an audience, it will find one without the process draining your bank account. The scams are out there—but you do not have to be a victim.
For Info You Can Trust There are plenty of books that can help you identify reputable publishers, literary agents, and book doctors, including Writer’s Market and its online counterpart at www.writers market.com (subscription-based), Guide to Literary Agents, and Literary Market Place. The Internet is also a rich source of information. Simply type “publishing scams” into your favorite search engine. Here are some of our favorite sites (not only for scam information, but for good writing advice as well):
• National Writers Union (www.nwu.org) for their “Writer Alerts” page (accessible to nonmembers)
• Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. (www.sfwa.org/beware) for their “Writer Beware” section
• Preditors & Editors (www.anotherealm.com/prededitors) for their “Warnings” page
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literary agents: what they do and how to get one by the
Staff of Writer’s Market
I
n today’s competitive marketplace, books only get published when they have a series of passionate individuals who believe in the project. The author must be dedicated and passionate enough to complete the book and polish it until it’s as perfect as it can be. Then the author must have an agent or editor who is enthusiastic enough to champion the work to the necessary publishing board and sales and marketing teams, who in turn promote the book to booksellers and the media. It’s a highly collaborative process, and every individual or group along the way must support the book in order for it to be successful.
What Can an Agent Do For You? When an agent agrees to represent you and your work, you have reached the first step in the publishing process; you now have an ally within the publishing industry, someone else who is excited about your book and wants to see it in print. In addition to believing in and being an advocate for your writing, an agent’s value lies in her knowledge of and connection to publishers: When she agrees to represent a manuscript, she knows which editors at the various publishing houses are most likely to feel as excited about your book as she does. As the representative for your work, your agent will tell the appropriate editors why she believes in your book and why they should, too. But beyond being enthusiastic about your book, agents offer expanded access to publishing houses. Although there are many writers who successfully sell their manuscripts without the help of a literary agent, most of the larger publishing houses will only look at manuscripts from agents. In fact, approximately 80 percent of books published by the major houses are sold to them by agents. If you feel that an imprint of one of the larger publishing houses—Random House, Simon & Schuster, Grand Central Publishing, HarperCollins, Penguin, or Holtzbrinck—is the best fit for your book, you’re going to need an agent just to get your book through those publishers’ doors. That’s only a small part of what an agent can do for you. The following describes the various jobs agents do for their clients, many of which would be difficult for a writer to do without outside help.
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Agents know editors’ tastes and needs An agent possesses information on a complex web of publishing houses and a multitude of editors to make sure her clients’ manuscripts are placed in the hands of the right editors. This knowledge is gathered through relationships she cultivates with acquisitions editors—the people who decide which books to present to their publishers for possible publication. Through her industry connections, an agent becomes aware of the specializations of publishing houses and their imprints, knowing that one publisher only wants contemporary romances while another is interested solely in nonfiction books about the military. By networking with editors over lunch and at conferences and trade shows, an agent also learns more specialized information—like which editor is looking for a crafty Agatha Christie-style mystery for the fall catalog, for example.
Agents track changes in publishing Being attentive to constant market changes and vacillating trends is also a major requirement of an agent’s job. He understands what it may mean for clients when publisher A merges with publisher B, and when an editor from house C moves to house D. Or what it means when readers—and therefore editors—are no longer interested in Westerns, but instead can’t get their hands on enough Stephen King-style suspense novels.
Agents get your manuscript read faster Although it may seem like an extra step to send your manuscript to an agent instead of directly to a publishing house, the truth is an agent can prevent writers from wasting months sending manuscripts to the wrong places or being buried in some editor’s mountain of unsolicited manuscripts (called “the slush pile”). Editors rely on agents to save them time as well. With little time to sift through the hundreds of unsolicited submissions arriving weekly in the mail or by e-mail, an editor is naturally going to prefer a manuscript that has already been approved by a qualified reader. (This is the reason many of the larger publishers accept agented submissions only.)
Agents understand contracts When publishers write contracts, they are primarily interested in their own bottom line rather than the best interests of the author. Writers unfamiliar with contractual language may find themselves bound to a publisher with whom they no longer want to work, or trapped in a clause that prevents them from getting royalties on their first book until they have written several. An agent uses his experience to negotiate a contract that benefits the writer while still respecting the publisher’s needs.
Agents negotiate Subsidiary rights Beyond print publication, a savvy agent keeps in mind other opportunities for your manuscript. If your agent believes your book will also be successful as an audiobook, a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, or even a blockbuster movie, he will take these op-
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tions into consideration when shopping your manuscript. These additional outlets for your writing are called “subsidiary rights.” Part of an agent’s job is to keep track of the strengths and weaknesses of different publishers’ subsidiary rights offices to determine the deposition of these rights to your work. After the contract is negotiated, the agent will seek additional moneymaking opportunities for the rights he kept for his client.
Agents get escalators An escalator is a bonus that an agent can negotiate as part of the book contract. It is commonly given when a book appears on a best-seller list or if a client appears on a popular television show. For example, a publisher might give a writer a $50,000 bonus if she is picked for a book club. Both the agent and the editor know such media attention will sell more books, and the agent negotiates an escalator to ensure the writer benefits from this increase in sales.
Agents track payments Because an agent only receives payment when the publisher pays the writer, it is in her best interest to make sure the writer is paid on schedule. Some publishing houses are notorious for late payments. Having an agent distances you from any conflict over payment and allows you to spend your time writing instead of on the phone.
Agents are strong advocates Besides standing up for your right to be paid on time, agents can ensure your book gets more attention from the publisher’s marketing department, a better cover design, or other benefits you may not know to ask for during the publishing process. An agent can also provide advice during each step of this process as well as guidance about your long-term writing career.
When Might You Not Need an Agent? Although there are many reasons to work with an agent, an author can benefit from submitting his own work. For example, if your writing focuses on a very specific audience, a niche topic, or is less commercial (such as literary fiction or poetry), you may want to work with a small or specialized publisher. These houses are usually open to receiving material directly from writers. Smaller houses can often give more attention to a writer than a large house, providing editorial help, marketing expertise, and other advice directly to the writer. Some writers use a lawyer or entertainment attorney instead of an agent. If a lawyer specializes in intellectual property, he can help a writer with contract negotiations. Instead of receiving a commission, the lawyer is paid for his time only. And, of course, some people prefer working independently instead of relying on others to do their work. If you are one of these people, it is probably better to shop your own work instead of constantly butting heads with an agent.
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The Basics of Contacting Agents Once you and your manuscript are thoroughly prepared and you’ve determined whether your work is best suited to a large commercial publisher or a smaller house, the time is right to contact an agent. Finding an agent can often be as difficult as finding a publisher. Nevertheless, there are four ways to maximize your chances of finding the right agent:
1. Obtain a referral from someone who knows the agent. 2. Meet the agent in person at a writers conference. 3. Submit a query letter or proposal. 4. Attract the agent’s attention with your own published writing.
Referrals The best way to get your foot in an agent’s door is to be referred by one of his clients or by an editor or another agent he has worked with in the past. Because an agent trusts his clients, he will usually read referred work before over-the-transom submissions. If you are friends with anyone in the publishing business who has connections with agents, ask politely for a referral. However, don’t be offended if another writer will not share the name of his agent. If you don’t know any publishing professionals, use the resources you do have to get an agent’s attention.
Conferences Going to a conference is your best bet for meeting an agent in person. Many conferences invite agents to either give a presentation or simply be available for meetings with authors. Agents view conferences as a way to find writers. Often agents set aside time for one-on-one discussions with writers, and occasionally they may even look at material writers bring to the conference. If an agent is impressed with you and your work, she may ask for writing samples after the conference. When you send your query, be sure to mention the specific conference where you met and that she asked to see your work.
Submissions The most common way to contact an agent is by a query letter or a proposal package. Most agents will accept unsolicited queries. Some will also look at outlines and sample chapters. Almost none want unsolicited complete manuscripts. Check agents’ Web sites or market guides like Guide to Literary Agents to learn exactly how an agent prefers to be solicited. Never call—let the writing in your query letter speak for itself. Because a query letter is your first impression on an agent, it should be professional and to the point. As a brief introduction to your manuscript, a query letter should only be one page in length.
• The first paragraph should quickly state your purpose and your project: You want representation for a [novel/nonfiction book/children’s middle-grade reader, etc.] that’s approximately [X],000 words and fits into the [X] genre.
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• In the second paragraph, mention why you have specifically chosen to query him. Perhaps he specializes in your areas of interest or represents authors you admire. Show him you have done your homework. • In the next paragraph or two, describe the project, the proposed audience, why your book will sell, etc. Be sure to mention any special features. • Then discuss why you are the perfect person to write this book, listing your professional credentials or relative experience. • Close your query with an offer to send either an outline, sample chapters, or the complete manuscript—depending on your type of book and the agent’s guidelines.
Remember, like publishers, agencies have specialties. Some are only interested in novellength works. Others are open to a wide variety of subjects but may actually have member agents within the agency who specialize in only a handful of the topics covered by the entire agency. You must put as much research into deciding which agents to query as you would when choosing publishers.
Publishing credits Some agents read magazines or journals to find writers to represent. If you have had an outstanding piece published in a periodical, you may be contacted by an agent wishing to represent you. In such cases, make sure the agent has read your work. Some agents send form letters to writers, and such agents often make their living entirely from charging reading fees, not from commissions on sales. However, many reputable and respected agents do contact potential clients in this way. For them, you already possess attributes of a good client: You have publishing credits, and an editor has validated your work. To receive a letter from a reputable agent who has read your material and wants to represent you is an honor. Occasionally, writers who have self-published or who have had their work published electronically may attract an agent’s attention, especially if the self-published book has sold several thousand copies or received a lot of positive reviews. Recently, writers have been posting their work on the Internet in hope of attracting an agent’s eye. With all the submissions agents receive, they have little time to peruse writers’ Web sites. Nevertheless, there are agents who consider the Internet a resource for finding fresh voices. The future will show how often writers are discovered through this medium.
A Final Word While agents can help you sell a single book, they’re more interested in representing your entire career, so be selective about the agents you query and eventually agree to work with. Agents are invaluable business managers, and your relationship with them is a lot like a marriage—with ups and downs, joyful times and disappointments, lean times and successful times—so make sure an agent’s personality and business style are ones you’re comfortable with before you agree to be represented by him. The process of publishing is a lot more enjoyable when you and your agent communicate well on the direction of your writing career.
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A Writer’s guide to money by
Gary Provost
A
friend of mine, who I’ll call Rocky, spent fifteen years writing a very good 500-page novel. When he sold his novel to a major hardcover publisher, he received an advance of $3,000, which he probably spent on therapy. The novel got a small first printing and good reviews. Soon after that all existing copies of the book were sucked into an enormous black hole, never to be seen again. Rocky’s novel was not reprinted in paperback; no producer bought a movie option; no magazine published excerpts; nobody asked for Rocky’s autograph. In short, Rocky’s book met the fate of most literary first novels: no advertising, no publicity, few sales, a short life. Almost certainly, that $3,000 is all the money Rocky will ever receive for his fifteen years of work. On the other hand, Robert James Waller required only a few weeks to write The Bridges of Madison County. The book took up almost permanent residence on the best-seller list. In 1993, The Bridges of Madison County sold more copies than the top ten best-selling books of 1983 combined. Waller’s follow-up book, Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend, which some have seen as a thinly disguised rewrite of Bridges, also went directly to the best-seller list without passing go. Waller, a singer before he was a writer, has parlayed his fame into a successful CD. Clint Eastwood has made Bridges a film. All of this has brought to Waller a paycheck well into the multimillions of dollars, putting him in the same tax bracket as Shaquille O’Neal. Hardly seems fair, does it? Of course not. Rule #1 about writing and money is that fair has nothing to do with it. Nobody is going to buy your book, short story, or magazine article just because you worked really hard. “A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work” doesn’t apply to writing for a living.
First, Some Money Myths Debunked If you want to understand how writers make money, you must first lose a lifetime of assumptions about work and money. Specifically, you must delete these three ideas from your mind: 1. My pay is related to the number of hours I work (the hourly wage). 2. My pay is related to the number of items I produce (piecemeal).
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3. My pay is related to the quality of my work (merit). Look at my earlier example: Waller worked fewer hours, wrote fewer pages, and created a work of, some might argue, lesser quality. But his paycheck was thousands of times greater than Rocky’s. Certainly the hours put in, the volume of work turned out, and the quality of your writing will contribute to the overall financial success of your writing career. But the number one determiner of your paycheck on any given project is not hours, volume, or quality. It is the market. Who bought it? And who did they sell it to? In the case of my friend Rocky, he sold his product to a book publisher and they in turn sold it to the small number of people who were willing to spend $22 for a hardcover literary novel by an unknown writer. In the case of Waller, he sold his product to a big publisher, Warner Books, but for various reasons, Warner was able to sell The Bridges of Madison County to millions of people who had heard about the book. Short stories and magazine articles sold to a publisher are also “resold” as part of the periodical in which they appear. The market for an article can be the small-town newspaper that in turn “sells” it to their five thousand subscribers, or the regional magazine that sells it to their seventy thousand subscribers, or the big national magazine that sells it to their three million subscribers. The editors of all these publications have two things in common: One, they are looking for well-written material that will interest their readers, and two, they’re not particularly concerned about how hard you worked to come up with the material. Did you make thirty phone calls trying to get that interview with Tommy Lee Jones, or did Tommy talk to you right away because he went to school with your cousin? They don’t care. Did you walk into the library and find what you needed right away, or did you spend hours there because some sophomore was using the computer for his science project? They don’t care. Did you use your research material in three other articles, thus making your time more cost-effective, or is this article the only one you will write on the subject? They don’t care. You are going to get paid what your work is worth to the editor, not what it is worth to you. In the case of Rocky, that is bad news. In the case of Waller, that is good news. So the question is not, “What’s fair?” The question is: “What can you do to be more like a Waller than a Rocky?”
Periodical Pay Rates You can begin by understanding the writer’s market. Let’s start with magazines and newspapers. We can generalize and say that a magazine or newspaper makes money by selling advertising space. If a magazine has a big circulation, it can charge advertisers more money, and then it will have more money to spend on writers. That means that if you write a 750-word column about how to have fun with a fax machine and sell it to a small-town newspaper, you might get $30 for it. If you were to sell the same column to a newspaper in a mid-sized city, you might get $80–100 for it, and if you sold the column to a big city newspaper you might get $200–300 for it. If you write a 2,000-word article on tax revolt for a city magazine, like Atlantic City Magazine, you might get $300. Sell
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the same piece to a regional magazine like Yankee and maybe you’ll get $900. Sell it to a big circulation national like Reader’s Digest and maybe you’ll get $2,000 or even $3,000. Same article, different markets. This generalization is useful, but not absolute. There are, for example, magazines that don’t need a lot of advertising money in order to pay you well, because they are not trying to make a profit. Magazines such as AARP: The Magazine exist not to make money on their own, but to serve the members of an organization, in this case the American Association of Retired Persons. There are also magazines, like The New Yorker, that make a lot of money because they are able to reach the desirable upscale readers who can afford the sports cars and expensive evening wear advertised in their pages. So you can see that the writer’s market is sometimes as complex as the stock market, and if you want to make money from your writing you must study guides like Writer’s Market and the individual guidelines of the publishers listed in it. Remember, better writing without better marketing won’t earn you a dime more. The lifestyle editor of the local newspaper is not going to pay you Redbook wages just because your piece on the history of spoons is of Redbook quality.
Efficient Writing However, as important as the market is, there are many things you can do as a writer to make money flow to you more often and in greater amounts. (Notice that I didn’t say faster. Money moves very slowly toward writers.) While time, volume, and quality are not directly responsible for the size of your paycheck, they will in the long run combine to make you solvent or lead you into bankruptcy. The quality of your writing is what will help you compete with top writers for the best-paying markets. And the speed of your writing will help you turn out a lot of material, even if it happens to be for lower-paying markets. When you combine all of these—market awareness, good writing, and speed—you have efficient writing. Efficient writing means not just studying the market and writing well, but thinking about how you can squeeze the most dollars from each hour spent on your writing and research. You will learn your own moneymaking tricks as you move through your career. But here are a few basics.
1. Use research time wisely This means when you research a subject for an article, learn enough for two or three or more articles on the subject. This goes for books, too. If, like me, you write fiction and nonfiction, so much the better. I wrote a nonfiction book called High Stakes: Inside the New Las Vegas. Now I am working on a mystery that takes place in Las Vegas. The research is paying off twice.
2. Reslant your article for another magazine Let’s say you’ve written an article for Inside Detective on people who took the law into their own hands. Maybe one of your most interesting anecdotes concerns a Boston man
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who foiled a pet shop holdup. He might get three paragraphs in your piece for Inside Detective, but maybe you could write a complete article about his case for Boston Magazine or the Sunday supplements of the Boston Herald or Boston Globe. When you can’t use all of the research, use part of it. Maybe in your research you found that most of these people used handguns. You could use your stories as a takingoff point in another article either for or against gun control.
3. Think about added value To the writer added value means giving the customer a little bit more and getting paid for it. Once you’ve agreed to write an article on ceramic banks for, say, $400, there are a few things you can do to fatten the paycheck. Artwork, meaning photos or illustrations, is usually paid for separately, and often brings in more money than the article itself, so be creative in coming up with ways to illustrate your article. Another source of revenue is sidebars. A sidebar is a small article, perhaps 200 words, that runs in a box beside or below the main article. For your article on ceramic banks, you could write a sidebar explaining how the pig came to be the model for piggy banks. (And by the way, the reason I thought of that example is that I came upon the answer while researching another article.)
4. Resell your article or story As you research the market, you will see that many magazines buy “reprint” rights or “second serial rights.” That means they will pay you money for the right to publish a story or article that you have already published elsewhere. Maybe you spent ten hours on your piece about backyard swimming pools and you got $500. That’s $50 an hour. Now you sell it again for $200. You’ve just raised your hourly rate to $70 an hour. Just be sure that you sold the previous publisher “first rights” only. Another way to get more money for your magazine article or short story is to make it part of a book. For example, I once wrote an article called “The Seven Beacons of Good Writing” for Writer’s Digest magazine. I have sold reprint rights to that article to six different writing anthologies, for a total of $2,000.
Books and Money While the principles of efficient magazine writing also apply to book writing, there are important differences regarding money in book writing. The money you get for writing a book comes from two sources: the royalties and advance, and the subsidiary rights.
Advance and Royalties Author royalties vary, but not by much. There are standards in the industry: 10 percent of the cover price on a hardcover book, 6 to 8 percent on a paperback. Usually there is an “escalator,” an increase in the royalty rate after the book has sold a certain number of copies. The advance is an amount of money you will get before the book is published, usually one-half when you sign a book contract and one-half when you deliver the completed manuscript. It is an advance against royalties and your royalty statements will arrive with-
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out a check until that advance has been earned back. I can give you some examples of advances, but I can’t promise that they will be useful. Two women I know recently sold their first true-crime books as paperback originals. One got $10,000, the other got $12,000. One of my students recently sold her first novel, a paperback original, for $8,000. Another sold his in hardcover for $4,000 and still another sold his in paperback for $3,000. I have another friend, very well established, who gets $300,000 advances for his hardcover novels. My own advances for true-crime books have been in the $50,000–70,000 range, but I only got $40,000 for a business book last year, $10,000 for a book about writing, and when I write a children’s book I’m lucky to get $7,000. I know of one author who was offered a $15,000 advance for his novel by one publisher, and $400,000 by another. As you can see, when it comes to money, book publishing is a crazy business. Certainly the great majority of advances fall between $4,000 and $50,000, but there are many superstars like Stephen King and Nora Roberts who get millions. Robert James Waller probably got a small advance for The Bridges of Madison County because nobody had ever heard of him, but he probably got a zillion dollars for the next book because by then everybody had heard of him. The reason for all this diversity is that the advance is often based on perceptions, not realities. A publisher bases his advance on what he thinks the first print run of the book will be. That number is based on what he thinks will be the advance orders for the book. That guess, in turn, is based on how enthusiastic he thinks the sales force will be about selling the book. That guess could be based on what he thinks the finished manuscript will look like. And so forth. It is all guesswork fueled by such varied things as the fact that a similar book did well last year; the author has a good track record; Madonna has agreed to write a quote for the front jacket; Steven Spielberg is interested in making a movie of it; or the author’s agent has a reputation for discovering great new talents. Of course, it is not as much of a crapshoot as it seems, because these beliefs tend to be self-fulfilling. When you pay a million-dollar advance to an author, you automatically print a lot of books and spend a lot of money on promotion and advertising.
Subsidiary Rights The other source of money for the book author comes from subsidiary rights. That is, all the rights he hasn’t sold to the publisher. Subsidiary rights include audio rights, foreign rights, movie rights, electronic rights, serialization (in a magazine) rights, and in some cases the right to base a T-shirt, towel, or desk calendar on your book. The best way to wring the most money out of these rights is to get a good literary agent before you sign the contract.
Some Good News If you’re feeling overwhelmed at this point, don’t be. After all the small checks and the slow checks and the frustrations that come with this profession, we writers have something that sane people do not. We all have it in us to write that next bestseller that brings the six-figure royalty checks, the movie deal, the book club offer, the huge paperback reprint, the letters from adoring fans. We won’t all be Robert James Waller. In fact,
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very few of us will be. But all of us can wake up each morning knowing that we are part of a profession that makes that dream at least possible.
Know Your Rights Writers and editors sometimes define rights in a number of different ways. Below you will find a classification of terms as they relate to rights.
• First serial rights: Rights that the writer offers a newspaper or magazine to publish the manuscript for the first time in any periodical. All other rights remain with the writer. Sometimes the qualifier “North American” is added to these rights to specify a geographical limitation to the license. When content excerpted from a book scheduled to be published appears in a magazine or newspaper prior to book publication, this is also called first serial rights.
• One-time rights: Nonexclusive rights (rights that can be licensed to more than one market) purchased by a periodical to publish the work once. These are also known as simultaneous rights, that is, there is nothing to stop the author from selling the work to other publications at the same time.
• Second serial (reprint) rights: Nonexclusive rights given to a newspaper or magazine to publish a manuscript after it has already appeared in another newspaper or magazine.
• All rights: This is exactly what it sounds like. “All rights” means an author is selling every right he has to a work. If you license all rights to your work, you forfeit the right to ever use the work again, in any form or media. You should avoid submitting to such markets or refuse payment and withdraw your material.
• Electronic rights: Rights that cover a broad range of electronic media, from online magazines and databases to CD-ROM magazine anthologies and interactive games. The contract should specify if and which electronic rights are included. The presumption is unspecified rights remain with the writer.
• Subsidiary rights: Rights, other than book publication rights, that should be covered in a book contract. These may include various serial rights; movie, TV, audiotape, and other electronic rights; translation rights; etc. The book contract should specify who controls the rights (author or publisher) and what percentage of sales from the licensing of these rights goes to the author.
• Dramatic, TV, and motion picture rights: Rights for use of material on the stage, on TV, or in the movies. Often a one-year option to buy such rights is offered (generally for 10 percent of the total price). The party interested in the rights then tries to sell the idea to other people—actors, directors, studios, or TV networks. Some properties are optioned numerous times, but most fail to become full productions. In those cases, the writer can sell the rights again and again.
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smooth starting for full-time freelance writing by John
F. Lauerman
A
t 7 a.m. I rise smiling and unblinking from my bed and begin preparing for another day of the life of a freelancer. First there’s a hearty breakfast, a few minutes of play with Hanna and James, and then a long, hot shower. At 8:30, dressed in mismatched socks, a torn sweatshirt, jeans, and high-top sneakers (who cares what I wear?), I make my way downstairs to the office where my computer hums expectantly. My to-do list beckons: an op-ed piece for the Times, a 6,500-word article on chaos for The New Yorker, a speech for the president of General Motors (due tomorrow), and the script for a Nova episode on the physics of baseball. Like a pilot strapping into the cockpit, I take the controls of my word processor and begin meticulously crafting sentences, paragraphs, pages, chapters. A full two hours pass before I even glance away from the screen, but when I do, holy cow! The sun is out, it’s a beautiful day, and it’s still only 10:30. “Golf!” I yelp, and hurriedly add the Pings to the collection of sports equipment in the Miata’s trunk. As I race to tee off, the cell phone rings. It’s my agent: The sixfigure book deal has come through. “Check’s in the mail!” she says. “Don’t spend it all in one place.” Wow, I love this job!
What Kind of Person Freelances? Well, it isn’t always like that. As a matter of fact, it’s almost never like that, and to be absolutely truthful I would have to admit I can’t remember a single day of freelancing that was even remotely like that. Sure, I take some days off. Yes, it’s true that I seldom dress up for work. Given, some of the jobs are exciting. But all in all, the freedom of freelancing has been greatly exaggerated. Most freelancers have offices, and most of them spend their nine-to-five day in that office, trying to make a living. Being a successful freelancer doesn’t necessarily mean having time to work on your golf game, or writing for high-profile national magazines. I once read that a good farmer is one who can make enough money to keep on farming. The same is true of freelance writing: If you’re making enough money to keep afloat, you must be doing okay.
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To Specialize or Not ... Building a specialty can be vital to maintaining your freelance career. In fact, many freelancers start out with a specialty interest, and the desire to write about it. I’ve been writing about science and medicine for more than ten years, and here are a few observations:
• Specializing can be important to financial and career survival. If you can say, “I know architecture, I’ve been writing about it for years,” it’s helpful when you’re looking for jobs, or when you’re trying to sell yourself. The best markets in freelancing provide upto-the-minute, accurate, understandable information about specific fields. The best way to do that is via specialization.
• Don’t be intimidated by specializing. That is, you don’t need to be an architect to write about architecture. Sure, it helps to know something about it, and have more than a passing interest. But the important thing is to become familiar with the terminology, be able to communicate familiar concepts, and cultivate contacts in the field.
• Once you do specialize, the world tends to get very small. Treat your sources as well as you can, particularly when you’re starting out. Some sources will want you to read quotes back to them. Depending on the type of assignment you’re working on, you may want to accommodate them, or at least negotiate something with them. Calling people back to comment on what you’ve written also gives you a chance to do more reporting, and to cultivate them as regular sources. Maybe some of your sources, particularly the higher-placed ones, will be very concerned about whether they can trust you, and they will remember if they think they’ve been burned.
I often think of a freelancer as an artisan, not unlike the silversmith Paul Revere: He lived upstairs, worked downstairs, and was as active in the community as he was in his own profession (recall his famous ride?). Before the birth of large corporations, virtually everyone’s work life was organically related to life in the community, by both proximity and function. As it happens, today’s economic climate allows for a certain amount of artisanship in the field of writing; people who can fill that niche are able to make a living. That being said, there are lots of talented people who have tried freelancing and returned to office work; likewise, there are others who have left the daily grind and hightailed it back to the home office. I began freelancing while on a science writing fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley, doing pieces for the San Francisco Examiner and San Jose Mercury News. Later, when I took a job with the Harvard Medical School news office, I continued to do occasional articles for the Boston Globe, the Patriot Ledger, and the Boston Herald, as well as other publications. The notion of full-time freelancing—as opposed to after-hours, weekend freelancing—occurred to me in the same idealized way that it strikes a lot of people: “be your own boss,” “more time for writing fiction,” “tennis at three.” These were the ideas float-
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ing around in my head. Two children, a mortgage, and a car loan have dashed those dreams, but I’m still a thriving small businessman, I still decide more or less how I’m going to spend each day—as long as I spend it working—and I still have the sense of artisanry and identification with my work that I think only freelancing can provide.
What’s in a Freelancer’s Toolbox? As I think I’ve proven often enough, you don’t have to be a gifted writer to freelance. You just need to be willing to gather information and write it up clearly. That, in a nutshell, is what most freelancers provide: fresh information served hot. (See the sidebar on specialization.) However, the news many writers aren’t prepared for is that freelancing is hard work, and it requires planning, risk-taking, and doing a few things most people aren’t used to doing on a daily basis:
• Working alone • Marketing your services • Editing your own work • Motivating yourself • Being your own office manager • Doing other work for which you have no training
Are you prepared to do these things? Erin Martin was a public information officer at a large Boston teaching hospital until a merger forced her to reconsider her position. She knew freelancers who were making $100 an hour writing public relations copy for local firms, and decided to take a stab at it herself. “The work was there,” says Martin, “but I didn’t like the isolation. The telephone man came to install a new line and I wanted to have lunch with the guy. I didn’t like freelancing very much. I’m much more comfortable in an environment where I interact with other people.” Luckily for Martin, she managed to find another position quickly, where she now hires many freelancers. However, many would-be freelancers find they have difficulty getting adequate work. I receive any number of calls from people who are simply looking for new clients, or advice on how to find them. The reality is that the vast majority of assignments come by referral, and that the best time to develop a client base is before you go out on your own. Marketing your services is an unending part of the life of a freelancer. As long as you’re peddling your own services, you will need to put your products and abilities in front of the people with the power to buy them. This means going to professional meetings, having lunch, making calls, small talk, and friends. Keep in mind that none of this is a replacement for good writing and editing, the most important components of a good marketing effort. But personal relations with editors and managers make getting repeat business much more likely. Many freelancers are unprepared for the level of writing and reporting they will have to reach to satisfy their clients. Bob Whitaker, editor of CenterWatch, a newsletter
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that follows the clinical drug trials scene, says that many freelancers are surprised when he asks them to go back for additional reporting. “Some freelancers think they can do a couple quick interviews without really understanding the subject,” he says, “and then use their writing skills to cover that up. I need someone who can report stories in a thorough manner.” Then there’s the Big Mo: motivation. I can’t tell you how often people ask me how I motivate myself to go to work in the morning. My answer is that there’s no better motivator than a mailbox with a paycheck in it. However, I find many people can’t make the connection between working in December and eating in January; if you’re one of those people, keep commuting. One of the hardest things to get up for is the everyday running of your office. I often tell new freelancers that their most important job is collecting receipts so they can keep track of their expenses. Those receipts are worth money, and when I started off, I collected everything, even if it was for a cup of coffee. Now I’m a little more selective, but I’m always thinking about my expenses and how they’ll affect my earnings and taxes. (See the sidebar on financial habits.) As I write this, I’m getting ready to prepare my taxes, something I never look forward to. I also have to make all the decisions about what equipment to buy, when to buy it, and when to get rid of it. It gives one a whole new appreciation of the job an office manager has to perform. Office management may sound imposing enough, but this may not even compare with some of the professional work you’ll do. In the quest to keep a steady stream of clients, and to find interesting and rewarding work, I’ve written all kinds of things I’d had no experience writing before: market analyses, video scripts, slide shows, advertising copy, you name it. If you need work, you may have to expand beyond your comfortable area of expertise and try some new things. If you’re ready to do all these things, and take some unforeseen chances, then you have what I consider the basic traits to become a freelance writer.
Myths Busted: The Business Plan A few years ago, when I was starting out full time, I felt that there were some important gaps in my understanding of how to make the freelance business work. Naturally, the most important thing I was concerned with was cash flow. I decided to attend a seminar on the business of freelancing to see how other people handled their finances, and perhaps get some expert advice that would help maximize my income. At the course, we students sat in an attentive circle, waiting to hear what pearls of wisdom would fall from the mouth of our instructor. “First of all,” he instructed, “you need a business plan.” Everyone in the circle quickly wrote down “Business plan!” I felt naive and embarrassed; I had never had a business plan. How would I ever get ahead in life without a business plan? However, I wasn’t sure what a business plan was, so I decided to take a reporting tack. I raised my hand. “What did your business plan say when you started out?” I asked.
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Some Financial Advice My late mentor, Lillian Blacker, gave me one piece of important financial advice: “Always keep your milk money tucked into your mittens.” Here I’m adding a few more tips for beginning full-time freelancers:
• Keep track of all money coming in or going out. Have a good idea of how much money you need to meet your monthly expenses.
• Keep some emergency money in the bank. This admonition may sound hackneyed and unrealistic, but most family financial advisers recommend a cash reserve equal to three months of your income—and they’re talking about people who already have jobs! Your ability to continue freelancing will depend on whether you can get through tough times.
• This may be the most important sentence in this article: Save your receipts. Every dollar you can legally deduct from your taxable income is more money you can keep. The current tax situation is not particularly friendly to freelancers, so keep track of every dollar you spend; then find out from a tax expert what you can legally deduct.
• Save for the future. If you figure to be freelancing for a long period of time, you must think realistically about your retirement income. Take advantage of things like self-employment IRAs and other tax-exempt savings opportunities. That leads me to an important point: If you have children (or plan to), set up a savings account for their education.
• If you feel you need to know more about finances, learn it! “I read all kinds of books and went to one-day seminars on small business administration,” says Judi Norkin, a freelancer in Newtown, Pennsylvania. “I am always actively teaching myself about the business side.”
• Get an accountant. It may cost more in the short run, but if you are ever audited, it may be very useful to have someone with you at your elbow as you face the IRS. An accountant can objectively evaluate all your deductions and tell you how the IRS is going to look at them, which could save you quite a bit of money.
“Well,” admitted our instructor, “I never actually had a business plan myself, but this syllabus I’m using says you should have one.” It was a telling moment, but in looking back, I’m not that surprised. Almost no one I’ve ever talked to had a business plan before beginning his freelancing career. Most successful freelancers I’ve spoken to went out on their own because they just couldn’t stand another day of business-as-usual and office politics. Rob Dinsmoor, a good friend of mine who has been freelancing almost as long as I have, got started in a fit of temper. “My employers were about to publish a table in eight-point type, and I knew no one was going to be able to read it,” he recalls. “They had done it before, and I thought that if no one said anything they would do it again. So I started shouting and before I knew it I
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was having a tantrum. The next day I was so ashamed, I gave my notice. But I started picking up freelance work right away, before I even had time to look for a full-time job.” Rob didn’t have a business plan either, but he did have what he really needed: paying clients. As a freelancer, having clients is your #1 concern; my idea of a business plan is that you know where the money is coming from. Rob was lucky enough to have enough contacts, including his former employer, to generate the income he needed to cover his bills. If you know you have enough business to cover your expenses before you go out on your own, you’ve basically won the battle before a shot has been fired. A common fatal error committed by freelancers is they start their business without any idea who their clients will be. To start off, new freelancers should optimally have one big client or several small clients. I began with one medium-sized client, a medical alumni magazine. A friend of mine was obligated by circumstances (the birth of her first child) to take a three-month maternity leave. So, my first freelance assignment was to fill in during her convalescence. This gave me three months of steady, paid work during which I could look for additional clients.
How Much Should I Charge? How many clients do you need to start with? You can never have too many clients, but you want to be assured of enough business to pay your bills. Aspiring freelancers come to me all the time asking how much they should charge for their services. The answer is: enough to pay your bills. There’s an easy way to figure this out, which I actually picked up from a freelancing seminar. To figure out how much you need to earn each hour, try this exercise:
• Sum up your annual expenses: rent, groceries, clothing, car payment, utilities, opera tickets, greens fees ... everything. Add in the costs of running your own business, like office supplies and telephone bills that formerly would have been charged to your office. Also add in things like health insurance and your contribution to a retirement fund. Then figure that if you make enough money to cover all these expenses, you’ll have to pay about one-third that amount in taxes. So add up all those expenses, plus one-third more: that’s the amount of money you need to get by each year. Let’s say—very conservatively—it’s $35,000.
• All right, time is money. Let’s see how much time you have to earn your annual $35,000. There are fifty-two weeks in a year.
• Say you’re a tough boss to start off with, and you only give yourself two weeks vacation. Plus you take the major holidays and your own religious or cultural holidays. If you’re an uncultured atheist, this adds up to five days, but for other people it could be more. Take another five days for sickness and personal matters. Let’s say we have forty-seven weeks left for you to work forty hours in: 47 × 40 = 1,880.
• Of course, you won’t spend all that time working on projects you can bill for. Your main activities in your office will be (from greatest to smallest, we hope) working,
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looking for work, and office management. In your first year of freelancing, you could spend as much as 30 percent of your time actually looking for work, and 5 percent managing your office. That means that with any luck you’ll spend (65 percent of 1,880) 1,222 hours or 152.75 days working. So, in order to make $35,000, you’ll have to charge about $30 an hour for your services.
• So, the first sentence of your realistic business plan should read something like this: Find enough clients to give me 152.75 full days of work paying at least $30 an hour.
Don’t interpret all this as saying you should try to earn just enough money to keep you out of poverty. Far from it! My own hourly rate is more than double the figure I’ve suggested here, but for reasons I’ll explain in the next section, that doesn’t mean I earn more than $70,000 annually. My point is that your business plan should tell you how much money you need and how much time you’ll need to get it. While that makes your planning process a little simpler, it doesn’t solve all your problems.
Reality Bites That little exercise only took a couple of minutes, and it made everything sound so simple. Well, the unfortunate reality is that nothing is simple, least of all starting your own business. For starters, almost none of my clients allow me to charge my hourly rate, with the consistent exception of PR companies. However, it’s not like driving a cab—as a freelancer, you can’t just turn the meter on and charge whatever it says when you get to the airport. Even PR clients have a budget for each project, and you start off with an understanding that you’ll spend a limited number of hours on the project and charge within the budget. Most of my newsletter, newspaper, and magazine clients, on the other hand, pay on a “per-word” basis, which is similar to a project basis in that you’ve agreed ahead of time how many words the project will be. So, no matter how many words you actually write, the project will pay the same amount of money. Unfortunately, you can’t assume that if you work longer hours and do a better job on a project, you’ll be rewarded for it. But there are two things you can do: look for better-paying clients, and negotiate. If you hustle, chances are you’ll find lots of clients, and work on many different kinds of projects. As you’ll see, some types of projects tend to pay more than others, although not always. However, you can quickly identify the clients who pay well and on time. My advice is, phase out those clients who pay poorly—with the exception of those who can give you good exposure—and go with the clients who can pay your bills. Negotiation on price is also extremely important. This process is something that many freelancers are not too familiar with. It can be extremely uncomfortable at first, but eventually you may find it very rewarding. Although there are no hard-and-fast rules to this, here are three important things to remember:
• Recognize your strengths. Clients are calling because they need you. Don’t assume they’re doing you a favor by giving you work.
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• You can always negotiate down, but you can never negotiate up. Think before you bid on a project, and always start higher than you think the project is worth. • Don’t take professional negotiations personally. Understand that it’s your client’s job to try to get good services at low prices. Remember that it’s your job—not your client’s—to make sure you’re fairly reimbursed.
Get Going! Every time I teach my course in freelance writing, we run out of time long before everyone’s questions are answered, and I usually stand at the front of the class for several minutes doling out advice and encouragement. No one can tell you everything you need to know about freelancing in one 4,000-word article, even with ample sidebar space. There are so many more things that could be discussed in detail, such as marketing your services, writing good query letters, client relations, how to choose jobs, and more. One final note: Remember the best reason to become a full-time freelance writer—the enjoyment. You have to like being at home and being with the people who live with you at home. Make sure you discuss your plans for full-time freelancing with your spouse, significant other, and children before making the move. Let them know their support is important to you, and there may be some tough times ahead. From my standpoint, it’s worth it. Nothing you learn as a full-time freelancer will ever be wasted, especially the feeling of freedom and satisfaction that naturally comes from independence. It’s like learning to fish; it’s a skill that can put food on the table for a lifetime. As my fellow freelancer, P.J. Skerret, says, “The beauty of having freelanced successfully is knowing that, no matter what happens, you will always have a job you can fall back on.”
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the art of negotiation by
Gregg Levoy
M
any years ago, one of the magazine editors I regularly sold to left his spot on the masthead to become a fellow freelance writer—an irony only a writer can fully appreciate. During a phone conversation he told me something he never would have revealed while an editor: “You should have been asking for more money, more often, especially once you began writing for us consistently. You always took whatever we offered.” When breaking into a magazine, he said, writers should take whatever terms they are offered. Continuing this practice after breaking in, however, is like turning down raises. I was guilty as charged. My views on asking editors for more money, or more anything, could best be described as approach-avoidance: If I didn’t approach the subject of negotiation, I could avoid rejection (which I’d already had plenty of, thank you). I’d also thought of negotiation as something only for J.R. Ewing types. I didn’t realize that the very qualities that make me a writer and made me think I’d be eaten alive at the bargaining table—sensitivity, thoughtfulness, creativity—are also typical (when combined with a bit of assertiveness) of the best negotiators. But the former editor’s remarks fired me with both insight and indignation. I began experimenting. When a magazine editor asked to reprint one of my stories for $75, I screwed up my courage and said, “How about $125?” He said, “How about $100”? I said, “OK.” I made $25 for less than ten seconds of talking! That would make a dandy hourly wage. Not all negotiations have been this easy, but each time I managed some success I was emboldened. Within a year I was negotiating with some of the buck-a-word magazines for money and rights that would eventually double my income. I learned three lessons in short order:
• What you can get if you ask is astonishing. One editor I know told me that nine out of ten writers never ask for anything, and she almost always says yes to the one who does.
• The worst thing an editor will do is say no. Not one editor in twenty years has hung up on me because I asked for more money. • Everything is negotiable, from money and rights to deadline, expenses, payment schedule, kill fee, length, tone, and editing.
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Collaborative Bargaining There are more than a few writers who feel they couldn’t warm up to editors if they were burned at the stake together. They approach negotiating in an atmosphere of trust not unlike that surrounding two nations exchanging captured spies at the border. Editors, however, aren’t our enemies. They are hardworking people trying to be recognized for their efforts. They’re also not people you’re selling used cars to. You want to develop long-term relationships with them, because the more steady customers you have, the more steady income you have. Your negotiations must be collaborative, with both sides feeling good about what they get. So how do you manage a win-win outcome when editors have all the power? First, understand that editors don’t have all the power. It’s a buyer’s market for some writers, and a seller’s market for others, as determined by the law of supply and demand. If most writers offer roughly the same thing—passably good writing, fairly good ideas, occasional reliability, a modest stamina for rewrites, and a deep-seated fear of asking for anything more than editors offer—it’s a buyer’s market, and editors will buy the cheapest work available. But when you begin giving editors what they want most—bang-up writing, imaginative ideas, a firm grasp of the audience, punctuality, and a product that sells magazines— and when you then ask for payment commensurate with that quality of performance, it turns into a seller’s market, with editors favorably disposed to negotiating to keep you.
Using Your Bargaining Power Negotiating is not an event; it’s a process. It’s more than just a quick pitch; it’s the whole sales campaign. It begins not when you pick up the phone, but when you pick up the professional relationship; bargaining power is the cumulative effect of everything you do in that relationship. Most writers don’t recognize this and underestimate their bargaining power. These five “power tools” will help you build a strong negotiation position.
1. Performance Several years ago, I told one of my regular buyers of short pieces, Allied Publications, that I wanted to renegotiate my fee, which had held steady at $25 per piece for two years. He told me to put it in writing and let him think about it. I wrote the following letter: Dear Richard: It was nice chatting with you on the phone yesterday. I look forward to putting together more pieces for Allied. As for the business: After having written eight or ten pieces for Allied over the course of two years, at $25 each, I am hoping we can consider a higher fee, $50 each. I hope that given the consistent quality, fast turnaround, and minimal editing my articles require, this will seem like a fair price. Give me a ring and we can discuss it.
His reply: He raised my rate to $35 and suggested we could discuss another adjustment in six months. Meanwhile, 45 percent raise.
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When you deliver the goods and give editors more than they bargained for, don’t let the fact go unnoticed at negotiating time.
2. Presentation From the first impression on, your presence should communicate enthusiasm, selfmotivation, attention to detail, resourcefulness, humor, patience, and, above all, confidence (fake it if you must; it has a way of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy anyway). How you present yourself is conveyed, whether you know it or not, through your phone manner, correspondence, query letters, stationery, and writing.
3. Professionalism During the negotiation that led to my first piece for Pursuits Magazine, the editor wanted me to pay expenses for a trip to Seattle to do the article, for which she would reimburse me. I explained that I was currently on assignment for two other national magazines, both of which wanted me to pay out-of-pocket expenses for trips (one to South America), and doing so was fast depleting my savings account. I asked her to reconsider her request and send me a check before the trip to cover my expenses. I also offered to send to her an itemized list of what I anticipated spending. She sent a check for $600 that week. I had, in this case by implication, demonstrated that I was a professional with credibility and competence, that I was worth sending not just to Seattle but to South America, but that I nonetheless had a limited bank account. Bringing self-esteem into your business and writing affairs can have a commanding effect. “Professional” writers, for instance, are those most likely to succeed at changing “pays-on-publication” clauses to “pays-on-acceptance,” simply because they know that in no other business do people, professional or not, stand for not being paid their wages on time. At the least these writers appeal to an editor’s sense of logic, fairness, and business principles by pointing out the time-honored tradition, common to all deferred-payment plans (such as credit card payments), that a buyer pays a higher price for delayed payment, and a seller gets a higher price for waiting.
4. Polish Go the extra mile for editors: Burn the midnight oil to give a story that extra shine. Help them track down photos. Do your own editing. Double-check your facts. Oblige all reasonable requests for rewrites. Get work in before deadline. Then remind your editors of these facts at negotiating time.
5. Personal contact People enjoy doing business with those they identify with. So give editors lots of opportunities to identify with you. Drop them notes, call with updates on stories, go visit them and break bread. Once you’ve broken into the stable of writers, cultivate your editorial relationships as if your livelihood depended on it. Remember: The stable is usually not far from the pasture.
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Think Big Several years ago, a Vogue editor called to buy a story idea from me. Not the story, just the idea. “How much do you want for it?” she asked. Now, what is a story idea worth? They’re a dime a dozen—$100? I did save them time, though, by already doing the outline—$200? And now they wouldn’t have to pay me to write—$300? “How about $400?” I finally said, thinking big. “Sold!” she said. There was a moment’s silence, during which I thought to myself, Damn. Anytime a buyer accepts your first offer, you’ve blown it. You’ve undersold yourself. Your writing is worth whatever someone will pay for it, and that is determined by how much they need it, how valuable they perceive it to be, the going rate, the budget, and your bargaining power. But set high aspirations. Come in with a price before the editor does, one that is perhaps a third to a half higher than you expect to receive, or expect them to offer. Often your expectations of both are too low. Remember, aspirations can always be lowered. Once stated, they can’t be raised.
Approaching Your Negotiations You just asked an editor to pay you on acceptance instead of on publication. She flatly said no, sorry, company policy. Quick, what’s your response? You don’t want to be reduced to responses like, “Well, it doesn’t hurt to ask, huh?” You need instead studied comebacks that grow out of planning your negotiations. Do not go into them thinking you’ll just see what happens. Rely on homework, practicing what you’ll preach, knowing what you’ll say if an editor invokes “company policy.” Script it out if need be. Above all, know what you want out of the negotiation and what you’re willing to settle for. Another form of planning I undertake is keeping notes on all my conversations with editors. Several years ago, an editor at Health Magazine mentioned to me that rates were probably going down for shorter pieces and up to a dollar a word for longer features. I jotted it down. Four months later she called with a go-ahead on a query and offered me $1,500 for a 2,000-word piece. I pulled out my file and there was the note about a probable rate change. I asked her about it. After much squirming, she finally offered me $1,800 for 1,800 words. Less work, more money. You can also brainstorm advance solutions to potential negotiation deadlocks. For example, both sides usually want more money, and conventional wisdom suggests that more for you means less for them, and vice versa. Not necessarily. The pie can be expanded. When I travel on assignment to a city where I have friends, I offer to stay with them instead of at a hotel, if the editor will kick back half the savings into my fee. If the deadlock is over editors taking all rights, denying you the chance to make extra income from your writing, try this: Offer to retain “syndication rights.” You can sell your pieces again, but only to newspaper syndicates that agree to put at the top of the
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story “Originally appeared in XYZ Magazine.” The magazine gets its exclusivity; you get your extra income.
Eight More Negotiation Tactics All of these strategies are based on collaborative principles: 1. Listen. Sometimes the cheapest concession you can make in a negotiation is simply letting an editor know he’s been heard. And remember, listening is not necessarily agreeing. 2. Be quiet. Nature abhors a vacuum. People will naturally rush in to fill silences, but if that silence is going to be broken with a compromise, let it be theirs, not yours. During the negotiation with an in-flight magazine editor about his pays-on-publication policy, I mentioned that as a business practice it didn’t seem fair, and then I shut up for a moment. In the awkward silence that ensued, the urge to blurt out something—anything—to ease the tension was excruciating. He broke first, and he did so with a compromise, effectively talking himself right out of his position. 3. Attack problems, not people. In the in-flight negotiation, I made sure to focus my attention and displeasure on the issue, not the editor. It was the policy that was unfair, not the person trying to uphold it even against his own principles. 4. Ask open-minded questions. The more information you have about an editor’s needs, interests, and dilemmas, the better your bargaining position. So get them talking (before and during the negotiation) by asking questions that do not elicit yes or no answers: “Why do you have a pays-on-publication policy?” or “Are there improvements I could make in my writing that would make it work better for you?” 5. Have a concession strategy. Acrobats are the only people who make any sort of a living bending over backwards. Don’t give in just to avoid conflict (but don’t dig your heels in either, biting when a simple growl would do). If you come in with a price of $900 and your editor counters with $500, don’t immediately whittle away at your initial offer by suggesting $700. Tell him why you believe you’re worth $900. When conceding, start small. Don’t jump from offering $1,000 to backing off to $500 in one giant step. It will appear you can be bought for even cheaper than that. 6. Discuss fees last. Fee is the area you’re most likely to disagree about, so, if you can, start discussing more easily agreeable areas. If an editor suggests a three-month deadline, say you can get it done in two and a half. If she says $50 is all she can give you for phone expenses, say you’ll make your calls in the evenings and weekends and save her $20. Then, once you’ve built up common ground and warmed the editor’s heart with your conciliatory nature, talk price. 7. When you stop negotiating, stop. Make sure you discuss all negotiables in one session, not piecemeal. Once you’ve made your final agreements, don’t try to better them. 8. Get it in writing. When you finish negotiating, make sure you commit your agreements to paper, be it a written contract or a simple letter of agreement. If an editor suggests you forego a written contract and just leave it at a friendly handshake, politely tell him that you’d like to keep the relationship friendly, so you would much prefer to work with a written contract—you can even tell him that’s your company policy.
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book contract clinic: quick fixes for bad clauses by
Stephen E. Gillen, Esq.
I
f you’ve been published, then you’ve seen it before—a whereas and a therefore followed by eight or more pages of preprinted, pedantic prose offered up by the editor as her “standard publishing contract.” Other than a few tiny spaces for your name, the title of your work, and the manuscript delivery date, the bulk of it looks as though it were long ago locked down in Century Schoolbook type. But the truth is that there is more to review than the spelling of your name, choice of title, and projected completion date, and more to negotiate than you might realize. Here are three critical points to get you in the right frame of mind, followed by an explanation of five typical clauses to help you understand what is (or ought to be) worthy of negotiation.
1. You Have More Leverage Than You Think Editors are under ever-increasing pressure to sign new titles, meet publication dates, and deliver sales results. For many of them, these factors have a direct bearing on their year-end compensation (a circumstance that can work to your significant bargaining advantage as year-end approaches). While there are many aspiring first-time authors out there, only a relative handful will be published. If you have attracted interest or a contract offer, then you have already made the cut. A reasonable list of tactfully stated concerns and requested amendments will only reinforce the impression that you are a competent and thorough professional. Moreover, the editor will have invested a significant amount of time in reviewing your proposal, perhaps getting outside reviews, preparing a pro forma profit and loss analysis, and drafting a publication plan and recommendation for her superiors—if you are not signed, all of this effort will have been for naught and the editor will be back to square one.
2. You Have to Do Your Homework Negotiations are ultimately influenced by which side knows the most about the other side’s positions. The editor starts this contest with an advantage gained from experi-
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ence in the market, experience doing other similar deals (undoubtedly many more than you have done), and the benefits of your perspective as reflected in your proposal. The way you get on an even footing with your editor is to learn more about your publisher’s plans for, and expectations of, your work—information that will help you evaluate your leverage. Ask about them after the editor has indicated an interest in your work but before you engage in active, contract-focused negotiations—in the context of learning more about your editor or publisher, more about her list and her business, more about the market and your potential competition. Ask the editor yourself, either in person or over the phone. Negotiations may be formal and may be best handled by your attorney or agent in order to preserve your relationship with your editor. But information gathering will be most effective if you do it yourself. A question perceived as innocuous when asked by you will be viewed with suspicion if posed by your agent or attorney. It may take some probing, but the information you gather will prove valuable, so take copious notes.
3. Decide What’s Important to You There is no one-size-fits-all solution. If you make your living as a professional writer, then money issues will likely be at the top of your list—advances, grants, royalties, and re-use rights should be the focus of your attention. If, on the other hand, you’re an academic living by the “publish or perish” mantra and in search of the inner peace that tenure will bring, then the money issues may well take a back seat to ensuring that your work is actually published—on schedule and intact. If you are a professional of another sort (doctor, lawyer, accountant) and you view your book not so much as a revenue generator but more as a promotional piece and as your professional bona fides, then your principal focus may well be on the noncompete provision and ensuring that it does not preclude you from engaging in the kind of professional writing, speaking, and consulting that does pay the bills. Keep your goals firmly in mind as you review the clauses and the better and best alternatives that follow. Odds are, you will not prevail on all of these issues. But odds are equally as good that you will not lose on all of them either. In any event, you will not get that for which you do not ask. So ask away ... at the end of the day you will have a better deal and a more informed relationship with your publisher.
author warranties AUTHOR WARRANTIES, REPRESENTATIONS, AND INDEMNITIES. The Author hereby warrants and represents that: (i) the Author has the right to enter into this Agreement and to grant the rights herein granted and the Author has not and will not assign, pledge, or encumber such rights; (ii) the Author is the sole Author of the Work and, except for material of others, permission for use of which has been obtained by the Author pursuant to Paragraph _______, the Work is original and previously unpublished; (iii) the Work is not in the public domain; (iv) neither the Work nor its title will contain any material that would violate or infringe any personal, proprietary, or other right of any person or entity or that would vio-
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late any contract of the Author, express or implied, or that would disclose any information given to the Author in confidence or on the understanding it would not be disclosed or published; (v) no material in the Work is inaccurate; (vi) the use of any instruction, material, or formula contained in the Work will not result in injury; and (vii) appropriate warnings will be contained in the Work concerning any particular hazards that may be involved in carrying out experiments described in the Work or involved in the use of instructions, materials, or formulas in the Work, and descriptions of relevant safety precautions. The Author hereby indemnifies and agrees to hold the Publisher, its licensees, and any seller of the Work harmless from any liability, damage, cost, and expense, including reasonable attorney’s fees and costs of settlement, for or in connection with any claim, action, or proceeding inconsistent with the Author’s warranties or representations herein, or based upon or arising out of any contribution of the Author to the Work. The Publisher will notify the Author of any claim, action, or proceeding, and the Publisher may use counsel of its own selection to defend the same. The Author may participate in the defense, at the Author’s own expense, with counsel of the Author’s own choosing. The Publisher will have the right to withhold payment of sums otherwise payable to the Author under this or any other agreement with the Author, and to apply the sums withheld to such liability. The warranties, representations, and indemnity of the Author herein will survive termination of this Agreement for any reason and will extend to any licensees, distributors, and assigns of the Publisher.
Publishers usually require their authors to make certain representations and warranties about the work submitted—that it isn’t libelous, that it doesn’t infringe thirdparty copyrights, and so on. This is generally a reasonable request because, in many respects, only the Author is in a position to know whether or not the Author’s work is original and noninfringing. Be careful, however, that these representations apply only to work as supplied by you and not to the work of other contributors or editors. Also, we all know that every editor likes to put his mark on a work by changing the title. Be sure that you do not warrant that the title does not infringe trademark or other rights (unless, of course, it is indeed your title and you have taken appropriate steps to clear its use). Most contracts will also require you to indemnify the publisher for any damage or cost incurred as a result of your breach of the foregoing warranties. It is reasonable for you to ask that such indemnification be limited to defects as determined by a court of competent jurisdiction and also to ask that your obligation to indemnify the publisher be capped at the total royalties and other payments you actually receive from the publisher’s exploitation of your work, or that you be added as a named insured on the publisher’s media perils policy. While the latter may sound like a happy compromise, understand that the deductibles (for which you would still be liable) are generally very large.
Better AUTHOR WARRANTIES, REPRESENTATIONS, AND INDEMNITIES. The Author hereby warrants and represents, with respect only to the Author’s contributions to the Work,
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that: (i) the Author has the right to enter into this Agreement and to grant the rights herein granted and the Author has not and will not assign, pledge, or encumber such rights; (ii) the Author is the sole Author of the Work and, except for material of others, permission for use of which has been obtained by the Author pursuant to Paragraph___ ______, the Work is original and previously unpublished; (iii) the Work is not in the public domain; (iv) the Work contains no material that would violate or infringe any personal, proprietary, or other right of any person or entity that would violate any contract of the Author, express or implied, or that would disclose any information given to the Author in confidence or on the understanding it would not be disclosed or published; (vi) to the best of the Author’s knowledge no material in the work is inaccurate; and (vi) the use of any instruction, material, or formula contained in the Work will not result in injury, and appropriate warnings will be contained in the Work concerning any particular hazards that may be involved in carrying out experiments described in the Work or involved in the use of instructions, materials, or formulas in the Work, and descriptions of relevant safety precautions. The Author hereby indemnifies and agrees to hold the Publisher, its licensees, and any seller of the Work harmless from any liability, damage, cash, and expense, including reasonable attorneys fees and casts of settlement, for or in connection with any claim, action, or proceeding based upon a breach as determined by the final and nonappealable verdict of a court of competent jurisdiction, of the Author’s warranties or representations herein. The Publisher will notify the Author of any claim, action, or proceeding, and the Publisher may use counsel of its own selection to defend the same. The Author may participate in the defense, at the Author’s own expense, with counsel of the Author’s own choosing. The Author will not be responsible for any settlement of a claim, action, or proceeding with respect to which the Author has reasonably withheld the Author’s approval. The Publisher will have the right to withhold its reasonable estimate of the total liability of the Author (including reasonable attorney’s fees) from sums otherwise payable to the Author under this or any other agreement with the Author, and to apply the sums withheld to such liability.
Best AUTHOR WARRANTIES, REPRESENTATIONS, AND INDEMNITIES. The Author hereby warrants and represents, with respect only to the Work as submitted by the Author, that, to the best of the Author’s actual knowledge: (i) the Author has the right to enter into the Agreement and to grant the rights herein granted and the Author has not and will not assign, pledge, or encumber such rights; (ii) the Author is the sole Author of the Work and, except for material of others, permission for use of which has been obtained by the Author pursuant to Paragraph ______, the Work is original and previously unpublished; (iii) the Work is not in the public domain; (iv) and the Work contains no material that would violate or infringe any personal, proprietary, or other right of any person or entity that would violate any contract of the Author, express or implied, or that would disclose any information given to the Author in confidence or on the understanding it would not be disclosed or published. The Author hereby indemnifies and agrees to hold the Publisher, its licensees,
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and any seller of the Work harmless from any liability, damage, cost, and expense, including reasonable attorney’s fees and costs of settlement, for or in connection with any claim based upon a breach of the Author’s warranties or representations herein as determined by the final and nonappealable judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction; provided that the Publisher promptly notifies the Author of any such claim and cooperates with the Author in its defense. The Author shall not be responsible for any settlement of a claim, action, or proceeding with respect to which the Author has reasonably withheld the Author’s approval. The Publisher shall add the Author as a named insured on the Publisher’s media perils policy of insurance.
Strategy The publisher may have a limited ability to alter the language in these clauses as a result of the requirements of its policy of insurance. In any event, your exposure under these clauses is largely within your control. If there is something about the nature of your work that makes it susceptible to attack (e.g., it’s an exposé of a private figure), it is in your best interest to be sure the publisher is fully aware of the issues and you work closely with the publisher and its media-perils insurer to minimize the likelihood of a successful challenge.
royalties ROYALTIES. Except as otherwise provided below, the Publisher will pay to the Author a royalty of _____% based upon the Publisher’s net receipts from sales of copies of the Work, revisions thereof, or reprints of all or portions thereof. A royalty at one-half the aforementioned rate will be applied to the Publisher’s net receipts: (a) from sales by it in foreign markets of special editions, adaptations, or regular editions of the Work, or from sales by it in the domestic or foreign markets of foreign language editions or adaptations of the Work; (b) from sales by it of visual or sound reproductions or adaptations, motion pictures, educations, and commercial television versions, Braille and large-type editions, microfilm or microfiche editions, and microcomputer adaptations of the Work; (c) from the sales by its subsidiaries or business affiliates through trade channels, mail order or coupon advertising campaigns, and solicitation by radio and television; (d) from the Publisher’s use or adaptation of the Work (or any portion thereof ) in conjunction with any other work as a part of a database or custom-published work through any means of storage, transmission, or copying now known or hereafter devised. With respect to this subsection (d), the Author’s royalty shall be applied to a pro rata portion of the net receipts, said portion to be determined through use of a reasonable and objective method of relative valuation to be selected by the Publisher in its sole discretion. The Publisher will pay to the Author 50 percent of the Publisher’s net proceeds: (e) from agreements to transfer, sell, or license to others the right to reprint all or portions of the Work, to include the Work in an electronic database, or to make visual or sound reproductions or adaptation, motion pictures, educational and commercial television
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versions, Braille and large-type editions, microfilm or microfiche editions, microcomputer adaptations, electronic versions, translations, or foreign editions or adaptations either in English or in foreign languages. No royalty shall be paid on copies sold at a discount of more than 50 percent or below the cost of manufacture. Publisher may set up a reserve sufficient in its opinion to allow for returns.
The royalty clause provides for a base rate on the cash received by the publisher from sales through its traditional distribution channels, with much lower rates on sales through a number of secondary channels. It has become common for publishers to provide for some discretionary mechanism for allocating the sales proceeds from special bundling deals and from exploitation of electronic rights (subsection d above). On rights sales (subsection e above), as opposed to product sales, the publisher typically splits the proceeds 50/50 with the author. Sometimes the publisher takes a larger share; only with some significant effort will you get the publisher to take less. Understanding these provisions means understanding the publisher’s distribution and accounting models, which can be labyrinthine. Include an audit clause, and leave this to the sharp pencils.
Better ROYALTIES. Except as otherwise provided below, the Publisher will pay to the Author a royalty of: _______ % on the first _______ copies in any single edition; _______ % on the next _______ copies in any single edition; _______ % on all copies thereafter in any single edition, based upon the Publisher’s net receipts from sales by it of copies of the Work, revision thereof, or reprints of all or portions thereof (“net receipts” means cash received by the Publisher less returns, exchanges, and any amounts separately itemized on the customer’s invoice for shipping, handling, or taxes). The Author shall have the right, upon reasonable notice and during usual business hours but not more than once each year, to have the books and records of the Publisher examined at the place where the same are regularly maintained, insofar as they relate to the Work, by an independent public accountant. Such examination shall be at the cost of the Author unless the net of all errors aggregate to more than three percent (3%) of the total sum accrued to the Author are found to Author’s disadvantage, in which the cost of such an examination shall be borne by the Publisher. Any amounts disclosed by the examination to be due to the Author shall be promptly paid together with interest at the highest allowable statutory rate calculated from the date the payment should have been made.
Best ROYALTIES. Except as otherwise provided below, the Publisher will pay to the Author a royalty of:
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________% on the first _________ copies in any single edition; ________% on the next _________ copies in any single edition; ________% on all copies thereafter in any single edition, based upon cover price of the Work and revisions and reprints thereof. The Publisher will pay to the Author 50 percent of the Publisher’s net proceeds from agreements to transfer, sell, or license to others the right to exercise any of the Subsidiary Rights granted herein. Author shall have the right, upon reasonable notice and during usual business hours but not more than once each year, to have the books and records of the Publisher examined at the place where the same are regularly maintained, insofar as they relate to the Work, by an independent public accountant. Such examination shall be at the cost of the Author unless the net of all errors aggregate to more than three percent (3%) of the total sum accrued to the Author are found to the Author’s disadvantage, in which case the cost of such examination shall be borne by the Publisher. Any amounts disclosed by the examination to be due to the Author shall be promptly paid together with interest at the highest allowable statutory rate calculated from the date the payment should have been made.
Strategy Royalties are the proverbial two birds in the bush. Far better to negotiate for nonrefundable advances—these represent a bird in the hand and, if they are significant, increase the publisher’s stake in promoting your work to ensure its commercial success. In any event, know whether your royalties will be based on cover price, invoice price, or net receipts. And if they are based on the latter, ask the publisher to define the “net” in net receipts so you know what will be deducted. Also ask for a copy of the publisher’s discount schedule and for some historical averages (i.e., how much of the publisher’s sales are typically done at each discount rate) so you can compare apples to apples in the event you are the happy holder of two or more contract offers. What is a good royalty rate and how much should you ask for? There is no pat answer to this question. If you do your homework, however, you will at least be able to ask for a tiered royalty structure—a base rate up to the publisher’s break-even volume, a higher rate on sales over breakeven, and a higher rate still on sales over the volume at which the publisher achieves its target margin. Watch out for an unlimited ability to reserve for returns—any such right should be subject to a cap based upon the publisher’s historical experience. If you are successful in obtaining substantial advances, be sure they are paid upon submission of the manuscript (and not on the publisher’s acceptance, which might be delayed) and they are not cross-collateralized (i.e., recoverable from royalties earned by other titles you might have written or might yet write for the same publisher).
submission SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPT. The Author will deliver to the Publisher, on or before date, a complete and legible typewritten manuscript (and word processed text file) of Work satisfactory to the Publisher in form and content. If the manuscript for the complete
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Work is not delivered on or before the date specified above, or if the manuscript is not satisfactory to the Publisher in form or content, the Publisher may, at its option: (a) allow the Author to finish, correct, or improve the manuscript by a date specified by the Publisher; (b) have the manuscript properly prepared by such other Author(s) as it may select and the Publisher may deduct the cost of obtaining such Author’s services, whether compensated by fee or royalties, from the Author’s royalties; or (c) terminate this agreement by written notice to the Author, in which case any manuscript shall be returned and all rights therein shall revert to the Author, and any amounts which may have been advanced to the Author will be promptly refunded to the Publisher. In the event circumstances since the date of this Agreement have, in the sole judgment of the Publisher, caused the market for the Work to change or evaporate, the Publisher may reject the Work. In such event, the Publisher shall so notify the Author, the Author shall be entitled to retain one-half the advance specified in Paragraph ______ as a kill fee, all rights in the Work shall revert to the Author, and neither the Author nor the Publisher shall have any further obligations lie hereunder.
It’s one thing to be signed to a publishing contract, but unfortunately (and perhaps unfairly) quite another to be published. Editors come and go and markets change. An open-ended manuscript acceptability standard (like the one above) can leave you holding an unpublished manuscript. Most form contracts will require that you deliver a completed manuscript that is acceptable to the publisher in form and content. This arguably allows the publisher to reject your completed work for any reason (provided it is not acting in bad faith). You should strive for an acceptability clause that requires only that the finished manuscript conform in coverage and quality to the sample chapters provided with your prospectus or, alternatively, a clause that requires the manuscript to be professionally competent and fit for publication. You should also ask for language that obliges the publisher to provide you with detailed editorial comments and at least one opportunity to revise. And you should not permit the publisher to complete or otherwise use your work and charge any third-party costs against your account without your consent.
Better SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPT. The Author will deliver the completed Work on or before date. The Publisher acknowledges and agrees that the manuscript will be deemed acceptable so long as it is professionally competent and fit for publication in the good faith exercise of the Publisher’s reasonable judgment.
Best SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPT. The Author will deliver the completed Work on or before date. The Publisher acknowledges and agrees that the manuscript will be deemed acceptable so long as it conforms in content, coverage, style, and rigor to the outline and prospectus previously provided (a copy of which is attached hereto as Exhibit I). In the event the
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publisher deems any submission not acceptable, it will so advise the Author in writing within thirty days of the date of submission and will describe with particularity the deficiencies therein and the changes required to make the submission acceptable, in which event that Author shall have thirty days to make the required improvements. The Publisher’s failure to so advise the Author in the time and manner specified shall be deemed the Publisher’s acceptance as to the tendered submission.
Strategy Don’t assume that just because you were offered a contract based upon your tender of a completed first-draft manuscript that the publisher will necessarily publish your work. If the acquiring editor moves on, you will be back to square one with a new editor who may not have the same level of interest in or commitment to your work. When seeing your work in print is an important objective, make sure you close and lock the publisher’s back door.
noncompete agreements CONFLICTING WORKS. During the life of this Agreement, the Author will not without the prior written consent of the Publisher participate in the preparation or publication of any work on a similar subject, which might tend to interfere with or injure the sale of the Work, and will not authorize the use of the Author’s name in connection with any such work. OPTION. Author grants the Publisher the option to publish the Author’s next book-length work. The Author shall submit the completed manuscript for such work to the Publisher and the Publisher shall have ninety days within which to notify the Author of whether it will exercise its option and to tender to the Author a publishing agreement for same and substantially the same terms as are provided herein. During the option term, the Author shall not offer such work to any other publisher and thereafter shall not offer such work to any other publisher except on terms more favorable than those offered by the Publisher.
Almost every publishing contract will include a “noncompete” provision calculated to ensure that the publisher has a monopoly on your work on a particular subject and that you do not publish or assist in publishing any other work that might compete. These restrictions are usually very broadly drafted and open-ended in scope. As such, they may be unenforceable as an unreasonable restraint of trade. Better, however, to try to narrow them before you sign. Also common is an options clause that gives the publisher dibs on your next manuscript. Strike the option clause and tell the publisher that if they do a great job with the current one, you will certainly be back with the next.
Better COMPETING WORKS. During the life of this Agreement, the Author will not without the prior written consent of the Publisher participate in the preparation or publication of any directly competing work. For purposes of this Section, a “directly competing work” shall be defined as any book-length work on the subject of [be as specific as possible].
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Best COMPETING WORKS. During the life of this Agreement, the Author will not without the prior written consent of the Publisher participate in the preparation or publication of any directly competing work. For purposes of this Section, a “directly competing work” shall be defined as any book-length work on the subject of [be as specific as possible] and intended primarily for distribution and sale to [be as specific as possible] through [specify channels]. The Publisher acknowledges that the Author has in process the following works, provisionally entitled [specify] and agrees that these works do not constitute directly competing works. The Publisher further agrees that the Author’s activities as a [specify]; and any work that she/he might write or present in connection with the performance of those activities (and not constituting a book-length work) for trade distribution shall not be deemed a breach of the provisions of this Section. Nor shall the use of her/his name or likeness in connection with such activities be deemed a breach thereof.
Strategy The narrower the noncompete, the better. The more precisely you can define what it is you will not do and what it is you are free to do, the less opportunity there will be for misunderstandings. If the publisher expresses a reluctance to more precisely define the boundaries, ask for a quid pro quo—i.e., a parallel commitment from the publisher to refrain from publishing the works of other authors on the same subject. It is highly unlikely that the publisher would entertain such a prospect, but the mere thought may make him more reasonable about the scope of your noncompete.
copyright GRANT OF RIGHTS. The Author acknowledges that the Work was specially commissioned by the Publisher and intended as an instructional text and agrees that the Work shall be considered a work-made-for-hire, with the Publisher deemed the author and sole owner thereof for copyright purposes. In addition, and against the possibility that the Work might ultimately be deemed incapable of characterization as a work-made-for-hire as a matter of law, the author hereby irrevocably grants to the Publisher all right, title, and interest (including, without limitation, all copyrights throughout the world and all other legal and equitable rights in all media, whether now known or hereafter invented) to the Work. The Author acknowledges that she/he shall not acquire any rights of any kind in the Work as a result of his/her services under this Agreement.
The grant of rights clause spells out the breadth of rights being acquired by the publisher—and there is a broad range of possibilities here. Least favorable to the author are “work-for-hire” provisions (like the one above), which transfer the broadest possible rights to the publisher and deprive the author of certain statutory protections. While relatively uncommon in trade book deals, they are often used in educational publishing (especially at lower curricular levels). More common (and slightly more favorable to the author) are grants of “all right, title, and interest” (also included
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above, as the publisher’s fallback position in the event the work at issue does not qualify for work-for-hire treatment). While appearing to be all encompassing, the “all rights” grant at least leaves the author with her statutory protections intact. But in the final analysis, there is little reason for the publisher to get rights that it does not intend to exploit. If your publisher intends only to publish a hardcover edition for distribution in North America, then the grant of rights should convey North American hardcover rights only. Alternate editions can be addressed by amendment to your book contract if and when the publisher expresses an interest in publishing them. The following provisions represent possible compromises that allocate rights in the work more equitably.
Better CONDITIONAL GRANT OF ALL RIGHTS. The Author hereby grants to the Publisher the sole and exclusive right and license to publish, promote, distribute, and sell (or permit others to do so) the Work in all languages, in all media, and throughout the world; provided, however, that the right to publish the Work in any form other than book form (see “Subsidiary Rights”) shall become nonexclusive as to those Subsidiary Rights which have not been commercially exploited by the Publisher within two years after first publication of the Work in book form and the Author expressly reserves the nonexclusive right also to exploit said unexercised Subsidiary Rights, free of any obligation to pay royalties to the Publisher, but agrees to cooperate with the Publisher to ensure that any such exploitation shall not interfere with the Publisher’s exclusive right to produce and publish the Work in book form.
Best GRANT OF EXCLUSIVE BOOK PUBLISHING RIGHTS. The Author hereby grants to the Publisher the sole and exclusive right and license to publish, promote, distribute, and sell (or permit others to do so) the Work in the English language only, in book form only, and only for distribution in North America. All other rights in the Work are expressly reserved exclusively to the Author.
Strategy Most publishers are positioned to exploit (through subsidiaries, affiliates, and standing relationships) more than book publishing rights, and it is in your best interests to let them have everything they will effectively commercialize. The extent to which you bargain to retain some of these rights will depend upon the nature of your work and whether it lends itself to these alternative uses, the publisher’s ability and interest in exploiting them for you, and your ability to do this independently. But you should resist the temptation to get sloppy here and you should endeavor to force the publisher to specify which, if any, of the following rights they truly need and are presently positioned to exploit:
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hardcover • reprint edition • book club • audio (books on tape) • radio trade paperback • multimedia (interactive digital and games) • digest mass-market paperback • first serial • second serial • abridgement electronic (text-only database and information retrieval—on disk or online) syndication • condensation • merchandising • selection • television anthology • motion picture (theatrical) • collection • dramatic (live theatrical)
The list goes on and on. To the extent these rights are licensed by the publisher to some other buyer, they are referred to as “subsidiary rights” (i.e., rights subsidiary to the publisher’s principal line of business).
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The Craft of Fiction In Defense of the Short Story..................................................................................... 75 by
Lee K. Abbott
More Than Form: The Novel and the Story............................................................. 79 by Jack
Heffron
Why True-Life Stories Don’t Make Good Fiction.................................................... 87 by
Alyce Miller
Weaving Plot and Subplot.......................................................................................... 93 Donna Levin
Plotting the Mystery Novel......................................................................................... 99 by Judith
Greber
How to Write Today’s Horror.................................................................................106 by
D.W. Taylor
Not Just Happily Ever After: Writing Real Romance...........................................117 by Jennifer
Crusie
Believability in Science Fiction & Fantasy............................................................122 by
David Gerrold
Jump-Start Your Fiction Through Your Characters..............................................125 by John
Tibbetts
Adding Life with Dialogue........................................................................................131 by
Monica Wood
The Business of Fiction Writing the Query That Sells...................................................................................140 by
Susanne Kirk
Agents’ Roundtable...................................................................................................144 by the
Staff of Writer’s Market
The Big Challenges of Publishing in Little Magazines...........................................149 by
Will Allison
The Serious Business of Choosing Literary Fiction................................................154 by
Ben Nyberg
Superior Bambini and Other Samples from the Slush..........................................161 by
David Groff
Rejection Slips: A Writer’s Guide to What They Mean.........................................169 by
Will Allison
Self-Promotion: Maximizing Your Novel’s Visibility............................................174 by
W.E. Reinka
Fiction
by
In defense of the short story by
Lee K. Abbott
T
his time she was in the third row, toward the center, hers a face even Warren Beatty might not tire to gaze upon. This time she was young, though on other occasions she had been younger or older or, not infrequently, not a “she” at all. This time she got her question in early, well before I’d had the chance to charm her and the rest of the audience with a joke or yet another display of shallow wit. This time she actually smiled when she asked—semi-chagrined, I’m hoping, to have to ask it in the first place. “Why don’t you write a novel?” I don’t think she meant to insult me. But only quick thinking and a knowing chuckle from my host, not to mention the memory of my mother wagging her finger at my nose to emphasize yet another lesson regarding good manners I’d failed to learn, kept me from saying the obvious: Why, sweet cheeks, isn’t a bear a horse? Which is to say, without a lot of the hooey that nowadays attends far too many things, that she, like so many theretofore, seemed to think that in the scheme of matters literary, writing stories was decidedly minor league; that grown-ups, those with more on their minds than what USA Today needs only a hundred words to say, wrote novels; that a real artist(e), a typist with monstrously BIG ideas between his ears, needed at least a three-inch pile of paper to get the talk walked—all assertions as full of dangerous nonsense as any issuing from the National Rifle Association and the Republican Party. I do not think of stories, even the most traditional of them, as practice for the supposedly harder and putatively more sophisticated work that we’re told the novel is. I do not think of stories as inherently an easier form to fail in. Nor do I think of stories, no matter the age or ilk, as insufficient to the task of detailing, as Updike once noted, how it is to live in the here and now. I do not think of stories as child’s play, less demanding because they are less long. I do not consider stories, in fine, as efforts silly or ephemeral or provisional. Nah, I write stories, too many of them not short enough, because I can. Which is to say, with nary a twinkle in the eye, that the form suits my temperament, never mind my understanding of our goofy and condemned kind. In the first place, as a scribbler who came of age in the sixties, I am impatient, eager to grab the next goody in the refrigerator, anxious to go on the next adventure. World
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peace? Yeah, today that, and tomorrow the end of hunger in Africa. What do you mean, as my father used to say, Rome wasn’t built in a day? For me, you’re beginning to gather, speed is of no little premium. Hence, if two or three or—God help me!—four stories go bust before Independence Day, no big deal, because I know that, come Thanksgiving, I’ll have at least one to be reasonably proud of, one to show to a stranger with a checkbook and a publication that reaches Americans at bulk rate. I am also eager to horse around with the fundamentals of my faith. Second person? Why the dickens not? Ditto with the present tense. How about a story in the subjunctive mood? Can do (and, golly, was once done by yours truly, an undertaking, owing to related sleights of hand with time, that nearly broke my head in half). What about multiple thirds? Or telling a story backwards? Maybe a story of one sentence (another chance, by the way, to practice one’s grammar and gifts at subordination). You say you want to tell a story in 1,500 words exactly. Go to it. Not use quotation marks for dialogue? That, too. For story is a form that invites heedless experimentation—a form, in fact, whose principle virtue is its possibility, its fluidity. (You want proof? Okay, smartypants, define the form, beginning with the easiest of questions: How long is the story? Or this: When does a story become a novella, a novelette, or a, uh, long story? Geez, at least we know, with all due respect to the differences among Spenser and Shakespeare and Petrarch, that a sonnet is fourteen lines long. With a story, the “rules” are less fixed and more ambiguous. Length? Mr. E.A. Poe said it should be read at one sitting. This, of course, was before the red-eye to London, the bus ride to Katmandu—all sittings almost impossible to sit through.) Another reason to write short is that you don’t have to know very much. More proof? Try this: Think of your favorite novel. Now think what X had to know to write that book—the facts, if you will. Moby-Dick? The minutiae about knots alone were worth one darned chapter. The Great Gatsby? Man, how much time do you have for a lesson or two about shirts? Go ahead, try it yourself. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier. Libra by Don DeLillo. And Lord help you if you should undertake to create your own world. Does the name William Faulkner mean anything to you? Or what about Ray Bradbury? The Denis Johnson who wrote Fiskadoro? Lordy, you might even have to invent a language à la A Clockwork Orange. With a story, even one about places long ago or never were, you can, well, fake it. I once, for example, wrote a story about a father who was obsessed with his brother’s death on the Bataan Death March at the beginning of World War II. To do right by the material, I read one book—and, no pun intended, a short one at that—to learn the history, to find the names, to get the anecdotes. To write a story on UFOs, I read another book. To concoct some artful lies about Pancho Villa and Black Jack Pershing, maybe three books. Washington Irving, he of the Headless Horseman and the minor role in Catch-22, used to say that writing at novel length inevitably lead to “dull patches.” Not surprisingly, I, in the words of the miracle that is Smokey Robinson, second that emotion, especially because I agree with the aforementioned Mr. Poe that we writers ought not to write even one word that does not, as he put it, contribute to the “unity of effect.” This, folks, is hard to do. Harder than getting into heaven, methinks. The story writer cannot be self-indulgent
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or indifferent to the need to hurry along to the next dramatic moment. We have to make our mark, often not subtly at all, and press on. “His skin looked like week-old pork,” we type and are thus finished describing the software tycoon with the tongs and the barbecue mitt and a mistress with a charge card to Frederick’s of Hollywood. “Her voice made my hair melt,” we type and dare not go into any more detail about, say, her full-sprung thighs or her peculiarly fetching way of getting from hither to yon. No, the emphasis for the story writer is brevity, an aesthetic economy where less is more. Similarly significant to understand is that, metaphorically speaking, you don’t often turn corners in stories nowadays where what you’ve discovered about Debbie-do or old Phinizy Spalding is grave enough to scare the pants off you, or have you wondering why that bit of “news” was yours to behold. Novelists, I think, run the risk of learning stuff about themselves through their characters that might well give the lie to the easy convictions they cleave to as citizens. What, you wonder, did it cost John O’Hara to write BUtterfield 8? Or what horrible truth was John Cheever coming to in Oh, What a Paradise It Seems? And how long did it take William Styron to start breathing again when he finished the last chapter in Lie Down in Darkness? To be sure, such remarkable looks into the dark well of us can, and do, happen with story. In fact, I have argued elsewhere that we ought not ever to write a story that will only cost us time to get between margins. Still, with the novel—unique to its form, dear readers—much is demanded, not least a broader, more comprehensive sense of character, which is to say, finally, a more straightforward and more honest view of ourselves, the analogues for the selves we breathe into life with language. You can’t, I fear, spend years with Dr. Jekyll without having more than one heart-to-heart with Señor Hyde. I am here to say that a story is nicely accommodating to material, the “stuff” you’re alive to fictionalize. In the twenty-seven years since I published my first “histoire” (the only word in French worth repeating in polite company), I’ve written about, oh, a duke’s mixture of men and women bedeviled by the roil and rue of lived life. I’ve a hapless hero who killed two dogs, another who believed his mutt could speak enough English to pass the SATs. In an attempt to learn what structure alone can “say,” I’ve told two different stories precisely the same way. I’ve given myself over to a guy, shaped like the Pillsbury Doughboy, who aims to get out of his draft physical by wearing India silk panties (crotchless, of course) and smooching a general or two. At various times in my career, into my head, always unbidden, have sprung, in addition to the usual rakes and flounders, a football coach with a fondness for high heels, a professional “voice” breaking into his own house, a teenager watching his father destroy a brand-new set of Wilson golf clubs, two former college buddies who like to hold up Stop N Gos, a being from “outer-goddam-space,” a mother who makes no apology for being a drunk, a twice-divorced scoundrel who likes to box waltz with women in the aisles of his local food mart, a banker who watches his wife—evidently naked, at least from the waist up—drive by in the Volvo sedan of his bridge partner, a woman in love with an ex-G.I. who hears voices and owns a Russian handgun to do battle with them, a smart-mouth delinquent whose directions to his place in the desert take six pages, and a session drummer with astonishingly bad taste in sweethearts. Why, I’ve even presumed to take up residence in the
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interior life of a thug named Fork—a sad sack, really, who offered to be to us what pestilence had been to our forebears. In short, whatever has interested me, and a lot certainly has, I’ve had a form accommodating enough to do the heavy lifting that art is. Novel writing, so E.L. Doctorow is said to have once remarked, is like driving at night on an unfamiliar road. For the story writer I am, that trip to the end of Lonely Street is neither less daunting nor less spooky; it’s just shorter. Like our brothers and sisters who go long, we at the “to” end of narrative’s “fro” must be equally watchful, equally vigilant, equally attentive to what surprises will spring out at us from the dark. I likewise believe that story writing fits well with these parlous and busy times. In my own case, I went short in part because, with a wife and two children and no little desire to be an acceptable husband and father, I had no time to go long, especially with the tenure clock ticking in the background. We had soccer practice to go to, trombone lessons to take, school plays, trips to the orthodontist—the alpha and omega, in short, of all that’s involved in rearing youngsters you mean to keep clear of woe and despair and ignorance. Hence, I wrote at night, after story time. I wrote when I didn’t have class to teach (or, sigh, prepare for). I wrote when there was no department meeting, no advisee rapping at my chamber door, no sleep to have, no administrator to knock some sense into. I wrote when I didn’t have papers to grade, softball to play, flesh to press, or shilly to shally. Mainly, however, I wrote short because, well, after thirty pages I began to lie. I have, I should finally confess, tried to go long. Three times, in fact. The painful autobiographical novel (featuring a young man far too sensitive for the crudities of the modern world). The pornographic novel (yes, literally). The historical novel (see that mouthbreathing son-of-a-gun Pancho Villa from above). With each, fortunately, I learned yet more about being brief, about what to leave out, about how to cut, about why, among other things, all the little birdies go tweet-tweet-tweet. I learned the felicity of the right word at the right time. I learned, very quickly, to get to the dadgum point. I learned not to overstay my welcome, to leave the party well before the fistfights start and the drunks get to singing college fraternity songs. I learned to fish, not cut bait. I learned that a good title is worth a chapter all by its lonesome; that a name—Tump, for example, or Mr. Pitiful—is worth, at the very least, a page of vital statistics. I learned that writing is not necessarily prose. I learned, to coin a phrase, to make time fly, days and even years disappearing in a sentence. I made pals with the angel that is white space. I became explicit, maddeningly so. I learned to kill two, sometimes three, narrative birds with one stone. And, yes, I’ve learned what I can’t do. I’ve learned what I have is the stamina, the time, the imagination, or the courage to type—not the least valuable lesson, importantly, one can learn about one’s singular, miserable self. And, best of all, I am not through learning. I don’t expect that I’ll change—too little time left to become passingly good at the high and low of another genre. Besides, I have more, albeit short, to say. And short, as the poet reminds us, is sweet, right? In any event, I have nothing rousing to finish with, no rhetorical flourish of the sort you might think to underline or commit to memory. Rather, I hope my words have become a comfort to those similarly afflicted with the need to be brief. Had I been a more proficient writer, this, too, would have been shorter.
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More than form: the novel and the story by Jack
Heffron
I
doubt there is a fiction writer anywhere who would need more than a moment to define the difference between a novel and a short story. The primary difference, of course, is length. And yet, that simple, easily discerned difference creates a good many other differences in the writer’s approach to the work, her relationship to it, the strategies she uses to complete successfully a piece of fiction, long or short. Still, we discuss the forms as if they were very much the same, though we make clear distinctions between, say, the short story and the poem. Early in our literary careers, most of us find ourselves as either a fiction writer or a poet. For the majority of fiction writers, those early years are served writing short stories. We began writing “seriously” (that is, for others, strangers, to read and criticize our work) in an undergraduate creative writing course. And though the syllabus may not have called for a short story instead of a novel chapter, we all banged away at the smaller form. A short story, to the novice, seems a good bit easier and, well, less presumptuous. We planned to learn the finer points of plot, characterization, and point of view in the shorter form, then to graduate to the longer one, the assumption being that the novel was simply a much longer short story. Such thinking denies some very real differences in the forms. In fact, the short story’s demands for economy, compression, and unity may be more difficult to satisfy for the novice than the novel’s need for endurance and stamina. As William Faulkner once said, “All the trash must be eliminated in the short story, whereas one can get away with some of it in a novel.” The story demands that every detail, every word, serve a specific and clearly focused end in order to achieve an overall unity of effect. In many ways, the short story is closer to the poem. Rick DeMarinis, who has published a number of story collections and novels (including The Year of the Zinc Penny, a novel, and The Voice of America, stories), believes the notion of writing stories in order to graduate into novels is wrongheaded. “I did serve such an ‘apprenticeship’ in the misguided belief that a short story was easier [than the novel] because it was shorter,” he explains. He perceives the difference as largely a matter of discipline and attitude. “The novel requires the discipline of the endurance runner; the short story requires the discipline of the tightrope walker.
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In a novel, problems in character development, plot, tone, and others, can be solved by adding whatever seems necessary. In a story, any addition requires achieving a new balance, a realignment of all the other parts. The process of revision often involves a good bit more taking out than putting in. The task is getting the piece to read as though it were written in a single sitting, as though the writer simply took dictation from the muse—an occurrence not nearly as common as story writers would have their readers believe. More often, the story writer revises over and over, tinkering with sentences, scenes, dialogue. He lives by inference, by suggesting a world outside the story to create the illusion that we are examining a detail from a very large canvas.
Word By Word Thus, the short story, because of its demands, seems an unlikely place for the apprentice writer to begin, unless the writer’s goal is to work for a good long while within that form. “In terms of creativity, a week of short story is far more exhausting than a month of a novel,” says Robert Olmstead, who has enjoyed success with stories (River Dogs) and with novels (Soft Water, A Trail of Heart’s Blood Wherever We Go, and Coal Black Horse). “I take great pleasure in working on novels. There’s a generous pace to them. It’s leisurely. You can take time to get up and walk around, refill the coffee cup, light a cigarette.” Olmstead, a graduate of Syracuse University’s MFA program (where he worked under Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff) and who now is Director of Ohio Wesleyan University’s Creative Writing Program, believes that the apprenticeship is served with short stories because the workshop setting handles the shorter form more easily. He also believes, however, that apprentice writers should concentrate more on sentences and paragraphs than on the larger structures. “The best apprenticeships are word by word, line by line, two people sitting next to each other discussing a paragraph for an hour.” His belief is echoed by Kate Braverman, a novelist (Lithium for Medea and Palm Latitudes) and story writer (Squandering the Blue). She believes that young writers should not be so concerned with form. “Structure gives people a superficial concept of what writing is. I’m interested in people writing good lines and being aware of the fact that good lines are built on a choice of words, how they sound, how they resonate, what they suggest.” Like Olmstead, she feels the emphasis, in the early years, should be on writing for its own sake, divested of a defining form. “The best apprenticeship that people can put in is to go and sit in front of a building and do five pages on what that building looks like. Go around and learn your world, what the architecture is, and what the trees are and what the history of your street is, and the names of the Indians who used to live there, the gods they believed in.” If the apprentice writer feels he must choose one form over the other to work in, there are, admittedly, advantages to the shorter one. It does allow the young writer to finish work, an important aspect of the learning stage, since a finished product offers a sense of accomplishment, a feeling that one has met his goals. The shorter form also allows for a greater range of experimentation. The writer can vary points of view from story to story and can play with different narrative structures.
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Developing Characters The strategies a writer uses in developing characters for a novel are different from those used in a short story. A short story, first of all, allows the writer to develop only a few characters, seldom more than two, into complex, rounded fictional people. Since the story must be focused on the character’s crisis of the moment—the story’s central impulse— little room is left for supplying background and exposition. The character’s history as well as his life beyond the current crisis must be implied by a few well-chosen details—a pocketwatch passed down from a great-grandfather, a ribbon won at the seventh-grade track meet. Through these details, the reader senses lives being lived, so that the characters seem more real. Without them, the characters will appear flat, mere props to carry out the story’s conflict, or worse, to serve some agenda beyond the story—a message the author wants to convey or an issue the author wants to explore through fiction. A telling gesture or detail can help character development—a scar, a beard that is constantly stroked, fingernails manicured to perfection that the character flashes at odd moments. These details summon forth the character, make her clear in the eyes of the reader by inferring behavioral traits and patterns that the story does not have room to show at greater length: a “tip of the iceberg” approach. Finally, the old truism is true—action is character—and a short story simply offers fewer opportunities to show your character in action. Thus, a character can be complicated by a single act—a harsh man tenderly pulling a blanket over a child, a kindly softspoken woman demanding her due from an impudent store clerk. A short story that, for me, offers textbook strategies in characterization is Richard Giles’s “The Whole World,” which appeared in the Winter 1990 issue of Story. In it, Giles quickly establishes his main character, Pope, a hard-bitten, tough old farmer whose daughter returns home, pregnant, having been driven off years before by her father’s inability to accept her adult sexuality. Pope’s primary physical detail, his tag, is a missing finger, a stump that “he stroked as another man might pick his teeth.” The detail suggests Pope’s past, his life before the story, giving him a history. It also suggests how tough his life has been, full of harsh physical labor, and perhaps it hints at his stunted emotional development. But rather than settle for a one-dimensional, American Gothic image of the stoic farmer, Giles also offers a few of what DeMarinis calls “telling gestures.” We glimpse behind Pope’s mask and find that while lying in bed waiting for sleep, he fantasizes about being a night bird, free in the dark sky to fly and to screech. Later, in a vain attempt to keep his daughter entertained (and thus away from the men in town), he retells the story of losing his finger, relishing her laughter. He becomes suddenly vulnerable in the reader’s eyes, and a complex individual. The best stories, those whose characters linger in our memories long after the story is over, employ characters that, like real people, are full of contradictions, of fantasy lives that are not even suggested on the surface. Since the story writer does not have room enough and time to show a character in a variety of fully developed and revealing scenes, she must find other ways to move quickly past the character’s masks (and past
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the type with which the character is most easily identified). The surest means to this end is asserting a great deal of pressure on the character. He must want something very badly, must need desperately to escape whatever torment dogs him so that the reader can see the character without disguises or defenses, a naked self that is weak or strong, passionate or indifferent, brave or cowardly (or both, depending on the situation). Asserting that pressure by constantly raising the stakes, constantly creating new roadblocks for the character, can also lead to some nice surprises for the writer. A character we thought of in one way—shy or arrogant or friendly—suddenly bursts off in a new direction. In such cases, the cozy confines of the story help the writer assert this dramatic pressure, since both the writer and the reader can live with a heightened narrative tension over the short haul. If the character is under tremendous pressure from the start in a novel, the reader and the writer will be exhausted after the first hundred pages (if that long). The novel demands that the tension be modulated, rising and falling like waves or, depending on the story, like a roller coaster.
Showing Change The writer of the short story also is limited in his ability to convincingly show a character’s change. Of course, many stories lead to an epiphany, to a change in perspective about the subject of the story, but length prohibits showing more fundamental changes in character. Therefore, when we show a character working her way through a bad time, say the months following a divorce, we can suggest at the end, given the events of the narrative, that she will be able to cope better in the future. But if her selfishness and basic dishonesty caused the divorce, it is difficult, in 5,000 words, to convince the reader that the action of the story has ignited a significant reversal in behavior and that the character will now be a considerably more generous, giving person. “In the novel, not only one but other characters can and do change,” explains James B. Hall, who has published novels (Mayo Sergeant, Racers to the Sun, and Not By the Door) and story collections (The Short Hall). “‘Life’ changes them and we see it happen and believe. The novel involves process, and given enough process, a change in character becomes acceptable. Whereas short fiction’s commitment to unity of effect, to only a very few full scenes, legislates for revelation within a character, but precludes the melodrama of a character’s fundamental change, let us say, from a bad man to a good man.” One way the story writer might attempt to circumvent this limitation is by opening the story with a catastrophic event that changes the character’s life view, then developing this change throughout the story. In “The Country Husband,” John Cheever’s protagonist, Francis Weed, survives a plane crash and returns to his repressive suburban world a “changed” man. The story documents his rebellion in comic detail, but even here, the “change” is only temporary and Francis returns to his “normal” self. In developing characters into complex, rounded literary folk, the novelist has many more options. She can sketch entire scenes for the sole purpose of developing an aspect of a main character. “The novel allows tremendous latitude in the introduction and treatment of characters,” says DeMarinis. “You can give ten pages, if you want, to the
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description of a cab driver or of a psychiatric nurse just for the joy of exercising your powers of description or to indulge your insights into the varieties of human behavior.” The novel’s latitude not only allows, it forces the writer beyond the short story’s limits of inference and gesture. For a classic example, consider F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. We first see Gatsby bathed in moonlight, his arms spread wide to the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He is the distant, enigmatic, romantic hero. Before seeing him, we learned a bit about his legend, heard the rumors about him. Then we watch as he presides over one of his grand parties. Then we meet him, along with Nick, and our early perception of him as mysterious hero is complicated by his laughably bogus “life story.” Later still, we see him as gangster, as shy boy-man made vulnerable by love, and finally as a desperate dreamer. And Gatsby, despite all the scenes in which he is developed, remains somewhat vague. Think of the complexity of Nick Carraway, even Daisy. All are shown in a number of contradictory ways. The larger canvas allows for such contradictions without suggesting that the character’s development is somehow wrong, inconsistent. In the story, a number of contradictions would make us wonder who the character really is. Thus, we tell the writer that we don’t believe the sweet, vulnerable protagonist we’ve come to know in the story’s first fifteen pages would do such a thing on page sixteen. We insist that the writer foreshadow such a contradiction earlier, give us some clue as to the character’s complexity before foisting such a change upon us.
Plot, Pace, and Structure A novel demands greater modulation of pace, a rising and falling action rather than a beeline for the exit. While short stories do not require a fast, linear, forward movement, they must be focused on one or two very specific goals. Even daring, fragmented structures such as those used by Donald Barthelme, Robert Coover, and William H. Gass have a clear direction. “It’s the very rare short story that can accommodate a subplot,” says DeMarinis, “but a true novel almost requires such excursions. The pace of a story is obviously faster than that of a novel. Like a poem, a short story has a detectable rhythm. Some novels do, but most do not. Or if they do, it is not as crucial an element to their aesthetic success.” In a story, I would not enjoy the luxury of a five-page scene since such a drastic change in intensity—such as a shift in the established rhythm—would register on the reader as a “soft spot,” and an alert editor would trim or cut the scene, or perhaps combine it with another one so that at least it would be working on a number of levels, accomplishing several necessary chores for the story. Likewise, the length of scenes, by necessity, must be shorter in the story. A scene’s success is judged by its precision, its control, its tightness. When writing a scene in a short story, I write everything that transpires between the characters. I record all the dialogue, the gestures, the asides, all the starts and stops and hems and haws to make sure that I have done well by the scene in my head—given it plenty of time to develop on its own, to take over and become something different, such as when a character
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suddenly says something I had not foreseen. Once completed, I go back to trim, reviewing the scene dozens of times until I’m sure all the fat is gone, that the scene is tight. A master at creating and sustaining long dramatic scenes within the short story is J.D. Salinger. In his classic story “Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut,” he uses, primarily, only two characters who remain, for the most part, in a single room, talking and drinking during a long afternoon. But such stories require wonderful dialogue in order to sustain the reader’s interest, and their apparent aimlessness must be controlled with a deft hand. Several years ago, Madison Smartt Bell told us that “Less Is Less,” and the past few years have seen a slight shift away from minimalism to more fully developed narratives. Still, the story writer (and to a lesser extent, the novelist), in order to compete in the marketplace, must make more of less. Robert Olmstead, defending his former teacher Raymond Carver from the (now pejorative) tag of “minimalist,” noted, “I read a Carver story and the word that comes to my mind always is generosity. He’s an immensely giving writer.”
Point of View Today’s novelists and short story writers enjoy great freedom when choosing a work’s point of view, but each form offers slightly different freedoms and limitations. In both cases, the caveat remains: It must seem natural—an organic part of the work. The writer fails if the chosen point of view is too limited, too self-conscious, or too distracting. For this reason, unusual points of view—second person, for instance—tend to be easier to execute in a short story simply because the writer is not forced to sustain that device over many pages. Thus, Bob Shacochis uses second person with wonderful results in his story “Lord Short Shoe Wants the Monkey.” The use of you rather than I, he, or she does not become a bothersome convention of the story. Sustaining that very idiosyncratic approach over the course of a novel is extremely difficult, since it calls such attention to itself, drawing the spotlight away from the characters and plot. (Of course, it can be employed occasionally with great effect, the most famous contemporary example being Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City.) The same reasoning holds true for first-person narratives in which the voice is very idiosyncratic, a dialect perhaps. The novelty of such a voice can engage a reader for a short while and can add a delightfully fresh perspective to one’s material, but the writer must ask herself: Can the reader tolerate such a voice through hundreds of pages? Can this voice communicate my entire story, even the more subtle aspects or those that require keen observation? Or will the limitations and eccentricities which seem so charming and which allow me to sustain a strong element of mystery for twenty pages become annoying or overly confining in a much longer work? Of course, examples in which an unreliable, idiosyncratic first-person voice tells a long story are legion: Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, for one; Allan Gurganus’s The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All is a more recent example. But a writer making such a strategic choice here must be aware of the challenge he has set
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for himself. For all the novelty and freshness this voice gives the work, it creates a great many demands. The most common point-of-view technique in use is, of course, the limited third person, which focuses on the thoughts of a single character but allows the writer to move in and out of that character’s mind and to make more general observations. The writer also can sustain tension through what his main character does not know. This point of view seems to be the easiest one to employ in a short story. Over the course of a novel, however, it may become too confining. Locked into the mind of just one character without the benefit of a rich voice, the reader can feel claustrophobic. He may want to jump into the consciousness of another character—or two, or three, or more. Novelists, therefore, often choose an omniscient point of view, though not in the nineteenth-century mode of jumping from one character to the next even within a single scene. They use a more limited omniscience but with a number of characters changing, say, with each new chapter. This technique gives the novel an openness, allowing the reader a fresh look at the events of the narrative. In fact, the switching perspectives can become the central focus of the novel as a number of characters investigate the same events. The master of this approach was William Faulkner, particularly in The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying (in which first-person narrators are mixed). A more recent example is Tobias Wolff ’s The Barracks Thief, in which first person and third person are mixed to great effect. Such shifts within a story are more difficult to execute since the goals here are economy and unity. The reader does not take kindly to shifts in perspective unless the writer establishes this openness early in the story—within the first several pages. Certainly writers can use an omniscient point of view, and can even use more than one first-person or limited third-person narrator. An excellent example of the latter is T. Coraghessan Boyle’s story “If the River Was Whiskey,” in which the very tight third-person perspective switches between father and son. But Boyle marks the shifts by inserting a space break each time. The reader may be jarred if the switches simply occur without apparent pattern. A writer also risks jarring the reader (and violating the reader’s trust) when, after the first ten or twelve pages of a single point of view, he changes to a new one. Of course, such “rules” have never limited the creative mind and should, instead, be used as guideposts that can save the writer time spent on trial and error. Even better, they might be used as challenges the writer creates for herself—barriers to be broken through. “If you can write in a voice I want to hear—I don’t care how long, in fact, I don’t care what form or even what subject matter—I will read, read, read,” says Olmstead. “For everything we can say about the nature of the endeavor, there’s a writer out there running roughshod over our tenets.”
A Different Dynamic In discussing how a writer decides between novel and short story, Braverman says, “Finally, it’s not enough that you choose it, it must choose you. It’s a dynamic.” It seems to
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me the notion of a dynamic between writer and work cuts to the heart of the difference between novels and short stories. The primary difference is one of our relationship to the form in which we are working. Since fiction writers are very different from each other, so, too, are their relationships with their work. Though I truly love the short story form and would never want to choose between forms, I find myself more at ease when working on a novel. As Olmstead noted, there is a leisurely quality to the relationship, an awareness as I write that tomorrow I will return to this world and the next day, and the day after that. In fact, while writing in this longer form, the writer lives, at least part of the time, within that world. And so much of what happens in the “real” world seems somehow to fit that other one, so that I find myself writing notes constantly—in supermarkets, theaters, restaurants, everywhere. Some writers can avoid the keyboard for days, maybe weeks, while allowing ideas to incubate. When ready, they attack—whipping out short stories in a single sitting or a section of a novel in a week. Unfortunately, I am not one of those writers. I must face the keyboard nearly every day, and novels ease that chore by prolonging the process of creation: Tomorrow I will write what comes next. With short stories, I write as the pieces come to me, in whatever order, and the process of creation is a good bit shorter than the process of revision. And though the short story offers that sense of completion more often—undeniably, a wonderful feeling—the writer is then faced with the task of beginning again, of starting over from scratch. Rick DeMarinis agrees. “Beginning a short story is almost as hard as ending one, which always takes some miracle of insight. This involves some agony. I think a writer of short stories needs to depend on the inspired moment. The novelist is more of a plow horse than a gazelle.” So each writer must ask herself, “Which am I—plow horse or gazelle?” And it is unlikely that any of us are one as opposed to the other: We’re both. The question then becomes, “Which am I most often?” Braverman sums it up this way: “A story is like a love affair, and a novel is like a marriage.” A story offers initial exuberance and, since the end is never far from sight, plenty of romance. The novel offers more certainty, a stronger sense—for better or for worse—of permanence. Though she enjoys both forms, Braverman feels the novel grants a greater sense of achievement. “For a writer, I think the novel is the ultimate performance,” she says. “It’s the ultimate test of intelligence and stamina and the ruthless will to succeed. The ability to embrace ghastly solitude. And you cannot conceal who you are across the dimensions of a novel. A novel ultimately reveals the quality of the soul.” The important point here is to remember that the forms are indeed different, and that the young writer who charges into the sunset armed for battle must remember that his strategies must change to fit the opponent.
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Why true-life stories don’t make good fiction by
Alyce Miller
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ow many times have you been inspired to turn a true story (amusing anecdote, tragic episode, personal experience) into fiction? Or after hearing a particularly good story, one that moved you to laughter or close to tears, you’ve thought, “Wow, now that would make a good piece of fiction?” Why is it that after transcribing the story to paper, you discover it has failed miserably on the page? Worse, readers and editors conspire to tell you the story is boring (nothing happens), improbable, predictable, or even unrealistic. How can real stories seem unrealistic? Don’t most fiction writers borrow material from real life for their stories? The answer is yes, but fiction writers draw on many other sources as well. Often what appears in works of fiction is a combination of “true stories,” imagination, and invention. This is what distinguishes fiction from much nonfiction. Six of the biggest pitfalls in writing directly from true life are as follows:
1. Writing stories from which you have either too much or too little distance: With too much distance, you may not know enough to flesh out the story beyond anecdote; with too little distance, your close-up familiarity may get in your way as you assume your reader will automatically feel the same way you do about the material. 2. Relying on and allowing the “real-life” plot to drive the story toward “the way it really happened,” rather than exploring alternate routes. 3. Neglecting character development; assuming that because you think a real-life person is funny or tragic, your reader will, too. 4. Wanting to stay in control and explain why everything happened the way it did; overlooking the wonderful possibilities of ambiguity, irony, and understatement. 5. Straitjacketing the writing itself because you know exactly where the story is going. 6. Failing to include essential details that convince and give texture; again, relying on your own emotional response to a real-life situation, rather than to the detail and development that move the story machinery.
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Inventing Another Kind of Truth It’s helpful to remember that one of the shifts that marks so much twentieth-century fiction is from “what the writer already knows and wants to impart” to “what the writer discovers.” Twentieth-century fiction typically resists demonstration and instruction, and leans more toward exploration and open-endedness. Readers of contemporary fiction expect to play a very different role from their nineteenth-century counterparts. Writers who get stuck in transcribing real-life stories cheat themselves and their readers of the potential for mutual discovery. My creative writing students frequently express frustration with their flawed attempts to transform “real life” to fiction. A student in an adult fiction class I recently taught dismissed all critiques of weak moments in her stories with this rationalization: “But that’s the way it really happened. It’s the truth.” Her readers’ responses were, “But you haven’t convinced us.” What my student forgot is that fiction is, as the adage tells us, a means of transforming, not simply transcribing, life. “Truth” is always prismatic. Fiction, by its very nature, alters and falsifies. The fictive dream offers the illusion of truth. It is very different from factual reportage. Certainly, fiction writers often borrow ideas from “real life,” but they also mix and blend real-life events and characters and images with what they invent and imagine. Often, writers may start with a snippet of conversation or an interesting image from real life and work from there, allowing each idea to choose the next. Fiction writers must always be open to possibility. Perhaps in real life the main characters of your story live in southern California, but if you know little or nothing about southern California, and if the landscape and culture of southern California are not essential to the story, you might consider choosing a setting you are more familiar with. Readers can tell when you’re stretching thin what little you do know. Sculpting real-life events and characters is a given in fiction. Remember, you’re not a journalist concerned with the exact recording of “facts.” Fiction writers are inventors of another kind of truth.
Examining the Truth Another student of mine recently wrote a long, involved love story based on an emotional experience that really happened to him. The story failed on many levels. It opened with the accidental reunion of two high school sweethearts in a small Western town they just happened to both find themselves in. The woman now worked as a waitress in a bar where the man had coincidentally stopped to gamble. We are told in the second paragraph that the woman had jilted the man eighteen years before, and the man was still nursing a broken heart. By page three, the couple had slipped off to a motel and fallen into bed together. In the afterglow of sexual ecstasy they realized they had never stopped being in love. By page five, they were living together. The woman had a young daughter, by another lover, named Valentine. The little girl immediately
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became attached to the male protagonist, no questions asked. The three lived in perfect familial harmony for a year until the final pages when the man realized he simply could not make a commitment. We never knew why, since up until that point everything seemed to be going along swimmingly. The story ended with the departing man promising the little girl he would send her a card every year on her birthday, which fell on Valentine’s Day. So how did the story fail? First, coincidence (in this case, the accidental meeting) is always difficult to pull off in fiction. Handled carelessly, it comes across as a trick, or even laziness on the part of the author (the way the line “And then I woke up” does). The coincidence in the student’s story, even though true, rightly struck the readers as “hokey.” But because it “really happened,” the student was reluctant to part with that detail. Since the coincidence was not essential to the story, the student might have considered other possibilities that would also have served character development. Example: What might happen if the man deliberately came looking for the woman? What if he had been seeking revenge? What if he was happily married to someone else? What factors in his present life might have prompted him to seek out the old girlfriend? What if the reunion took place in their old hometown, which the woman had never left, making it logical for the two to be in the same place simultaneously? What if the man didn’t recognize the woman right away, or vice versa? What if she had come looking for him? A second problem: The student relied on the weight of his own emotional attachment to the situation, rather than character development, to convince the reader to care about the two characters. He assumed the readers would automatically accept the man’s passion for the woman. What he forgot is that the “real-life” subject matter was not loaded for his readers in the same way it was for him. Third: His choice of perspective through a thinly disguised version of himself as the male protagonist allowed him no opportunity to play with point-of-view possibilities. Writing “himself ” restricted him. The issue of “distance” arises here. Perhaps because he felt so emotionally linked to the situation, he found it impossible to write with a certain necessary detachment that might have led him to a more fully realized character. As a result, he ended up with a shamelessly bland protagonist whose motives were vague and whose actions seemed unfathomable. Hard to feel sympathy for such a character! Fourth: The dialogue between the two lovers showed none of the tension or irony this strained situation would ostensibly produce. The student stuck pretty much to “real-life small talk,” which may have been true to life, but is rarely of interest. Fictionalized dialogue simulates real-life dialogue, but must be carefully selected for the way in which it serves the story. A line like “What a nice house you have” could work if it was, say, ironic, if we knew the woman lived in a run-down trailer, for example. But the student’s dialogue consistently mirrored the action (“Would you like some lemonade?” she asked, handing him a pitcher) and revealed nothing about the characters’ feelings or motives. When in conflict or crisis, people often don’t say what they really mean, and this can be used to great advantage by writers in developing tension. Many times actions speak louder than any words. Example: How would the reader have read the same scene
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if the woman offered the man lemonade and her hands were trembling? Or she poured him a glass of lemonade without asking him if he wanted any? Or she gave him a glass of lemonade while she drank beer? Or she gave him lemonade that was too sour? Fifth: The student failed to develop the dynamics inherent in the main conflict between the two characters. After all, the man had been jilted by the woman. What must he be feeling? How would he behave? When he jumped in bed with her were his motives mixed? The setup offered tremendous potential for the subtle expression of complex dynamics, but the story as the student wrote it lacked any of the tension suggested by the circumstances. Finally, the student relied on a cliché at the end as a stand-in for the complexity of the man’s sadness at leaving the little girl named Valentine. Even though in real life the child’s birthday fell on Valentine’s Day and her name was Valentine, the device felt corny. Readers objected that the story had descended unforgivably into bathos. How to get away from that? The student might have reconsidered whether the Valentine’s Day detail was crucial to the story and discovered he was using it as an easy stand-in for more complex dynamics yet to be explored. Or he might have set out to discover what would happen if the little girl were not so likable. Or what if she weren’t six (as she was in “real life”), but ten or fourteen? What if she had been omitted entirely from the story?
Avoiding the Clichés of Life Writers must be attentive to the clichés that real life serves up and either make something of them (freshen them, challenge them, work against them) or abandon them altogether. Speaking of clichés, the love story is by its very nature already a cliché. How to work against that? Consider a piece as poignant and disturbing as Anton Chekhov’s “The Lady With a Dog” or D.H. Lawrence’s “The Horse Dealer’s Daughter.” Both are love stories. But both leave the reader uneasy by resisting what is expected and challenging the reader to think beyond the narrative lines of “boy meets and gets girl.” Another problem with translating directly from “real life” is that real life is only infrequently punctuated by trouble that is interesting. A happy family reunion in which all the relatives are thrilled to see one another, true as it may be, is boring to read about because nothing happens. It lacks the critical elements essential to fiction: conflict or crisis. A conflict or crisis can be as subtle as the boy narrator’s thwarted romantic quest in James Joyce’s short story “Araby” or as shocking as the murderous jealous rage of Leo Tolstoy’s protagonist in “The Kreutzer Sonata.” At the other end of the spectrum, remember that “real life” can be stranger than fiction. “Trouble” in real life may be far too complicated or unbelievable to translate directly into fiction. It may need condensing and distilling in order to make it work. Again, the very strangeness of real life may be a stumbling block unless the writer can work in the details that convince, or push the strangeness to new levels. I have often wrestled with the challenges of fictionalizing the complexities of real people and events. For example, I tried to write about a woman I know who has been kidnapped, raped, and beaten; who has had seven abortions and three children, all by
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different men; who has struggled with alcohol and drug abuse; who finally shot to death her abusive common-law husband and spent four years in prison where she was impregnated by a guard. When she gave birth in the prison hospital, her family had only a couple of days to make arrangements to get the baby out. After the woman’s release from prison, she dated an ex-prisoner who at age fourteen had bludgeoned his grandparents to death. Shortly thereafter, she slept repeatedly with her one sister’s husband, also an ex-convict. She had a second sister who was an alcoholic and lived with a string of abusive men. All of the above are facts drawn from real life. Yet their very volume proved distracting. I discovered that the undiluted, untransformed truth was far too complicated and implausible to work as fiction. I realized I would have to stretch my readers’ credibility too far and run the risk of disrupting the fictive illusion. I might easily be accused of contrivance or soap opera camp. When working from complicated real-life stories, you might consider simplifying and concentrating on one event, allowing the story to blossom from that point. Discover what it is that interests you most. For example, I might have chosen to focus on the moment when the woman’s baby was born in the prison hospital. Or the moment when she had to hand the child over to her alcoholic sister. Or I might have focused on the hours leading up to her sister’s discovery of the adultery. Some of the other real-life events might work as texture, woven into the background fabric. By narrowing the overwhelming number of explosive facts about this woman’s life, I would be more likely to develop the story with depth and not rely on a barrage of sensational events to pump up emotion. And I could have made use of some of the other details through implication and understatement. Remember that writing fiction is a selection process. Writers sift through a vast array of experiences (real, imagined, and borrowed) and choose the details that serve the story. Real life has no such filters. It comes in gusts and storms. Fiction, like life, is not static or fixed. Writing is an act of discovery in an infinite field of possibility. Telling a story exactly as it happened may put a stranglehold on the sheer delight and pace of invention. Don’t suffocate the life out of interesting stories. Allow them to breathe and grow.
Some Things to Remember Real life is only one source for your story ideas. Combine what you observe in real life with what you invent and imagine. Keep a writer’s notebook. Collect ideas. Truth is often stranger than fiction. Create composites of people and events by finding their “essence.” Simplify without flattening. Say more through less. Allow implication and nuance, not volume, to create texture and depth. Real life happens a day at a time. A hundred years can pass in a fictional sentence. An hour can be elongated to last an entire novel. Time in fiction is often collapsed or prolonged. It does not adhere to the neat little increments of real life. Condense or skip over periods of time that have little bearing on your story.
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Complexities and contradictions of human beings must usually be refined in fiction without reducing characters to attributes. Consider what is most interesting about the characters you’re working with. Resist the urge to overexplain, a habit with tellers of real-life stories. Allow your curiosity to roam freely. Allow real-life characters to be transformed. Don’t hold any real-life detail too precious. Be ruthless. If it’s not working, abandon it. Try starting with the kernel of a real-life story. The best way to enter a story is through your own curiosity. In real life you know Aunt Carol wept at Grandma’s funeral because she was sad. But, your curiosity might suggest that maybe Aunt Carol’s tears signified something other than sadness. What if she was actually elated Grandma died and her tears are tears of joy? Or she’s crying out of guilt because her last words to Grandma were cruel? Or perhaps her tears have nothing to do with Grandma at all, but with the unexpected presence of her ex-lover at the funeral? If you’ve conveniently entered the story from your “real-life” point of view, try telling the story through another character’s eyes. Explore different “I” narrators. Explore the use of third person (both limited and omniscient). Notice how a change in point of view allows the thinly disguised version of yourself to become someone else. Finally, don’t get stuck in “real life.” Keep your fictive possibilities open! Real life is only part of the story.
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weaving plot and subplot by donna levin
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enry James once called the novel “a loose, baggy monster,” but if you’ve written a novel, or tried to write one, you know that Mr. James was being overly kind. A well-plotted novel reads as if it’s all of one piece, as seamless as a crystal vase. Funny thing, when you try to construct one of those novels yourself, you feel as though you are the sole engineer responsible for threading together all of the freeways of Los Angeles. That’s one reason writers find novels so intimidating, and it’s also a reason that sometimes writers who have mastered the short story have a tough time making the transition to novels. Some short story writers think all they have to do is keep the short story going for three hundred pages, instead of stopping after twenty, and they’ll have a novel. Not so. A novel is not only longer than a short story, it’s wider. It has a main plot, but even a relatively short, slight novel has at least one subplot, and most novels have several. You can’t avoid being devoured by the baggy monster that is a novel by keeping your story simple. No, because then you end up with a novel that will be thin and uninvolving. But neither can the subplots you do put in place be just arbitrary, other-things-that-happen. They are part of the composition of a novel that, once complete, seems so effortless and whole. So how do you come up with one of these perfectly fitting subplots? You create a subplot that exists for a reason: It either highlights the theme of the book, drives the main plot forward or, at the very least, provides us with a context for that main plot. It might even accomplish all three.
The Thematic Subplot It’s always satisfying for us as readers to see subplots that intersect with main plots; it appeals to our wish to see life itself makes sense. By “intersect,” I mean that the same characters appear in both the plot and subplots. (It’s sort of like the way Mr. Drucker was in both Green Acres and Petticoat Junction.) But for a subplot to function, it is not absolutely necessary for it to intersect with the main plot. A classic example of this is Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. Anna Karenina
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is the story of a beautiful Russian aristocrat, Anna, who’s married to the upright but uptight Alexei Karenin. She’s a virtuous woman, but also a lively, emotional one. Meanwhile, her husband is the kind of guy whose idea of a good time is to clip his fingernails. So when the fatally charming and handsome Count Vronsky falls in love with her, although she tries to resist his advances, it isn’t long before she succumbs and embarks on an affair with him. Anna finally leaves her husband and child for Count Vronsky, but her own conscience, in part, won’t let her live with this choice, and eventually, she commits suicide by throwing herself under the wheels of a train. The premise, or the point, of Anna’s story is that adultery leads to death. (Not always the case in real life, of course, but the point of Anna’s story nonetheless.) In the same book, however, Tolstoy included a subplot, the story of Konstantin Levin, a noble landowner who woos and finally wins the lovely Kitty Shcherbatsky. They marry and have a child, and suffer some rather typical trials and tribulations of the first year of marriage, a sort of Russian Barefoot in the Park. They fight over little things and reconcile over big things. The love of his wife and child make Levin a stronger yet gentler man, and toward the end of the book, Levin, who has been an agnostic up until now, experiences a religious conversion. The premise, or point, of Levin’s story is that fidelity (or a happy family life) leads to salvation. The characters in Anna’s story and the characters in Levin’s story overlap, but only incidentally. For the most part, the purpose of the subplot, and thus the unity of the novel, arises because the two stories make two sides of the same argument. They are thematically linked. When the plot and subplots of the novel do not intersect, then it is crucial that they all prove a single theme, otherwise the subplots will seem arbitrary, like stories that belong in other books. For example, let’s say that you want to write a searing, insightful young-peopleadrift-in-the-big-city book. You assemble a group of various types—an artist, a shrewd entrepreneur, and a lawyer who wants to help the poor among them—and tell their stories in episodic fashion. The entrepreneur starts selling the hats she designs on the street; the promising artist is seduced by drugs; the lawyer tries to find ways to compromise with the system without losing her ideals. Meanwhile, these characters don’t interact much with each other except that they’re sharing the same loft space so they have to wait in line for the others to get out of the shower. When you get to the end of the stories about these young people in New York, whatever happens to all of them will have to be consistent with a single point that you, as the author, have proven. Perhaps the point will be only the strong survive in the big city. In that case, we’ll have to see how, indeed, the strong characters overcome the obstacles they face while the weak characters wind up broke and alone, or worse, become discouraged and go back home to Peoria. The thematic link in a book such as this can be the difference between an amateurish, rambling novel about nothing in particular and one that possesses that seamless, crystal vase quality.
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An Even Better Way The thematic link of plot and subplot has worked well in many books, and anything that’s good enough for Tolstoy is good enough for me. However, it doesn’t hurt to devise subplots that also drive the action of the main plot forward. As an example, let’s look at one of the emblematic books of the 1980s, Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities. Bonfire tells the story of Sherman McCoy, an arrogant bond trader whose life unravels after he and his mistress get lost in the Bronx and run over a young black man. The hit-and-run accident becomes a cause célèbre for the entire city of New York, a symbol of racial oppression; ironically, in the end, Sherman’s punishment isn’t to go to jail but to get stuck in a kind of criminal justice system limbo in which he must defend himself forever. Although Sherman himself does not really have the stature of a hero, his downfall results from forces outside of his control and his tragic dimensions. Also, while Sherman is a bit of a pompous snob and occasionally a buffoon, he isn’t the most evil character in the novel (there’s lots of competition for that honor), nor is he responsible for all the social injustice that is visited upon him personally. The two main subplots of Bonfire (there are several, more incidental subplots as well) concern, first of all, Larry Kramer, an assistant district attorney who is looking for a Great White Defendant to bolster his career, and secondly, Peter Fallow, an alcoholic British journalist who similarly must find a good story to cover. Wolfe creates complex lives for both Larry Kramer and Peter Fallow, but for each of them, the central goal becomes to nail Sherman, the perpetrator of the hit-and-run. Therefore, as each character either comes closer to or is pushed farther away from his goal, Sherman is affected and thus Sherman’s story moves forward even when he’s off-scene. This makes for an admirably dense novel, because the same phenomenon works in reverse. When we read about Sherman, we are also reading about Larry Kramer and Peter Fallow, because the outcome of Sherman’s story—whether or not he achieves his goal of escaping the consequences of his involvement in the hit-and-run accident—affects them as well. This is a fairly tricky concept, so, let’s once again take an invented example to illustrate further. Say that you’re writing a novel in which the main character is a mailman. One day he witnesses a murder through the window of one of the houses on his route. The killer sees him. Now Mailman knows that he has to flee or the killer will have to kill him, as well, in order to eliminate the only witness to his crime. Now cut to Mailman’s home where we learn that Mrs. Mailman has been unhappy in her marriage to Mailman for years and has finally taken a lover. She and her lover would like nothing better than to get rid of Mailman and move in together. But the house is in Mailman’s name and Lover has recently been fired from his bank teller’s job, so they have no money. (Mrs. Mailman is a former socialite who is morally opposed to working because it might damage her manicure.) Mrs. Mailman hears Mailman’s key in the door. What’s he doing home in the middle of the day? Lover escapes through the bathroom window just before Mailman bursts
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in, declaring that she must hide him. Ah-ha! says the reader (though perhaps not aloud) because the reader knows that Mrs. Mailman might want to see Killer find Mailman and do him in, because then she would get the house and the AT&T stock and be able to be with her lover. It would resolve her story. What’s crucial here, and what causes these two plots to drive each other forward, is the way in which both Mailman and Mrs. Mailman have different stakes in the outcome of the same problems. Will Mrs. Mailman actually help Killer find her husband? Or, seeing Mailman vulnerable, will she fall in love with him all over again and decide that she must protect him, so that Mr. and Mrs. Mailman now must flee Killer together? Or will Mailman learn of Mrs. Mailman’s affair and go after Lover? Either way, the two stories—Mrs. Mailman wanting to be with her lover, Mailman running from Killer—affect each other.
The Subplot as Social Context The effect of plot and subplots doesn’t have to be reciprocal, though. Take Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind: History itself is a subplot throughout the book, but especially in the first part, in the form of the Civil War, we follow the victories and defeats of the two armies, and then, when Sherman’s army comes upon Atlanta, it forces one of the more dramatic incidents of the book: Scarlett and Melanie must flee on the very day that Melanie gives birth. By the way, this should be the case to a greater or lesser extent in any historical novel: that the true, historical incidents will affect the lives of the invented characters. Heck, if that didn’t happen, why not just set your novel entirely in the Mall of America in 1994? It is also in a historical novel that a subplot can provide a context for a main plot, that is, help us understand the characters and what their choices are. However, this is really a nice way of saying that the subplot of historical events impacts the main plot more subtly. In the case of Gone With the Wind, the sweeping economic changes that follow the Civil War force Scarlett to reveal sides of her personality we might not otherwise see: scrabbling for financial security, her dormant ruthlessness comes to the fore. More specifically, for example, the shift in power that occurs during the Reconstruction enables Tara’s former overseer to levy taxes on Tara that Scarlett can’t pay. This causes her to marry Frank Kennedy, a man at whom she otherwise wouldn’t bother to wink, so that she can get the money. The subplot that works as “context” isn’t confined to the historical novel, however. Some of the more minor subplots of The Bonfire of the Vanities illustrate this principle as well. Early in the novel, Edward Fiske III, who represents a church group, goes to see a certain Reverend Bacon. Fiske is trying to ascertain what happened to the $350,000 that the church gave the Reverend for a day care center. The Reverend, in turn, subtly threatens Fiske, implying that he can, if he wants, create unrest and even violence in the black community, and that even if he can’t account for the $350,000, it isn’t much to pay for peaceful neighborhoods. The conflict between Fiske and Reverend Bacon forms a complete, if small, subplot. Fiske is worried about what will happen to his job if he can’t recover the money,
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while the Reverend has every intention of keeping it. But the reason this subplot functions is that it provides a context for the main story line. The background it gives us about poverty in Harlem and the Bronx helps to explain, in part, how it is that when Sherman is inadvertently responsible for running over a young black man, he unleashes so much rage.
When Theme Meets Plot and It All Ends Happily (or Otherwise) In the very best-plotted novels, not only do the main plot and the subplots affect each other, but they also form a thematic whole. For this, let’s look at F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Like The Bonfire of the Vanities, Gatsby captures the spirit of an age, and like Bonfire, it embodies that spirit in some very specific people. The main plot of Gatsby is the story of Jay Gatsby’s unwavering love for Daisy Buchanan, a young woman who represents not only all his naïve and intense ability to love but the insouciance of America in the 1920s. Gatsby pursues the elusive Daisy for years, refusing to abandon his image of her as an unspoiled angel who loves him equally in return, even though she has married another man and had a child. A subplot involves Daisy’s husband, Tom, who is having an affair with an auto mechanic’s wife, Myrtle. From a thematic point of view, this subplot provides a contrast to Gatsby and Daisy’s story: While Gatsby idolizes Daisy, Tom’s affair is completely cynical. The two stories drive each forward as well, in the way we’ve discussed, because Gatsby, Daisy, and Tom have a stake in the outcome of each other’s relationships. For example, when Daisy becomes involved with Gatsby, it’s in part motivated by her anger at her husband’s infidelity. But the real joining of plot and subplot comes late in the book. Gatsby runs over Myrtle in his car, killing her. At least, that’s what Myrtle’s husband, the auto mechanic, believes (in fact, Daisy killed Myrtle), and it is in the wake of this outrage that Myrtle’s husband kills Gatsby, whom he also believes was her lover. Thus, the resolution of the subplot (Tom’s affair with Myrtle, which is resolved with her death) provides a fairly thorough resolution to the main plot—Gatsby’s relationship with Daisy obviously ends with his death. But yet another character is affected and yet another subplot indirectly resolved by this event: Nick Carraway, the narrator (although a secondary character) of the book, is so disgusted by the way that Gatsby’s so-called friends, and Daisy herself, abandon him in death, that it drives him from this land of the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous From Hell. Nick leaves the East and returns home. When two or more plots simultaneously resolve each other this way, the reader has the sense of reading something inevitable, something plotted by Fate itself.
Yes, It’s Harder Than It Looks (But That Doesn’t Mean You Can’t Do It) Sure, it’s no sweat for us to take apart the great works of Western literature. Sort of makes you want to say, “Okay, Leo, okay, Scott, now it’s my turn!”—all the while knowing that
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when you sit down to weave your own perfect tapestry of plot or subplot, you may find your threads getting a little knotted up along the way. Before you start your novel, spin out several versions of what happens. Brainstorm and experiment with various scenarios. Ask yourself what the characters need from each other. If there isn’t anything, make something up. Once you have a main character who is embroiled in a story, don’t let your secondary characters sit on the sidelines to comment on the action. Ask yourself, what stake might each of them have in the outcome of that main character’s story? Or, ask yourself, what is the point of the main character’s story? Then, how can you demonstrate some other aspect of that story through the secondary characters’ lives? For example, if your main character is a surgeon wrestling with the ethics of his profession (i.e., cutting down on hospital stays under pressure from insurance companies), then logical subplots would deal with other doctors who in different areas either abuse their positions (perhaps doing makework surgery) or who continue to fight the good fight to maintain high standards (spending extra time with patients even when there’s no extra money or glory in it). Look, too, at how the setting of your novel might provide opportunities for subplots. No one is entirely independent of the culture in which she lives. Whether the novel is historical or contemporary, there are always social forces at work impacting the characters. So ask yourself: Does the Rotary Club approve of the new teacher’s methods? Is there nuclear testing going on nearby? Is some revolutionary cell trying to recruit your protagonist? But most of all, look to the characters themselves. Ultimately, the most stirring plots emerge from character, characters who are active and who create their own destinies. As you write about the characters and get to know them, their more subtle qualities will emerge, leading you to more plot ideas. This isn’t the same as saying that a character “takes over the book,” which is one of those quaint writing myths perpetuated by novelists who forget that characters aren’t real people. In the early stages of writing your novel, there will almost inevitably be gaps in your own plotting logic. But we novelists must put a lot of faith in our unconscious minds to provide us with the raw material; then we must use our conscious minds, and elbow grease, to shape that raw material into something fine. Something like a crystal vase, even.
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plotting the mystery novel by Judith
Greber
I
t’s said that James McNeill Whistler, the artist of “Mother” fame, spent a great deal of time pre-envisioning his paintings in such detail that when he mentally “saw” the completed work, he blended his paints into their ultimate hues on his palette. Applying the colors was swiftly done. Other artists begin with a hazier image from which they draw one or more preliminary sketches, followed by layers of paint, brush stroke by brush stroke, a day’s work often scraped off and begun again, changing and adding to the original idea until they get as close as they can to what they now know they want. The same spectrum of possibilities applies to writing a novel, even one as crafted as a mystery. Plotting, or pre-envisioning, creates a road map for the trip ahead. You can either plan your entire route in advance, or proceed knowing only a general direction. Either way, you’ll get there. Some people are Whistlers who prepare outlines that can be hundreds of pages long and are actually first drafts. Others begin with a scrap, and off they go. Their first drafts are exploratory, and they ultimately become long outlines. Some writers can pre-envision to a point, and then the only way through the murk ahead is by living the story—i.e., writing it and finding a way through. Here are the approaches of just a few of today’s writers:
• Elizabeth George’s intricately plotted novels are preplanned only to about fifty pages of the manuscript. Then she writes and discovers what else is ahead. But before that, she devotes a great deal of preparation time to the characters, and in so doing, sees possibilities in how they might behave. • Janet LaPierre gets as far as she can on her initial idea and she composes a midpoint outline, a look back at what has happened so far. Then she projects what still has to happen. Shelley Singer starts her books wherever she has an idea for a scene and continues • in every which way and direction until she figures out what connects those scenes. • Michael Connelly knows what the case is going to be and who did it, but from then on, he “wings” it. “I find it’s actually the best way to create,” he says. “It gives you the most freedom and you enjoy it the most.”
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• Tony Hillerman “gropes” through, able to see “the details that make a plot come to life” only while writing the scene, in the mind of the viewpoint character. But he needs to be familiar with the location of the story, the nature of the crime, and a theme, plus have some idea of one or two characters in addition to the sleuth. Once finished, now knowing where the story has taken him, Hillerman rewrites the first or first few chapters. He says, “... you don’t have to be able to outline a plot if you have a reasonably long life expectancy.” • P.D. James spends more than a year planning each book she writes. • James Lee Burke doesn’t know what’s happening beyond a scene or two. • Lia Matera, author of twelve mystery and suspense novels, says: “If, going in, I know too much of what’s going to happen, I lose interest. I need to be in suspense as much as the reader does. As you might imagine, this means a tremendous amount of rewriting. Once I figure everything out ... many scenes no longer work, my clues aren’t in place, the moods and tone are likely to be wrong. It would be far less work to outline, and it would certainly mean less hand wringing and breastbeating. But I would lose my juice for the story, so I guess I’m stuck ... I have to be trapped in a corner, unable to write one more word, before I’ll continue the painful process of plotting. I’d like to be an outliner, but I resent them for being so smug about something that’s probably genetic.”
Presenting the Problem Beneath all the spins you’ll put on it, your basic story is either how the protagonist or sleuth finds/vanquishes the killer or how the proposed victim or sleuth prevents the ultimate disaster from happening. So somewhere near the beginning you have to present the problem. For example’s sake, say you’re intrigued by a news story about an embezzler. You were awed by his cleverness, appalled by his chutzpah, or tempted that somebody in your office is doing the same thing. Doesn’t matter. You were emotionally affected. You decided to use his crime as the basis of your mystery. Let your mind wander around possibilities. Where does the murder fit in? Why? How? Who? Begin with who was killed and why. This “why,” the motive, leads you into the back story—what happened leading up to the murder, the reason for it, which is a great deal of what your sleuth is going to have to uncover. Now—who? The corpse might be the embezzler, the embezzler’s boss, the mailroom clerk who happened upon an incriminating bit of evidence, or somebody who was there to deliver a warrant or flowers or ... Or maybe there’s no dead body—yet. There need not be one immediately, just a sense of impending danger. But the crime should happen early in the book since it generates much of the action. If you’re aiming for suspense—the bad thing that’s going to happen—you may think about the crime in a different way. Maybe the embezzler is actually the hapless pawn of someone using his cleverness to destroy the company or wreak revenge on someone. Maybe the embezzler has become our protagonist—trying to break free, go straight, come clean before he’s killed—but the noose keeps tightening.
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The contemporary puzzle-mystery has by and large adopted the traditional suspense finale and no longer pretends that all the suspects would passively gather in the library to be told which of them committed the crime. The contemporary climactic endscene will be a direct, generally physical confrontation with the killer.
Getting From A to Z Now, to figure out how to get from A to Z—what happens in between the crime and the confrontation with the killer. Alas, that space looms as wide as the Grand Canyon, and worse, you’ve got to build a bridge across it to where you’ve planted your conclusion on the other side. Nobody ever said it was easy, just possible. (It’s also possible that the original spelling of “plotting” was “plodding.”) What to do? Consider that crime novels are actually three stories. First, what physically happened. In this case, a dead person in the conference room had a bullet wound. Second, the theory of what happened. The police decide that poor X was the victim of an interrupted robbery. And third, what really happened. That’s the story your sleuth will glimpse in bits and pieces, a.k.a. clues that shine through the surface veil, those facts that don’t neatly dovetail with what supposedly happened. So that your detective has a serious job ahead of him, think of four other people who, for different reasons, would also appreciate the victim’s demise. (His ex-wife who’s fatally ill and has come to realize how much money was hidden from her during the divorce. A corrupt off-hours cop who was providing security and also, it appears, a bit of special aid and comfort to the dead man’s current wife. A woman who, with good cause, sued him for sexual harassment—and lost. A man hired to ghostwrite his autobiography who gets next to nothing—unless the book’s a bestseller, which it might be if its subject died violently.) Write down these reasons and draw lines to the dead person, connecting them. You’ve got five suspects now, counting the one you know is guilty. Five ways the crime might have happened. You’ve also got five aspects of the dead man’s life, paths for your sleuth to follow into blind alleys and finally, home. Write bios of those people explaining who they are, why they hated the dead person, why they don’t have a clear alibi, or why they behave oddly when informed of the news or questioned by the sleuth. Think about what else in their life they’re protecting or hiding that will make them suspicious. I like to have every suspect lie. Most are hiding minor embarrassments, some real but nonrelated offenses, but they all twist the truth to serve their own purposes, and that makes the sleuth’s job harder by generating wrong theories and misdirection. Why isn’t this an open-and-shut case? Or if it seems as if it is—why does your sleuth disagree with that opinion? What’s odd about the murder to the sleuth? What is the initial and erroneous theory of what happened and why? Why does the sleuth think this isn’t right? If you aren’t writing a police procedural, how does your sleuth come to be involved in this crime and why aren’t the police functioning adequately? (This is when you’ll envy those who are writing historical mysteries set in the days before there were official
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police forces.) This is often where what Alfred Hitchcock called “the MacGuffin” comes in. This is an element that gets the story going, often a gimmick that seems to be the issue—missing papers, a Maltese Falcon—but isn’t the actual problem that drives the novel or film. A MacGuffin, a side or secondary issue may pull your amateur sleuth—or PI who isn’t allowed to investigate an open homicide—into action. Or it may set the police off in the wrong direction, but all the same, pull them into the actual story. If you use a MacGuffin, be sure its question is also answered, ideally before we get to the solution of the central question. Is there a way to link the crime into the amateur’s job? By virtue of her profession or personal life, does your sleuth know something seemingly unrelated to the crime and only she sees the connection? Sometimes the amateur is driven to action because she’s the prime suspect, but obviously, this can’t be used too often if you’re planning a series. Which of the suspects might she know or have access to so as to sleuth in some sane fashion? Did something she did or said make it worse for her buddy so that she feels obliged to do penance via sleuthing? Does she work for the embezzler? Date the biographer? Have her hair done at the same salon as the ex-wife? Or, she might be linked to a bit player who’ll provide one significant piece of the puzzle, or a lead toward it—witnesses, friends of friends, informants, gossips who unwittingly know something valuable, e.g., the dead man’s fiancée or cleaning woman. (“And Lord knows what a mess his closet was with that shredder in there. No wonder he kept it locked—must have been ashamed of its looking like a big packing crate in there. Had to beg him to clean the place out every three months, and he took off from work so he could stand there watching me the whole time. Peculiar man, rest his soul.”) Figure out how your detective will reach some of the players. Could she possibly be a client of the same cleaning woman as the now-dead embezzler? If so—set it up early. Coincidence is fine to start events rolling, but never to solve the crime. So, before you need it, establish that the cleaning lady exists, is late, is switching days with another client—something to make her later appearance feel natural. In fact, everything in your book that will eventually provide a surprise needs to be set up so the reader feels you played fair. Even if he’s forgotten what you set up by the time it resurfaces, he’ll then remember that you did establish that fact. Are there links to any of the other suspects that need a preliminary establishing scene or mention? If you have a PI, and local law says PIs cannot investigate open homicide cases, then what permissible work is he doing that leads into this murder? Often his assigned case is something of a MacGuffin—not the real problem at all, but his involvement in it pulls him into something darker and more dangerous. If it’s a police case, what makes it more than run-of-the-mill, of personal meaning to the detective? Next, ask yourself what has to happen in order to set up the above. Can you begin with the sleuth walking in on the dead man in the conference room or are there things we need to know beforehand? Sometimes you need to plant clues before the crime is committed—action or dialogue by the impending victim—something the sleuth doesn’t particularly notice at the time, but in context, later, will recall. You might
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need to set up where your sleuth is before and during the crime so that his arrival at the inauspicious time and his weak alibi makes sense. You want to introduce all your significant characters fairly early in the book, so think of ways to bring them on stage. This may be obvious, but worth saying: You never want to spring the hitherto unseen villain on the reader at the end. Let your mind float. See what follows “what ifs.” Ask questions—how did this happen? Why would she be there? What would she do if she were there? Free-associate. Don’t strain to organize it at this point. You can make anything happen if you make us believe this person would do that. Think about the character and why he’d behave a certain way. As always, check your reflex actions. If your first thought is that your character would run away from the situation, take a moment to consider whether a different course of action might be equally true but less predictable and more interesting. What makes certain people suspects? Where were they at the time of the crime? Your sleuth will track down these false leads. For example: Ethel, the sexual harassment plaintiff, now works in another town. In order to time the killing so precisely, she had to know the details of the victim’s erratic schedule. How did she know? How’d she get into the office before it was open? How did Ethel, who does not drive and has only one leg, get to the scene of the crime? How will your sleuth find these things out in order to formulate a theory? A chapter might be built around discovering that Ethel was not where she should be at the time of the crime. (You can arrange these discoveries and scenes beginning with the least revealing and most confusing in order to keep the puzzle spinning.) Or around finding out that Ethel had hired an airport limo that morning. (How’d the sleuth find that out? Picking through Ethel’s trash—another scene? Wait—what made her do that?) However you set it up, we find out that Ethel went to the airport that morning at dawn. We’ve reached a seeming dead end—Ethel was in the air when the murder happened. Perhaps the sleuth takes a new tack, looks at somebody else with more interest. Then, elsewhere, another scene built around the discovery that Ethel wasn’t carrying luggage when she got into that limo and, from that, discovering that she immediately took a second shuttle from the airport to downtown, one block from the scene of the crime. Motive and opportunity. The sleuth revises the theory again, starts tracking Ethel but guess what? Just as she’s about to be declared the murderer, Ethel herself is found dead. The logic of the puzzle changes one more time. And becomes more urgent because it’s now obvious that the actual killer is willing to kill again rather than be caught. Maybe. Or maybe Ethel’s death had nothing to do with the other crime and when that’s realized, the theory will again be in need of revision. Eventually, you’ll have a list of things that have to happen, each of which will become a scene that provides either a real or imagined clue or frustration as the sleuth hits another brick wall. Each plot point changes the status quo, and as in physics, each action produces a reaction. Something else now needs to be figured out and done.
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Avoiding Plot Clichés Throughout, remember that character is destiny and your character is not an idiot. You want drama, but not because of behavior that makes the reader want to shake your sleuth silly. Avoid such plot machinations as having your protagonist agree to meet a suspect on a lonely pier late at night. While on the subject of plot clichés—avoid the scene where someone tells the sleuth he possesses vital information he’ll share later. Of course, he’ll be dead before a word of it is uttered. Or the idiotic police force or DA. Instead, make the officials’ inability to solve this based on inadequate methodology or incorrect assumptions, but not plot-convenient denseness or orneriness. Or the villain who postpones killing the protagonist because he needs to brag about how clever he’s been. He hasn’t been clever enough to read mysteries and see that during his monologue, our hero’s going to figure a way out of this. Or anything else that you’ve read and seen too often for it ever to feel new again. Tell yourself your story often. You’ll probably see more details each time. At each juncture, ask, “What’s the worst thing that could happen here?” and go for it. You’ll increase the tension and advance the plot.
Subplots You may have been told you need subplots, and indeed, they can enrich your story. But rather than think of them as extra plots you need to create, simply consider what else is going on in the protagonist’s life besides foiling an evildoer. Is he also facing a love, health, family, professional, or financial impasse? How might that impact, reflect, enrich, or further complicate the main story? What about the other characters? Remember, your story is what happens at the intersection of many people’s individual stories. These other issues will come out of your characters and enrich the mix. Resolve these minor, secondary issues before you resolve the main one of guilt and apprehension.
Scene By Scene Transfer your jumble of doodles, lines, names and ideas, to a more manageable medium. Screenwriters use 3×5 cards, putting one scene—one thing that has to happen—per card. Phrase your sentences as actions—”She visits the limo company but they refuse to open their records.” If you can, also make note of the purpose of the scene. “She’s so mad now, she’s not worrying about protecting Ethel anymore, and she decides to go to the police.” Such cues will generate action and remind you of motive and cause and effect more than, say, “checks out limo company.” Try to put characters into as many of your scenes as possible so you don’t always have your solitary sleuth ruminating. Interaction with others is dramatic and provides tension—the sleuth wants information, the person being interviewed doesn’t want to or can’t provide it. Dialogue is action.
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Eventually you’ll have a tabletop of cards that will reveal where holes are. Don’t worry if it seems scrappy; it’s good and necessary to leave room for surprises. But the cards might show that you have your sleuth in two places at once, or arriving at a conclusion that has nothing supporting it, or that nothing much happens for a long spell. That last plot problem was supposedly solved by Raymond Chandler by bringing in “a man with a gun.” It’s not a bad plan. Create action. Up the tension by introducing a new threat—always think in terms of “what’s the worst that could happen now?”—or some dramatic change of behavior on the part of your characters. Play with the order of scenes—take one away, combine the points of two of them into one solid scene, and so forth. If you hit a wall now—or in the writing process—when your character seemingly has become paralyzed and can’t function usefully, look back and see if you can change the “given” that’s called halt to present action. Does your sleuth really, truly, have to be half of Siamese twins? It can be useful to think in terms of stage and screen. Your drama, too, will have three acts. Your first act is roughly the first third of the book. It sets up and presents the crime, establishing the conflict. It also introduces your cast of characters, their relationships, and your setting. The second “act” is devoted to complications and crises—the great middle-muddle, the sleuthing in a mystery, or further threats and escalating dangers in suspense. Protagonists try and fail and try, try again. In fact, there is almost a “rule of three”—the initial attempt establishes the problem and its difficulty, and nobody succeeds “if at first.” If they did, there’d be no story. The second attempt and failure shows that it’s a really big problem and not at all easily solved, and the third becomes the real test that breaks the pattern. (A fourth try seems excessive—give your sleuth a break!) This is true in almost all quest stories and fairy tales. It’s a pattern that works. So theories prove to be wrong, often by the introduction of a second corpse, perhaps the former prime suspect, and we try again. The tension is now sky high. This portion usually comprises the bulk of the book. The third act eliminates more theories, thereby tying up subplots while it builds to “The Big Scene”—that do-or-die point of no return, the crisis, when the sleuth finally figures it out and confronts the villain, or the suspense protagonist finally meets his demon face-to-face. And then, a brief coda for closure. This isn’t an explanation of what you’ve already shown, but a page or two giving the reader an idea of what’s ahead, or what the events meant to the protagonist. And that’s it. When you write the first draft, no matter how much time and effort you lavished on your outline, parts of it are probably not going to work. New ideas will occur to you as you live the story, and you’ll be wise to go with them and say “adios” to your best-laid plans. The outline was a road map. The writing is the trip and real adventure.
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How to write today’s horror by
D.W. Taylor
I
t all began thousands of years ago in some dark and smoky cave with a tale-teller chanting to his awestruck tribe huddled around a sputtering fire. He sang of strange beasts, angry gods, and dark magic afoot in a dangerous world. In other words, horror stories. All known societies have a rich history of these supernatural myths and legends. Their purpose, like fairy tales for children, is to explain the threatening universe beyond the cave, to simplify a confusing world seemingly dominated by forces greater than ourselves. But we’re civilized now. No more of that “moon eating the sun” business. We know an astronomical event when we see one. Why, we don’t even throw virgins into volcanoes anymore to keep them (the volcanoes) from erupting. Yet we still love our horror tales, and horror is everywhere in our post-print media. The genre’s three archetypes—the Vampire, the Monster, and the Ghost—have been immortalized in the breakfast cereals Count Chocula, Frankenberry, and Boo Berry. On TV, horror is used to hawk everything from floor polish to charge cards. The number of horror films is staggering, multiplying themselves in sequel after sequel like some evil spawn. And don’t forget that the music video that sparked a craze, Michael Jackson’s 1983 “Thriller,” was nothing if not a little shop of horrors.
Horror’s Awe-ful Appeal The first task for a writer hoping to publish in this genre is to understand the reasons for such enormous popularity, to fathom the complex social and emotional elements which fueled the horror “boom” that began in the early 1970s and continues nearly unabated today. Like Freddy Krueger and Jason, horror refuses to die. And to write it successfully, we need to know why. When H.P. Lovecraft observed in the 1930s that the appeal of horror was narrow because it required imagination and detachment from life, the Rhode Island recluse couldn’t have anticipated the profound threats to our imaginations and lives in the last decades. Can anyone doubt that we live in a horrific world? Missile silos overflow with pent-up doom. The AIDS virus stalks our globe. The “greenhouse effect” has nothing
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to do with fecundity. And above Antarctica there’s a hole in the ozone layer that’s the size of the continental United States. Someone should wake up Lovecraft and tell him that imagination and detachment have become virtual requirements for maintaining one’s sanity today. Our need for horror stories parallels our sense of alienation, helplessness, and fear as common today as pollution. Horror has become an important way for us to deal with these emotions by letting us confront them in a make-believe world, gain a sense of control there, and bring a little of it back with us. But a horror writer need look no further than his own backyard to find his subject matter: the misery of the ghetto-child, the degradation of women, the shame of the homeless, the unspeakable isolation of a nursing home. There’s real horror in loneliness and rage, in twisted love and jealousy, in the rampant greed that threatens to rot us from within. Much of today’s horror is about these dark stains on our souls, the cancers of our minds. Since Lovecraft’s time we’ve increasingly fooled ourselves into thinking that the universe is fully explainable in terms of natural laws that are discoverable through science. Once we understand these laws, the reasoning goes, we’ll be the undisputed masters of the universe and our lives in it. Yet, at the same time, we suspect and hope that there are still occult forces out there that we can never fully understand. We are driven to seek them out because our science and rationalism threaten to rid the universe of all mystery. But there is another appeal about which we mustn’t fool ourselves: the violence of our species is found in horror literature in distilled form, pure as plutonium, and is a metaphor for the everyday brutality that lies just beneath the surface of our lives. This compulsion to violence is another legacy from our early hominid ancestors, who fought off extinction on the African veldt. Eons of biological evolution have ingrained the savage instincts of the hunter into us, yet our current lives give us little opportunity for its expression. In many ways we have become automatons regulated by the corporation’s clock and must suppress our savagery—and pay the price in ulcers, heart disease, and social psychopaths. The emotional and physical violence of horror literature act as a safety valve for our repressed animalism. What commuter doesn’t cheer for King Kong as he rips the five o’clock train from its tracks? Who hasn’t wished to strike out against the nameless, faceless regulation of our lives, a conformity that threatens to turn us into unthinking, unfeeling workaholics? Who doesn’t see in Frankenstein’s monster, who was refused the affection he craved, the expression of our own innate hostilities? Few of us in this complex, technological, alienating world have not felt at times misunderstood, unappreciated, alone, dehumanized. Horror stories have become a convenient and harmless way of striking back, of giving in to those mysterious and feral forces, allowing them to take control and wreak havoc on the stultifying regularity of our lives. A safety valve. One which allows us to exercise, in the words of Stephen King, “those antisocial emotions which society demands we keep stoppered up ... for society’s and our own good.” We can also understand why this literature appeals so strongly to adolescents in the process of rebelling against authority and social conformity. Horror literature, like rock ‘n’ roll, is strenuously antisocial and especially popular with teens experimenting with the extremes of their emotions.
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Horror also appeals to the dark side in us. We hold an inescapable fascination with the grave and the mystery of death. At the instant of our birth, the countdown to oblivion begins as each passing moment brings us closer to death. It is said that Voltaire possessed a clock which, in addition to chiming the hour, intoned the solemn words: “One hour nearer the grave.” Death is the one aspect of life that cannot be denied. And as Stephen King observed, the reading of horror and supernatural tales is a form of preparation for our own deaths, a “Danse Macabre” before the void, as well as a way to satisfy our curiosity about the most important event in our lives except birth. So perhaps the ultimate appeal of horror is the affirmation that it provides. The opposite of death is life. If supernatural evil exists in this world, as many horror stories posit, so must supernatural good. Black magic is balanced by white. The Wicked Witch of the West met her match in Glenda the Good Witch. If the fallen angel Lucifer lives and is at work in our lives, so must be God. In a starkly rational world that would banish such beings, horror literature gives them back to us: their magic, their power, the reality they once held in simpler times. As critics over the years have noted, fantasy literature works like religion in our lives. It helps to satisfy our need to believe in forces greater than ourselves, worlds different from our own. It touches that part of us that dreams of what never was and can never be. But for a brief and magic moment it is real and we believe. And are filled with awe.
What Today’s Readers Want So the question becomes how to write awe-inspiring stories that will leave readers panting and our bank accounts swelling. What worked for M.R. James and Algernon Blackwood in the twenties, Lovecraft in the thirties, Richard Matheson and Ray Bradbury in the fifties, Robert Aickman in the sixties, Stephen King and Peter Straub in the seventies, Stephen King and Clive Barker in the eighties, and Anne Rice in the nineties won’t necessarily frighten or entertain readers in the twenty-first century. What will? During a course in “Contemporary Horror Fiction” at Moravian College in Pennsylvania, I asked thirty-two undergraduates, who represented virtually every major from accounting to zoology, exactly that question as well as several others in a market survey of this genre’s traditionally most enthusiastic audience: young adults. I first asked, “What are the elements that make for a good horror story?” And then had them explore the flipside: “What ruins a horror story for you?” I wanted to know if their answers would reveal any difference between the standards that critics and teachers have set for the contemporary horror story and the personal criteria that readers actually use as they stand in front of the rack at Waldenbooks and decide whether or not to reach for their wallets. Even a cursory glance at best-seller lists, especially those from decades past, reveals the striking difference between popular taste (what sells) and critical taste (what’s praised). That sounds hideously commercial, and any writer who would slavishly follow the results of a market survey is bound to write only perfunctory, uninspired drivel. The one thing this genre doesn’t need is more cynical, assembly-line novels penned for the sole purpose of making money and feeding off the accomplishments of serious writers.
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The horror story, so far at least, has managed to outlive the hacks and sleazoid publishers whose only allegiance is to the quick buck, a testimony to the power of this genre and humanity’s need for it. But there is also too much focus in school on literature written mainly for an audience of critics and teachers. That’s a shame because the true glory of literature, I’ve come to believe, lies in its ability to hold an audience spellbound with the power of narrative, which is our oldest and still most prevalent way of understanding the world. We’ve always told stories to each other, especially horror and fantasy stories, as a way of mentally shaping and reshaping the inscrutable universe around us. Although one may deplore and berate TV and movies as sugar-water substitutes for the meat and potatoes of literature, these media rather democratically satisfy the human thirst for story, for narrative. And whenever a “serious” writer forsakes the obligation to tell a good story, whenever his purpose for writing is no longer to weave the magic spell of narrative but to produce “great art” and to please elitist critics, that writer will surely be replaced by movies and TV—or a better storyteller. So I agree with J.N. Williamson, who in connection with this course appeared at our college for a lecture and public reading. This popular American novelist said to my students one day in class, “Art is accidental; it is incidental to having told our story as best we can.” The fact that more than one hundred students tried to register for the thirtytwo available seats in this course is evidence that horror authors like Williamson have never lost their commitment to tell a good story, to entertain, and the students knew that. Therefore, an attempt to understand the expectations of readers in this genre isn’t necessarily a bad thing; indeed it is a manifestly logical and necessary thing. The results of the survey surprised me. By the end of the semester, we had read and discussed over forty stories from contemporary commercial and small press magazines like Grue, Pulphouse, and Noctulpa; from literary anthologies like Masques; and from single-author collections like King’s Skeleton Crew. Our semester of dark fantasy was brightened by the novels of several “sons”: Jackson, Matheson, Williamson, Wilson; as well as by Straub, Koontz, and the King. Student reaction was as varied as our story types. Some reveled in rock horror and splatterpunk, finding the quiet literary horror tale monumentally boring. Others felt that technohorror and urban allegorical horror spoke most directly to this age of AIDS and “wildings” in Central Park. Still others couldn’t get enough of the ghosts, vampires, and werewolves of old. Surely, I thought after presiding over impassioned debates about the literary merits of “Blood Rape of the Lust Ghouls,” there is going to be little, if any, agreement among this bunch on the elements of a good horror story. I was wrong.
Suspense: Keep ’Em on the Edge One result astonished me: Ninety-seven percent of the students listed “suspense” as the primary ingredient of a good horror story. Keep in mind that this was not a multiple-choice survey; these students had a blank page in front of them and could have written down anything. The fact that all but one self-selected the element of suspense further underscores its cardinal importance to them. In effect, the results say that these
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readers bring to the horror story one paramount expectation: to be entertained with the element of anticipation, dread, and uncertainty; in a word, suspense. Virtually every student wrote something like:
“I want to be kept on the edge of my seat.” “True suspense keeps you glued to the book until it’s finished, then you say, ‘Whew!’” “I like stories that have constant suspense and give me ideas of how to get revenge on my brother.”
Hope you’re not that brother. In their comments on suspense lies a strong clue as to how to handle one of the most challenging aspects of writing in this genre: providing a satisfying ending. These students obviously preferred, when possible, for the unrelenting suspense to lead to an unexpected, even shocking ending. They wrote, “I want the suspense to lead to a good twist at the end,” and, “A good ending is one you didn’t expect.” One even borrowed a favorite word of Stephen King’s: “A suspenseful ending is one you didn’t expect and leaves you scared shitless!” Now, everyone owes thanks to Douglas E. Winter, who has engendered more respect for this genre than any other modern critic. Yet it is both interesting and instructive that in his essay, “Darkness Absolute: The Standards of Excellence in Horror Fiction,” this eminent critic does not once mention suspense. Yet when professional writers like Dean Koontz and J.N. Williamson, whose hungry families depend upon them to sell books, instruct us on the craft of writing horror fiction, their primary topic is how to create and maintain suspense. So there is, at least in this instance, a difference between the viewpoint of the critic and of the reader, for whom the “bottom line” is to be entertained. No doubt a writer should aspire to standards of excellence. But in order to be read, which is surely a writer’s first goal, he had first better make sure he tells a suspensepacked story that leads to a dynamite ending.
Character: Someone Like Me What surprised me about the second result was how much everyone—students, writers, critics—agreed on it. Believable characters are what hold a horror story together; they are the engines of its power. In his essay “Keeping the Reader on the Edge of His Seat,” Koontz, the acknowledged “Dean of Suspense,” provides this maxim: “Suspense in fiction results primarily from the reader’s identification with and concern about lead characters who are complex, convincing, and appealing.” Douglas Winter lists characterization as his second standard of excellence and quotes another pretty good horror writer, Stephen King: “‘You have got to love the people ... that allow horror to be possible.’“ My students agree: They listed believable, sympathetic characters as the second key to a good horror story. Typical of their comments were: “A really good horror story for me is when the author is able to make you ‘feel’ for the characters—their pain, fear, happiness, wanting.” Others said simply, “Having believable characters is what lets me get into the story.” Considering these comments, it should come as no surprise that stu-
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dents voted as their favorite work of the semester Robert R. McCammon’s “Nightcrawlers” (Masques), a suspenseful story of a Vietnam vet’s nightmarish guilt, a sorrow that becomes so strong that it explodes with a harrowing and deadly substantiality.
Setting: A Mirror for Madness Perhaps another reason for the popularity of “Nightcrawlers” is that its vivid setting, a stormy summer night at a roadside diner in rural Alabama, fulfills a third requirement: A story of dark fantasy must be anchored solidly in a believable, realistic setting. Modern readers expect the modern horror story to take place in familiar surroundings that provide a mating ground for the natural and the supernatural. Today’s readers seem to know intuitively that today’s horror requires a context of normality, a true-to-life backdrop that accentuates the grotesque. There was a close similarity between my students’ comments and those of critics. In “Horrors: An Introduction to Writing Horror Fiction,” T.E.D. Klein, Twilight Zone Magazine’s first editor, writes that before bringing the supernatural on stage, the writer must first “establish, so thoroughly that we can believe in it, the reality of the world.” One student put this simply as: “I’ve got to believe I’m there.” When another student wrote, “A good horror story needs a balance between the realistic and the bizarre,” it’s almost as if he had been reading Douglas Winter: “An effective horror writer embraces the ordinary so that the extraordinary will be heightened.” So readers and critics agree: Use of the fantastic does not excuse the horror author from the task of conjuring up a vivid, everyday reality on the page. On the contrary, it increases the importance of that task.
Plot: Picking Up the Pace Another strong preference, and one that is closely related to the need for suspense, concerns the pace of the writing and the plot. What should an aspiring horror writer make of such comments as: “The action has to keep up. Once it lets down, it’s all over for me”? Or, “I like it when the tone is very fast-paced reading. It’s too boring when it reads slow and feels drawn out”? Is there a key to best-sellerdom in this student’s desire for “concise and coherent stories [that] are both easy to read and entertaining. When reading for entertainment, one shouldn’t have to analyze a story to understand it”? Similar preferences for a quick, easy read were expressed by a majority of the students surveyed. Why this desire for a fast-paced, action-packed story? No doubt much could be made of the shortened attention spans of this generation that has never known life without the Internet, the steady decline in standardized reading scores, the increasing emphasis on immediate gratification, the murder-by-the-minute slasher films and MTV. Regardless, the single ineluctable fact is that when they pick up a horror story, these young readers expect to be entertained. They may surreptitiously admire James Joyce’s dazzling experiments they may harbor a secret craving for John Updike’s perfumed sentences, they may even look to Saul Bellow for help in an existential crisis. But when they pick up a horror story, they want fun. And that means fast-paced and
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suspenseful, easy on the literary embellishment, and without a side order of metaphysical reflections on life in a godless universe.
More Gore: Taboo or Not Taboo? The results here reaffirm the important distinction between literary horror and celluloid horror, whose “shock schlock” attempts to exploit young readers. Significantly, these students warned against too much explicitness in literature. “Too much gore, if not justified, ruins a story, although I like to see it on films to admire the special effects.” Of those who expressed a preference for gore and the emotion of repugnance, each did so with important qualifiers, saying for example, “A little gore doesn’t hurt”; and “Graphic gore to a tasteful point.” Explicitness is an expected part of the genre today; indeed, the job of the horror writer always has been and always will be to assault taboos, to broadcast our unspeakable urges, to show us the nauseating possibilities that we fear. But there still is a clear line separating effective from ineffective use of the genre’s extreme and rebellious materials: They must be justified by the story’s context, tone, and theme. As sometimes splatterpunk Robert R. McCammon (Swan Song, The Wolf’s Hour) said in a recent interview, “I don’t believe there can be any bad taste in creating a scene, only bad writing in handling it.” Explicitness can also be a double-edged sword. Many expressed a preference for suggestiveness in description, which we called “narrative blurring”—a phrase T.E.D. Klein uses to capture H.P. Lovecraft’s dictum: “Never state a horror when it can be suggested.” These students agreed. “Description should be only enough so that the reader can get a picture, but not so much that there’s nothing left for the imagination.” Such comments illustrate the principle that still guides even these jaded viewers of the hack-’emand-slash-’em films: Our own imaginations can still scare us more than any author could ever hope to. Good horror writers collaborate with our minds.
What Today’s Readers Don’t Want An important part of writing successfully in any genre is learning what not to do. Unfortunately, the path to publication is not straight and narrow, without blind alleys and sloughs of despair. And to avoid those pitfalls one must discover not only what a good horror story is, but also what one isn’t. Just as these readers were unanimous in what they wanted most from a horror story (fast-paced suspense), they were equally adamant about what ruins their fun: anything that smacks of a “literary” treatment and slows down the pace. Eighty-one percent made comments like:
“Can’t stand long, drawn-out stories which overkill with background and details about characters and about life—makes for tiresome reading.” “I don’t like stories that go into so much detail about everything that I lose the plot and my head spins by the time I’m through reading.” “Detail upon detail, description upon description, bore upon bore!”
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One student said simply: “Literary horror—yuck!” On the surface, such comments seem to contradict the need they expressed earlier for finely drawn characters and setting. But these students are actually displaying a solid understanding of this genre and its uniqueness. As readers of horror, they expect to be entertained by a suspenseful tale of dark fantasy. Their comments imply that while theme, realistic characters, and settings are important props in the entertainment, those elements must be kept secondary. Too much of a good thing blurs the boundary between the horror story (a literature of fear and the fantastic) and the “literary” story (a literature of character and theme), which they’ve come to associate with school. As one student begged when we were about to discuss Stephen King for the first time, “Please don’t tell me he’s good literature; I like him too much.” Sadly, “literature” for many young readers has become associated solely with the stories of mainstream realism chosen by authority figures for textbooks, stories which for many years students have had to analyze, take tests on, and regurgitate teachers’ interpretations of—a useless and demeaning experience at best. For the above student and many like him, horror—with its emphasis on plot, suspense, and extremes—gives back to literature what schools have managed to strip away: its pleasure, entertainment, fun.
The Guessing Game A lot of the fun in this genre comes from the important game that goes on between writer and reader, wherein the writer tries to stay always one step ahead, doling out just enough information to keep the story intriguing and coherent yet the reader still guessing and in suspense. The horror writer must walk a tightrope, balancing delicately between predictability and obscurity, telling neither too much nor too little. Failure to avoid those extremes was the pitfall most frequently cited by these students. Eighty-eight percent complained about predictability, saying again and again: “I don’t like authors who give away too much too soon.” Their comments here also reaffirm the importance of the ending in this genre. Several students wrote, “An obvious ending ruins the whole story,” and one even made an impassioned plea to writers: “To all horror authors: please don’t give away the ending before I get there. It makes me want my money back!” These students also grew impatient with authors who withheld too much information and left readers baffled about what really happened. Sixty-nine percent objected to “stories where everything is a confused jumble of events.” Their typical reaction was not one that bodes well for repeat sales: “Too much confusion in a story and I just give up.” Some of these comments arose from our reading of several experimental stories in which authors challenged the reader by violating one or more traditional rules of narrative and attempting to let the form of the story mirror a character’s confused mental state or be a comment on the illusory nature of reality. That myself and several English majors in the class were the only ones who liked such stories further underscores the expectations of the majority: A story that is entertaining does not make unusual, “literary” demands on its readers. Experimentation may be important for an artist’s and a genre’s
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growth, but it won’t necessarily do well in the bookstore. The student who wrote, “A horror story that loses me is boring. If I can’t understand it, I can’t very well enjoy it,” was also serving notice about his tolerance for literary innovation.
One Man’s Meat These students were traditional in another way. A majority flatly rejected gratuitous acts of sex and violence. They would agree with Ramsey Campbell, author of The Influence, who once said in an interview: “In the worst horror fiction, violence is a substitute for imagination and just about everything else one might look for in fiction.” Campbell was drawing the same distinction between sensationalism and the legitimate use of violence as my students did:
“Stories that have no justification for their violence bore me.” “Blood and guts shouldn’t be used unnecessarily, some writers don’t understand this.” “What ruins a story for me? Too much purposeless blood and gore.”
I should add that Moravian College is church-affiliated in name only; these are typical students from a variety of religious—and nonreligious—backgrounds. I think their reaction is a typical one, and it helps to answer a question posed by many social critics and parents about how far explicitness can go in the media: Where will it end? What’s the stopping point? These eighteen- to twenty-year-olds, products of the sexual revolution, suggest that explicitness contains its own antidote: boredom.
A Willing Suspension These readers also objected to what they called “unbelievable” writing: setting, characters, style, or story logic that failed to keep them immersed in the tale, their skepticism on hold. They wrote: “The horror has to be made believable. If not, then the story has nothing for me,” and “I have to be able to believe in the setting, characters, and esp. the monsters, etc.” My favorite remark about style was: “Writers should avoid clichés like the plague.” These comments touch on one of the real paradoxes and challenges of dark fantasy: an author must write so convincingly, so realistically, that the reader achieves a “willing suspension of disbelief ” in the face of that which is patently unreal. Most English professors, whose primary focus is the “slice of life” moralistic tale, would have a difficult time understanding the pitfall that these students are pointing out. Horror fans know that, in this genre, writing believably means more than just capturing everyday reality. It means using the same qualities of prose found in the best mainstream writing to set up a quotidian reality, and then to move the reader beyond it into the realm of the fantastic—while maintaining his belief in something that just isn’t so. To quote Richard Matheson, grand pére of the modern horror story: “Pound for pound, fantasy makes a tougher opponent for the creative person.” Fans know that, even if their teachers don’t.
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Getting fresh Robert Bloch, another grand pére who in Psycho staked out fresh territory for the psychological horror story, remarked in his introduction to How to Write Tales of Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction that “ ... in order for a writer to do his or her best, he must incorporate originality, a prime ingredient for success. If the theme is old, the twist or payoff must be new.” My students couldn’t agree more. They derided “stories that seem to be carbon copies of others.” These readers demanded that “A plot should not seem even remotely familiar,” and that “If the supernatural is used, it must have a new twist.” Like Bloch, they seemed to recognize that each genre places a premium on different writing talents: the extrapolative powers of the science fiction author, the observational skills of the mainstream realist, the plotting finesse of the mystery writer. The students were laying down an important caveat for aspiring horror writers: in a genre which attempts to entertain with suspense and dark fantasy, there is a keen demand for raw imaginative power and an unorthodox daring-do of mind that can take writer and reader where others fear to tread.
In the End It’s clear that young readers have a genuine enthusiasm for this literature. Contemporary horror fiction taps an excitement for reading in them that is almost always absent from a classroom dominated by the classics and the modern darlings of English Departments. Anne Tyler, Saul Bellow, and John Fowles are fine writers, but what truly excites these students is horror. It speaks to them in a way that Silas Marner does not. And their response to horror fiction reaffirms the force that literature can have in young lives when teachers allow it. These readers have also a clear set of their own standards. While they can appreciate the graphic detail and daring assaults of splatterpunks like John Skipp, Craig Spector, David J. Schow, and Joe R. Lansdale, they still insist that certain boundaries be observed. They demand quality writing, especially in characterization. One of the more hotly contested questions among today’s critics—whether horror should be psychologically or supernaturally based—does not seem important to them. An equal number of students wrote, “A good horror story blends reality, fantasy, and the supernatural” as did those who said, “I like stories that can really happen because they scare me the most.” In the end, although the surface features of the horror tale have changed to reflect the times, today’s readers still want genuine characters inside a vividly written story based on a fresh and frightening premise, pulled together by a suspenseful plot that keeps them turning the pages rapidly. Although no formula can guarantee writing success, that one is a good place to start.
Horror Novel Checklist Like any literary form, the horror novel has its conventions—ones which the apprentice struggles with, the professional masters, and the greats soar beyond as they shatter the
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boundaries of genre, whether it be Elizabethan revenge tragedy (Hamlet) or pact-withthe-devil tales (Faust). At Moravian College, as part of a workshop in writing the horror novel, we analyzed thirty mass-market paperbacks from among the latest releases by Zebra, Leisure, Onyx, Pinnacle, Dart, Tor, St. Martin’s, and others. Not surprisingly, we found that the basic elements of fiction—an opening that hooks readers, exposition of characters and their situation, complications, climax, and resolution—still provided the underlying structure, but these elements had been altered to fit the special conventions of a literature of fear and the bizarre. Here’s the checklist we devised for writing our horror novels:
• The Grabber. Have you opened with a prologue or short chapter which provides a
brief but tantalizing (and usually violent) glimpse of the secret horror which will propel the story forward? • Backfill. Within chapters 1–5, have you introduced the main characters and their problems, and isolated them in one locale (a town, resort, swamp, etc.) along with the horror? • Turn Up the Heat. Do your middle chapters show increasingly weird or violent events which threaten the protagonists and force them to investigate and eventually confront the horror (usually ancient or occult) that has been triggered? • Flash Slash. If the pace slows, have you flashed to a “slash” or “mutilation” scene of minor characters to show the horror at its gruesome work? • Final Jeopardy. Does your final climax scene contain sufficient payoff for the reader? When things have gotten as bad as they can get for the protags, with seemingly no way out, just as they are about to be overpowered by the superior horrific force, something enables them to triumph: courage, ingenuity, imagination, a tool or piece of information previously planted. • It Lives. A short final chapter or epilogue should show the main characters at peace, resuming their normal lives but changed forever by their encounter with evil. But have you also hinted that the victory is a temporary one, and that the horror has merely gone back into hiding and could rise again someday—possibly in a sequel?
Other conventions to keep in mind: Cupid Strikes refers to the romantic subplot in horror novels wherein the hero and heroine meet and join together (spiritually and physically) to fight the evil besetting them. Bang for the Buck means that readers expect the horror novelist to offer well-researched information on a legend or myth, occult or psychic lore, exotic geographical location, sport, profession, etc. Body Count and overall levels of violence vary greatly from publisher to publisher; be sure to analyze a particular house’s recent releases before submitting. Doing so could save a great deal of postage, waiting, and grief. More importantly, such study and preparation is the real “secret” to writing a horror novel.
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not just happily ever after: Writing real romance by Jennifer
Crusie
Y
ou want to write a romance? Congratulations! You’ve chosen an exciting genre with a noble past, although you may find yourself arguing that with the Vast Uninformed. While working on my MFA in fiction, having already published three romance novels, a professor said to me, “Jenny, you write so well. Have you ever thought about writing literature?” Heads up: Romance fiction is literature, the finest kind of literature, the kind that explores the most powerful emotion known to humanity, a force that has driven people to great deeds and horrible acts, that has elevated and destroyed, that can create life or inspire death. Love is not just a subject for silly love songs, and romance novels are not silly chick books with embarrassing covers. Love is a maelstrom that attacks our bodies, our minds, our hearts, and our souls, transforming us forever. Romance novels tell the stories of what happens when we get caught in that maelstrom. A less dramatic definition: A romance is the story of two people who meet, struggle to build a relationship, and commit to spending the rest of their lives together, facing the future with optimism. Convincing an increasingly jaded readership that “this one is forever” is no easy task but it’s an important one: a good romance novel does nothing less than restore a reader’s faith in the power of true love, even if it’s only for four hundred pages. Half the mass-market fiction sold in this country is romance novels—almost 2,300 romance titles were published in 2004 alone—so clearly, romance novelists are doing something right. That also means there’s never been a better time to write romance. Unfortunately, there have also never been so many dumb assumptions about them. So first, here are some myths to wipe from your mind (or from the minds of others, by force if necessary):
Myth #1: All romances are alike Not even close. Historical romances are love stories that take place before the twentieth century. As we move further into the twenty-first century, the line blurs a little more and the earlier decades of the twentieth century will become more popular as settings. The key is that the story is removed from the present to a time beyond memory. Popular
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settings are the American West, the revolutionary period, and the Civil War; medieval and nineteenth-century England, Scotland, and Ireland; and anything with Vikings, but just about every time period and country has been written about by now. A subset of the historical is the Regency novel; set in the early nineteenth century, the Regency has a set of conventions as rigid as the sonnet and should be studied apart from historical romances set in the Regency Period—an entirely different kind of romance. Contemporary romances are love stories set in the present time. This genre also has several popular subgenres, for example, the romantic comedy, a genre with its roots in the screwball comedies of the thirties and forties and before that in the comedies of manners by Jane Austen; and the sweet romance, generally defined as a traditional love story with no explicit sex scenes. Other subgenres combine romance with other kinds of fiction—romantic suspense, for example, combines mystery with the love story; the tradition goes back to the nineteenth-century Gothic novel, and its twentieth-century roots include Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca. Paranormal romances blend horror or fantasy with the love story, drawing on classic legends such as the ghost story and the vampire tale. The inspirational romance blends the story of faith with the love story. Finally, there is a growing market for erotic romance, stories with a dual purpose to both tell the love story and to arouse. A third kind of romance, called the series romance, encompasses both contemporary and historical elements. These books are published in a numbered series by Harlequin/Silhouette, and are divided into categories, which is why they’re also called category novels. Harlequin Intrigue, for example, is a category romantic suspense line, while Harlequin Romance is a traditional or sweet line. Deciding you want to “write a romance” is like telling a waiter you’d like some food. If you aren’t reading romance already, you’re going to have to study the genre to find the kind of stories that you want to write, and also to understand the genre as a whole. Romance readers are extremely discerning and they can spot a faker by the end of the first chapter. Nonbelievers need not apply.
Myth #2: Romance novels must have a happy ending Nope. Romance novels must have an optimistic ending, but many romances deal with catastrophe and deep trauma. To slap a “and they all lived happily ever after without the benefit of therapy” ending on such a book would be a betrayal of the characters, and a good romance novel is first and foremost about character. The romance novel heroine is not Cinderella or Pollyanna; she knows there will be tough times ahead, but she faces them with optimism, as does the hero. No last pages with cockroaches scuttling across cracked linoleum floors while the protagonists stare sullenly at each other. “Tomorrow is another day” is writ large upon the romance protagonists’ hearts.
Myth #3: Romance novels have no conflict Oh, please. Show me a romance in real life that has no conflict and I’ll show you two first-graders whose desks are not next to each other. One of the many reasons romance
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novels are so popular is that everybody’s had at least one bad romance and would like to believe a good one is possible, even if only in the pages of a book. However, there is a problem inherent in the romance conflict. A great fictional conflict is a fight to the end between the protagonist and the antagonist, resolved when one destroys the other completely. This is a bad beginning to a long-term relationship, so most romances that use the heroine and the hero as protagonist and antagonist end in compromise. That’s good for relationships, bad for fiction climaxes. My suggestion: pit the heroine and hero against an outside antagonist and have them work together to thwart him or her, cementing their relationship during the struggle. Studies have shown that pain and stress actually make it easier for people to fall in love—think starcrossed lovers, office romances, and all those war babies—so a conflict external to the romance can actually deepen it.
Myth #4: Romance novels are soft porn for women First, not all romances have sex scenes. Second, not all sex scenes are porn. Third, what’s wrong with explicit fiction for women? We’re not supposed to smudge our shiny little brains with thoughts of great sex? Romance novels encourage women to go after what they want and need, and a multiple orgasm never hurt anybody. Romance novels are not about sex, any more than dinner is about dessert. However, sometimes dessert is a good thing. It just depends on your appetite.
Myth #5: If a romance novel is really good, a publisher will call it women’s fiction and make it a hardcover Never confuse quality with marketing. The category printed on the spine of the book (“general fiction,” “women’s fiction,” “romance”) and the kind of cover protecting the book (hard or soft) are marketing decisions, based on getting the book to the right reader. Many terrific books are published as paperback originals; many real stinkers have hard covers. So what exactly does determine category and cover? The line between romance and women’s fiction can be a blurry one. A romance is always a love story. Women’s fiction is always about women’s lives and women’s relationships, although not necessarily romantic relationships, and is usually about a personal journey; that is, the woman grows and learns during the course of the novel. If a story is about a woman’s journey as demonstrated in her romantic relationship, you have a novel that fits both categories. This is when the marketing department steps in because the label on the spine is about selling the book to the largest number of readers who will be satisfied by it. There are many women—poor, misguided souls—who will not read romance novels because they think they’re tacky, but who will devour the same story if it’s sold as women’s fiction. So why not categorize all romance fiction as women’s fiction? Because the most passionate book buyers shop in the romance section. It’s a conundrum, so marketing makes the call.
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As for packaging, books are published in both softcover and hardcover because the markets for the two forms are different. People who buy paperbacks often buy by genre; that is, they want something good to read on the plane or the beach, so they go to the mystery section or the romance section because that’s what they like. They buy by author name and word of mouth, too, but they’re willing to take a chance on an unknown author because the cover price is relatively cheap. The average romance reader goes through five books a week, so cover price is important to her. She’ll look at a hardcover by her favorite romance author and think long and hard before plunking down the cover price. Therefore, introducing a new romance author in hardcover can be very tricky. Many romance novelists who are in hardcover established their readership in paperback first; their hardcover sales come from the readers who love their work so much that they can’t wait a year to read the paperback. People who buy hardcovers buy, on the average, one book a month, and they buy because they want to read that book: they like the author, or the book has good word of mouth or it has information in it they want. They do not buy by genre, and this, coupled with the widespread misconception that romance is poor-quality fiction, means that they often will not buy a romance author. This is why so many of the new romance authors that begin in hardcover are issued as general fiction, and why so many of those romances have what has come to be known as “mainstream elements” including intricate plots and subplots apart from the romance. Nowhere in any of this discussion has quality come up. That’s because it’s irrelevant. Publishers package and label books to best target the books to buyers, not to alert the readership that some aren’t as good as others.
Joining the Party Now that you’re up on romance basics and you’re ready to join the party, what should you do? Write the love story you want to write, the one that fills your mind waking and sleeping, the book you must write. You have to really need to write that book because if you don’t, you won’t. As you write, study the craft of writing. Read books on it, take classes in it, go to conferences and talk to other writers, and rewrite and polish your work until it gleams. Understand point of view, plot and character arc, conflict, motif, metaphor, and all the other tools that good writers understand and use. Writing stories is a very old and very honored calling and demands nothing less from you than the very best you can give. Many writers have written several books before they got one published, and many of those have been grateful because it gave them the chance to make their mistakes in private. Nothing you write is ever wasted; it’s all part of your growth as a writer. Give the finished book to somebody who likes the same kind of romances you do. Ask her to be honest. When she’s honest, don’t argue with her or defend the book. Listen to the things she had trouble with or didn’t like and try to figure out why she
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didn’t like them. Explaining things to her is not an option; you’re not going to be able to explain things to every reader when the book is published, so you have to put everything on the page so it doesn’t need to be explained. Study the genre. When you find romances you like, or are similar to the stories you want to write or already have written, you’ve identified your market. You do not study the market to find out what to write, you study the market to find out which section of it will buy what you already want to write. (The best answer to the “What should I write?” question is an old one: “Write the book you want to read but can’t find.”) Find out who edited the book that is most like yours that you liked the most (call the publishing house and ask). Write a query letter to that editor and (1) explain why you liked the book she edited, (2) tell her you’ve written a book you hope she’ll like as well (but not one that’s better than the other book or as good as the other book), (3) describe the book’s characters, conflict, and interesting plot points in a few, short, punchy sentences that are so fascinating that she must read the manuscript (think of it as a movie pitch), (4) and then give her every possible way of reaching you short of carrier pigeon (phone, fax, e-mail, snail mail, and the always popular self-addressed stamped envelope). If she writes back and says, “Yes, please send the proposal,” send her the first thirty to fifty pages of the book plus a synopsis of the plot, usually about one paragraph per chapter, ten to twelve double-spaced pages in length. In the cover letter, thank her for asking to see the manuscript; this is very important because it keeps you out of the slush pile, a dark place in the corner of the editor’s office where manuscripts can rot for months and, in some cases, years. Include another SASE. If she calls and asks to see the manuscript, congratulate yourself and send it. If you get the proposal back with a letter explaining why she isn’t interested in publishing it, feel good: if she took the time to write you a letter, she’s interested in you as a writer. If she sends it back with a form letter, assume she’s just made a terrible mistake she’ll someday regret, and send a query letter to the next editor who edited a book you liked. If she calls later and says she wants to buy it, say, “Thank you very much, I’ll get back to you.” There’s a tendency to want to give away the farm with your first novel because you’re so grateful somebody wants to publish it. This is when an agent comes in handy; agents are never grateful. At some point, probably shortly after you decide you want to write a romance novel, join Romance Writers of America. RWA is one of the smartest writers’ organizations around, and not the least of its benefits are its online bulletin boards where members discuss craft and industry issues and where you can get information on everything from agents to zoology (as in “never kill an animal in a romance novel”). RWA also has guidelines for recognized publishers and agents, position papers on contracts and the various rights negotiated therein, and a monthly journal that addresses the issues romance novelists are facing. For more information visit www.rwanational.org. Romance fiction is a vitally important form of fiction that places women at the centers of their stories and celebrates the liberating and redemptive power of love. As a romance novelist, you’re part of a long tradition of life-affirming, feminist storytelling, and that tradition grows stronger every year. So welcome to the genre; we can’t wait to hear what you have to say.
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Believability in science fiction & fantasy by
David Gerrold
E
ver notice how sometimes you go to a movie and you see what you think is a terrific picture? You have a marvelous time; afterward, you go out for coffee and sit around chatting with your friends about what a wonderful movie you’ve just seen. Finally you head for home; later that night you decide to have a little snack, and just as you open the refrigerator door, a question hits you smack in the face: Hey! If E.T. could fly at the end of the movie to save himself and Elliott, why the hell didn’t he fly away at the beginning of the movie when they were first chasing him? (This one is easy to answer. He didn’t have a bicycle ...) And you stand there in front of the open refrigerator, your snack forgotten, realizing you’ve been conned and cheated, while the ice cream melts in your hand. Sometimes the refrigerator door question reaches out of the screen and bites you even as the dialogue is still falling out of the actors’ mouths. How come in the movie Independence Day Earth scientists were immediately able to decode the operating system and data files of an alien computer system? Most of us have enough trouble running the computer systems we do know. And if Han Solo can make the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs, why doesn’t he know that a parsec is a measure of distance, not time?
Bolognium: Handle With Care Yes, you can postulate something that violates our experience of the way the world works; just know that you’re inventing a special form of bolognium. The term comes from Larry Niven, author of Ringworld, one of the best science fiction novels of the twentieth century. In Ringworld, Niven postulated a gigantic ring circling a star. It had the surface area of millions of planets, and trillions of beings lived on it. In order to construct this massive object, Niven postulated scrith, a substance strong enough to build a ring 180 million miles in diameter. There is no such substance in the known universe, but Niven needed it for his story. So he invented it. It was pure unadulterated bolognium. Absolutely necessary for the story—and absolutely preposterous by the known laws of physics.
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In that same story, Niven also postulated a character named Teela Brown, who was the result of seven consecutive generations of winners of the breeding lottery. She had been “bred for luck.” This is another form of bolognium—an outlandish power or ability, presently unknown. Obviously, we don’t know if it’s possible to breed for luckiness, but Niven needed it for the resolution of his story—he needed to make an impossible chain of events look inevitable. The story included a couple of other kinds of bolognium as well, including stasis fields and salver weapons and several very interesting species of aliens. Niven says that there is a limited amount of bolognium that a writer can put into a story. A good science fiction story can sustain one piece of bolognium quite well. Stories with two pieces of bolognium require significant skill in juggling and should not be attempted by beginners. Three pieces of bolognium represent critical mass, and no one less than a grand master should attempt such a challenge. Stories with four or more pieces of bolognium are called “fantasies.” The trick with bolognium is to handle it as if it’s a toxic material. Wear protective gear and handle it with tongs, or better yet, work through robotic arms. If you want the reader to believe something impossible, you have to find a way to connect it to something the reader already knows. One of the best examples of this is the discussion of how to breed a new generation of dinosaurs in Jurassic Park (either Michael Crichton’s book or the film). Even though common sense tells us that it’s impossible for the genetic material of dinosaurs to have survived for sixty-five million years, the author’s careful discussion of how the DNA can be retrieved from the bodies of mosquitoes sealed in ancient amber is just convincing enough to energize our desire to believe. When a storyteller invents a colossal whopper—a tale so tall that it needs an express elevator—he needs to seduce the reader’s cooperation in creating believability. The author does that by grounding the story in the reality of the reader’s own experience. If you want to lend believability to an outrageous idea, you surround it with a whole bunch of other things that feel believable. Think of your story as a colossal lie; the trick in selling a lie is to surround it with so much truth that the listener believes the lie is also true. Alfred Bester wrote what many consider the greatest science fiction novel of all time, The Stars My Destination. It was predicated on one single piece of bolognium—that human beings have an inherent psychokinetic ability to teleport through space (and later, time). He called this skill “jaunting.” To make it believable, he did a brief history of how the skill was accidentally discovered when a scientist jaunted himself out of a certaindeath situation—and how other scientists tested for the existence of the ability to jaunt. He took the preposterous and surrounded it with the scientific method and examined how it would work. He created specific limits and rules. (For instance, you couldn’t jaunt to any place you’d never been, because you needed a mental target.)
Do Not Make the Star Trek Mistake Do not confuse technobabble with science. How many times have you had the experience of watching an episode of a science fiction TV show where the problem was solved by someone turning up the knob on the
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double-talk generator? Did you feel frustrated and cheated? You should. That’s not science fiction—that’s desperation on the part of an incompetent writer. DATA It’s life, Captain, but not as we know it. A creature of pure energy. GEORDI (concerned) I can’t give you any more power, Captain. The creature has transmogrified the dilithium volatizers and the blabberfax can’t handle the increase in plaso-dimensional discoordination stress. We’ll have to immobilize the greezinchokker or the ship will be narfled into quiblets! PICARD I know you can do it, Mr. La Forge! Go to Warp 11! WESLEY Captain! I have an idea! If we cross-polarize the dibbletizer, just by switching these two colored wires, we can reinvent transwarp capability and achieve speeds as high as Warp 37 at half the power. Gosh, why didn’t some grown-up think of this already? No wonder you need a fifteen-year-old super genius on this ship! Q (to himself ) With all my superpowers, why am I wasting my time on these chimpanzees?
In 1966, when Star Trek first came on the air, Gene Roddenberry established a very simple rule: “If I won’t believe it on the bridge of the battleship Iowa, I won’t believe it on the bridge of the starship Enterprise.” If only the subsequent inheritors of the Star Trek tradition had listened ...
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Jump-start your fiction through Your characters by John
Tibbetts
A
ll fiction writers—young and old, the novice and the experienced—are intimidated by a blank page. Many writers have blocks that can last for days, months, or years. Consider some of the brilliant writers who have been fallow for long periods: Herman Melville, Katherine Ann Porter, and Tillie Olsen, to name just a few. So how do you get started when your mind is empty, when you’re staring at that blank page, stumped? When I can’t get started writing, it’s because I am concentrating on the wrong thing; that is, I am focusing on the plot of the story. Instead, I’ve learned that I should concentrate on my character or characters. If I can understand my characters, then the plot will take care of itself. To break through a block, I must find out where and how my characters have lived, how they make their living, who are their mothers and fathers. To learn about your characters, do some research. I don’t mean research in a library. No, this is the research of your own life and imagination. You need to explore the people you have known, and within them you’ll find your story. Plot is character, said Henry James. About Russian writer Ivan Turgenev, James wrote: “The germ of the story ... was never an affair of plot—that was the last thing he thought of. The first form in which a tale appeared to him was the figure of an individual, or a combination of individuals, whom he wished to see in action, being sure that such people must do something very special and interesting.” So, in effect, James advised you should think of someone interesting, someone you find intriguing—and write about him. Put your character into a situation that would make him uncomfortable and then watch what he does. I have six exercises that will help you get a story rolling. If one of these exercises doesn’t work for you, try another. These strategies are all ways of keeping your story alive. At the same time, these exercises can help you discover and develop your characters, because when you make a character live and breathe, your reader will follow that person for page after page. Alter all, we all remember Huck Finn, Anna Karenina, and Pip better than we remember the plot details of the novels written by Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy, and Charles Dickens.
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1. Name your character Elmore Leonard, that wonderful writer of crime thrillers, once said that he can’t get a story straight in his mind until he gets the names of his characters right. Same with me. I can’t start a short story until I choose an appropriate name for my protagonist. How a writer chooses a name for his characters will tell you a lot about that writer’s methods—and philosophy—of storytelling. For instance, the novelist and filmmaker John Sayles has said that he chooses the shortest name possible for his main character. He doesn’t want to type a long name over and over again. I agree. It sounds superficial, but I don’t want to type Christopher, Jonathon, or Elizabeth dozens of times if I can type Chris, Jon, or Liz. So when I look over the stories I’ve written, I see the following names of my characters: Jeff, Ned, Ann, Tim, Bert. These names fit my characters. The people I write about would go by a short name rather than a long one. Informal people, they would likely have nicknames. They are usually Midwestern and they dislike pretension. Their tastes tend toward the simple rather than the complex, the unornamented rather than the rococo. These characters are common people—they’re not rich or particularly successful or remarkable in any superficial way. But generally they’re intelligent, politically aware, well-read, and perceptive about the people and the world around them. They are an unheralded group: schoolteachers, small-time musicians, students, and small-town or alternative journalists. No matter how hard I try to change the kinds of people I write about, I can’t do it. Frank O’Connor, the Irish storyteller, wrote that the short story is usually about a member of a “submerged population.” My characters are indeed members of a submerged group: a group submerged under the stream of attention given to the more successful, the more flamboyant. But perhaps the flamboyant is what interests you, as it did F. Scott Fitzgerald. Think of “Amory Blaine” in This Side of Paradise. It’s a name that fits the romanticism of Fitzgerald’s protagonist.
2. Write from the point of view of an alien I often start a story by basing the main character on myself. Most writers probably do the same thing; we know ourselves better than we know anyone else. But the character based on myself becomes boring very quickly. Soon I want to write about someone else without losing that freshness that comes from confessional writing. But it’s tough to write about strange people with different backgrounds from ourselves. The trick here is to find a common element between yourself and another person. Begin by writing an account of something that has happened to you. It can be something ordinary. Let’s take, for example, this common experience: Your close friend has just married someone whom you find unsuitable. Include details about how everything looked to you: the groom, the bride, the cake, the families, the music. Tell us about the smells, the sounds of the wedding. After all, the experience was different for you than for anyone else.
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Now pick someone you know, a friend or an acquaintance from a different social or economic or ethnic background. Make this person the main character of your story; he will have some of your qualities and some of his own. Put your character into your unhappy situation: His friend is marrying badly. See this scene from your character’s eyes. How will your character’s experience differ from your own? How will it be the same? You might learn that all people have similar basic emotions; for instance, we want our friends to be happy, but we express those basic emotions in different ways. You might smile and congratulate the bride and groom while someone else might brood, drink too much, and say hostile, inappropriate things. If you can identify with the emotions of people who are different from you, then you can understand their actions. By concentrating on emotions that each of us have, you can write from the point of view of a truck driver or a debutante, a sailor or a senator. After all, each of us at some time feels envy, disappointment, and pride. And sooner or later, each of us probably copes with a friend marrying someone we dislike. The filmmaker Steven Spielberg is a master of creating characters from varying backgrounds—and a master of showing how these characters would respond to the world and to conflict. (You can learn a lot about storytelling from the best moviemakers, after all.) In the movie, E.T.—The Extra-Terrestrial, for instance, the opening sequence is a lesson in an unusual character’s point of view—a creature from another planet. Remember, the movie’s first sequence shows us the creature’s first night on Earth. Spielberg’s camera is fixed at waist level for much of the first five minutes of the movie, because the creature’s eyes are at that level. What E.T. sees, the audience sees, too. The camera shows cars approaching. The camera is positioned low to the ground, from E.T.’s point of view. Then men emerge from the cars, and the audience, along with the creature, hears keys jingling—these keys are attached to a man’s belt, at waist level. As the creature tries to escape, running to his spaceship, which will soon fly away without him, the camera becomes E.T. The camera pushes through the undergrowth of the forest, striking bushes, and you hear the panicked breathing of terror. So the audience experiences the mad dash along with the creature. In this sequence, Spielberg masterfully illuminates how to get inside someone different from yourself. Spielberg identifies with an emotion that is common to everyone: fear. It is the fear of the unknown, of being left behind, of being hurt by someone bigger and stronger. Spielberg does not concentrate on the differences between us and the creature, but the similarities. Of course, as Spielberg continues to tell his story, he sentimentalizes his creature and neglects to give him any ugly attributes—meanness or selfishness. But his strategy of getting inside a character is consistent with Tolstoy’s approach: Tolstoy noted that once he got inside a character’s skin, once he saw the world through that person’s eyes, he took pity on him. It’s Spielberg’s empathy for the creature that makes that first sequence work so effectively.
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3. Create composite characters After a time, you may come to a dead end with your character. He’s not complicated enough or interesting to you anymore. Now you might think of grafting another person onto your character. Many storytellers have noted how their characters are composite bits of many people they’ve known over the years. A writer takes attributes of qualities from one person and then grafts those onto someone else—generally someone similar in a certain respect. I always have at least two—sometimes three or four—different models for each major character in my stories, though one model generally is predominant. But first you need to learn to ignore the boundaries of time and space. Start this exercise by picking a friend from childhood, someone you haven’t seen in years. Imagine what he would be like today. Describe his marriage, his work, his education. The idea here is to avoid the literal truth; you need to find another, more playful truth, an artist’s truth. Fiction writers and poets create their art by mixing people and situations, by disregarding temporal boundaries. Robert Frost wrote, “The artist ... snatches a thing from some previous order in time and space into a new order with not so much as a ligature clinging to it of the old place where it was organic.” One of the pleasures of storytelling is finding the similarities among disparate people. I began a story once about an old girlfriend. I wrote about her humor, gentleness, resourcefulness, toughness, and her fierce independence. But what I remembered most was her mulish stubbornness that made her difficult to be with. As I wrote about her, she suddenly reminded me of my grandfather. I saw similarities between a woman I cared for when I was twenty-four and a man who died when I was sixteen. I saw the connections between a redhead with long legs and a fierce old country doctor. I saw the connection between the qualities that I intermittently found attractive in a woman and the spoken and unspoken values of my family. My old girlfriend and my grandfather both came from hardscrabble families; they both had alcoholic fathers; they both pushed away those they loved; they were both tender, sarcastic, and harsh. So in my story, I gave my girlfriend a little bit of my grandfather’s background. By blending their histories, I made sense of something that never made sense before—my attraction to this difficult person. And I created a richer, more complicated story.
4. Make readers use at least two senses I can’t get rolling on a story unless I know the setting. If I am going to live imaginatively in a place for the duration of a story, then I’d better find it stimulating in some way. Also, my character must have some emotional reaction to the place where he lives or where he’s visiting; he must be in conflict with it somehow. One way to learn about your character is to put him into a place, then have him respond to that environment. It’s important for your character to sense things around him—to smell, to touch, to hear, etc. Flannery O’Connor, the short-story writer and novelist, wrote that she always tried to get at least two senses into the first paragraph
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of a story, preferably three. That is, she wanted her protagonist to respond physically to his setting. After all, human beings are not of another world; we are grounded to the earth; we sweat, we lust, and we fight. Consider the first few sentences of Ralph Ellison’s “King of the Bingo Game”: The woman in front of him was eating roasted peanuts that smelled so good that he could barely contain his hunger. He could not even sleep and wished they’d hurry up and begin the bingo game. There, on his right, two fellows were drinking wine out of a bottle wrapped in a paper bag, and he could hear the soft gurgling in the dark. His stomach gave a low, gnawing growl.
In these few sentences, we learn about the setting: a dark, crowded theater with a potentially rowdy audience (the wine). And we learn about the protagonist. He probably doesn’t have a home; if he had a place to live, he probably wouldn’t be trying to sleep in a theater. He’s poor, tired, and hungry. And we, the readers, become absorbed in this character because we perceive the environment along with him. Ellison has provoked our senses with the smell of peanuts, the sound of the wine gurgling, and the sound of the protagonist’s stomach growling. Two senses are evoked; one sense evoked twice. And the essence of storytelling is absorbing the reader in the world of your character. Making your reader smell, touch, feel, hear, and see (along with your character) will get that reader hooked on your story.
5. Create smart characters Most of us enjoy stories about intelligent, savvy people. A fictional character may not realize that he is intelligent (Huck Finn) or he may think he is more astute than he really is (Pip and Anna Karenina), but in one way or another we continue reading about, and believing in, a fictional creation because we admire his alertness to the world. Even Vladimir Nabokov’s child-molesting Humbert Humbert is admirable to the extent that he is resourceful and perceptive, if only on the basest level. Consider how Anton Chekhov in his great story “The Lady With the Dog” shows us the perceptiveness of his protagonist, Gurov: One evening while (Gurov) was dining in the public garden, the lady in the beret walked up without haste to take the next table. Her expression, her gait, her dress, and the way she did her hair told him that she belonged to the upper class, that she was married, that she was in Yalta for the first time and alone, and that she was bored there.
We know a variety of things about both Gurov and the woman. We know that Gurov is attracted to her, that he is a lady’s man, and that he can read character—both good and bad. We also know that he is cynical. About the woman, we know her class, her marital status, and her willingness to have an affair. Would Gurov be capable of making so many judgments about a woman he’s never met? Of course. Most of us make swift judgments like this every day about people we don’t know, and frequently we are correct.
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What makes this strategy so effective, however, is the fact that Chekhov does not allow his narrator to make these observations. In most cases, the omniscient narrator—one that sees the truth about characters and tells us the meaning of a scene or a story—is a monotonous and outdated strategy. Instead Chekhov filters these perceptions through the mind of Gurov. Notice that all the information comes to the reader by way of Gurov’s perceptions. Thus, the story has a greater richness and complexity. Allow your characters their full intelligence and perceptiveness. Allow them to know as much about human nature as you do on your best, most enlightened days.
6. Show character through action Sometimes the simplest thing in storytelling is the toughest—and the most important; that is, showing characters moving through the world without the crutch of getting inside their heads. As thousands of creative writing teachers have pointed out, it is more difficult to show than to tell. When you find yourself getting too fancy, or when you are stuck, return to this simple principle: what a person does tells us about his character. Try writing a page showing a person involved in action. Don’t enter your character’s mind. Just concentrate on what your character does. Gesture, said the eighteenth-century French novelist and philosopher Denis Diderot, is more illuminating than explanation. A suggested start: “After lunch he went to the porch to get the mail and found a large brown package.” Dramatize how your character responds, step-by-step, as if you were writing a play. Does your character throw out the package without opening it? Does he open it? What does he find? How does he react? If a story is going badly, or if I can’t get a story started, I usually try this exercise. It forces me to concentrate on action. This strategy reduces a story to “something happens and my character must react.” And isn’t life like that? Something happens and we must react. We react badly or well. Then we judge and measure our reaction. Think of the plot of Shakespeare’s Othello. Without realizing it, Othello has made an enemy of the evil Iago, who is determined to destroy him. The story is about how Othello reacts clumsily and foolishly to the challenges of this evil plotter. The plot of Hamlet is similar in this respect. Something has happened to Hamlet’s family—and how the hero reacts to this event and subsequent events is the story. Again, we are reminded of what Henry James wrote about Turgenev: Plot is character. Action defines character. But grand heroics are rare for most of us. You could go through a lifetime without an opportunity for obvious heroism. Most of us, in fact, live quietly. However, underneath the quiet a drama is going on, and the best writers are attuned to this everyday drama. They are attuned because each of our responses to the small stuff is the genuine barometer of character, good or bad, and is the heart of storytelling.
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adding life with dialogue by
Monica Wood
H
ave you ever read a transcript of a presidential press conference? Even the most lively and intelligent-sounding presidential answers can look like idiocy on the page. How about the conversation you overheard in a cafeteria? You wrote it down verbatim on a napkin: “So her mother says to me, not the mother but the one that I thought was her except for that one green tooth? She says to me, you know your friend Danny, that’s the guy I went out with just before I dumped Kevin ...”
“That one green tooth” is kind of interesting, and the convolutions of mothers and boyfriends might be a promising place to start from or go toward, but to make this “found” conversation fiction-worthy you’ll have to run it through a dialogue filter a few times. As a writer, you must choose your characters’ words wisely: Dialogue sets pace, controls tone, reveals character, and moves the story forward. Good dialogue isn’t a representation of how people really talk; it only reads that way. To get dialogue to read well, you have to practice writing a lot of it; and it helps to follow a few guidelines.
Using Dialogue to Reveal Story It is common knowledge that in order to keep up with the story line on a “daytime drama,” all you have to do is tune in for twenty minutes every month or so. In this case common knowledge is actually true, because of dialogue like this: Aging Ingenue Well, if it isn’t my little brother Max. Lead Male Hunk I guess we haven’t seen each other since Mother left her modeling job in Los Angeles to search for Justin. Aging Ingenue A lot’s happened since then. The fire at Cross Enterprises that left Paige and Whitney dead—
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Lead Male Hunk And who would have guessed that our own father would turn out to be the Port City Stalker.
This is not story revelation; this is shameless plot review. Rather than push the story forward, as good dialogue should do, this kind of information-giving dialogue stops the story altogether in order to identify characters and convey plot information. Useful in daytime drama, death in fiction. To write good dialogue, you must not think of dialogue as a device. If you have certain pieces of information that your reader must discover, don’t depend on dialogue to do the whole job for you unless you want something akin to a soap opera exchange. Dialogue can do some of the job for you, however, in a way that straight prose cannot. Let’s look at an example. Your main character, Roddy, is a little boy with the face of Gabriel and the soul of Lucifer. In your story Roddy wreaks havoc on his unsuspecting parents and spins their lives out of focus, illuminating nuances of parenthood that reverberate with rare and important truths about the human condition. That’s your hope, anyway. So far you have seven pages of clear prose, packed with telling detail. It reads flat. Roddy’s manipulation of his parents lacks tension somehow. If this is like most first drafts, chances are the story suffers from an overdose of exposition and an underdose of revelation. The reader probably envisions the author at the end of each paragraph holding up a cue card that says, “DO YOU GET IT YET?” Try giving Roddy a shot of dialogue. Four lines of good dialogue can save you four pages of exposition. Forget your six-paragraph description of diabolical little Roddy. Forget the two-page passage you wrote about Catherine, Roddy’s mother, that included the phrase “her heart quivered every time Roddy opened his mouth to speak.” Try the old “show, don’t tell” routine: Catherine set the last of the groceries on the checkout counter. An enormous woman with a “We Please” button clipped to her bosom smiled down at Roddy as she blipped each item through the scanner. She had to lean halfway over the counter to really see him. Carrots, soup cans, boxes of cereal beeped as Roddy, unsmiling, returned her gaze. “Aren’t you a cute little buzzard,” she said, running a block of cheese over the scanner. Catherine saw the purse of his lips, the stony set of his shoulders. She clasped her hands together. “He’s not very talkative,” she said, hopefully. The woman laughed. “He’s just shy, aren’t you, little fellow?” Roddy raised his tiny eyes. “I hope you die.”
Within a few lines of dialogue, fortified by gestural pauses and a well-placed dialogue tag (more on that later), you have conveyed plenty of information about Roddy: He is a child (“cute little buzzard”); he is short (the woman has to lean over to see him); he has tiny eyes; and his mother is afraid of him (“she said, hopefully”). You have revealed the two crucial elements of the story: Roddy is an unpredictable, and possibly evil, little brat; and Catherine is an ineffective and somewhat fearful mother. Not bad for a few inches of type.
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Dialogue Tags and Gestural Pauses In the Roddy-Catherine scene, you probably noticed that the actual words of dialogue are no more crucial than the dialogue tags and gestural pauses that set the tone and pace of the dialogue sequence. Dialogue tags are the he said/she saids of a dialogue sequence; descriptive dialogue tags are tags with a gesture attached (“‘... buzzard,’ she said, running a block of cheese over the scanner”); and gestural pauses are the full-sentence interruptions (“Roddy raised his tiny eyes”) that you sprinkle through a dialogue sequence. Look how eliminating gestural pauses diminishes Roddy’s scene: Catherine set the last of the groceries on the checkout counter. An enormous woman with a “We Please” button clipped to her bosom smiled down at Roddy as she blipped each item through the scanner. She had to lean halfway over the counter to really see him. Carrots, soup cans, boxes of cereal beeped as Roddy, unsmiling, returned her gaze. “Aren’t you a cute little buzzard,” she said. “He’s not very talkative,” Catherine said. “He’s just shy, aren’t you, little fellow?” “I hope you die,” Roddy said.
Not only is the “he said/she said” overbearing, but the pace of the scene, the sense of a life (in this case the bustle of a grocery store) going on around this little beast and his mother, is completely lost. Gone are the block of cheese being swept over the scanner, the woman’s laugh, and Roddy’s tiny eyes. Gone are Catherine’s nervousness and the checkout woman’s heartiness, both of which combine to infuse tension into this small exchange. By eliminating gestural pauses you are left with too swift a pace, a sliver of a scene, and too many dialogue tags in order to identify the speakers. It is best to dispense with dialogue tags altogether whenever you can, but sometimes a well-placed tag can inform the scene in a way a gestural pause cannot. Consider the “she said, hopefully” after Catherine’s one line: This is a woman afraid of her own child. While the best writing advice I ever received (from George Garrett, years ago at a writers conference) was “Circle all your adverbs, dear, and then kill ’em,” a well-chosen adverb in a dialogue tag can be most effective. Use them sparingly, however, and watch for redundancy: If the description is in the dialogue already (and in most cases it should be), leave it out of the tag. (For example: “I hate your guts!” she said angrily. Or: “I can’t go on,” he murmured sadly.) Another mistake some writers make when creating dialogue tags is trying too hard to jazz them up. He said/she said is just fine. Spare the reader from she hissed/I laughed/ he groaned. The aforementioned functions cannot actually be performed simultaneously with speaking, anyway. He shouted/she whispered/I screamed are probably all right, since they can at least be performed with words, but your best bet is to avoid tags in favor of gestures. Consider this scene:
Frank presented the daisies. “I picked these.” “So?” She gave them a brief glance. “What do you want, a medal?” “You said you liked romantic men.”
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“I said I liked romance.” She put up one finger. “There’s a big difference, Frank. Huge.” He stared into the flowers for a moment. “Are you real mad, or only a little bit mad?” “Real mad.” Frank turned the flowers around a few times in his hands, considering. “I guess this would be a lousy time to ask for that sixty bucks you owe me.” She snatched the flowers and tore off their yellow tops one by one. “That’s right,” she said, handing him the bunch of stems. “It would.”
In this scene it is easy to keep track of who is speaking, with minimal use of dialogue tags. In the girlfriend’s final line you have used a descriptive dialogue tag for a certain effect—her line is slowed down, by virtue of the tag (“she said, handing him the bunch of stems”), and as a result she is rendered imperious rather than impetuous. This is how the last line would look minus the descriptive dialogue tag: Frank turned the flowers around a few times in his hands, considering. “I guess this would be a lousy time to ask for that sixty bucks you owe me.” She snatched the flowers and tore off their yellow tops one by one. “That’s right, it would.”
The girlfriend’s action is less controlled in this second version, for she does not hand the stems back; and her line, uninterrupted, reads snappish and petulant. In the original version the girlfriend is much more self-possessed. Small decisions about how to present dialogue have large consequences for your characters. One caution about using any of these presentation devices: One device used exclusively will make the dialogue sequence monotonous: “Over here,” she said, waving her program in the air. “I thought I’d never find you,” he told her, picking his way over the row to the seat beside her. “I’ve been waiting for hours,” she said, pushing the sticky strands of hair from her face.
In other words, vary your construction. (This goes for all aspects of a story, of course, not just dialogue.) Your best bet for presenting realistic, snappy dialogue is to use a combination of presentation devices: tagless dialogue, gestural pauses, descriptive tags, and simple tags. This is especially true when long tags serve as a connector for an already long line of dialogue: “I can’t see you again, Marilyn,” Neville said, extracting his pocket handkerchief with a magician’s flourish and presenting it to her with a trembling hand, “because Mother’s wheelchair broke and she’s asked me to fly to Japan with her to have it fixed.”
Two mistakes here: The obvious one is the endless dialogue tag, and the other is the long line of dialogue with the connector “because.” You might salvage a line like this as follows: “I can’t see you again, Marilyn,” Neville said. He presented his pocket handkerchief with a magician’s flourish. “Mother’s wheelchair broke and she’s asked me to fly to Japan with her to have it fixed.”
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Once you begin to write dialogue with a better sense of the importance of presentation, you will notice that character and story revelation depend as much on the surrounding details as they do on the dialogue itself.
Revealing Character Now that you know something about the function of dialogue and its nuts and bolts, you’re stuck with a blank page and a character aching to say something. But what? It depends on the character. Children don’t talk like teenagers; teenagers don’t talk like adults; southerners don’t talk like northerners. Ethnic and cultural diversities also make for dialogue challenges: a Hopi Indian doesn’t talk like a Boston Catholic; a steelworker doesn’t talk like a lifeguard. This is not a simple matter of vocabulary, either. Your character’s words reflect so much about him—his background, motivation, inner and outer life—that the words he speaks are barely as important as how he speaks them. The cadence of dialogue, its syntax and grammar, and even the number of words it contains help show the reader who your character is. You might have a character whose worldview is maddeningly simple: Things are either good or bad. His dialogue is a series of platitudes that drives the other characters nuts. Another character might be painfully shy, or burdened by a terrible secret: she can’t seem to eke out more than a few words at a time. In the Roddy-Catherine scene, Roddy’s line is not “I hope you get sick,” or “I hope you get sick and die,” or “I bet you’re going to die someday.” He says, in the stripped, direct, bottom-line vocabulary of a child: “I hope you die.” Similarly, in the scene between Frank and his girlfriend, the verbal exchange has a certain cultural color. How differently would the reader perceive them if you were to change their words: Frank presented the daisies. “These are for you.” She gave them a brief glance. “I suppose you thought they would thrill me?” “You said you liked romantic men.” “I said I liked romance. There’s a difference, isn’t there?” He stared into the flowers for a moment. “Are you horribly angry, or only a little?” “Horribly.” Frank turned the flowers around a few times in his hands, considering. “I suppose it would be unwise to ask for the money you owe me?” She snatched the flowers and tore off their yellow tops one by one. “Indeed.”
The changes are small but the ramifications are great. The difference between “horribly angry” and “real mad,” or “that’s right” and “indeed,” is entrenched in the education, class, goals, and expectations of your characters. Interesting dialogue, in fiction and in life, depends as much on what you leave out as what you put in. The following scene tries to reveal some aspect of the relationship between a mother and daughter, from the daughter’s point of view.
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“I’d just like to see you settled, that’s all,” my mother says. “What do you mean?” I know exactly what she means. “Settled,” she says, glaring. “I mean settled.” “I’m settled, for heaven’s sake. I have a job, a house, a dog. I send out for pizza every Friday night.” She’s still looking at me. “Mom, I’m settled.” She purses her lips, drums her spotted fingers on the tabletop. “There’s more to this life, young lady, than the company of a dog.”
In this scene, what the mother and daughter do not say is what makes the scene work. The daughter knows what the mother is getting at, the mother knows the daughter knows, and yet each is refusing to acknowledge the other’s meaning. This unspoken argument provides the scene with emotional tension and reveals the characters as two strong wills locked in struggle. If you rewrite the scene using the dialogue the first version left out, you get something like this: “I wish you’d get married,” my mother says. “I don’t want to get married, Mom. I have everything I need right now.” She is glaring at me. “A husband would make your life a lot fuller.”
The scene loses its punch when you write the “real” dialogue. Remember, people seldom say exactly what they mean. That’s what makes stories, and real life, so interesting. In the mother-daughter scene, the language itself is not readily identifiable as belonging to any particular social stratum, but the words and cadences are carefully chosen nonetheless, for they illuminate a universal mother-daughter struggle. The mother’s use of “young lady” illuminates her desire to establish position. The daughter’s deliberate misinterpretation of the word “settled” as meaning, among other things, “I send out for pizza every Friday night” is understandably infuriating to the mother. The word “settled,” repeatedly and deliberately misunderstood, is the ping-pong ball in this back-and-forth game the mother and daughter are playing. Varying the length of the sentences also reinforces the push-pull of this scene. By keeping the words but slightly altering their order and cadence, you get a scene robbed of some of its tension and most of its rhythm: “I’d just like to see you settled, that’s all,” my mother says. “What do you mean?” I ask, though I know exactly what she means. “Settled, I mean settled.” “I’m settled, for heaven’s sake, Mom.” She’s still looking at me. “I have a job, a house, a dog, and I send out for pizza every Friday night, so I’m settled.” She purses her lips and drums her spotted fingers on the tabletop. “Young lady, there’s more to this life than a dog’s company.”
The alterations are slight but the rhythm is much changed. Treat each line of dialogue like a line of poetry. If you make every word count and pay attention to line breaks, your character will stay alive.
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One more observation about the original version of this scene: Notice the one line of internal monologue: “I know exactly what she means.” This line sets up the ensuing tension and lets the reader in on the daughter’s part of the push-pull. Combining dialogue with internal monologue—making the reader privy to the difference between a character’s thoughts and words—is a fascinating way for the reader to get to know a character.
The Pitfalls of Writing Dialect Let’s say you have done everything right—labored over word choice, meticulously laid out cadences, chosen a syntactical pattern peculiar to and compatible with your character—and still the dialogue looks stiff and unconvincing. Your character is Patsy, an old, angry, southern lady, but you wouldn’t know it by reading what she has to say. To solve this problem, you decide to literally spell it out for the reader: “Buddy’s been playin’ bluegrass all naht long,” Patsy said. “An mah haid’s ‘bout to explode.”
This technique is not only out of vogue, it can be vexing to a reader who must slow down in order to figure out what the character is saying. Besides, if the line doesn’t sound southern in the first place, spelling it out won’t make much difference. The translation for the above line is: “Buddy’s been playing bluegrass all night long,” Patsy said. “And my head’s about to explode.” With the possible exception of the word “bluegrass,” this line could be attributed to anybody from Boston to Seattle. It has no particular regional slant. (This is not necessarily bad, except that you want to identify Patsy as southern through her speech.) If you can’t get Patsy to sound southern, it’s probably because you’re northern—or western, or Canadian, or Bulgarian. If you insist on using Patsy, you have two choices: Move to Memphis or find some southerners to make friends with. Otherwise, you will probably resort to feeding Patsy lines like “shut my mouth and pass the grits,” which will not endear her to many readers, particularly your new southern friends. Creating true speech is a noble goal. To make your character as real as possible, though, you don’t have to write full-blown, phonetically spelled dialect. Some wellchosen phrases and a general rhythm in the language will suffice, allowing readers from outside the particular region to appreciate the linguistic differences while still being able to read the words. Let’s say you’re from northern New England. Why not move the story to Maine, where you’re more familiar with the local dialect? This way you can give Patsy a believable voice without resorting to dropped letters and suspicious spellings. “Howard’s been wailing on that guitar all night long,” Patsy said. “You better believe I got one wicked headache.”
A beautiful example of dialect that uses the language itself, with no spelling variations, comes from the great Irish playwright, J.M. Synge (pronounced, appropriately, “sing”).
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Here is a line delivered by Pegeen, the barkeep’s daughter from The Playboy of the Western World, after she meets Christy Mahon, a stranger who wanders into her father’s tavern: “Well, you’ll have peace in this place, Christy Mahon, and none to trouble you, and it’s near time a fine lad like you should have your good share of the earth.”
It’s difficult to read that line in anything other than an Irish brogue.
Knowing When to Stop Finally, you’ve got your characters talking to your satisfaction. Now it’s time to learn how to shut them up. Real people have a habit of repeating themselves and drifting off in conversation, but fictional characters can afford no such luxury. As a general (and arbitrary) rule, don’t let your characters say more than three sentences at once unless they have a compelling reason. You’ll be surprised how well this works. Let’s look at Spike and Arnold, two high school boys hanging around outside a school gymnasium. Arnold leaned against the scarred brick, his jacket slung over one shoulder. It was cold but his black shirt looked good. “You were the one who was dying to come to this stupid dance,” he said to Spike. “Just because Sherrie might show up within the next century is no reason to stand out here freezing. We’ve been waiting over an hour and she still isn’t here. I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t even show up at all. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit, considering her past history.” “What makes you think I care if Sherrie shows up? I didn’t say anything about Sherrie,” Spike said. He huddled inside his leather jacket, sucking on a cigarette. “We’re through, anyway. I wouldn’t give her the time of day at this point, if you want the truth. Six months was enough of her, let me tell you. I would’ve given her the shirt off my back in those days, but now I wouldn’t lend her my extra jacket if she was freezing to death in Siberia. Sherrie’s nothing to me. I don’t care if she lives or dies.” “I think I see her.” “Where?” Spike’s head whirled around like the light on top of a squad car.
This scene has possibilities, but the characters are too long-winded to move the scene forward. There’s plenty of story revelation here—Spike and Sherrie dated for six months and Spike is still smitten; Arnold and Spike have been waiting outside the gym for over an hour; Sherrie has a history of not showing up when she’s supposed to—but how important are these facts to the real story? Doesn’t it read a little like a daytime drama? Try putting a muzzle on this pair and see what you get: Arnold leaned against the scarred brick, his jacket slung over one shoulder. It was cold but his black shirt looked good. “You were the one who was dying to come to this stupid dance,” he said to Spike. “How much longer are we supposed to wait for her? Another century or what?” “Did I say I was waiting for Sherrie?”
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“It’s pretty obvious.” “A lot you know,” Spike said. He huddled inside his leather jacket, sucking on a cigarette. “I wouldn’t give her the time of day at this point, if you want the truth. I don’t care if she lives or dies.” “I think I see her.” “Where?” Spike’s head whirled around like the light on top of a squad car.
In this second version, not as much information is conveyed, but the essence of the scene— the difference between Spike’s words and actions—is distilled from the cluttered original. We don’t need to know how long Spike and Sherrie dated; the interesting part is that he’s still carrying a torch for her. We don’t need to know they’ve been waiting over an hour. Arnold’s impatience and the cold air already imply a long wait. This revised version is cleaner and more effective. Where the original scene hovered, the revision moves. Dialogue is not always a solution; in the wrong place, dialogue can burden a story. Even in the right place, good dialogue can drag a story if it is too long. All of these suggestions for writing good dialogue are, of course, simply guidelines that you are welcome to sidestep. Fiction isn’t much fun to write if you go strictly by the rules. In John Irving’s novel A Prayer for Owen Meany, Owen’s entertaining dialogue sometimes goes on for paragraphs (in capital letters!). Alice Walker’s luminous novel The Color Purple is full of spelling variations. However, when you’re stuck, when you get to the inevitable point in a story where something stops working, the “rules” are a handy refuge for getting your story moving again.
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writing the query that sells by
Susanne Kirk
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very day five or ten query letters arrive in my already overcrowded inbox. They come from all over the country, from all kinds of people, trying to sell me all kinds of manuscripts. They are letters that may have taken many anxious hours for an author to write; but I’ll know in a minute or so whether or not it describes a project I’ll want to see. Writers reveal a great deal about themselves in query letters, and editors—by definition overworked—have learned to spot potential winners quickly. What do we look for? To oversimplify, we want a subject that is right for our publishing house and right for the market, and an author who can write and who has some idea of the practical and professional realities of publishing. Recently I received a “serious” query letter from a first novelist who knew he had a bestseller on his hands and requested a $30,000 advance on the spot. He generously agreed that I could read the first two chapters before paying him the $30,000 but requested that I accept his terms when answering the query. Even if his work were exceptional, the author would be impossible to work with. He clearly doesn’t know the first thing about publishing. The typical query letter doesn’t make such outlandish demands, but it often shows its author’s weaknesses. Words are misspelled, syntax is poor, or the subject does not fit our publishing list and may be more appropriate, say, for a paperback romance imprint of a publishing house. The letter may be too long; or it may be too short as is the following: “Dear Editor: I have just written a wonderful fiction novel [sic] that will be a bestseller. Would you like to see it?” Such a cryptic note, which doesn’t even classify as a cover letter (to accompany entire manuscripts), is sure to get a negative response.
The Perfect Query Occasionally I receive the perfect query such as Sonia Gernes’s letter for her novel The Way to St. Ives. I had taken her query and sample material home with me one cold January day, together with a number of other manuscripts and queries. We editors read hundreds of manuscripts and proposals to find one that seems right, so I was both
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thrilled and anxious when I came upon Sonia’s query—thrilled to find something that sounded so right, and anxious that I had had the proposal for several weeks and she might already have approached another publisher. I immediately reached for my telephone and told Sonia how much I wanted to read her manuscript. Sonia tells me that the eagerness and interest expressed by that call made her feel that we were the right house for her novel. What made Sonia’s letter so good? Let’s analyze it in detail. She began by addressing me by name. I later learned that Sonia got my name from Literary Market Place, choosing me because my name was far enough down the list that I might be fairly junior and therefore perhaps more receptive to works from unknown authors than some of my colleagues. It’s an interesting theory, but listings in LMP are often merely alphabetical. Sonia was lucky because, as it happened, I do a lot of fiction. (Most editors who receive an intriguing query outside their own specialties are delighted to pass it on to the right editor in their house. We all hope for a similar favor next time.)
Make the Editor Read It Once you have addressed an editor by name, how do you attract and keep that editor’s attention? Here’s what Sonia said in her letter to me: I am enclosing a synopsis and the first two chapters of a novel I am completing. The Way to St. Ives is the story of Rosie Deane, of her progress from scrupulous spinster to autonomous woman in a small Catholic town on the prairies of western Minnesota. Rosie is an innocent, young woman kept within a narrow and sterile existence by the constraints of family, church, and a childhood illness. Her brother’s death as the novel opens and her friendship with a liberal though alcoholic young priest remove the most obvious of these barriers, and the attentions of Ray Bowen, an attractive and rather mysterious newcomer to the community, pull her fully into a world that includes sexuality, conflict, and moral choice.
This paragraph tells me what I need to know: The Way to St. Ives is a Catholic novel set in Minnesota with some interesting-sounding characters and some salable themes. But how will the novel fit into the overall market? Sonia tells me in her next paragraph: The novel belongs to what one critic has called the rite-of-passage novel of the midlife woman, a category which has been highly popular in recent years, and includes such commercially successful novels as The Women’s Room, Fear of Flying, The Summer Before the Dark, and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. The Way to St. Ives has in common with all of these the theme of women searching for integrity and autonomy, but the novel takes its feminist stance in a very subtle manner, and would appeal to a wider audience than more stridently feminist fiction. The most obvious similarity in plot is to Mary Gordon’s Final Payments, though Rosie moves through a very different milieu and, unlike Isabel, has internalized the most scrupulous aspects of Catholicism, particularly those concerning sex. Her struggles are different from Isabel’s and her growth is more dramatic. The setting of the novel might be compared to Wright Morris’s recent Plains Song or to Larry Woiwode’s Beyond the Bedroom Wall.
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Now I have a marketing peg. The novel will appeal to some of the readers who liked The Women’s Room, Final Payments, and Beyond the Bedroom Wall. Because of Sonia’s themes, her novel will inevitably be called a “Mary Gordon-type novel,” so Sonia is wise to address the similarities and differences head-on.
Sell Yourself Having introduced the project and its potential in the market, the query writer must be specific about what she is offering—and why she is qualified to write a book. Here’s how Sonia concluded her letter to me: The manuscript of The Way to St. Ives is approximately 350 pages long and is at the stage of final revisions. May I send you the complete manuscript for consideration? I enclose an envelope for your reply: You need not return the chapters. I am an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Notre Dame and have published quite widely as a poet in The New Republic, Sewanee Review, Southern Review, and many others. This is my first novel.
End With Oomph What else do I learn from Sonia’s concluding paragraphs? She seems professional and considerate—she encloses a self-addressed stamped envelope, and she does not ask that I return the chapters. She is also fortunate that her qualifications are impressive—she’s a published poet and a professor at a major university. What she doesn’t tell me, and what turned out to be of particular interest to the media, is that Sonia is a former nun who writes about Catholic themes with a special knowledge gained from years in the convent. Sonia could have used this background as an extra selling point, but she probably thought it was inappropriate to be so personally revealing in an initial query letter.
Be Sure Not to—Or to ... Sonia’s letter is a fine example of an ideal letter to an editor, but every query letter is necessarily unique. There are, however, some simple dos and don’ts that apply to all queries.
Don’t:
• misspell words • use bad syntax or grammar • affect an overly informal or cute style (no “Hi, Susanne” or “Good Morning, Su-
• relate your whole plot (include a separate synopsis if you must) • use more than one page, unless absolutely necessary • send a full manuscript with a query; enclose a sample chapter or two if you wish (in
• send a hard-to-read, blurry photocopy; send only a freshly printed original (never
sanne”—utterly repellent when the letter arrives late on a depressing afternoon)
accordance with the submission requirements of each publisher) send the only copy of your story, however!)
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Do:
• address the editor by name (get it from LMP or Writer’s Market or Novel & Short
Story Writer’s Market) research your potential publisher to make sure it produces your kind of books • (look in the stores for books similar to yours and make a note of their publishers) • be brief • explain how your project fits into the overall market • tell why you are qualified to write the book • type your letter neatly with no errors; use a letterhead (your university or business) if possible, especially if the letterhead is in any way related to your project use • your best writing style (have somebody you respect edit your letter before you send it) remember that the query is your sales tool •
After you send out the perfect query letter, your wait begins. It may go on for a week, a month, or even several months. When the response comes, I hope it’s a good one.
Query Formatting Tips A query letter should make a compelling case for a book, show why you are the person to write it, and outline the market potential for your novel. Once you’ve got these elements, it’s time to prepare your submission. Here are some basic formatting tips for a novel query:
• Use standard business-letter format, with an easy-to-read typeface (black ink, 12-point Times New Roman font).
• Use a one-inch margin.
• Single-space the body of the letter; double-space between paragraphs.
• Use letterhead or type your personal information in the top right corner.
• Try to keep the query to one page.
• As with an article query, try to grab your reader’s attention with a strong lead making the case for your book.
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agents’ roundtable by the
Staff of Writer’s Market
E
ach year we visit writers conferences across the country to find out what writers want and need to know. Invariably they ask about agents—how to find one, how to work with one, and how to know if an agent is doing a good job. We decided to go straight to the source and asked three well-respected agents to answer these and other frequently asked questions about their roles.
Eileen Fallon was an agent with Lowenstein Associates for eight years before establishing her own agency, The Fallon Literary Agency, in the summer of 1990. The agency handles mainstream fiction, mysteries, and romances, as well as a range of nonfiction. Jeff Herman founded the Jeff Herman Agency, Inc., in 1985. The agency handles gen-
eral nonfiction, business reference, commercial self-help, and computer books and is becoming increasingly active in general fiction. Prior to opening his own agency, Herman worked in a New York public relations firm and as a publicity associate for Schocken Books. He is the author of Jeff Herman’s Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, & Literary Agents: Who They Are! What They Want! How to Win Them Over! Evan Marshall is president of the Evan Marshall Agency, which specializes in books of adult fiction and nonfiction, as well as original screenplays. He was previously an agent for Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc., and before that held editorial positions with Dodd, Mead, Everest House, and New American Library. He is also a contributor to Writer’s Digest.
How can new authors increase their chances of attracting an agent’s attention? Eileen Fallon: One attracts an agent’s attention through professionalism, pure and simple. Professionalism encompasses everything from putting your name, return address, and a daytime phone number on correspondence to spelling the agent’s name correctly (and sending mail to the right address) to just about the most important aspect—researching the market before you write, through haunting local bookstores and using Writer’s Market or Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market and then contacting an agent who definitely handles the kind of material you are writing. For instance, do not send a science fiction novel to someone who does not represent books in that genre.
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Jeff Herman: Remember the agent is probably being flooded with submissions and
that the vast majority of them will be rejected for a variety of reasons. At the same time, most agents are seeking the next jewel. To be that jewel, the writer should avoid the most common disqualifiers. Briefly, here are some basic dos and don’ts:
• Establish contact with a query letter describing the project. Don’t send anything that can’t fit into a #10 envelope unless requested to do so. Include an SASE to facilitate a response. Make sure the letter provides a good “sales pitch” and is personalized and professionally written.
• Get good, personalized stationery. Have your name turned into an impressive logo. This will make you look sharp and businesslike.
• Don’t call. Most projects, especially fiction, have to be read for proper assessment. Hearing about it on the phone is a poor use of the agent’s time and won’t be appreciated.
Evan Marshall: I look first for evidence that the writer knows the market for which
he or she is writing, the conventions of the genre. Then I look for writing that is technically well crafted and a story that embodies fresh ideas and plot concepts as well as characters that are interesting and somehow unique. If all these are present, and the writer exhibits a professional manner in the way she corresponds with me and presents material, chances are I’ll be interested.
How important are referrals? Any suggestions on how to obtain some? Fallon: If a writer is referred by someone I know, usually another writer or an editor, I will most likely consider that material sooner than I would that of someone who hasn’t been referred personally to me. But it has no bearing on whether or not I take the material on for representation. I take on projects I can sell and don’t take on those I can’t. Herman: Referrals are invaluable as door-openers. Anytime someone calls or writes and states that they’ve been referred by someone I respect, they get serious attention. It doesn’t mean I’ll represent them, but I will notice them. It also means that the person didn’t just get my name from one of the many public directories of agents. To get referrals, the writer should talk to or gain access to anyone who has been published and is using an agent. The writer should join local and national writers’ groups to network and gather information about agents and the industry as a whole. Marshall: A referral is helpful but not vital. Many editors refer writers to me, and I do take special notice of these writers because the editors feel their material is of good quality and right for me. My clients also will refer writers to me and I look carefully at their work too, because obviously I respect the literary judgment of the people I represent.
Please explain agent contracts. What should an author look for in a contract and how long should such a contract be binding? Fallon: In such a contract, authors should look for a clear spelling out of terms—what
the commissions are on both domestic and foreign sales, what fees or deductions (if
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any) there are in addition to the commission, a clause telling you how to end the relationship. Contracts call for a variety of lengths of time that they are in effect. I prefer a book-by-book contract; I don’t think you can represent someone who no longer wants to be represented by you, since this is a very personal relationship. Herman: In my opinion, the contract should be brief and easy to read. Some of the basic points that should be addressed include:
• What will the agent represent? Will it only be the work in question? All future works, too? Anything and everything the writer ever writes, including nonbooks? My personal belief is it should only apply to the works at hand and not be binding regarding anything else. • What is the agency commission? (10 to 15 percent is normal.) What expenses will the writer be responsible for? (Photocopying, postage, and long-distance calls are often charged back to the author.) • How and when will the contract terminate? In my opinion, there should be no time limit here. Either party should be able to terminate the agreement at any time upon written notice. However, the agent should be entitled to remain as agent-ofrecord regarding any deals that were made or any that may result from efforts that were made prior to the termination. In other words, if I submit your work to ten publishers on Monday and on Tuesday you fire me, but on Wednesday we receive an offer from one of those ten, I shall be entitled to be the agent-of-record if you enter into an agreement with that publisher or any of the other nine.
Marshall: A representation agreement should state the types of material the agent
will handle for the writer (books? short stories? screenplays? plays?); the commissions the agent will receive on sales made domestically as well as overseas for the various types of material he will represent; whether the agreement covers a specified period (I have heard of periods of up to five years) or simply continues in effect until either party terminates by letter; how much time the agent has, after notice of termination, to complete deals he has begun; and whether the agent may deduct from the author’s monies expenses such as photocopying, messengers, and overseas postage.
How can an author judge how an agent is doing (apart from sales)? What can authors expect from an agent? Fallon: Authors should expect to be updated about the status of projects; if they are not happy with how frequently their agent gives them status reports, they should let the agent know right away (any problem should be aired as soon as possible). Herman: The way to judge your agent is to request frequent reports about who the work is being submitted to and what the status of those submissions is. You should request to receive copies of all publisher correspondence in response to your work. Even if no sales are resulting, your agent may be making aggressive and appropriate efforts to sell the work. What you need to know is that she is indeed making ongoing efforts to
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get a deal and hasn’t forgotten about you. Don’t be a pest, but you are entitled to call at least twice a month for status reports and strategy discussions. Marshall: Apart from sales, an agent should be submitting a client’s material both aggressively and judiciously. Beyond this, an author should expect career guidance, which includes editorial feedback based on the agent’s knowledge of the markets and advice as to which projects the author would be wisest to pursue. Finally, the author should expect reasonable communication regarding the status of active projects and prompt remittance of monies the agent receives on the author’s behalf.
What are some of the things writers ask for that they should not expect from an agent? Fallon: In my experience two things writers should not expect: 1) publicity advice, and 2) their agent to take on unsalable material (once a relationship has been established). Frequently, a good, competent nonfiction writer, someone who does practical books, wants to work on something more literary—unfortunately, just because one writes good nonfiction, one doesn’t necessarily have the artistic skill to pull off fiction. Herman: Many agents can and do help authors write and revise their manuscripts. But this is a luxury. The writer should not automatically expect this service. After all, they are the writers. Writers should not assume the agent has a lot of time for unproductive chitchat, especially during business hours. Writers should not assume the agent is responsible if the publisher screws up and makes a mistake in marketing or distribution. In such cases, the agent is also the victim, as may be the editor. Marshall: A writer should not expect constant (for example, daily) communication with her agent, who, after all, must serve a number of clients. A writer should not expect an agent to lend money, make travel arrangements, or publicize a writer’s book. Perhaps most importantly, a writer should not expect an agent to market material the agent does not feel is marketable or to make demands of publishers the agent believes are unreasonable.
What are some of the basic steps you take to market a writer’s work? What happens from the time a writer signs on to the time a contract is negotiated? Fallon: I keep abreast of the fields I handle and keep my ears open for opportunities. I keep constantly in touch with editors. I look for two things first when examining manuscripts: 1) I must feel excited about the writing, and 2) I must feel I am knowledgeable about the market for the material. Next, based on my knowledge of the market, I work with the writer to shape the material. I must have the very best material to submit. Editors really are overworked, so I must prepare a good package. Just as with a job interview, put your best foot forward and submit a well-prepared package—both in content and mechanical presentation. That is why I spend a lot of my time helping authors reshape the material before presenting it to an editor. Herman: In general, the steps are: 1) Make the proposal or manuscript as perfect as possible. Develop a sales concept and strategy. 2) Discuss the project with several appropriate
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editors, and submit it to those who showed significant interest. 3) Make follow-up calls to further massage their interest. 4) If and when an offer is received, call all the others who are still considering it and see if they would like to make an offer. If yes, set a deadline and create a bidding situation, whereby the project will be sold to the highest bidder. Marshall: Once a writer and I have agreed to work together, I go right into the market with his material. Often this means calling or meeting with editors who I believe would like this material. Submission methods vary widely, from the single submission to the auction-with-rounds, and I try to market a book in the most effective way possible for that book. During the marketing process, I try to keep my client informed about where the project has been and how the editors have responded. When an editor (or editors) makes an offer, it is of course my job to negotiate as effectively as possible on behalf of the client, explaining terms and policies as necessary and always offering my advice. Once a book is sold, it is up to me not only to monitor its progress up to and through publication, but also to pursue subsidiary rights such as television and film rights, serial rights, and rights overseas. Later, when royalty statements arrive, I must scrutinize them for accuracy and be ready to explain them to the author.
When should an author and agent part company? Fallon: When one or the other feels that they are no longer the best partnership in terms of furthering the writer’s career. Herman: The author should leave if he believes the agent is no longer providing reasonable or honest service. Marshall: When an agent has lost enthusiasm for a writer’s work, when a writer has lost faith in an agent’s ability to handle her work, or when any sort of tension has crept into the relationship—these are times when it is probably best for the agent and the author to part.
Explain your role as business manager. How does an agent keep track of royalties, etc.? Fallon: This sort of business duty is handled the same way as in any other business, through a workable system set up by the firm. Herman: Essentially, the agent is the conduit for the author’s due income from the publisher. This money should be turned around within ten business days. In most cases, there’s nothing extraordinary about this role. Sometimes an agent can spot errors and be effective in having them promptly corrected. Marshall: As a writer’s business manager, I handle all the details of the publishing process so that the writer can attend to what she does best—write. It is my job to see that a client’s book is published well and to intercede when it is not. Perhaps, most importantly, having an agent allows the writer to keep her relationship with the publisher “pure,” preventing the awkwardness that can arise when a writer represents herself.
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the big challenges of publishing in little magazines by
Will Allison
A
re you tired of making money from your writing? Do you enjoy waiting months for an editor’s reply? Do you thrive on exceedingly long odds? Do you prefer to publish in magazines that most people haven’t heard of? I’m only half-joking when I say you should be able to answer “yes” to each of these questions if you want to see your short stories in literary magazines. Consider the cold, hard facts: The majority of literary magazines pay in contributor’s copies or subscriptions rather than cash, and those that do pay cash sometimes offer as little as five dollars per story. It’s not unusual to wait six months for a reply on a submission. At many magazines, more than 99 percent of all manuscripts are rejected. And if you do manage to get published in a top quarterly—say Epoch or The Southern Review—don’t expect your family or coworkers to be impressed. Expect them to say, “That’s nice. Could you pass the salt?” Of course, none of this discourages thousands of short story writers from submitting their work to literary magazines each year. These so-called “little magazines” perform an important, if unsung, role in the world of letters. In addition to providing a home for cutting-edge fiction that mainstream magazines won’t publish, literary magazines are a proving ground for new writers. Your mother or boss may not read them but agents and book editors do, and many of today’s serious writers—the authors who’ve won Pulitzer Prizes and National Book Awards—got their start in modest quarterlies. But the real, practical reason that writers submit short stories to literary magazines is because they have few options. These days, only a handful of major magazines still publish literary fiction regularly. The sad truth is that there is little demand for short stories—especially literary short stories—outside the realm of little magazines.
They’re Magazines, Not Markets When it comes to literary magazines, forget everything you’ve learned about “the business of fiction writing.” Instead, think “labor of love”—a term that applies both to the writers, who are lucky to make a dime from their stories, and to the editors, who are lucky to make a dime from their magazines. If you flip through any listing of literary
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magazines, you’ll notice that many are affiliated with (and primarily funded by) universities. Many more are funded by grants, private contributions, or the editors themselves. Few if any literary magazines turn a profit, and, frankly, few are trying to (if they were, they wouldn’t be publishing short stories and poetry). Writers should therefore approach literary magazines with an appreciation for the ways in which they differ from more commercially oriented publications. For starters, writers ought to refrain from referring to literary magazines as “markets,” especially in their cover letters. (“Dear editor: Based on my research, your publication is an appropriate market for my fiction.”) I do not know a single editor who thinks of his literary magazine as a “market.”
The Editor Is Your Ally ... After you receive your first or tenth or one-hundredth rejection slip from an editor, you may begin to hate that person a little. You may begin to think that he doesn’t like you, that he enjoys turning down your work, that he doesn’t even bother to read your stories. You wonder why it takes him months just to say “no.” Despite the frustrations of the submission process, a levelheaded writer will always bear in mind that editors are allies, not opponents. No editor has ever gotten rich or famous by editing a literary magazine. They choose their jobs for the same reason that you write stories—because they care deeply about fiction. In fact, many editors are writers themselves and know full well how it feels to accumulate a shoebox full of rejection slips. Rest assured, when an editor reads your story, he wants to fall in love with it. He wants to publish it. He wants readers to clamor for more of your work. He wants the story to win a Pushcart Prize and an O. Henry Award and be chosen for The Best American Short Stories and New Stories From the South. And if you’re unpublished, he really wants to love your story, because few things are more satisfying than discovering talented new writers.
But the Odds Are Against You Chances are, however, that your story will be rejected. Editors simply don’t have the space, resources, or desire to publish the vast majority of stories they read. For instance, Zoetrope: All-Story receives about six thousand manuscripts each year and publishes only twentyeight to thirty of those—an acceptance rate of about .5 percent, or 1 in 200. (Compare that to undergraduate admissions at Yale, where the acceptance rate is about 15 percent.) Depending upon the size of the magazine and the way its staff is organized, your story will likely be screened by one or more editors or readers before reaching—or failing to reach—the editor who actually chooses which stories to publish. Up and down the line, these readers are rooting for your story, but by necessity, they’re also “reading to reject,” looking for any reason to discard your manuscript and move on to the next. Most submissions land in a magazine’s “slush pile,” its stack of unsolicited manuscripts. Such stories are said to have come “over the transom.” The majority of submissions are read and rejected at this level. Generally, the way a new (unpublished) writer gets past the slush pile is by writing a great story that catches the eye of an editor who then passes it up the ladder or sets it aside for a closer read. Some lucky stories bypass
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the slush pile altogether and go directly to higher-ups. These might include solicited stories, stories sent by agents, stories by well-known or well-published writers, and stories by writers with whom the editor has previously corresponded.
How Your Story Is (or Isn’t) Read How can editors read so many submissions and still have time to publish their magazines, much less eat and sleep? The answer is, most editors don’t read most submissions all the way through. This is true for every editor I know (though, to be fair, I once heard of an editor at a small journal who claimed to read every word of every manuscript she received.) Depending upon the story, an editor may read as little as a single line or paragraph, but—based on my experience and on conversations with other editors—I would guess two or three pages, minimum, is the norm. Cruel as it may seem, such a strategy makes perfect sense. Given the volume of stories they receive, most editors don’t begin to have time to read every manuscript from start to finish. An editor need read a story only up to the point at which he loses interest, the point at which he knows he doesn’t want to publish it. There is no reason for him to read any further. But what if the editor stops reading just before the story gets good? What if the story has a great ending, one that the editor would have loved? It doesn’t matter. Literary magazines publish stories, not pieces of stories. An editor must love the whole thing, from the first word to the last. And, alas, you have no control over an editor’s judgment. All you can do is send your work to magazines whose editors’ judgment and taste you trust based on the stories they publish.
Not All Submissions Are Created Equal Editors of most literary magazines will tell you sincerely that they’re looking for the best stories they can find, period, and therefore give equal consideration to all submissions. Some magazines even employ a blind reading policy in which the editors aren’t allowed to see authors’ names or cover letters. In practice, however, it’s fair to say that outside influences often affect the attention a story receives from an editor. Let’s say your cover letter indicates that you’ve previously published fiction in The Paris Review, won The Missouri Review Editor’s Prize, or attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Maybe you’re submitting your story on the recommendation of a well-known author or friend of the editor. Maybe you’ve received favorable feedback from the editor on previous submissions. None of these factors is going to cause the editor to publish your story. He may, however, be more patient with it. He may give your story an extra two or three pages to catch his interest before setting it aside. No doubt about it, previously unpublished writers are at a disadvantage, especially if their work ends up in the hands of an editor who hasn’t learned to trust his own taste, who needs outside validation—such as that provided by publishing credits—to make his decisions. Nevertheless, it’s safe to say that most editors strive not to be biased, because they know that an open mind increases their chances of recognizing quality work. You don’t discover the next Tim Gautreaux
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or Annie Proulx simply by following the pack. Most editors will happily give your story a fair shake, regardless of your credentials. All you have to do is avoid giving them a reason not to.
Multiple vs. Simultaneous Submissions The terms “multiple submission” and “simultaneous submission” are often used interchangeably, but they’re two different things. If you send a single story to more than one magazine at a time, you’re making a simultaneous submission. If you send more than one story at a time to a single magazine, you’re making a multiple submission. In their writer’s guidelines, most magazines clearly state their policy on simultaneous submissions but often don’t indicate their position on multiple submissions. Even if a magazine doesn’t explicitly prohibit multiple submissions, I recommend that you avoid sending more than one story at a time to a magazine (unless, of course, the editor asks to see several of your stories at once). The temptation is understandable. Let’s say you’ve got three stories that you want to send to a particular magazine. Why not send them all at once and save a little money and a lot of time? Three reasons. One, it’s selfish. To send three stories at once is like saying to the editor that you deserve three times as much attention and time as those writers who’ve sent only one story. Two, you run the risk of shooting yourself in the foot. If the editor dislikes your first story, he may—regardless of his good intentions—be less patient and less open-minded with the next two. Three, a multiple submission suggests to an editor that you aren’t able to gauge the quality of your own work. An editor wants to believe that you’re sending him your best story. To send three or five or ten stories is like telling the editor that you haven’t learned to separate your wheat from your chaff. Also, it’s wise to wait until you’ve heard back from an editor before sending him another story. Some writers will mail a new story off to the same magazine every week without waiting for a reply on the last one. Such behavior suggests an emphasis on quantity over quality, and it discourages the editor from initiating correspondence: Why should he bother with a handwritten suggestion if the writer isn’t going to read it before sending his next story?
The Value of Kind Words Writing is a solitary pursuit, but so is editing, especially if you have only a few hundred readers—which is usually the case among literary magazines. (A readership of more than one or two thousand is big news.) Like everybody else, editors appreciate feedback. I’ve heard more than one editor wonder aloud if anybody even reads his magazine. In your cover letter, consider taking time to let the editor know which stories, authors, and issues you’ve most enjoyed. If you’re a subscriber, why not mention that, too? And if you can’t find anything nice to say about the magazine, you shouldn’t be sending your manuscript there in the first place. Complimenting the magazine isn’t going to make the editor like your story, but it might make him like you, or at least help him to remember your name next time around.
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Most importantly, it will show him that you’ve actually read the magazine, which will distinguish you from the vast majority of writers in the slush pile.
On Handling Rejection No matter how many years you spend honing your writing, no matter how many stories you send to a magazine, it’s possible—in some cases, even likely—that the editor will never accept one of your stories. Never! If you’re unable to deal with this, you probably shouldn’t be sending out your work. As you begin to build a collection of rejection slips, remember that when your story is turned down, it doesn’t mean the editor doesn’t want to publish you or your work; it means only that he doesn’t want to publish that particular story. Don’t take rejection personally. Also, a rejection slip doesn’t necessarily mean that your story is unpublishable. Every day, editors reject stories that are snapped up by other editors further along the line. (Often they pass up such stories knowingly. An editor is not obligated to publish every story he finds “acceptable,” only those he falls in love with.) Publishing a short story, then, is a matter of finding the right editor at the right magazine at the right time. In other words, luck is involved. When you boil it down, all stories are rejected for essentially the same reason: The editor has read (or expects to read) other stories that he likes better than yours. Beyond the words you’ve put on the page, you have no influence over the editor’s decision, so don’t waste time stewing. Keep writing and try your luck at the next magazine.
Thank You, Sir, May I Have Another? Rejection slips are never much fun, but some are better than others. In the process of sending out your stories, you may receive “good” rejection slips, ones on which the editor has taken the time to write a brief note telling you that he enjoyed the story, inviting you to try again, or offering some suggestion for improvement. Such notes are rare and good things. They mean you’re getting closer. You’ve at least got an editor’s attention, if not a “yes.” If you receive a “good” rejection, dash off a quick thank-you note to the editor. This is not brownnosing, just common courtesy, and the editor will be more likely to remember your name next time around.
Know When to Move On Though editors are by and large fair-minded, hard-working people, inevitably there are some bad eggs—editors who are lazy about getting back to writers, who lose manuscripts, who write rude rejection letters, who don’t give every story a fair shake, who publish lousy stories. These editors are not worth your tears and curses. When you come across one, the best thing to do is simply move on. That’s one of the beauties of literary magazines. Though editors have different tastes, philosophies, and missions, most are looking for essentially the same thing—the best short stories they can find. As a writer—and a reader—you have plenty of choices.
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the serious business of choosing literary fiction by
Ben Nyberg
T
o take, or not to take: That’s the bottom-line question we editors are always asking. When I first became a practicing editor back in 1966—picking stories, poems, and essays for Kansas Magazine—I had no complicated set of criteria to help me answer that question, and fortunately, I didn’t need many. If something was publishable, we wanted to publish it. Not that we didn’t reject plenty of stories. We had our standards. But they were like a home plate umpire’s—a story was a strike or a ball; if a strike, we took it. A year later, Harold Schneider and I found ourselves editing Kansas Magazine’s successor, Kansas Quarterly, with four times the space to fill. I don’t think we’ve ever “widened the strike zone” to make up our quota of pages. From the start, I believe Kansas Quarterly’s standards have been consistently high (or at any rate consistent). But I know that at first it was still possible to make editorial decisions largely on the toggle basis of printworthiness: publishable, green light; not publishable, red light. Sometimes I yearn for those good old days, when I could feel that every deserving submission we screened saw print. But only sometimes. Most of the time I’m happier being an editor besieged by deserving writers, deluged by worthy material. I like knowing there’s so much good stuff out there, so many wordsmiths crafting diligently away, quite a few of them eager to be published in our magazine. I’m also glad I’ve had to become a better editor. When you can print only a few of many deserving submissions, you have to refine your critical sensitivity and establish your aesthetic priorities beyond the simple toggle level. You have to know—well enough to explain and justify it to fellow editors—why you value one publishable work over another.
Special Affects You ask: What are the standards literary magazine fiction editors try to apply to the steady, welcome stream of unsolicited manuscripts? As a fairly representative literary editor, I can explain. But before getting down to criteria, a disclaimer: No matter how hard I, or any other editor, may try to make purely objective judgments, there are always X-factors muddying our objectivity. This doesn’t make our decisions less fair, only more
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human. When the late John Gardner judged KQ’s fiction awards for 1977, he admitted candidly: “My fifth standard is pure blind prejudice.” Meaning that he, like the rest of us, had his quirks. I know we editors sometimes seem to behave like soulless robots, handing down death sentences with icy indifference. But we’re really pretty normal humans with a full set of personal passions and phobias, and a fair measure of fallibility. These X-factors are the main reason magazines need editorial boards. Without Xfactors, we could simply codify selection guidelines and hire a technician to screen submissions. A few magazines do operate with a single editor as judge-jury-executioner. This eliminates all the weary wrangling sessions and speeds the waiting author’s trial. But editors are too scrupulous a lot, generally, to like one-man shows. Consensus judgment rather than individual taste holds sway. That means more hurdles for your manuscripts to leap, but less chance you’ll be rejected (or accepted) because of X-factors. One other thing to keep in mind: a publication’s “special interests.” Of course, some of them are obvious enough. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, not surprisingly, “accepts only mystery, crime, and detective fiction.” The Twilight Zone is interested in “experimental, fantasy, horror, psychic/supernatural.” A waste of time and postage to send mainstream fiction to either of them. But most general-interest magazines have a slant, too, and you’ll have to dig beneath their names to find it. Reading a magazine before you submit to it is the only way to know for sure what its editors want. But descriptions of objectives and needs, like those in Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market, can help narrow your list. You’d think Road King magazine, for instance, might be every bit as macho as Hustler, but its editors warn: “Remember that our magazine gets into the home and that some truckers tend to be Bible Belt types. No erotica or violence.” Seniority Magazine, whose audience is the “fifty-five and over group,” offers this caution: “No stories about coping with retirement, entering nursing homes, dealing with tired marriages, etc.” So be sure you really know the special needs of any magazine before you ship your work off to it. Some magazines also strive for some kind of thematic unity in each of their issues, so that unless your story has the particular focus they’re featuring, it will be returned unconsidered. But keep your eyes open and you can also take advantage of such special topics. I’ve heard of magazines doing issues that featured epistolary fiction, Edgar Allan Poe spoofs and parodies, stories about children, rural fiction. The best thing about submitting to such “specials” is that there’s just not as much competition. It won’t mean a better chance of getting shoddy work published, but good work won’t have so far to rise to the top. Invitations to submit to features are normally found in the magazines themselves. But most editors seek variety rather than unity of effect, so that once they’ve taken several stories with a similar theme (like marital infidelity), tone (brightly comic, steely grim), or even setting (shopping mall, darkest Africa) they’re unlikely to want another until they’ve seen the accepted one into print.
Baited Breadth Still, after all the X-factors and special interests, it’s the literary excellence of your work more than anything else that brings acceptances. Regardless of our individual whims
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and cranks, we editors are all looking for the same thing—fiction masterpieces. No wonder the most common piece of advice to writers about “how to break in” is: Send us your best. Now we know, given the choice, you’d rather have your story appear in, say, The New Yorker than in Boondocks Review; you get more visibility and the pay’s better. But don’t suppose the editors of Boondocks will be any easier to satisfy than The New Yorker’s. Rumor has it that name writers send out their junk to Boondocks, whose editors snap it up because they’ll do anything for a little status. But of course name writers don’t want trash published under their name, in Boondocks or elsewhere, and Boondocks doesn’t want condescension from anyone. So send only your best to any magazine and hope the editors are discriminating enough to appreciate it. And keep sending it. Even if your work deserves print, given the odds against you on any one submission, it probably won’t make the grade if you don’t persist. You’ve heard of shrinking violet geniuses who never showed their stuff to anyone and left a trunkful of masterpieces in the attic of posthumous publication. Such pathological modesty is no virtue for you to imitate. Better model yourself on the old fisherman who baited up a dozen poles along the bank, and when he was accused of taking unfair advantage of the fish, replied, “Hell, I’m just giving myself a fighting chance!” Use your own poles and bait, but keep as many hooks baited as you can to keep yourself in circulation. Your best stuff, and only your best stuff. But that really presents the tough question—what is your best stuff? And how do you know when it’s good enough? Maybe that’s not even something a writer should ponder much. You can start brooding about “actualizing your creative potential” and wind up spooking yourself right out of the game. But you do need to have a firm grip on just who you are and what you know that merits a reader’s attention. If you don’t know your own mission, vision, habits, scruples, and quirks, you’re not on familiar enough terms with yourself to self-criticize. Only if you’re a “conscious artist,” working from technique rather than “inspiration,” can you use any advice about how to improve.
Playing God Now to those criteria. Mine work like a system of screens, from coarsest to finest, or, in another sense, most basic to most refined. To be acceptable, stories need to pass the first two screenings. To be actually accepted, probably three or four. The first, most fundamental screening must be for the most essential virtue:
Honesty What, honesty in a craft dedicated to artifice? Yes, because only sincere lies will do. Your imaginary details must come from an alternative environment so real that you’re not alibiing when you talk about it. Building air-castles is fine, but unless you create the ground they stand on and the beings that live in them as well, you’re not going to convince anybody that they exist. Your first duty as a fiction writer is to know that other place like a native, not just an occasional visitor. Anthony Trollope was so well acquainted with Barsetshire that he knew what its people were doing even when they
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weren’t in the story. William Faulkner “lived” in Yoknapatawpha County as surely as he did in Jackson, Mississippi. You’ve got to do the same. Being familiar with the setting is the only way to cover the doings and sayings, goings and comings of your imagined world’s residents accurately and thoroughly enough to take us there with you. That’s the essence of honesty—giving the reader a direct view of the lives of people who exist only in your unique mindland. How does an editor know when a story is dishonest? The same way you’d spot any con job—it smells fishy. As an example, let me recap my first attempt at fiction writing. Twenty-five years ago I knew little of fictional honesty. What I did know was that I could give Good Housekeeping’s readers a better story than they were used to getting. I’d have to sacrifice some seriousness and subtlety, but with just a little scaling down of my lofty standards, I’d treat them to a real gem of a yarn. So I went and wrote a slanderously false account of a gawky high school intellectual’s helpless infatuation with a glamorous cheerleader. The story bore no resemblance to life as it is lived. Worse, it was insufferably patronizing, strutting and swaggering, casting snide glances at a presumed throng of enchanted admirers. The sad moral of this bad fable: Don’t write out of pride or greed, and don’t write about what you can’t believe in. In short, be honest.
Efficiency By this, I mean the principle that in fiction, nothing’s there for nothing. Fiction may look like straight life, but the resemblance is superficial. Scratch a story and you get, not blood, but contrivance: structure, logic, symbolism, all sorts of synthetic goodies. Events happen only because some author-god makes them happen. In the real world, we seem to enjoy a measure of free will, but the world of fiction is driven entirely by the will of author-gods. Authors can literally make anything happen. They can say, “Let there be light,” and there will be light. Because they are all-powerful, author-gods have an absolute responsibility to play fair with both their puppet characters and their show’s spectators. And the basic rule of fair play is: Give readers as much as, but no more than, they need to know to get the point of the story. So the presentation of evidence in fiction is highly selective—what helps the reader get it belongs; what doesn’t, doesn’t. I’ve returned hundreds of potentially strong stories that failed mainly because of inefficiency. Every year I read dozens of narratives that seem to be nothing but records of actual experience. The raw data can’t be doubted, but I always have to wonder why a reader should be curious about the random episodes of somebody’s personal life he doesn’t know from Adam or Eve. Such a confessional ego trip is a waste of editorial time. We try to pretend it’s really fiction and so to make sense of the authorial persona’s spiritual journey, only to find in the end the joke’s on the reader, there’s no real point after all. Efficient stories never quit pushing ahead, never relax their search for answers to the questions they raise. The result is a rich, dense illusion of life that manages to pack large meaning into a few pages. Few, but not necessarily very few. Efficiency isn’t simply brevity. Some of the classical masterpieces of efficiency like James Joyce’s “The Dead” and Anton Chekhov’s “The Lady With the Dog” would take thirty or more pages. Efficiency isn’t pure velocity
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either. For sheer speed Ian Fleming’s spy novels are hard to top, but for real pace—that feeling of powerful purpose unfolding, surging inevitably on like a great river to spill finally into a vast resolving sea—give me Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent any day. Pace is set by the rate a story’s central idea develops, not by the noise level of the plot. So if you’re tempted to introduce some sex or violence just to liven things up, ask yourself instead why your story’s so dull. If it’s not going anywhere anyway, no amount of gratuitous hype will save it.
Complexity Eudora Welty says a good story is a “continuing mystery.” That means, no matter how often you read it, a story worth reading will always be larger than your comprehension of it. You can’t wear it out because its central question is the question life itself asks. Life gets more profound the more we know of it, and so does the expanding universe of serious fiction. What gives a story this quality of complexity is its author’s determination to accept no easy fixes, to settle for no less than the depth and range of actual experience. Specifically, this means 3-D characters involved in 3-D predicaments. It’s so tempting to sell out. Human nature yearns for simplicity, because life’s so complicated. We want fairy tale solutions—“and they lived happily ever after.” It’s tough enough to live problems, we feel. Why should we have to face them in our stories, too? Because stories, the best stories, are the finest life-problem decoders and life-crisis stabilizers available. Of course there’ll always be escapist fiction, too, for those times when we really need to run rather than cope. Nobody’s up to fighting trim every day. But nobody with any gumption wants to spend more time running than coping. Hence, the mission of serious fiction: to see life steadily and see it whole (thank you, Matthew Arnold). When I was trying to work myself up to read J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, I asked those who’d read and liked it what there was to get interested in. Fan after fan told me, without hesitation, I’d be fascinated by Gollum. When I got into it, I saw why: Gollum is Tolkein’s little go at Dostoevsky. No Raskolnikov, but still a truly tormented soul that makes us ponder Faulkner’s everlasting problem of the human heart in conflict with itself. Stories that fail the Complexity test do so because they try to deny human nature, to tell us life is a bowl of pitless cherries. Good fiction gives us the cherries, pits and all. The essence of complexity is quality workmanship throughout, uniformly top-ofthe-line components, and no skimping on characters or theme or plot or setting. Henry James recommended that you try to be one on whom nothing is wasted. If you practice that kind of sensitivity, and add honesty, you’ve got complexity.
Authority Hard to define, but easy to feel. The honest story that lacks authority may well be the single biggest category of rejected fiction. Because poor authority is so tough to describe, writers often think editors capricious, arbitrary, or evasive when they report, “Your story didn’t quite come off,” or “Interesting, but not quite compelling.” Such remarks usually mean, “Close but no cigar”—a compliment. If you’re new to the craft, be encouraged. A little more experience should bring the authority you need.
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But what is this mysterious “authority” and where does it come from? I’d call it a wise and easy authorial confidence that both guides a reader’s attitude and spurs his thinking. How to get it? Exercise. Practice. I mentioned earlier that you had to be able to live in the elsewhere of your story. The air of that elsewhere is words, and you’ve got to breathe words. When you’ve made and remade enough sentences that the scribal act is the most natural and familiar routine of your life, you ought to feel comfortable enough with words to write with authority. Not that the verbal flow ever turns smooth or steady, but its trickle/gush can become as mundane as heartbeats. The common name for authority is, of course, style. But style is really authority in action, authority showing itself verbally. Or concealing itself: The best style is usually invisible. When writing calls attention to itself, ordinarily it’s a case of words upstaging ideas, which puts cart before horse. Poor style of any kind—from “purple” to sloppy—is a distraction, and so an enemy of concentration, and so an enemy of good writing, fiction or otherwise. Of course there are exceptions to this rule. H.E. Francis’s stories, several of which KQ has had the good fortune to publish, are always very gaudy stylistically. But only because they reflect the tortured minds of their main characters. Rodney Nelson used poetic diction in “John Root Is Gone” to capture the aura of his Roethke-like central figure. Stephen Dixon’s “Cy” can’t very well keep his strangeness from showing itself in his narrative voice. But the rule stands: Good style is normally a colorless, odorless, textureless medium of conveyance. What’s conveyed may have color, odor, texture, but style shouldn’t be a distorting lens the reader has to correct for. When a reader’s under the influence of style/authority, it’s like following the Pied Piper.
Originality Nothing is rarer than genuine originality, nothing artistically finer. Of course it’s easy to be different. Anyone can perform a weird masquerade and get folks to point at him. What’s hard is to be different and still get folks to hear and believe. That takes genius. Meaning it’s out of reach for most of us? On a daily basis, probably yes. Beethoven, Shakespeare, Michelangelo—a handful of creative giants seem to have enjoyed steady runs of original vision. But for most of us garden-variety specimens it’s a case of nowand-then, off-and-on flashes of “inspiration.” The most important thing to remember about originality is that it absolutely can’t be forced. Try to force it and you’ll get nothing but oddity. The most you can actively do is to cultivate your eccentricity. Don’t let your natural uniqueness die of neglect. If you spend your life imitating others, socially or artistically, you can’t expect to turn out very original. It’s not even necessary to be a recluse in some isolated garret. Just don’t lose your identity in the crowds. Hold fast to your observer status, to that perspective that sets you apart. You needn’t look down on people or think you’re a privileged character. But you can’t hop on the bandwagon and also march to a different drumbeat. Some young fiction writers worry about a lack of freshness in their plots or unusualness in their characters or novelty in their style or format. Remind yourself that Shakespeare’s plots were all derivative and his dramatic technique was conventional, and quit worrying. If you have the potential of originality, be yourself and it will show through.
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Cool the Coffee From originality you can only go back to honesty and start over. Originality is simply the highest avatar of honesty, the ultimate expression of authority. True complexity is possible only within a context of full efficiency, which must be practiced upon a groundwork of honesty. And so it goes, up and down—and around—the scale. Five benchmarks of quality, five gradations. You must be honest to pass. Honest and efficient gets you a C. Add complexity for a B. And authority for an A. Originality is that exceptional A+ that’s really off the scale. In closing, let me give you an affective criterion that sums up all the descriptive ones. One final bit of personal history. I recall the Sunday afternoon I finished reading the submitted manuscript of Steven Allaback’s “It’s Never Bad in the Mountains” and turned to find a full cup of cold coffee beside me. The neglected cup of coffee: not too bad a figure for the subjugating mesmerism of strong fiction. The intensity of this experience that a powerful story inflicts on us comes, I am convinced, from our being forced to face its issues so directly we adopt them as our own. We are, in a word, implicated in the depicted action. In the Allaback story, I was caught up superficially on the level of adventure, wondering if anyone was going to fall to his death, and if so, who. But I was more surely held by the battle of wills, the moves and countermoves of its three conflicting quests. I was made to care so deeply about the lives of these imaginary beings that I forgot they were only performers on a stage and took their case to heart. That’s always the way with working fiction. No wandering idly through a zoo, noting with detached amusement the alien oddities of some other species. Rather, listening for dear life to crucial news about humanity’s struggle for high ground. We don’t so much escape into great fiction as come home to it. We don’t lose ourselves in some exotic adventure, we find ourselves challenged by our own uncertainties, disturbed by our own cussedness, supported by our own determination. And when we’re all done, our coffee’s gone cold. Make an editor forget his coffee and you’re a long way toward making him take your story.
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superior bambini and other samples from the slush by
David Groff
I
t’s late Friday afternoon. I have written jacket copy for three novels, calmed two anxious authors, discussed a pending contract with an agent in need of Valium, dickered with the production department for a rush job on a blurry author photograph, and consumed four cups of coffee. Now I turn to the stack of manuscripts beside my desk and plan my weekend. Before me are four piles of novels, each pile eighteen inches high. That makes six feet of fiction. Novels from Nashville, novels from Nome, novels from 95th Street. I should be able to read two feet this weekend, and, if I’m lucky, still be able to finish Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which work forced me to put aside two weeks ago. For me, it’s a rare pleasure to read a book with a spine. From Louisville, Kentucky, a novel about “two competing intelligence bureaus, the international bond market, and the call of mankind to God.” Heavens. That one I can put off for a swift browse on Monday morning. From Rochester, New York, the story of a young woman psychotherapist and her eccentric patients, including a lawyer who wears a boa constrictor wrapped around his shoulders. It’s badly typed, but not in a while have I read about a snake in court. Will see. An MD in Florida has sent a medical thriller about a gastroenterologist who uncovers a hospital scandal while he’s resectioning bowels. Ick. But the writer has been published in small magazines and colon quarterlies, so it’s worth a look. The novel might well be too “genre” for my publishing house, but maybe it could be a paperback original, assuming the writing is decent. From another doctor—when do all these MDs find time to play golf?—comes the story of his Texas boyhood, a “fictional novel.” Uh-oh. That’s another one for early Monday morning. A former screen actress I’ve never heard of submits a “romance” concerning a young nurse who goes to Hollywood and ends up ministering to an alcoholic film star, with whom she falls in love just as she lands a role in a famous director’s new musical movie. The drunk actor grows suitably jealous. The story sounds suspiciously like A Star Is Born. Still, everybody loves to read about Hollywood, including me.
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A top literary agent has sent me a novel about the first Irish princess to visit the Ottoman Empire. I flip to page 23: “Mohammed let his robe fall to the tiled floor as Elaine lay breathless beneath him like an octopus out of water, panting. ‘Come to me,’ she cried, even as she knew her lover could barely understand her English. He fell willingly against her, centuries of desire visible in his shortening breaths. ‘Ah,’ Mohammed cried as he licked her seashell-like ear, his voice as piercing as a rapier. ‘You shall today become one of my wives. Together we shall sire a race of superior bambini!’” The agent says she wants big money for this one. Like a good boy I put Mohammed, the nurse, the Rochester therapist, and the crusading gastroenterologist into my backpack. After taking an hour to work off my frustrations on the Nautilus machines at my gym, I go home and read until Sunday evening.
On Watch for the Rolex I shouldn’t leave the impression that most editors hate their jobs and would prefer to live on Fiji surrounded by charming islanders who don’t know a book from a brick. While the Fiji part sounds nice, editors on the whole adore their jobs, work long hours for relatively low pay, and enjoy a pleasure rare among working people: They get to see the product of their labors. They assist in a kind of birth, watching a novel evolve from a jumbled stack of pages to an ordered stack of pages, then to a copyedited manuscript, proofs, and finally a book—a book they can hold in their hands, a book that a few and sometimes many people will enjoy and benefit from. Nor is reading manuscripts, either solicited or unsolicited, an onerous task. Certainly it’s often frustrating, not because so many are bad but because so many are mediocre—decent ideas for novels that lack wit, spark, singularity, authority. Nevertheless, reading manuscripts in search of the one that’s dazzlingly publishable isn’t like looking for a needle in a haystack. It’s more like burrowing through a haystack in search of something slightly larger and much more valuable—a Rolex watch, say, that needs only a once-over or twice-over before it ticks like a charm. I like that analogy because a novel, like a watch, is useful.
Useful? How Can Fiction Be Useful? There once was a cartoon by William Hamilton in The New Yorker; two well-to-do young women are in a bookstore doing some serious browsing, when one says to the other, “Fiction’s nice, but it doesn’t get you anywhere.” That cartoon hit home for me. As a young editor involved in publishing both fiction and nonfiction while trying to stay in tune with the readership out there, I’m constantly amazed at the difficulty inherent in getting even the most commercial fiction across to a larger audience. Few novels sell as well as The Secret, Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution, or Who Moved My Cheese? Often, a publisher’s leading fiction titles—especially from new authors—will sell no better than so-called “midlist” nonfiction dealing with women alcoholics, say, or jet lag, or how to get a corner office, thin thighs, or loving mate in thirty
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days. Fiction is always a hard sell. People want to spend $24.95 on a book that tells them something they can use. Booksellers are saying that fiction sales have begun to improve, not just for blockbusters like Stephen King and Jean M. Auel, but also for modest commercial and literary fiction. Still, editors remain very cautious in choosing fiction to take on. A novel has to be truly extraordinary to garner much attention. That’s probably a good thing. What is also a good thing is that editors of fiction have taken a leaf from nonfiction. They know now that people read fiction not only to be entertained but also to learn something useful that gets them somewhere. The pundits say this is the age of information. Every day we’re engulfed by facts about new software, yuppie eating habits, Shiites, and Elizabeth Taylor’s love life. Sure, we can sometimes drown in fact, but most of the time we wallow happily in our trivial and not-so-trivial pursuits.
For Peat’s Sake Readers want a good story, fascinating characters, and some refreshing sex; but they also want to know about polo ponies in Palm Beach; the lives of the natives of Egypt, Maine; the revolutions in the record industry; the strained routine of Marines in Iraq; and the drugs of choice among Hollywood wives. I believe that if a writer can weave a whole world with drama, immediacy, and authority, then she is halfway along to competing with Dr. Atkins. If there’s one thing editors are looking for, it’s a vivid, authoritative engagement with the world. Editors don’t want much; they just want the world. The fatal flaw in most manuscripts I read is a lack of engagement and intimacy in describing and evoking a very particular world. Few novels I read are vivid enough in their physical detailing to create a physical response in me. Few are full of information, engaging, and useful enough for me to remember. As a positive example, consider that First Lady of popular fiction, Judith Krantz. Ms. Krantz is not only a glamorous jet-setter who wakes in Beverly Hills and dines in Paris. She is a hard worker and a dogged researcher. Most of Mistral’s Daughter is a romp between three passionate generations; it’s also a carefully plotted (and most important) convincing portrait of avant-garde twentieth-century worlds of art and fashion. Writers tend to believe they can reel off a Judith Krantz sort of novel, but it takes that one thing called talent. Her novels are sweet cream, factual, informative, and fun, with characters you care about because they’re sexy and glamorous and real—existing in a genuine world genuinely painted. I once worked on a novel by Morgan Llywelyn, whose novels of Irish history have won her an enthusiastic following. Grania: She-King of the Irish Seas is the story of a reallife Irish woman pirate, a sort of Queen Elizabeth I with estrogen, who captains a shipping empire, staves off the invading English, and learns how to love a man. Grania is a terrific character, and I see her so sharply because Morgan Llywelyn knows Ireland inside out. I can smell the peat burning. (Do you know where the phrase “keep a straight
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face” comes from? When you dig out peat, you must make the spade thrust perfectly vertical—and so keep a straight face.) The creation of a convincing, engaging world is a vital ingredient of every kind of fiction. When I was still an editor at Crown Publishers, the house bravely brought out a book of short stories: Easy in the Islands by Bob Shacochis. The book succeeded because Shacochis was able to put across his intimate knowledge of the Caribbean with terrific drama and style. His is not the Club Med Caribbean but the Caribbean of fishing boats, canny natives, shanties, jazz clubs, and dissolute, scared Americans. After reading Shacochis I felt I could wander the islands without a map. [Editor’s note: Easy in the Islands won the American Book Award in 1985.]
Vinyl Imagination You don’t need an exotic locale or esoteric knowledge to succeed in engaging your reader, however. Michael Cunningham’s Golden States, for example, is a magnificently detailed, quiet novel of a young boy coming of age in southern California. You sympathize with this character and come to love him; and you learn exactly what it’s like to sip coffee in a Burger King at dawn. Few of the novels I read possess this sort of intrigue and detail. Sure, the characters may feel real, and they may have interesting thoughts, actions, and neuroses. The dialogue may be sharp and the people may not all sound alike (this last is a rare phenomenon). But if the people I’m reading about don’t startle me into paying attention and don’t exist in an environment that fascinates me intrinsically, then I’m going to start longing for Fiji. Let’s go back to one of the novels I took home for the weekend—the one about the nurse who comes to Hollywood, mops up after the drunk star, and then hits the big time. It’s a rehash, but that’s okay; writers are constantly writing versions of what they have read, and publishers often publish last week’s pot roast. The dialogue is nice, even occasionally witty, and the nurse has more guts than Florence Nightingale. But I do not believe for a second that this author has ever jaywalked across Santa Monica Boulevard. She does mention a Jacuzzi once or twice, but I don’t learn a damn thing about the movies, or how Malibu feels at dusk. I might as well be in Newark, New Jersey. Her setting, and the overall physical circumstances of her fiction, are utterly generic. Even when writers think they are stocking their novels with detail, they usually aren’t. I’ll read all about how our heroine makes love with a Maytag repairman in the back seat of a 1969 Oldsmobile Cutlass parked on a radiant cliff at Big Sur. But, for example, what kind of sound does our heroine’s buttocks make as Maytag lifts her off the sweaty vinyl seat? Beats me. And although I’ll hear a lot about the crashing Pacific surf, nothing in the writing will send the spray into my eyes. An author may write with what he feels is sharp focus, but usually the camera doesn’t linger long enough or zoom in with any style. Most writers fail to treat their readers with enough intimacy. They seem to assume that readers can feel exactly what the writers feel themselves, but most readers really need a strong jump start to ignite their imaginations.
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To Wit Ironically In his book After Virtue, the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre posits that any ethical position in the twentieth century cannot be the result of theory or abstract reasoning. Ethical stands must spring out of complicated, real situations seen fully and honestly, in all their complications. Only with thick description can someone make a virtuous ethical choice. And only with thick description can a novelist render character and situation with the virtue that is authority. All of this comes down, of course, to language. If a writer can zoom in on a scene or a feeling using language that transcends the simplifications inherent in everyday language, then he will write with that element that is so unteachable, so impalpable, and so necessary: style. I have no idea what style is. At the Iowa Writers’ Workshop I took a course in Prose Style and while I did learn that Joan Didion writes with an immense number of periodic sentences, I ended up with even less concept of style. I don’t think even Joan Didion knows for sure what style is. I did learn enough, though, to encourage all writers (myself as jacket-flap writer included) to master all the forms of classical rhetoric, from periodic sentences to anaphora. Even many of the best writers I know write too sparely, too blandly. It’s always best, I think, to pile on everything in the first draft and then to hone in on dialogue, actions, and descriptions that truly resonate stylistically and textually. Too many writers, moreover, tend to slap sentences together so as to make their meaning clear and their rhetorical impact nil. Style works much as music does rendering feelings too deep for tears. Cicero, for one, knew a hell of a lot we don’t. There is one element of style and attitude that is in fact definable, and, while not always overtly necessary, a big help to any writer: wit. I have plodded through thousands of manuscripts that are as somber and arid as Death Valley. Presumably, most are written by people who can make amusing dinner conversation, but who confuse sobriety with seriousness. These novels, about being rich, or female, or gay, or American, may reveal earnestness, pain, and sensitivity—and also induce in the reader not only bouts of giggling but narcolepsy as well. Sure, human life is nasty, brutish, and short. But far too many authors have been convinced by some Miss Thistlebottom that fiction must be as solemn as an undertaker’s funeral. This is nonsense. Tragedy is not superior to comedy. Ask Shakespeare. To our gastroenterologist, there is nothing inherently funny about resectioning a bullet-ridden bowel. True enough. But it turns out our hero is as single-minded and aggressive as Caspar Weinberger. Even when he lies beside the fire with his girlfriend he doesn’t crack a smile. Nobody jokes; nobody (including the author, it seems) finds anything ironic in the story. Since the novel isn’t fun, and the plot a little improbable and icky, I’ll decline on this one. But Gert, our Rochester therapist, is thoroughly human, likable, easier to take. She has two crazy cats named Boris and Natasha. At the local natural history museum, one of her patients tails her. It’s the mayor; he is dressed like a nun. Gert treats her mayor
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with all the perplexity, irony, and wit owed to a public official who believes he is Sister Maria Dolorosa. I’m not in the business of giving prescriptions to writers’ sensibilities. Part of the pleasure of editing is the chance to help a writer shed her particular angle of light on the world. But I do believe in wit—not gut-busting jokes necessarily, but wit as John Donne might define it: the use of all your intellectual, emotional, and creative faculties, together with a sense of proportion and a modest taste for irony. Those same pundits who call our era the age of information also declare it the age of irony. What is irony after all but the recognition that all is not as it appears to be? We receive that message several hundred times a day. And all fiction writers are in the business of revealing not what seems to be simple and true but what is complicated and true.
Looking For ... Beyond wit, style, thick description, and characters to care about, what does an editor look for? Editors don’t know what they are looking for. They are basically readers, and they like to be surprised. They also like neatness, a snappy cover letter (with the manuscript), and an addressed return envelope with the stamps already in place. You should also keep in mind the following when submitting fiction for publication: 1. Know your publisher. If you’ve written a romance novel about an eighteen-yearold girl who falls in love with an international photographer and lives happily ever after, you shouldn’t send it to Knopf. Knopf doesn’t publish romance. Neither do most other hardcover houses. Ask yourself what kind of novel you have written, and write away for the publisher’s catalogs so that you know exactly what you’re getting into, or check the book racks in your favorite bookstore. 2. Ask yourself if you’re really ready to publish a book. Maybe your epic novel of Greenland could work well initially as a series of short stories. By publishing extensively in magazines, you could garner a bit of cash, some recognition (editors take notice of an author’s credits and they try to keep abreast of magazine fiction), and possibly an agent. 3. Decide whether you want an agent. Like a dishwasher or a Cuisinart, an agent is nice to have, but you can do the job yourself. Novels submitted by agents generally get read first, but most editors pay attention to work from unagented writers as well—where the quality and originality are often just as high. 4. Write a wonderful query letter. It may be difficult—it may seem easier to write another novel—but it’s worth the effort. A query letter is a great opportunity to write your own jacket copy. Your letter should be a succinct, entertaining, and informative introduction to your fiction and its author. Spend time on it. Don’t be cute, just human. 5. Sample chapters. I personally don’t mind when an author sends along several sample chapters with an initial query. But I’m infuriated when those chapters are either taken from the middle of a manuscript or are nonconsecutive. Supposedly, nonconsecutive chapters give an editor the chance to see the writer’s overall style
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and plot, but the editor reads your work with no context. Send the first three or four chapters of your story. If you don’t think they represent your entire novel, rewrite them until they do—until they make an editor quiver from scalp to toenail, demanding to read more. 6. Manuscript mechanics. If you’re sending in hundreds of pages, put them in a box. Don’t ever bind your manuscript; that means I can’t take home only a hunk of it at a time. Don’t send loose stamps and please don’t enclose a check for return postage; that’s a pain. It’s fine and dandy to submit a clean photocopy; everybody does it; and I would feel terrible if I dropped an original typescript in the bathtub. Computer-generated text is fine, too, just as long as it’s not dot matrix on perforated paper, in which case I will ruin my eyes and barely resist the temptation to return the manuscript in dot-sized pieces. 7. Never, ever, send a manuscript addressed to “the Editor” or “Fiction Editor.” There is no such person. Your novel will be read in thirty seconds by an overworked assistant and not even Henry James could survive that. Check the directories (Literary Market Place, Writer’s Market, Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market, Publishers Weekly, etc.) for the name of an editor whose specialties and previously published books indicate she might be interested in your work. This is worth the hassle of researching. You still might receive a form rejection slip, but at least you’ve done everything you can. 8. Give the editor time to read your manuscript. I’m generally about four weeks behind in my reading. If an editor holds onto your novel for a long time, it may mean that many editors are reading it. It may also mean your novel has been lost in the mail. That sometimes happens. Feel free to query a publisher after the stated time elapsed and hope that the publisher has kept a record of your submission. 9. Don’t operate in a vacuum. After three years at Iowa, I don’t quite believe a writers conference or creative writing program can create a writer, but contact with other literary toilers certainly can make the process of writing more professional and less lonely. Read everything you can and feel free to imitate; everybody does it (“Bad writers borrow and good writers steal,” said one of my teachers). And try your work out on people around you who won’t try to keep you happy with pacifying answers. Rewrite and rewrite and then, after five months, rewrite again. Most of the novels I read would have been much more successful if they’d gone through the typewriter or word processor once more, or at least had an objective reader early on. Why do I feel so often that the author and I are the only ones who have ever read the author’s novel?
Super Baby I can’t encourage anyone to be a writer. Writing and publishing are still mannerly occupations, without the high-stakes viciousness of the movie biz or arms-control talks—and the rewards are concurrently small. Few books make anyone much money; fewer people buy bestsellers than gyrate to Madonna. Become a rock star or a television
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evangelist—you’ll have a better shot at posterity. Writing is a long, lonely, grinding, and often unsuccessful endeavor. So is editing. I spend hours reading manuscripts despairing at the amount of mediocrity in circulation. But editing is a craft, not an art, and compared with the toil of writing, it’s child’s play, requiring just politeness and an ability to see the forest for the trees. Sometimes, late on a Sunday afternoon when manuscripts sprawl like autumn leaves on my living room floor, I open to page one of a new novel and realize suddenly, viscerally, from the first sentence, that I’m in the presence of a wonderful, talented, publishable writer: “Gert had always hated her name. It rang in her ears like the noise a duck would make as it froze slowly on the snowy lawn of the Kodak building. Gert. She sat pinned in her sweaty office chair listening to the unfortunately named Thomas G. Hardy, a wholesale lingerie salesman, explain why he could no longer sleep with his wife. He was discussing gardenia perfume with Gert. As he leaned forward, sniffling slightly, Gert felt a feathery, damp terror tumble into the cavern of her body as soundlessly as an eyelash.” A little overwritten, maybe. But nice sounds, great imagistic contrasts, and two fascinating characters in one paragraph. I keep on reading, until dusk, past dinner, toward bedtime, until Gert’s story is complete. I go to bed and even dream of Gert. On Sunday night, Mohammed, the Hollywood nurse, and the crusading gastroenterologist are boxed and replaced in my backpack, all to be politely returned on Monday morning. Gert stays with me. I’ll write a report on the novel, trying to be as savvy as Gert’s creator. I’ll walk down the hall to the office of another editor, cradling Gert. If I’m lucky, and other editors love this novel, too, this will be the first of many trips down the hall with Gert, until at last I am carrying a finished book, ready for the rest of the world. Now I burst into the editor’s office, carrying something that’s alive. “Barbara,” I say, as the editor looks up. “A superior bambino!”
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Rejection slips: a writer’s guide to what they mean by
Will Allison
A
few years ago at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, a talented young writer approached me with a question about a rejection slip she’d received for a short story. The rejection was a standard preprinted note, but at the bottom—in friendly, loopy script—someone had written, “Liked this one!” She asked me what to make of this, and I told her the fact that somebody had taken the time to jot a note, however brief, was encouraging, and that she should try the magazine again. “Yes,” she said, growing a bit impatient, “but what does it mean?” As a writer who’s received his share of rejections, I could appreciate her frustration. What exactly did they like about the story? How much did they like it? Did it come close? What didn’t they like about it? And anyway, who liked the story? An editor? An intern? A mail clerk? At the same time—having rejected hundreds of stories myself while working as an editor at Story—I wanted to tell her to relax. Even the simplest rejection note can, after too many readings, begin to seem like some daunting Rosetta Stone, a code the beginning writer feels he must decipher in order to get published. Liked this one! But there is no hidden meaning, and editors who write such notes aren’t trying to be cryptic. They’re simply too busy to write more, their energies being better spent on stories they do intend to publish. As it is, editors devote an enormous amount of time to rejecting stories. At Story, for instance, we received about twenty thousand manuscripts a year and rejected all but fifty or sixty of them. It was dispiriting work—especially for a writer—and some days I felt not so much like an editor as a sort of literary bouncer. Rejection notes are a fact of life, though, and we writers might as well make the most of them. After all, they can help us gauge how close we’re getting to having a story accepted. They’re crucial in establishing relationships between writers and editors—relationships that sometimes lead to publication. And, in some cases, they’re even useful when revising a manuscript. For the budding story writer, it’s worthwhile to know how to use these little notes, when to shrug them off, and when to take them to heart, because sometimes they might be telling you more than just “no.”
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The Two Types of Rejections Rejection slips fall into two basic categories, the personal note and the form rejection. The lowly form rejection—so named because it contains a preprinted, impersonal message—is often produced on a tiny slip of paper, a practice that saves trees and postage but also seems to symbolize, quite crushingly, a magazine’s regard for a rejected story. The politely worded message contained on form rejections usually expresses a mixture of gratitude and regret, such as this one we used at Story: “We appreciate the opportunity to consider your work. We regret having to return it, but thank you for sending it to us.” Of all form rejections, perhaps none is so familiar to American short story writers as this tasteful classic from The New Yorker, which manages to be polite without mincing words: “We regret that we are unable to use the enclosed material. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider it. The Editors.” The wording varies a little from magazine to magazine, but the basic message is always the same: thanks, but no thanks. Nevertheless, many rejection slips tap dance around this fact in ways that can be maddening for the beginning writer, offering lame excuses (“Due to our extensive backlog, we regret we will not be able to publish your story ...”) or couching the rejection in temporal terms, saying that a manuscript doesn’t meet the “present needs” of the magazine, or that the magazine is unable to use it “at this time.” The truth, of course, is that the story doesn’t meet the past, present, or future needs of the magazine, and the editors will be unable to use it at any time. It should be noted, however, that some magazines employ more than one form rejection in order to communicate differing levels of interest in an author’s work. In-house, these are often referred to as an A rejection, B rejection, and so forth. For example, here’s a form rejection a friend of mine received from one of my favorite magazines, The Paris Review, expressing zero interest in her manuscript: “Thank you for showing your manuscript to The Paris Review. We regret we are not able to make use of it at this time. Sincerely, The Editors.” But on a subsequent submission, she received a more encouraging slip: “Thank you for showing your manuscript to The Paris Review. We are unable to accept it for publication, but remain interested in your work and would like to see more of it. Sincerely, The Editors.” This is about as good as it gets with form rejections. The second type of rejection is the personal note, wherein someone at a magazine actually takes the time to write you a letter—or at least a few words (Liked this one!). Personal notes may be handwritten or typed, signed or not. Sometimes they’re jotted at the bottom of a form rejection slip, and other times they arrive on the magazine’s letterhead. In any event, they’re much harder to come by than straight form rejections. During my time at Story, for example, I wrote perhaps one personal note for every twentyfive stories I rejected.
Interpreting the Language of Rejection Should you ever find yourself poring over a rejection note and asking, “But what does it mean?”, it’s useful to remember that there is really only one reason an editor rejects
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a story—she doesn’t like it enough to publish it. A rejection note does not mean that your story is unpublishable. In fact, it’s not uncommon for a story to be rejected ten or twenty times before being accepted. A rejection note simply means it’s time to dust yourself off and climb back on the horse, to send the manuscript to the next magazine on your wish list. Even though all rejections bear the same disappointing news, some are less disappointing than others. I often refer to personal notes—not without a sense of irony—as “good rejections,” because they suggest that, even though the editor didn’t want the story, it at least caught her eye. This can be a faulty assumption, though. Sometimes editors write personal notes for reasons that have little to do with the manuscript itself. For instance, maybe an editor’s policy is to write a personal note to anybody enrolled in an MFA program, or to anybody who’s previously published a short story, or to anybody who merits professional courtesy, such as a writing teacher or fellow editor. Other reasons might be harder to fathom. Maybe the personal note you received was written by one of those rare editors (usually found at smaller literary magazines) who makes a point of personalizing every rejection. Maybe you mentioned in your cover letter that you’re a subscriber, and the editor penned the note in gratitude. Maybe the editor felt some connection to you because your protagonist has the same name as her grandmother, or you share the same alma mater or hometown. In my case, I couldn’t help jotting a brief note to any writer whose submission bore the postmark of Columbia, South Carolina, where I grew up. Perhaps the most important thing to look for in a rejection note—more important than an editor’s praise for your distinctive voice or her favorable comparison between your writing style and Alice Munro’s—is an editor’s desire to read more of your work. When an editor sends you a note that says “Please send more” or “Try us again,” that’s exactly what she means. Such invitations—especially signed ones—are not doled out carelessly. My rule of thumb at Story was that I didn’t ask to see more work unless I was willing to enter into a long-term correspondence with that writer, personally responding to all of her subsequent submissions even though, in the end, the odds were still such that I might never publish one of her stories.
Getting the Most From Rejections The novelist Karen Joy Fowler saves her rejection slips in a fat envelope so she can show her students that even award-winning authors must cope with rejection. Some writers tape rejection slips above their desk for inspiration. Still other writers post theirs on the Internet. A Google search for the term “rejection slips” nets close to 6,500 hits, including many sites where published authors post their rejection slips online—ostensibly as a way to encourage unpublished writers, though one gets the sense that many of these authors just want to say “I told you so” to the lame-brained editors who dared reject them way back when. In more practical terms, rejection slips are useful in helping you determine how close you’re getting to publication, providing a barometer—albeit a highly imprecise
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one—of interest in your work. A single form rejection tells you nothing except that a magazine doesn’t want your manuscript. But if you send the manuscript to lots of magazines and it garners lots of form rejections, they might collectively be telling you it’s time to revisit the story or start a new one. On the other hand, if a story accumulates several favorable personalized rejections— preferably signed, preferably offering detailed feedback—you might reasonably hope that it will soon find a home (though “soon” may mean months or years, depending on the response times of the magazines to which you’re submitting). If the notes are signed by editors rather than by assistant or associate editors, all the better. Check the masthead to get a sense of how far up the ladder your story climbed, keeping in mind that, at smaller magazines, there may be only one rung on the ladder. With some magazines, the turnaround time on a submission also might hint at the level of editorial interest. If a rejection slip comes back fast, that could mean the editors quickly determined the story wasn’t for them. If the rejection slip is slow coming, that could mean the story is getting a closer look—presumably being passed around among the editors or held back for an editorial board meeting—and occasionally a rejection note will indicate as much. It all depends on the magazine’s usual response time: a few are always quick to reply, the majority are chronically slow (mostly due to small staffs), and others are totally unpredictable. Rejections are also crucial in establishing relationships with editors. Granted, it’s usually not much of a relationship—the exchange of a few brief sentences every few months or years—but such a correspondence is enough to keep you on an editor’s radar screen. If you get a signed note from an editor, it’s a good idea to send your next submission to that person—even if it’s a slush pile reader or a lowly assistant editor. Having shown interest in your work, he is in a better position to push your story up the editorial ladder, and chances are that if you bypass that person and try leapfrogging your way to the top by sending your manuscript directly to the editor, it will end up in the slush pile anyway—perhaps with a less sympathetic reader this time. However, don’t expect editors to remember you without a little prompting. Use your cover letter to gently remind them of their interest in your previous work by thanking them for their comments or suggestions on your last story. And by all means remind them if they expressed a willingness to see more of your work (“Thanks for taking a look at my last story, and thanks for the invitation to send more. Enclosed is a new one ...”). Rejections can also be useful in revising a story, but writers should exercise caution in this regard. Often, when an editor perceives merit in a story but doesn’t want to publish it, she offers the writer a criticism or two in her rejection note. It’s a generous impulse, but it can lead to misunderstandings. I’m guilty of writing such rejections myself. Many a time, I penned notes that praised a story but expressed dissatisfaction with one or two of its aspects—the slack pacing, the weak beginning, or the fact that I felt like I’d read the same story before. When an editor registers such complaints, she may be right on the money, but she hasn’t necessarily zeroed in on all of the story’s faults, or even its biggest faults. Rather, she’s glanced at the manuscript long enough to know that she doesn’t want it and to
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quickly note a problem or two. Chances are that she hasn’t even read the whole story. Unless she’s trying to build a strong relationship with the author, she has little incentive to read it more closely and offer a detailed critique. After all, there are tens or even hundreds of other stories on her desk waiting to be read. Such notes can be especially puzzling for the beginning writer, who might take the editor’s criticisms to be the “reasons” she didn’t accept the story. The beginning writer might then infer that, were it not for problems X, Y, and Z, the magazine would have accepted the story. The temptation is to quickly rework the manuscript per the editor’s suggestions and resubmit it. This is a bad idea. If an editor wants to see a story again, she’ll say so. And besides, if she likes a story enough to publish it, she’ll probably go ahead and accept it with the assumption that the problems can be fixed during the editing process. But even if the beginning writer resists the urge to resubmit the manuscript, it’s still a bad idea to revise a story based on what was likely a cursory reading. I’m always grateful for an editor’s candid reaction to my story, positive or negative, but unless there is evidence that the editor read the story closely—such as a detailed critique or particularly insightful comments—I don’t revise the story based solely on his reaction. In such cases, a writer should be guided by common sense and not swayed by a magazine’s or editor’s reputation. A good rule of thumb is that the shorter and less detailed a rejection note is, the less attention the editor devoted to the story, and therefore the less weight you should give to her criticisms. On the other hand, if several editors zero in on the same problem, or if the editors are telling you the same things you’re hearing in your workshop or writing group, they may be on to something.
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Self-promotion: Maximizing your novel’s visibility by
W.E. Reinka
E
ager faces at writers conferences cloud over whenever the editor or agent on the panel reminds the audience that writing their novel is only half the job. The other half is selling the novel—not to a publisher but to the book-buying public. But doesn’t the publisher do that? Sadly, no, except for brand-name authors. In Making a Literary Life, Carolyn See writes, “After you write your book, you must sell it ... Not your publisher or your agent or anyone else is going to do it for you.” Novelists can get discouraged in their drive to sell their books by reminders from experts that nonfiction books generally dovetail better with promotional angles, news hooks, or organizations interested in a particular subject. But, before you scrap your dreams, stop, close your eyes, and name five best-selling authors. Chances are all five authors you named are novelists—and every one started their career as an unknown writer. It could be you haven’t even read books by a couple of writers on your list but they’re such brand names, they spring to mind anyway. This is a fundamental advantage for fiction writers—novelists can build a brand name that transcends their individual titles.
Building a Brand Name Robert S. Levinson, award-winning public relations authority whose thrillers include Ask a Dead Man, says, “You stay in the marketplace by serving yourself, not the current title.” In Guerilla Marketing for Writers, authors Jay Conrad Levinson, Rick Frishman, and Michael Larsen point out an indisputable fact of career building: “How well your first book sells helps determine the fate of succeeding books ... You have more at stake than royalties. You’re investing in your business.” Romance author and literary agent Alice Orr encourages writers to promote themselves. In No More Rejections: 50 Secrets to Writing a Manuscript That Sells, she tells writers: “You always must be selling numbers, a greater number with each book published under your name. And numbers are all about name recognition—not just title recognition, but name recognition.”
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It’s never too early to start positioning yourself in the marketplace. Indeed, some experts would suggest you write your book to fit a marketing plan vs. writing a marketing plan to fit your book. But most writers don’t have a marketing plan when they face that first terrifyingly blank page of manuscript. Even without a formal marketing plan, there are steps you can take to begin increasing visibility for your work and start building brand recognition.
Compiling Lists for Buyers and Promoters Some aspects of marketing should begin even before the manuscript is complete, starting with your mailing lists. You’ll have one mailing list of people who may be interested in buying your book. Carolyn See suggests that the list include “your old professors and schoolmates, your carpet cleaner, the guy who fixed your roof. Before you say, ‘Oh, I couldn’t ask them,’ think for a minute. If these people aren’t going to buy your book, then who on earth is going to buy it?” She’s right. Think how your interest would be piqued by a postcard or e-mail that an old classmate from Central High had just published a new novel. Your second mailing list consists of people who will help promote your book. That list is as shameless as the first list and would include contacts from the media, writers’ groups, bookstores, and civic or professional organizations. For example, you’re sitting in your dentist’s waiting room when you notice the Rotary International plaque. Go home and add your dentist to the promotion list. Rotary International looks for speakers every week, and chances are your dentist will provide you contact information when you’re ready to line up speaking gigs. Another group of people who can help promote your book are booksellers. Schmooze the people at bookstores. “You want booksellers to think of you when they’re recommending a book,” says Naomi Epel, author of The Observation Deck: A Tool Kit for Writers. “By being nice to them and appreciating their store, you’ll get remembered, and they’ll sell your book. They’ll place it face-out instead of spine-out. They’ll order a few more copies than they usually would.”
Inventing Imaginative News Hooks and Promotional Angles You may face a delicate challenge with the publicists at your publisher. On one hand, publicists usually devote their energy to frontlist books. On the other, you may step on toes if you run roughshod over them. Linda McFall, publicity manager for St. Martin’s Minotaur, recommends authors cultivate publicists’ favor by saving them time. Promotion plans start months before publication, so months before your book’s publication, demonstrate your willingness to cooperate and sensitivity to publicists’ time by e-mailing them the various mailing lists you’ve compiled. Note especially if you have any outof-town mailing lists (perhaps from your old hometown) of people likely to come to a book signing or publishing party if your publisher sends you to that city.
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“Increasingly bookstores are requesting mailing lists,” says Marie Coolman, director of publicity (West Coast) for the Random House Publishing Group. “An author’s local mailing list may persuade a store to host an event with an author they normally wouldn’t be inclined to host.” Another way to help your publicist is by e-mailing (minimize precious phone time) talking points on your book or suggestions for news hooks to get you media interviews. Coolman recalls when historical romance writer Ciji Ware was promoting Midnight on Julia Street, she and the author used the novel’s subtext of historical preservation and Ware’s personal expertise on preservation to garner more interviews. Those interviews, though ostensibly focused on historic preservation, gave Ware additional avenues to promote her novel. If your novel or background dovetails with a specific angle like gardening, business, or sports, contact editors of those newspaper sections and editors of trade or special interest magazines in that field. At the same time, be realistic; don’t waste precious personal time or materials chasing far-fetched connections. No gardening editor cares about a sports book. Part of running roughshod over your publicist is being unrealistic. Coolman laughs as she says, “I can’t tell you how many authors have asked me about getting them on Oprah. Take a look at the Today show or Oprah to see what kinds of authors they have on.” Five years ago, Oline H. Cogdill, mystery columnist for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, would receive ten or twenty review copies each week. Now she’s deluged with up to a hundred. But since her reviews are syndicated in hundreds of newspapers worldwide, it’s important to catch her eye. Guess what? A review copy with a note to please review your book isn’t going to do it. Levinson advises to “stand out from the pack.” Don’t just say your book is compelling. Everybody says that. Pitch a trend. Give it a news hook. Look for ways to make things easy for the book reviewer. One way Cogdill says writers make things easy for reviewers is by putting downloadable color photos and book jackets on the writer’s Web site. (But don’t go ahead and email them to the reviewers; the graphics take forever to download and you’ll just upset reviewers by overloading their mailboxes.) San Francisco literary agent Michael Larsen, one of the Guerilla Marketing authors, suggests writers construct an online press kit with a news release, author photo, positive reviews, talking points, FAQs, author’s bio, book jacket, and information on classes the author might teach or other promotional information. In other words, the online press kit should include everything the author compiles for a hard copy press kit. And you’ll want a press kit, not just review copies, to get people’s attention.
Creating a Web Site With Personality The world gets more electronic every day. So does book promotion. Epel declares, “Author Web sites are musts these days.” But there are Web sites and then there are Web sites. Larsen points out, “Everybody has a book and everybody has a Web site. What makes creative Web sites unique comes out of personality.” He advises authors set up their
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Web site while they’re still compiling mailing lists, before the book appears in print, so it can be included on the back of the book. As with everything else related to book promotion, waiting until publication to set up a Web site is too late. The easiest way to know what you want—and don’t want—in a Web site is by examining existing author Web sites. Some are astoundingly clever; others cram too much on one page and look amateurish. Steal ideas. Adopt the trivia game Jeffrey Deaver includes on his Web site. Borrow from Danielle Steel’s Web site and award books or audiotapes as contest prizes. Think those mailing lists aren’t important? Then why do brand names Stephen King, Nora Roberts, and Fannie Flagg all use Web sites to expand their e-mail lists?
Standing Out From the Crowd Just as you didn’t send off your novel to a publisher or agent until you were convinced it was absolutely ready to go, don’t line up promotional events without being ready to go yourself. Prepare answers in advance to common questions such as: Why did you write this book? What’s your book about? What writers have influenced you? If you snagged the interview by tying your novel to a trend or news hook, know in advance how you’ll tie in your book when you face the microphone. Coolman begs writers, “Practice, practice, practice answers before hand. Being on TV or radio looks and sounds like a normal conversation, but it isn’t. In normal conversation we talk our way to our points. In TV, radio, and even print media, we have to get to our points right off the bat.” Likewise, Epel recalls how her media coach encouraged her to prepare three key points to help sell her book that she would make in every interview no matter what questions were asked. Try to stand out from the pack at bookstore appearances. Lorna Landvik (Patty Jane’s House of Curl, Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons), the comic chronicler of smalltown life, throws a Hershey’s Kiss to any audience member who asks a question. One way that Diane Mott Davidson (Double Shot, Chopping Spree) climbs to the best-seller list is by giving away fresh-baked cookies at bookstores. (When she’s on tour, her husband sends daily batches of cookies via FedEx to whatever city she’s visiting.) Some bookstores have a full-time events staff. Others don’t have a clue how to host an event. Don’t take chances. Two weeks before your appearance, send fliers to the store advertising your appearance. After the event, autograph leftover stock. It doesn’t do you any good to sign a book unless potential buyers know it’s signed. Print your own “autographed by author” stickers for those stores that don’t supply their own. If this sounds cheesy, consider that Lawrence Block, named a “Grand Master” by the Mystery Writers of America, takes a roll of autograph stickers on every tour. More and more authors participate in what are called “drive-by signings.” They stop to sign stock at stores without hosting a formal event. Take your “autographed by author” stickers along to such signings. It also wouldn’t hurt to take a copy of a letter from your publicist assuring stores that unsold signed stock can be returned in the normal fashion (if, in fact, this is your publisher’s policy). A myth has built up over the
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years that signed books can’t be returned. Not only is that not true but its perpetuation discourages stores from letting authors sign. If your book has limited distribution, phone the store in advance to suggest a future date for a stock signing, thus allowing the store time to bring in more copies of your book. Don’t assume the store knows anything about marketing. Remember, this book is your baby. As such, encourage stores to sprinkle signed stock on a display table, endcap, or the front window, in addition to being face-out on the shelf. The more places your book is displayed, the more likely it is to attract attention.
Handling the Merchandise Bear in mind Kremer’s fundamental advice in 1001 Ways to Market Your Books: “There are two fundamental activities in marketing any product or service: 1) promotion and 2) distribution. In other words you must get the word out and you must make sure that your product is available.” If you speak before the Rotary, take along a carton of books to sell. Use those months before publication to arrange to accept Visa and MasterCard. Half of today’s purchases are not paid for by cash or check. Publicize yourself by offering a copy of your novel for the PTA raffle. Give ten copies to the local PBS station as premiums for their fundraiser provided they repeatedly describe your book. “The next ten people who pledge at the hundred-dollar level will also get a copy of the compelling new medical thriller, Bloody Scalpel, by Springfield’s own Kathy Martin.” Ingratiate yourself with a local bookseller by contracting to buy your author copies through them at a deep discount rather than taking advantage of the 40 percent author’s discount with the publisher. Sales records are based on books sold through stores. Promotional and giveaway copies you buy directly from the publisher won’t count toward building your sales numbers. Whether your novel remains half-formed in your mind or has already been bought by a publisher, it’s time to start shaping your promotion plans. In the words of Levinson, “If you start today, you’re already a day late.”
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The Craft of NonFiction Where to Get Great Article Ideas.............................................................................179 by
Greg Daugherty
The Art of the Interview...........................................................................................184 by
Philip Gerard
The Real Deal: Writing Memoir..............................................................................190 by
David Vann
Take Back the Essay!................................................................................................194 by
Bill Roorbach
Travel Writing: From Journal to First Draft..........................................................197 by
L. Peat O’Neil
The Business of NonFiction The Creative Magazine Query Letter.....................................................................203 by
Art Spikol
Writing an Irresistible Book Proposal.....................................................................208 Michael Larsen
Analyzing a Magazine from the Outside In...........................................................21�4 by
Lisa Collier Cool
How to Break in to Popular Magazines.................................................................217 by Jenna
Glatzer
Sell It Again, Sam: Reprints & Rewrites................................................................221 by
Gordon Burgett
Make More Money with Sidebars...........................................................................227 by
Gordon Burgett
nonFiction
by
where to get great article ideas by
Greg Daugherty
M
ore than paper, more than ink, more even than those annoying subscription cards that tumble out at every opportunity, magazines are made of ideas. Behind every magazine is an idea. Behind every article within the magazine is an idea. Behind every sentence within an article is—or darn well ought to be—an idea. And where do all those ideas come from? Many come from writers. If you are a new writer, you may worry that you’ll run out of ideas any day now. By the time you’ve been at it for a few years, you’ll be producing more ideas than you’ll ever be able to use. In case you find yourself in the first camp, here are six ways to generate more ideas.
1. Take a lot of showers Ask any twenty successful freelance writers where they get their best ideas, and I’ll bet nineteen of them will say, “in the shower.” There’s even some science to back them up— something about negative ions, as I recall. But who cares, as long as it works? Keep your brain focused on story ideas rather than letting it wander all over the place. Otherwise you may waste whole showers making grocery lists or thinking up new ways to clean the shower curtain.
2. Put your subconscious to work Remember that one writer in twenty who doesn’t get ideas in the shower? Odds are that he would tell you that the best ideas seem to bubble up out of nowhere. That, some say, is the subconscious mind at work. You don’t have to sit back and wait for your subconscious to start bubbling, either. You can give it an assignment. That, anyhow, was the claim of Napoleon Hill. Once, when Hill was trying to come up with a title for a new book, he had a little talk with his subconscious before he went to bed. “I’ve got to have a million-dollar title, and I’ve got to have it tonight,” he said. (And he said it out loud, yet.) “Do you understand that?”
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Apparently his subconscious got the message, because at 2 a.m., Hill woke up, bounded to his typewriter, and banged out the title. Hill’s book Think and Grow Rich went on to sell more than twenty million copies and remains in print to this day. When I’ve tried Hill’s technique, the results have been mixed. Some mornings I’ll wake up with an idea I’ve asked for. Other days I’ll wake up with a good idea but on an entirely different subject. The rest of the time I just wake up. Since your subconscious mind has a mind of its own and can spit out ideas any hour of the day or night, keep pen and paper in your pocket, in your car, on your nightstand, and any other place a brainstorm is likely to strike.
3. Read everything you can get your hands on The best writers I know not only try to keep up with the fields they cover but read just about anything in sight. Few of the things you read will pay off in an immediate story, but they all feed that mysterious idea machine in your head.
Books Poke around the library. Let yourself get lost in unfamiliar aisles. Check out the new releases at your local bookstore. Many of the freshest ideas these days appear first as book titles, then make their way to magazines.
Magazines Read the ones you want to write for, of course, but look at others, too. You’ll learn some new things and maybe discover new ways to tell a story. And you may even surprise yourself and stumble on a promising market or two. Old magazines are another good source of idea fodder. Check out some of the great magazines someday when you’re in the library and have nothing else to do: Holiday, Look, Saturday Review, to name a few.
Newspapers Your local paper can be a terrific source of article ideas, especially if it’s not a paper that magazine editors regularly follow like The New York Times. You may see a story in your local paper that’s ripe for telling practically as is in a national magazine. More often, though, you’ll find hints of a possible national story. It may be a local trend that’s yet to be widely written about or a local person whose tale could be one of several in an article reported from a national perspective. When you travel, scoop up the local papers there, too.
Online The Internet may be both the biggest time-saver and the biggest time-waster ever invented. I’ve found it an incredibly useful research tool but seldom discover any worthwhile article ideas, no matter how many hours I spend browsing. One possible exception: Web sites sponsored by local newspapers; they’re rarely as rich in detail as the papers themselves, but they offer a window into the goings-on in different parts of the country. And also, unlike the papers themselves, they’re mostly free.
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4. Listen up I find some of the best story ideas come from listening to my friends, neighbors, and co-workers talk about their concerns of the moment. Magazines pay a lot of money to convene so-called “focus groups” of everyday people who sit around talking about their likes, dislikes, and whatever else they’re asked to discuss. You can accomplish much the same thing for free by paying attention when someone starts griping about X, singing the praises of Y, or asking why no magazine has ever told the truth about Z. For example, I once heard one of my neighbors asking another about the best way to send money to a family member traveling overseas. Until that moment, I’d never given the matter much thought. But I checked it out, and a few months later not only did I know the answer but several million magazine readers did as well.
5. Tap into your own experience Forget for a moment that you’re a writer. What’s on your mind, just as a human being? If you’ve wondered about something, chances are other people have, too. The difference is you’re a writer and can go out, investigate the matter, and maybe even get paid for coming back with the answer. The beauty of your own personal experience is that it’s forever changing. Have a baby, and you’ll find yourself jotting down child-related story ideas. Switch jobs, change homes, get a divorce, get a disease, win a trip for two to exotic Bora Bora—all of life’s amazing twists and turns can supply you with fresh ideas.
6. Get to know some PR people Public relations people often have great ideas for stories before anybody else does. Many of them are former magazine or newspaper writers themselves. The trouble, of course, is it’s their job to put a spin on the idea that benefits their clients. The other trouble is they’re out to get their clients as much positive publicity as possible, so if you got their story tip, a few dozen other writers probably did, too. That said, I’ve found PR people worth paying attention to over the years. If nothing else, they can sometimes get you access to key experts and provide background information you’d otherwise spend a lot of time digging up on your own. Just remember their agendas and yours aren’t identical.
Will Editors Swipe Your Ideas? Beginning writers often ask if magazines will steal their ideas. The best answer I can think of: Maybe, but it’s not worth worrying about. In more than twenty years as an editor, I have never stolen an idea from a writer— and I don’t think I’m necessarily a shoo-in for sainthood. And in my twenty years as a writer, no magazine has ever stolen an idea of mine (as far as I know, anyhow). Yes, I’ve heard a few horror stories along the way, but I don’t think idea theft is a crime to lose a whole lot of sleep over. For one thing, a good writer is always generating ideas—far more than she can begin to use. And since no two writers given the same idea will generate
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the same story, it’s much easier for editors to pay you to write it than to steal it. And finally, if a magazine wants to steal your idea, there is not much you can do about it. I’ve seen writers try, though. Some are deliberately vague in their queries, hoping to tease the editor into giving them the assignment. Others practically make editors sign formal nondisclosure agreements. All a writer really accomplishes by such amateurish tactics is to insult the editor’s integrity—a dumb marketing move if there ever was one. Occasionally you’ll see an idea you pitched to a magazine appear in that very magazine a month, a year, or a decade later. Did somebody swipe your idea? Possibly, but more likely the idea came from another writer with a somewhat different approach. Few ideas are so unusual that only one writer will think of them. So chalk it up to coincidence and move on. You’ll probably have better ideas tomorrow anyway.
What to Do With an Idea Once You Have It Ideas are the writer’s raw material. And like any other raw material, they’re far more valuable once they’ve been refined. The most common problem that beginning writers seem to have is grasping the difference between a story idea and what’s simply an interesting subject. Here’s an illustration: Undersea exploration is an interesting subject, but it’s way too broad for a magazine article. You might, however, be able to sell a piece on how undersea exploration is raising some tough new ethical questions. For example, is the wreck of the Titanic fair game for souvenir hunters or a sacred resting place for its victims? One useful test is to try to write a headline for your proposed article. If it sounds like a book title or a fourteen-part PBS series, you need to bring your idea into sharper focus. But if it sounds like a headline you might see in a magazine—particularly in the magazine you want to propose it to—you’re probably on the right track.
How Editors Look at Ideas You can boost your ideas’ odds of success if you learn to step back and look at them the way an editor does. Not all editors think alike, but if you could peek inside an editor’s head , you’d probably see a thought process that works something like this:
1. Does this idea belong in this magazine? Sometimes the answer is pretty obvious: A magazine about dogs probably won’t be interested in a story about cats. Other times, it’s far more subtle: A dog magazine that last year ran a story called “Rottweilers: Those Gentle Giants” is an unlikely market for your proposed piece on “Rottweilers: Four-Legged Psychopaths From Hell.” What can you do? Look up what the magazine has run in the past year or two in the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature or other computerized magazine database at your local library. Not all magazines are indexed this way, but some surprisingly obscure ones are. If you can’t find out whether your idea conflicts with one the magazine has already done, just give it a shot. There’s no shame in approaching a magazine with an idea that’s just slightly off the mark.
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2. Have we done this story before? And if so, how recently? Some magazines will return to the same topic month after month, as long as they can put at least the illusion of a fresh spin on it. Some women’s magazines, for example, run a diet story in every issue, for the simple reason that such stories, however unbelievable, sell copies. Other magazines won’t touch a topic that they’ve covered in the past five or ten years.
3. Have our competitors already done the story? Even if the magazine itself hasn’t touched the topic, an editor may consider the idea old stuff if one or more of the magazine’s competitors has. Magazines differ considerably in what they consider their competition. Some will look only to their specific category (boating magazines, decorating magazines, teen magazines, and so forth), while others will consider newspapers, television, and every other type of media. Generally speaking, you stand the best chance with ideas that have received no coverage or only very local coverage.
4. Is this the best way to approach this story? Sometimes a fresh approach can inject life into a tired topic. For example, “Six Ways to Childproof Your Home” would be a familiar approach to most editors of parenting magazines. But something like “How Professional Childproofers Rip You Off” or “Childproof Accessories That Could Injure You Child” might get their attention.
5. Is this the best writer for the job? In some cases, magazines may turn a perfectly fine idea down if you don’t seem like the right writer. In rare instances, they may offer to buy the idea from you and assign it to another writer. What may make you inappropriate? Distance is one thing. If you come across a great story in Australia, but you happen to live in Albuquerque, the magazine may not have the budget to send you there. Or, if you are obviously a beginning writer, the magazine may hesitate to assign you what’s sure to be a complex, ambitious story. A magazine is most likely to take a chance on you if an editor there has worked with you elsewhere or knows your work from other publications. A powerful query and strong clips can also make a difference.
6. Even if this isn’t right, is the writer someone worth encouraging? Some editors are too busy or too self-important to send personal notes to writers whose ideas may have just missed the mark. So don’t automatically assume the worst if you receive a terse form letter in reply. Other editors will suggest a way an idea might be reshaped or urge you to try again with another one. If your query is impressive enough, an editor may come back to you with a story idea of his own.
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the art of the interview by
Philip Gerard
O
ne of the instincts that drive the writer who is fascinated with a topic is to find out what other interesting people have to say about it. Even when we’re not actively writing about something, most writers I know are conversation junkies, always asking questions of people who just might know something we don’t, eavesdropping on conversations that intrigue us. We like hanging out with people, enjoy arguments and speculation, the sound of voices talking for its own sake. So it may seem a short step between that and a deliberate interview. But in fact most writers I know are just as timid around strangers as the average nonwriter—some even more so. After all, we writers are used to spending long stretches of solitary time in small, isolated rooms, with only the company of our word machines. We hate to bother people. If the person in question is famous, we feel a bit like impostors and are reluctant, even apologetic, about taking up that person’s valuable time. You would think that practice would make it easier to approach complete strangers and ask questions, but in my experience, at least, it never gets easier. So you wind up sitting by the telephone, pencil tapping, going over the questions you want to ask, checking your tape recorder again and again to make sure it’s working, then taking a deep breath and mashing the numbers, part of you stupidly hoping that the person you’re calling will be out. Or else standing outside a closed door (the most intimidating thing in the world is a closed door) and taking that same deep breath. But it’s just human nature to be anxious about a first meeting with a stranger. Once past the awkward introductions, you stop being strangers, and as the interview goes on you’re feeling more and more comfortable with each other, and the questions and answers become just conversation. Even when you are about to interview someone you already know, the artificial nature of the planned interview can put you both under a certain tension that would be unthinkable during an ordinary, spontaneous encounter. For instance, I first met Ron Powers years ago and have seen him half a dozen times since then at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. But when we sat down to do a “for-
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mal” interview for this book on subjects we had discussed informally in workshops and dinner conversations, suddenly I felt very nervous. The place we had decided to meet turned noisy and we left, seeking a quieter venue. As we sat down on a secluded porch to talk, I realized I had left behind my notebook and pen. My microcassette tape recorder turned cranky and wouldn’t record, despite the fact that I religiously change batteries before I start any long interview. Powers lent me paper and pen, gave me a patient few minutes to fix the glitch in my recorder, and we both had a laugh and relaxed. Then he said wonderful things about writing. Any initial awkwardness is not a disaster but simply a matter of course, a moment to get past as gracefully as you can. And if you feel nervous—and you’ve done this before—imagine how your subject may feel.
A Typical Interview There is no such thing. The whole premise of interviewing is that people come in an amazing variety. Just when you think you’ve heard it all, you’ll hear something astonishing. But as writers we live by our habits, and like many writers I try to follow a template for interviewing. Naturally, it varies a lot based on the situation and the person, and other writers do it differently, but it’s a useful starting point for a formal, set interview. To prepare for the interview: 1. Ask yourself why you want to interview this person. This is the question to ask before you ask any others. Is it to get background information? Is this person a main character—maybe the only character—in my piece? Or am I interviewing him in reaction to another interview? Am I interviewing this person as a way of getting a chance to interview the person I really want to talk to? Until you know why you’re talking to somebody, you don’t know what you want to take away from the interview. Which means you don’t know what to bring into the interview, or what questions to ask during the interview. 2. Establish basic background facts—a resume that includes vital statistics such as age and nationality, education, occupation and job title; key credentials, achievements, and honors (and dishonors—if the guy is a convicted murderer, I want to know that, too). Bear in mind that the object of the interview may be to elicit such a resume, especially in the case of a noncelebrity, so don’t take the above too literally. Sometimes it’s as simple as reading the author’s bio on the back flap of a book jacket. But if there’s background I can reasonably find out before I sit down face-to-face, I want to make the effort to learn it. I want to have some precise sense of whom I’m talking to—that will partly determine what questions I ask him. How much should you know about a person before you sit down and ask her questions? That depends. If the person is a celebrity—Henry Kissinger or a Nobel laureate—it pays to do your homework beforehand: You don’t want to waste precious time, theirs or yours, on basic background you can find out from Who’s Who or Time magazine. Partly it’s a question of how much time you can spend with them, and partly it’s a question of why you want to talk to them in the first place.
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Shooting a public television documentary in Hong Kong, I was asked to write interview questions for Sir Jack Cater—who wasn’t one of my sources. All I knew about him was that he was on the board of a nuclear investment company in China. Why in the world would we want to talk to him for a show about the reversion of the colony to Chinese rule? The producer said he’d been told this fellow was someone we should talk to, but he didn’t know anything about him, either. So I wrote up some boring questions about investment and atomic energy, figuring the interview would be a throwaway. Chatting with our narrator while the camera and lights were being set up, Sir Jack mentioned offhandedly that he had been in Hong Kong since the end of World War II. It turned out he had helped rebuild the colony after its devastation by the Japanese, and that he had gone on to become the founding commissioner against corruption in the civil service. Both foreign occupation and communist corruption were important themes of the show. So we asked him about the war and about anticorruption, and he gave us a fascinating and emotionally charged interview, full of living memory and anecdote, not facts and statistics, but vivid stories about a place and a people he loved. Most interview subjects are flattered when you obviously know their work and accomplishments—it’s a measure of your seriousness as a writer and also of how seriously you take them. Showing that you have done your homework sets a baseline for the interview. The subject does not feel compelled to explain basic background and may feel freer to move on to more interesting matters. 3. Decide where you want to conduct the interview—you may or may not have control over this, but it’s a factor. 4. Decide how best to record the interview—using notebook, tape recorder, or only a good memory. 5. Write a very brief list of the questions you really want to ask. And I mean brief. I usually go into an interview with three to five absolutely essential questions that I intend to ask no matter what. Sometimes, I have only one question. This does not always mean I ask them all—or ask any of them. But having the list gives me a starting point that reinforces the connection between this interview and the larger piece, and keeping it brief allows me to invent other questions on the spot in reaction to something that’s been said in the interview, to follow up, or to repeat a question, if the subject thinks he’s answered it but I don’t. It means, even if time runs out, I usually get answers to the most important questions on my mind. 6. Review your notes on other interviews, on your research in general—so you can cross-reference, inform your conversation, elicit responses to what others have said about the same set of facts, and set the stage for a kind of dialogue among your sources. 7. Read what’s already been written about your subject, and what she has already said in print. This is not always necessary or possible, but especially with celebrities it can help you avoid triteness. It can also give you qualified (because she may or may not have been quoted accurately, or may have changed her mind since) access to her opinions and attitudes. The writers I quote at length in my articles and books are all writers whose work I read before I asked them for insights about writing. I didn’t want to insult them or em-
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barrass myself, and I wanted to make sure I admired their art enough to trust what they had to say about the act of making it. It’s an enlightening—and unsettling—experience for a writer to be interviewed. Try it yourself. We are so accustomed to questioning others and then implicitly asking them to trust what we do with their words, that we are too often surprisingly ignorant of how it feels to see your own words go in there and come out here. Persuade somebody to interview you and write his version of it—then see how well it jibes with your recollection of the interview. Even when I’ve seen myself interviewed on television, I am always convinced that I didn’t really say all those things; surely I’m smarter, more poised, more articulate than that. If you can’t find anybody willing to interview you, interview yourself with a list of questions using a tape recorder. The playback will be an eerie reminder of the degree of trust your subjects are placing in you, the interviewer, and of their vulnerability, of the power you have over their words. To conduct the actual interview: 1. Begin the interview with an open mind—prepared to listen. You are not the star of the interview, your subject is. Out of nervousness, or ego, or maybe just because we like the person we’re interviewing and feel drawn to confide in him, we can inadvertently dominate the conversation. But when you’re talking, you’re not listening, and when you’re not listening, you’re not learning anything you don’t already know. 2. Ease into the interview. Break the ice. Chat. Warm up. You may both be nervous, especially if you’re using a tape recorder. Again, if you’re interviewing on the fly, these niceties may be moot. William Howarth says he once interviewed a subject while clinging to the back of a speeding motorcycle—hardly the moment for small talk. And some interviewers deliberately open with a tough question, just to catch the subject in a candid moment—not my style. I prefer to begin with questions that help set the subject at ease, then get more and more pointed as I establish trust. I want the subject to forget I’m an interviewer and just talk to me from the heart. 3. Be prepared for the interview to generate some heat. You don’t want your subject to stalk out in a fury thirty seconds into the conversation, but allow some latitude for emotions. Let him be angry. Let her express her feelings about her critics. One or both of you may end up in tears. But part of you must always be standing back from the process, emotionally disengaged, keeping track of the encounter. 4. Pay attention to what your subject is saying. Gratuitous advice, right? You’d be surprised how your mind can wander. You thought it would be terrific to interview the Pope, but now all you can think of is your next question, how bright the glare is from that window, and look at the funky costume on that guard standing next to him. And what in the world is the right name for that big hat he’s wearing? Keep your eye on the ball. Listen. Even if it means you stop writing for a minute. For the duration of the interview, your job is to make your subject think he is the most fascinating person in the world. Don’t insult him by acting bored or distracted. 5. Pay attention to the physical surroundings, the tone of the conversation, and other cues. The glare from the window and the funky costume of the Swiss guard
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may wind up in your story. What are you picking up between the lines? What isn’t the subject saying? And why won’t he look you in the eye? There’s a lot going on in an interview—it’s a complex, dynamic event. Paying attention to the context while listening is an acquired skill—practice it. 6. If you missed something the subject said, if he spoke too fast for you to write it down, if you’re not sure you heard what you think you heard, ask him to say it again. Slowly, so you can write it down accurately. Most people I’ve interviewed are pleased to see you making an overt attempt to get their words right on paper. But be careful not to turn it into a dictation session. 7. After you’ve asked all your questions, ask him what he would like to say that you haven’t asked him. Such open-ended comments can turn out to be the heart of the interview—you thought it was winding up, but it’s just starting. Now you know what questions to ask. Remember that you may listen for a long time before the subject says anything worth quoting. Either the interview will come to an end arbitrarily—the appointments secretary will arrive on cue and show you the door—or you will decide to end it. You can’t think of any more questions to ask. There’s an awkward pause. You’re losing interest. The subject keeps looking at his watch. Maybe it just feels over. That doesn’t mean it is over: It may be only the first of several encounters. Or you may want to follow up with a telephone call, after you’ve had time to review your notes— either to check a quote for accuracy or to ask that last question that never occurred to you until you were halfway home. So: 8. Before you leave, make sure you know how to reach your subject for a follow-up interview.
Asking Good Questions— and Listening to the Answers A good way to learn what not to do in an interview is to watch local TV news reporters at work. Again and again, you’ll hear startling admissions, tantalizing hints, clues about important directions in which to take the interview—and the TV reporter, following a list of set questions, will merely move on to the next question: Reporter: So, what brought you to Milwaukee? Subject: Well, after we kidnapped the Lindbergh baby, things got a little hot in New Jersey. Reporter: And how do you like living here?
“A good interviewer has an interesting mixture of qualities,” Bob Reiss explains. “You’re absolutely relentless in driving toward your goal. At the same exact time, you’re prepared at any second to abandon your goal—because what happens if you find out you’re going in the wrong direction?” The key to any interview is to listen. Good questions open up the discussion, give the subject range to tell you what he knows. Those local TV reporters always interview children the same way—by asking
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yes-or-no questions. Unless you’re trying to pin down a politician or a crook, a question that can be answered with one word is probably not a very interesting question. And questions do not always have to be phrased as interrogatives. Mild, leading statements can elicit “answers,” and the interview can flow as a relaxed, enjoyable conversation. So what makes a good question? While preparing for the interview, think of all the obvious questions everybody else would ask, then ask something different, unexpected, something for which the subject has no canned answer. Some characteristics of a good interview question:
• The subject hasn’t been asked it before—at least not the way you’re going to ask it.
• It can’t be answered in one word. (Exception: when you want a specific affirmation
• It opens up rather than closes down possibilities for revealing character. • It can’t be answered with the same authority, wit, or nuance by anyone else. • The question engages the subject’s passion—he cares about the answer, so the an-
• It is responsive—to the mood, the setting, the subject’s words and actions. If he is
As the subject speaks, he actually discovers what he thinks. or denial of fact, as in, “Did you steal the money?”)
swer matters to you.
constantly toying with a small statuette on his desk as you talk, ask him about it. If he has just volunteered that he’ll spend next weekend with the National Guard, ask him where and doing what.
Reiss admires the technique of Oriana Fallaci, who is renowned for her books of direct interviews with such notable public figures as Golda Meir, Yasser Arafat, and King Hussein of Jordan. “The best question I think anyone ever asked she asked Haile Selassie, the Emperor of Ethiopia, when Ethiopia was in turmoil,” he recalls. “He was in the waning days of his rule. It was the 1970s, but the country was still running as if it were medieval times. Hundreds of thousands of people were dying of famine. ... Students were being found in the morning in doorways strangled with piano wire by the secret police.” Fallaci was there to learn about the student disturbances. “Her question to him was, ‘Did you ever disobey instructions when you were a kid?’ Now, she could have asked about numbers, about students, how long the university is closed this year .... And the answer, which was—he used the royal ‘we’—‘We do not understand the question,’ pretty much summed up the whole situation in Ethiopia and the distance between this old man in a palace and students who were being killed every day.” Very often, no matter which question you ask, a subject will stubbornly get around to telling you what he wants you to know—or what he thinks you want to know. Your job is to hear that, but also to coax him beyond what he is prepared to tell you. Often it’s not a matter of willful antagonism. It’s just that the inexperienced subject will assume you are interested in the cathedrals, when in fact you are interested in those old women next door—which may seem absurdly mundane to his sense of the world.
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The real deal: Writing memoir by
David Vann
A
memoir, unlike an autobiography, needs to offer a story. You can leave out the extra sibling or skip over entire decades, but whatever’s left needs to read like a novel. The problem with this is that the protagonist (you!) and dumb luck will both get in the way. The characters in a novel all push at one another to create what happens. Each turning point in their conflict creates the next scene. Almost nothing happens randomly or accidentally or through outside forces. The novel presents a perfectly paranoid universe in which every detail relates to the whole. But in a memoir, there are many things that just happened because they did—the minor characters often don’t push so insistently; there may not even be a clear antagonist; and the protagonist is in all the scenes, shuffling around and getting in the way even when he isn’t doing any important dramatic work to move the story forward. So how can you shape a story?
Select and Emphasize Memory does the first work for you, because you forget thousands of unimportant details and magnify the dramatic moments (moments of conflict). Don’t worry if you didn’t keep a journal or take notes. My memoir, A Mile Down: The True Story of a Disastrous Career at Sea, tells of how my wife and I sank in a freak storm in the Caribbean on our honeymoon and lost everything. But the story begins years before, in Turkey, where the boat was built. When I began writing this memoir, I had no notes. I couldn’t remember the names of most of the people I’d known in Turkey, and I couldn’t remember sequences of events or even how I thought or felt at the time. But memory had begun to make a story of my dream of escape. I was also beginning to understand the more important background story of whether I went to sea out of obedience to my father, whose own adventures at sea were a last attempt, before his suicide, to reshape his life. And these two stories, of escape and obedience, were in conflict with each other.
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Divide Your Protagonist Escape vs. obedience is the kind of conflict that can drive a book-length work and hold it together. It’s also the core of what characterization is about. Think of Flannery O’Connor’s characters: Julian, for instance, in “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” who can never speak of the old family mansion “without contempt” or think of it “without longing.” Building your memoir around this conflict can clear away the jumble of insignificant events. You’re looking for a series of scenes (particular moments in time and place) that fit together and speak to this divide. You might look for the times you felt fated or doomed, for instance, because what you were doing didn’t make sense but felt inevitable nonetheless. These scenes can organize chapters or even entire sections, usually appearing at the end (the place of most emphasis is always at the end, whether of a sentence or paragraph or chapter).
Use Scenes You really will have to explore important moments in scenes, using all the techniques of the craft of fiction, even though you’re writing a memoir. Narration is fine for background material and for skipping over time and unimportant events, but a scene offers a particular time and place, a chance for the reader to see and hear and feel what happened, a chance to become convinced that the struggle is real and matters. I’m dropped onto my back naked on a flooded, varnished floor in a hurricane when I question my father’s influence, not just pondering the void.
Start at the Beginning of the End Your scenes will have a chronological progression, and this is a fine way to structure a book—through time from beginning to end. But also consider the structure used more often in books and films, called in medias res, which in Latin means “in the middle of things.” The word “middle” is misleading, because really these works all begin with the first scene of the final sequence. This is the moment when a decisive shift has happened, and the end is unavoidable. The story is funneling toward that end. We often begin with this scene, fill in all the necessary background leading up to that moment, then cross over the moment and follow the final sequence. You may not always notice this, because many writers try to keep the background as brief as possible, so that nearly the entire work is just the final sequence. In A Mile Down, for instance, I pack all my background material into the first chapter of only seven pages. By the beginning of chapter two, I’m already stuck with the boat and caught up in inevitable disaster. The rest of the book still needs structure and is organized around the two times we lose everything—the first time halfway through the book and the second time at the end—but really the entire book is the final sequence. How I get into the educational charter business, run charters in other countries, and find myself in Turkey; how I buy the boat and meet Seref the builder; how the Kosovo
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War threatens to ruin my business—all of that’s compressed into just the first seven pages, along with the history of my father’s time at sea and suicide and the early history of bereavement, because none of it is the current story. It’s vital that you find the current story, the final sequence, and don’t bog it down with background.
Keep Your Narration Active If you can’t limit your background material as much as you’d like, you can still make your narration read like a scene. Tobias Wolff is a master of this. Look at his story “The Liar,” half of which is narrated background material. He organizes this material as an essay on his protagonist’s parents, but he provides enough visual detail, gesture, and dialogue in narration that no one would guess they’re reading an essay. In Wolff’s first memoir, This Boy’s Life, look at the background section that immediately follows his opening scene. Details like “idlers with rotten teeth” keep readers from noticing this isn’t really a scene.
The Truth Factor Because we’re shaping our stories around important, linked moments told whenever possible in scenes and using structures such as in medias res that have been used for thousands of years, what we’re creating is something other than what happened. No true story, once told, is true. It loses its truth in the process of telling, and it becomes far lovelier. As long as you don’t make up characters or events, you can call your work a memoir and call it a true story—but don’t be fooled. You’re not recreating your experience and recording it faithfully: You’re shaping a story more cohesive than experience, something worth reading. You’re countering dumb luck, randomness, clutter, and anything else that doesn’t have meaning. Most of truth is clutter. By selection and emphasis alone, a story loses some of its truth; it becomes a representation, like language itself. Then there’s ideology—our beliefs about the world. These beliefs frame and change the truth of everything we think, say, and write. We’re not capable of thinking even one single true, neutral sentence. This doesn’t pardon inventing characters or events in your memoir. It’s a shame James Frey changed significant details in A Million Little Pieces, because that casts doubt on an entire genre that relies on the weight of truth for part of its impact. But don’t let the controversy over one writer take away your freedom to tell the stories of your own life.
Don’t Leave Your Protagonist Alone Our moments alone are tremendously important to us, but they’re tremendously boring to everyone else. Whatever great themes of our lives have become clear in these moments alone have also existed in some form in interaction with other people, and these are the tense scenes that reveal us, push us into the next decision and create meaning for our readers. So the sequence of important, linked scenes will work best if it involves conflict with other people. This leads us to antagonists.
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Find an Antagonist Antagonists aren’t bad people. They’re just people who have desires and wants that are different than, and in competition with, the desires of protagonists. In the part of your life that you’re writing about, who wanted something different than what you wanted? This is where I ran into trouble in my own memoir. I struggled against a boat, a dream, the sea, my dead father, and myself, none of which makes a great antagonist. I have Seref, the Turkish builder, to struggle against in the first sixty pages, and he’s a perfect antagonist because I never know whether he’s friend or foe. He’s caught up in the struggle and suffering, too. But then the story carries on to other seas, and although there are other antagonists and even villains, such as an unscrupulous German captain, none of these people is there for the entire dramatic arc. My wife is there, but she’s suffering alongside, not pushing at me in a way that creates the conflict and events. My dead father and my own ambitions and flaws, mixed with some pure bad luck, create the disasters. This was a big problem in revision. Readers don’t actually believe in bad luck, because they’ve been trained by novels not to, and first-person narrators are distrusted the moment they point out flaws in others. So I couldn’t really use even the few minor antagonists I did have. If you just can’t find a suitable antagonist, I think the best bet is to cleave to the scene—to the details—of what happened in the world you’re describing. Try to remain as invisible as possible.
Starting Out Now that I’ve finished a novel and a story collection, I’m working on a new memoir, which was originally going to be the prelude to A Mile Down. I’m right at the beginning of the memoir; what it looks like to me now is just a vast, impossible clutter, with no ending or arc to shape it. The working title is Plundered: Memoirs From a Mexican Drug-Running Port. A captain abandoned my boat with a destroyed engine, and it took me four months to replace the engine (which was stolen twice) and sail north. I was visited each day by half a dozen military and police groups, by the local crime boss, prostitutes, begging children, and fishermen, and I even ran into pirates. I don’t know who I was then or what I thought or felt. I’m not sure why I was there or why I stayed. I sit down at my laptop for an hour and a half each morning, though, seven days a week, and I work on a scene each day, a particular moment that stands out in memory as disturbing or important, trying to find who these people are, including me, and what the story is about. Lately it seems it may be about culpability, even accidental culpability. It was a drugrunning port in which most lives were headed already toward destruction, but my presence there seemed to upset certain balances and accelerate ruin and despair. There’s a scene in which a woman is nearly murdered, right at my feet, and that scene holds the key, I think. The truth, and all its millions of tawdry details, are lost forever, but the story, the memoir, is just beginning to form.
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take back the essay! by
Bill Roorbach
I
was taught as a schoolkid and in high school that an essay was an argument of a particular kind. It had to have a thesis sentence, clearly stated, and all the stuff you wrote had to support that thesis. And, of course, I learned that an essay had parts—a beginning, a middle, and an end—and that these parts had names. This format is the soul of what’s commonly called expository writing, the kind of writing that makes a category and a term like creative nonfiction necessary. For me as a kid and well into college, one of the defining characteristics of expository writing was that it was no fun. You couldn’t be yourself but had to be someone else, someone deathly serious, someone formal, someone who shared the moribund and officious voice of an encyclopedia. A conformist, in other words, someone who wouldn’t challenge the overburdened teacher. There is, ladies and gentlemen, another kind of essay out there, the kind that you find most often in The Best American Essays, or in the work of writers from E.B. White to Adrienne Rich, George Orwell to James Baldwin, and contemporaneously in all the best literary magazines. It’s a more wandering sort of essay, an essay in which one gets the sense of a person—a person who is, well, searching. And learning, discovering something that the reader will discover, too.The term Phillip Lopate uses for such work is the personal essay. (Please see his anthology The Art of the Personal Essay for not only examples of the genre, but for the genre’s history and for Lopate’s illuminating and defining introduction. Read his personal essays, too, for strong examples of the form.) When I say personal essay I don’t mean that the work contained therein is private or somehow small; I don’t mean that it’s work only one’s family should read or that there’s nothing universal there; I don’t mean that there is no argument, no thesis; I just mean that the author speaks as a person rather than as a disembodied voice of knowledge, that the writer speaks from the heart, with no great worries about objectivity or faked fairness. That is, the writer speaks honestly; he admits that he is there behind the words—prejudices, interests, passions, hatreds—warts and all. The writer writes something that only he could possibly write. Objectivity? People pretending to be objects have never interested me much. And people who think and write of others as objects are aligned with the forces of evil.
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Friendship and the Essay The origin of the term essay to mean a particular kind of writing is usually placed in Renaissance France and attributed to Michel de Montaigne (pronounced in English to rhyme with Fontaine). In The Art of the Personal Essay, Lopate lovingly calls Montaigne the “fountainhead,” and goes on to say that Montaigne “may well have been the greatest essayist who ever lived.” You might want to read Donald Frame’s wonderful biography of our man, but here’s the way-too-quick version: Michel de Montaigne was born in 1533, son of a patient and doting father (Montaigne himself tells us quite a bit about his father in his essais), who gave him the best education money could buy and set his son up as a lord. Montaigne loved the Latin poets and philosophers and statesmen, Seneca and Plutarch and Virgil, Tertius, Martial, Catullus, Horace. He was a practicing lawyer, a member of the Parlement of Gascony, and later, mayor of Bordeaux. But it was at Parlement that he met Étienne de La Boétie, a poet and thinker and statesman with whom Montaigne talked endlessly. According to Frame, “La Boetie satisfied [Montaigne’s] deepest need, for complete communication.” But after five years of a deep friendship, ideal conversation, and constant companionship, La Boétie died, aged “32 years, 9 months, and 17 days” (in Montaigne’s tellingly obsessive reckoning), of a sudden intestinal ailment. Frame fills in many details of La Boétie’s life, but readers of Montaigne already know much of the story from Montaigne’s essai “On Friendship.” Donald Frame: “There is much to show that the Essays themselves—are among other things—a compensation for the loss of La Boétie.” Phillip Lopate: “I has been suggested that Montaigne began writing his book so that he could talk to someone; the reader took the place of La Boétie.” So the Essais of Montaigne are an ongoing conversation with Étienne de La Boétie. And years and centuries after Montaigne’s death, a reader feels in Montaigne’s presence: His essays separately and in total remain a conversation with readers—readers who become stand-ins for La Boétie, one at a time.
The Conversation What if you were to begin to think of your writing as a conversation with a reader, just one? Two people intimate over a meal, say, or over a cocktail, head-to-head. What if your audience was not a huge roomful of frighteningly various souls but one single person, the king or queen of good listeners, always nodding in interest, always with you, and a genuine friend, always ready to question your logic? What if you started to think of your writing as a conversation? Pick a dear friend with whom you enjoy conversation and argument, and picture that friend reading over your shoulder as you sit down to revise any of your exercises to date. What must change? Will your friend admonish you for a certain pomposity? Will your friend yawn as you repeat old information? Will your friend take issue with some
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of your facts? Argue your opinions? Where will she laugh? Where will she grow sad? Where will she nod her head in understanding and agreement? Tailor your sentences to the needs of one reader, and you’ll tend to make your work more accessible to all. If you find it hard to imagine your friend listening, why not bring the work to the actual person and read it aloud to her? What reactions do you get? Why? Again, what needs to change? And if as yet you are (understandably) too shy to read your stuff aloud to anyone, take heart: Even contemplating such a reading will result in necessary revisions.
You Are an Expert, Too Montaigne is said (by himself) to have worn a medallion around his neck inscribed with his motto, which I will render in modern French: Que Sais-Je?—What do I know? And indeed, when it came time to write, he would look into himself and report what was there— good or bad, ugly or beautiful. He was an expert on himself (as we all are) and so reported confidently, as an authority (note the word author lurking in that common word). It’s difficult, these days, to ascribe much value to our own thoughts on, say, friendship. The editors of Newsweek call a psychologist or a sociologist if they wish to report on friendship. Yet we all are experts on the subject, just as Montaigne was. Even if you have no friends, you know something about friendship, perhaps more exotic stuff than the rest of us. So look inside yourself. What do you know? If I asked you to write on, well, let’s say ants, you’d have plenty to type: You’ve dealt with ants all your life. And your take on ants would be different from anyone else’s. Sure, someone like Edward O. Wilson, the renowned myrmecologist, knows more about ants than you do, but you know more about the day the ants carried away your Great-Aunt Minnie. And you could always study up to add to your knowledge, bolster your authority. Here are a few titles from Montaigne’s essays. Note that anyone—even you, especially you—could write about any of these subjects: “On Sadness,” “On Liars,” “On Fear,” “On the Power of Imagination,” “On Drunkenness,” “On Books,” “On Cruelty,” “On Anger,” “On Smells,” “On Experience.” Other writers have taken over and made use of this form of title, too, for books as well as for essays: On Love, by Stendhal; “On Shaving a Beard,” by Phillip Lopate; “On the Morning After the Sixties,” by Joan Didion; “On Embalming,” by F. Gonzalez-Crussi; “On Living Alone,” by Vivian Gornick; On Becoming a Novelist, by John Gardner; “On Coffee-House Politicians,” by William Hazlitt; “On Failure and Anonymity,” by Mira Schor; “On Apprenticeship,” by yours truly.
THE TRUE NATURE OF THE ESSAY Montaigne called his chapters essais. This term, as you may already know, comes from the French verb essayer, which means “to try.” So an essay is a try. That’s all. An attempt. An effort to get some little bit or large chunk of thought into writing. Doesn’t that take some of the pressure off? Think of each day’s work as a try. And instead of applying the labels memoir or essay to a piece, say, “Try.” Just to yourself. Just for now.
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travel writing: from journal to first draft by
L. Peat O’neil
P
art of the travel writer’s judgment is knowing what to write in the journal and what to leave to memory or later research. This is a personal decision, based on a judicious appraisal of available time. I’ve been recording trips in notebooks and honing visual recall for several decades and here are some tips: Develop an ability to memorize scenes and experiences. Test yourself. What do you see, what did you hear? Describe people in a sentence. Capture accents and gestures. Record colors and texture. While it is tempting to concentrate on writing the facts in your journal, remember to report the passing scene. If you are confident in the strength of your visual and sensual memory, you may leave some of the color commentary to memory. There are writers who need just a word to remind them of an experience. Others save objects that are encoded with memories. I collect local newspapers, postcards, souvenir programs, sales receipts, and tickets, even bus transfers. All of them remind me of the trip unfolding. If there is an opportunity, I save leaves, shells, seeds, and flowers. I sketch, write down names of people I talk to, jot down street signs, phrases from menus or advertisements. These disparate items serve as precise substance in your article so you can identify the brand name of the beer or the hot sauce you liked, the street where you encountered the helpful policeman, or the color of the wildflowers that carpet the pasture. Processing information before writing can make for a richer construction, but I caution novice travel writers against waiting. Write down as soon as possible what you’ve experienced. The habit of writing at least twice a day in the travel journal, perhaps at lunch and dinner, will yield the quantity and quality of information and anecdotes you need for a successful path in travel writing. Neglect the journal and you decrease your options for writing interesting stories that can be sold to several markets. Over time, your writing will evolve and mature. Phrases and sensations ripening in the mind for a day or more won’t lose their power. When you have a few years of regular travel writing behind you, experiences can be mulled over before writing, although the travel journal will always be the primary tool for productivity. People in the habit of jotting thoughts and observations in a diary have trained themselves to explore their thoughts. Anyone who is planning on becoming a travel
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writer and doesn’t have the predisposition to journal writing will have to be extra vigilant to write regularly during the trip to ensure that enough material is recorded to craft a salable travel article. The writer who already has journals or notebooks from previous journeys is rich with potential material to mine for the first few travel stories. The writer who hasn’t kept a journal until now can start recording story gold. In writing workshops, people sometimes ask me whether notes from past trips can he transformed into travel articles that will sell. Ascertain whether the information is still current. If your notes are from a trip to a place that has recently undergone significant political, geophysical, or cultural changes, it’s a safe bet you couldn’t base a travel article on those old notes. However, if your notes are lively, ripe with engaging people, and include anecdotes and unique events, and you’ve checked the facts related to those notes, perhaps you can craft an evergreen travel story based on your experiences at that time, in that place. Your flair as a writer and ability to focus on a particular theme will determine whether the notes from past trips can become articles in print.
From Journal to First Draft Read the written notes taken on-site to recover the dynamic immediacy of the passing scene. The journal on your desk serves as a resource for your brainstorm of travel memories. Or perhaps you’re working with long e-mails sent to family or friends from the road. For me, the entire diary serves as a first draft, although I may prune parts and use them in other travel articles with a different market focus. As we shall see in the examples that follow, some sentences from the travel journal can be directly inserted in travel articles. Other passages must be substantially rewritten to preserve continuity and style. For readers who are itching to get started and already have a travel journal, it’s time to make a typed transcription of your journal, upload from your PDA, or collect e-mail text files from various sources. This will be your first draft. Organize the travel journal entries on your computer. Skip the personal passages that explore your private moods and musings. Arrange related entries using the copy, cut, and paste options for your word processing program. This preliminary phase of typing and organizing material is easiest on a computer. If you are using a typewriter, try this organizational technique. Type travel journal entries onto separate sheets of paper, a paragraph or two per page. Leave lots of blank space. Sort the sheets of paper or cut and paste paragraphs so related events are together. With this technique, the writer who uses a typewriter should still come away from the transcription phase with a working draft. At this point, I’d advise against creating a chronological log of your experiences. Travelogues—place-by-place inventories of what you did and where you went—are not travel articles. Read as many published travel articles as you can so you’ll have an idea which highlights from your journal or notes will tell the story in the format of contemporary travel journalism.
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Of course, some readers won’t or can’t wait to get started shaping the travel piece. If you are compelled to tinker with the draft of raw travel journal entries now, remember that memorable travel writing has the same ingredients as any stimulating prose: Descriptions that summon the senses, alert the mind, and trigger memory. Details that show the place and people. Facts effortlessly woven into the textual fabric. Beyond that, travel writing strives to put the reader on location. What turns of phrase, bits of dialogue, or remembered experience will evoke the spirit of a place? Consult any writing book on prose style and the advice is the same: Use simple construction, vivid description, active voice, and mighty verbs. For insight on how untouched journal entries—or long e-mails sent home during the journey—become part of finished travel articles, examine these excerpts from travel journals and the related paragraphs in published travel articles. Freelance writer Chad Neighbor, based in Scotland, jots down the barest of entries in his travel notebook to serve as memory helpers. His diary entry about a stay in a cottage near a Scottish loch reads: Tigh-na-Coille. 150 ft from loch on part of promontr set off by burnet. basic but thick walls up to 2 ft set tapering in rms upstairs. w-to-w carpets, well equipped, modern furniture but practical, gd dining table. fire already laid (by previous occ) no wood but good coal, many repeat vis sometimes neg. over 10 years of photos on walls from 1 of them. helpful comments from other occ on, walks, restaurants, attractions, wildlife, etc. bats. post bus goes by door. black wd of rannach across rd capercaillie. schiehallion. coal fires (no logs) comments on whats lacking (washmach). fortingall yews.
These notes show a writer who uses a word or two to summon the scene to mind. This system of note taking probably wouldn’t contain enough information for a beginning travel writer. However, peeking into another writer’s notebook gives an idea of the many ways that details can be recorded. While Chad Neighbor’s notes seem to skim the surface, he does have lots of material. For example, place names that are difficult to spell were carefully written out, although missing some capital letters because of his hasty style. Many common words were abbreviated. Scene-setting details were carried directly from the notebook to the article that ran in The Washington Post Travel Section. The attractions of these superbly located cottages are only too obvious. The scenery tends to be first rate and, in our case, the 150-foot stroll to a private beach (even if wind and water made it far too cold for swimming by non-huskies) was irresistible ... Another quite different bonus of Forestry Commission and National Trust cottages is their logbooks, compiled by many years’ worth of visitors. These are a valuable resource for new arrivals dying to discover the best local tearoom or spot for spying a kingfisher. We followed the advice to visit Scotland’s smallest distillery at Edradour near Pitlochry—a fascinating detour. But the diaries also offer an absorbing chronicle. Some people have been spending certain weeks at certain cottages for ten years or more and feel almost as if they’re part owners. Indeed the excellent photos of Tigh-na-Coille and surroundings were taken, mounted, and hung by a regular visitor there who thought the walls were a bit bare.
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One of the most entertaining aspects of the entries was the complaints, visitors being clearly divided between those who expect all the modern conveniences and then some, and those who do not. There were complaints about the lack of a television, a microwave, a washing machine and, poor soul, a double boiler . . .
You may notice that Chad Neighbor writes a line about the logs and coal for the fire twice in the notes. He saves this information for the end of the article, using it as physical and psychological closure while creating strong internal structure for the story. The last thing he does during the trip is lay the fire for the next visitors, the scene he found when he arrived. One of the tests of a good vacation, of course, is how you feel when you leave your temporary abode. After our week on Loch Rannoch I felt relaxed, refreshed, and more appreciative of one of Scotland’s most spectacular areas. And, after laying the last fire in the fireplace (a tradition to welcome the next arrivals) and making our last chug down the driveway, I also felt sad to be leaving.
New York-based travel writer Ann Jones shares her travel journal entry that became the lead and opening paragraphs for “Horse-Packing in Kookaburra Land,” which appeared in Diversion, February 1991. March 18: Drove Sydney—Tumut (6 hrs) thru central highlands of NSW—all rolling brownish grass & sheep & dusty eucalyptus—storm at Guilbourn—sandstone at Berrima—Tumut in a volley of green willow & poplar along a river—wide streets—tin roofed bungalows— dinner at Returned Soldiers League Club—Chinese buffet.
This shorthand impression of her entry to Tumut became the opening for the finished piece. In Tumut the hot place to eat is upstairs at the Returned Soldiers’ League. The restaurant is a cavernous hall with all the warmth and ambience of an American Legion post, and the food is plain—the kind my grandmother called “filling”—but the price is right. Saturday night they lay on something a little special, like a Chinese buffet. That goes over big with the locals, since there’s not a whole lot of Chinese food available, as far as I could tell, in the hinterlands of New South Wales, Australia’s southeastern corner … I’d left Sydney that morning, heading southeast, for a leisurely six-hour drive to Tumut. The highway ascended a series of rising valleys to grassy tableland that seemed to belong only to me and the sheep—thousands upon thousands of them. It was March, the end of Australia’s summer, and the dry grass, the dusty sheep, and the road were all the same color, actually no color at all. Then, below me, appeared a big stand of green poplars along the Tumut River, and the road wound down among tidy tin-roofed bungalows, steepled churches, and plain-faced business establishments set wide along broad avenues laid out for the grander city Tumut once intended to become.
Notice the author’s effort to relate the faraway place to familiar: “ambience of an American Legion post ... the kind my grandmother would call ‘filling.’” The sketchy notes in the travel journal expand when Jones uses them to summon memory to embellish the
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experience for the final rendering in the travel article. The note about “brownish grass & sheep & dusty eucalyptus” becomes more refined: “the dry grass, the dusty sheep, and the road were all the same color, actually no color at all.” Ann Jones says she takes notes for her travel articles in three ways: “As I go, I jot quick notes, especially facts and people’s memorable remarks, in a standard reporter’s notebook that is always with me. At day’s end or when time permits, I try to make a longer entry in a journal, summarizing the day, including descriptive details and noting issues and themes raised by the day’s events and conversations. (The excerpts included here are from her day’s-end travel journals.) I also often carry a pocket tape recorder to make quick notes to myself, conduct interviews, and record the noises of the place, especially animal and bird sounds and local music. I rarely listen to the notes or interviews, but I often replay the noises to bring back the feel of the place I’m writing about.” When I started using travel journal entries as the foundation for travel articles, the writing was rather formal and composed, as the following entries from a trip to Barcelona demonstrate. During the years since then, I’ve learned that it is easier to extract a first draft from travel journal entries that are focused on the details, atmosphere, and scene. Rather than striving for artful sentence structure in the journal entry, craft specific descriptions that are mated in sensual perception. Here are the highly structured notes on Barcelona that eventually formed the basis for a destination article with a special focus on the architecture of Antoni Gaudi. Today we hunted Gaudi’s buildings. Beginning with the Holy Family Cathedral, still unfinished, and ending at Park Guell, a marvelous fantasy land high above the city where clean air is able to be breathed. The cathedral proved a wonder, high towers, a sand castle in prestressed cement. It may take another fifty years to achieve Gaudi’s vision, certainly work is not progressing rapidly. The candy-colored towers are visible several blocks away. An amusement park perhaps, or a children’s playground. No, Templo Sagrada Familia, the Holy Family Church between Calle de Provenza and Calle de Mallorca (north east of the Diagonal) at their intersection with Calle de Cerde. Still under construction after one hundred years, this cathedral evokes the gothic spires and buttresses of churches of the Middle Ages, yet it is constructed with the humorous, even mocking, combination of materials that marks all of Gaudi’s efforts. Fantastic/marvelous forms, part nightmare, part joyous fantasy, crawl upwards to the four spires on each end of the cathedral. There is also harmony, however; the spires may look like a sandcastle melting under the onslaught of the sea, but the design is wonderfully proportioned, superbly designed, and completely in tune with human sensibility. The effect of entering a building you do not realize is unfinished is remarkable. You wonder if this is what a war zone feels like. We pursued his work in downtown area, marching perhaps longer than desirable. Got a bus up to the park, which relieved our legs. There we bought postcards, attempted a watercolor (stiff, amateurish), and watched schoolchildren play. The pure air was instantly remarkable and cleared my eyes and headache. We rested up, then walked the Gothic quarter before dinner.
The published piece opened with visual drama and walked the reader through the building:
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Jutting above Barcelona’s skyline, the rosy-colored towers could be the turrets of a transplanted Disneyland castle. Or a fantastic suspension device from a children’s playground. Or the scaffolding of a movie set. Surely not a cathedral. But the sparkling pink towers do rise from a cathedral—La Sagrada Familia, the Church of the Sacred Family, architect Antoni Gaudi’s unfinished masterpiece. ... Visitors enter the church through a vestibule that resembles many other commercially successful places of worship: Admission is charged; signs in four languages advertise a multimedia documentary about the building for an additional fee; a sales clerk offers souvenirs and postcards; the visitor’s registry has comments in a dozen languages. But beyond the vestibule, the similarity disappears. The nave, the choir, in fact the entire heart of the cathedral is an open-air construction site. Great blocks of precast concrete, stacks of tiles, and numbered pieces are laid about, not unlike Lego pieces, waiting to be fit together. A closer look at the four landmark towers reveals they are not pink but gray concrete cones that culminate in mosaic glitter. It is the light, filtered through Barcelona’s air pollutants, that makes the towers appear pastel. An elevator whisked us and other visitors to a bridge connecting the two center towers ... figures from a dream menagerie—reptiles, amphibians, mammals—crawled up the cathedral’s facade, part nightmare, part hilarious fantasy: A tortoise at the base of a column stretched its mouth in a gasp, a lizard curled back on itself, dragons stared.
Note how many of my travel journal phrases appear verbatim in the finished piece. The general statements have sharper focus, showing instead of telling. The detached tone has become more personal and shows the reader what is unfolding. Comparing the building materials to Lego blocks continues the playground fantasyland theme established in the opening sentences. The structured journal entry mentions the improved air quality in the elevated areas of the city as it affects the writer, putting the writer at the center of attention; the published article describes the colorful effects of the air pollution and focuses the reader on the cathedral while conveying the same information about bad air in a more interesting way. Above all, travel writers should strive to communicate elegantly. We are the filters through which experience passes on a path to the reader. Our job is to describe accurately what we see and feel, not just reprocess factual information that is important to no one but economists, trade brokers, and the tourism industry. It’s true that at the beginning, the urge to write about everything will propel your pen. Take a step back, though. You know you can’t write about everything you see and hear. And you certainly won’t be able to use all those pages of notes in one story. Focus on what interests you. Have purpose; your experiences drive the story line. If the information gathering sustains your attention, when the piece is finished, the reader will stick with the story. Packing in the facts for facts’ sake won’t make a great travel article.
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the creative magazine query letter by
Art Spikol
S
ometimes I think that writers tend to view editors as stereotypically hardnosed people with short attention spans who react to writing as if it were a laxative: that is, you don’t buy it unless you need it. That’s partly true—at least, the first two parts of the statement sometimes are. But the last—well, that’s what’s wrong with stereotypes; since they’re based on appearances, they often ignore the human equation.
Write to the Human Being There are two people inside every editor. The human being is the one who says, Gee, this sounds like a story I’d like to read in response to a good query. The professional asks pertinent questions: Can 1 afford this? Do I need it? Can I justify buying it? The professional will occasionally overrule the human being, but not as often as the human being will overrule the professional. So, it makes sense to write to the human being. This is how the human being in me feels:
• He wants an opening sentence strong enough to get him to the next sentence and the next, until he’s read the whole letter.
• He wants to care about your subject, and you have to make him care. • He should finish your letter wondering about all the answers you haven’t provided. • He wants to know specifically what he’ll be getting—what kinds of information, what point of view. And don’t tell him you intend to be objective, because nobody is. He’ll settle for fairness.
• He wants to hear any special reasons why you should get the assignment. • He can’t tell everything from a letter; if you have samples or clips, send them. If you don’t, you’ll probably have to offer to write the article on speculation—it’ll give him a chance to get used to your work, and it’ll get you a foot in the door. If you have a gut feeling that what you’re offering isn’t quite right for his magazine, you’re probably right.
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• He has purchased manuscripts with misspelled words, poor punctuation, and occasional bad grammar, but even if you’d sold him every one he ever bought, you’d still have starved.
• He doesn’t want to hear your suggestions about how you could improve his magazine or how you could write an article better than so-and-so did it in a recent issue. If you don’t like the magazine the way it is, you probably shouldn’t be attempting to write for it.
Avoid Common Mistakes In the nonfiction magazine writing class I teach, I have a few query letters I use as examples of what not to do. Each of them does something, or several things, almost guaranteed to discourage any editor. I’m not going to reprint the actual letters here, nor even the actual words (and, because I removed the names long ago, I’ve long since forgotten who wrote them)—but I am going to keep the examples similar enough so you can see why the “no thanks” letters went out to the person who wrote:
• “Such existences I perceive as the skid row life since it is there that one can often locate a vast panorama of emaciated forms immersed in alcohol seeking warmth and smelling like damp shoes,” for trying too hard—without punctuation, yet.
• “Would you be interested in an article entitled, ‘Star on the Rise’? It’s about John Smith, who is one of the most promising politicians, at age twenty-six, that our state has ever seen,” because if I want to buy puff pieces, I’ll go to a pastry shop or ask John Smith’s mother to write the article.
• “I have recently done some research on the soft pretzel, and have found roots in Austrian tradition which relate to it. Knowing of the large number of Austrian immigrants in the Philadelphia area ...”, because not only am I convinced that the number is smaller than the person thinks, but I’m very convinced that the story would be a bore to most readers, Austrian or not.
• “As a third-year journalism student who has never had the opportunity or background that is now available to publish an article, I’ve been struck with an idea which seeks recognition—namely, fathers and daughters in business with lucrative results. An article of this unprecedented nature would undoubtedly shed new light on the old saying, ‘chip off the old block,’” because he sounds like a freshman journalism student.
• “The courts seem to circumlocute a policy of laissez faire, whereas Congress is evasive, and parents are inordinate,” because I wouldn’t want to force readers (or myself) through one paragraph like that, let alone an entire article.
• And the grand prize: The person who wrote me a handwritten, nearly illegible letter containing a decent story idea, wondering if we could supply someone to keep him company while he did the story, because the research was going to be boring. Don’t laugh; it’s true.
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The Elements of a Successful Query The query should serve several primary purposes:
• Sell your idea through a brief, catchy description.
• Tell the editor how you would handle the lead and develop the article.
• Show that you’re familiar with the publication and how your article would fit with it.
• Indicate why you’re qualified to write this article. When applicable—and when possible within space constraints (a query letter should be no more than one page)—the query should also:
• State the availability of photography or other artwork (if this is a key selling point, you should definitely include such information; if it’s not, these details can be discussed when the editor contacts you about an assignment).
• Provide a working title that succinctly and enticingly sums up your idea for the editor.
• Estimate the article length (it should be as long as you think necessary to cover the topic, keeping in mind typical length of pieces in the publication—but be flexible).
• Outline possible sidebars.
• Summarize the supporting material, such as anecdotes, interviews, statistics, etc.
• State when the article will be available.
• Indicate if you’re submitting this idea to other publications simultaneously. Remember that this is a business letter so the format should be as professional as possible. Use single-spaced block formatting, standard font (12-point Times New Roman is always a safe bet), and a one-inch margin on all sides. Include your name, address, phone number, e-mail address, and fax number in the top right corner or on your letterhead. Be sure to address your letter to a specific editor, include an SASE if you’re sending by snail mail, and thank the editor for considering your query.
That’s kind of an honor roll of queries that didn’t quite make it, but I’m aware that some of the letters are rather extreme and some of these people may actually one day be writers. Their trouble was not knowing how to approach me. They figured that because I was an editor and they were just beginning writers—something of which I’m certain— they had to write something that was literally beyond themselves so I’d be impressed.
Write a Simple, Solid Query Meanwhile, I was looking for a simple, straightforward, interesting letter. In fact, let’s take a look at what that third-year journalism student could have said:
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The “& son” that appears after the names of so many area businesses are gradually being joined by “& daughter.” In fact, there are now about a dozen father-daughter partnerships in and around Philadelphia—from a dental lab to a trucker to an antique shop. And chances are good that it’ll be the wave of the future as more women stop thinking primarily of marriage as a career. I’d like to take a look at this new phenomenon, find out how these businesses make out both in terms of profitability and peaceful coexistence, and see what happens when I toss out the old sexist standard, “Hey, hon, is the boss around?” Also, will the logical conclusion be mother-son and mother-daughter businesses? I’ve never been published, so I don’t have any clips—but I’ll work on spec if you’re even mildly interested. I’m pretty good with a camera, too, so I’ll send along contact sheets of each pair if you like.
I’d have to say, “Okay.” It’s not a great letter, but it’s readable, the language is clear, and I have a pretty solid idea as to what I’ll be getting. And there’s no risk—which is probably the best incentive for me to read the work of a writer with whom I haven’t previously dealt. That’s all there is to it. Good thinking and a 41¢ stamp and you can put your idea in front of just about any editor in the country. The price is right, anyway.
Ten Ways to Turn Editors Off What you say (What they think): 1. “Have you done a story about ...?” (You should know this when you query. There are ways to find out.) 2. “I am writing to give you the opportunity to publish ...” (How did we get so lucky?) 3. “Would you be interested in the truly hilarious (or tragic) story of ...?” (I don’t know if we can survive it.) 4. “This is the kind of story you should be doing ...” (Don’t hold your breath.) 5. “Just tell me which approach you’d like me to take ...” (Just tell us which approach is appropriate.) 6. “The author can ...” (What’re you, an agent?) 7. “There would obviously be two sides to the story ...” (If it’s obvious, isn’t it a bit patronizing to tell us about it?) 8. “I know I can write better than so-and-so did for you some time back ...” (We’ll bet your mother told you so.) 9. “If you’re not interested, please let me know, since I’m sure I can sell this somewhere ...” (Go to it.) 10. “I’ll be willing to take a little less than your regular fee to get this published ...” (We’re not willing to pay less, assuming it’s worth publishing.)
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Jack Smith 555 W. Fourth St. Cincinnati, OH 45200 (513) 555-9000 writer@emailcom December 10, 2006 Edward Fictitious Managing Editor Inc. 77 N. Washington St. Boston, MA 02114 Dear Mr. Fictitious: Custom Cleaner Inc.’s doom was sealed before the company’s first home dry-cleaning kit reached stores. Procter & Gamble Co. already was preparing a competing product. And when P&G announced its plans, retailers wouldn’t stock Custom Cleaner. Clean Shower, another upstart cleaning product, seemed headed for a similar fate. After a promising initial reception in the market, the no-scrub daily cleaner inspired knockoffs from such well-heeled rivals as Clorox Co. But Automation Inc., maker of Clean Shower, fought back successfully, increasing sales by boosting advertising even as four competing brands hit the market. In a 1,000-word article, I would like to use such case studies to explore how entrepreneurs respond, and sometimes even prevail, when established competitors invade their turf. I believe this would strongly appeal to Inc. readers who invest in new products—and usually harbor deep fears of sudden ruin at the hands of giant foes. I am a freelance business writer who has published two books on start-up businesses, and for eight years I’ve covered the consumer products industry for Advertising Age and other national business publications. In this work, I’ve encountered numerous start-up companies that have launched novel products only to face potentially fatal competition. Thanks for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you. Sincerely, Jack Smith Encl.: Reply postcard Clips
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writing an irresistible book proposal by
Michael Larsen
T
he Golden Rule of Writing a Book Proposal is that every word in your proposal should answer one of two questions: Why should a publisher invest in your book, and why are you the person to write it? If a word doesn’t help answer one of those questions, delete it. There are many reasons why, at least at the beginning of their careers, nonfiction writers are luckier than novelists:
• More agents handle nonfiction. • More publishers publish it. • More book buyers buy it. • It’s easier to write, sell, and promote. • It’s easier to resell in other media. • It’s easier to build a career out of by writing articles, giving talks, and selling CDs and other products.
• Most nonfiction books sell on the basis of a proposal (not finished work). If you prepare a salable proposal, you can get paid to write your book. And I believe that what you’re about to read is the fastest, easiest way to get the best possible editor, publisher, and deal for your book.
Putting Together Your Proposal Proposals have three parts: an introduction, an outline, and one sample chapter. Most proposals run thirty-five to fifty double-spaced pages. Here’s what goes in those pages.
The Introduction The goals of the introduction are to prove that you have a solid, marketable, practical idea and that you are the right person to write and promote it. The introduction has three parts: an Overview, Resources Needed to Complete the Book, and About the Author. These elements give you the opportunity to provide as much ammunition about you and your book as you can muster. Your introduction may take a lot of time to prepare and may only run five to ten pages, but the fate of most books hinges on it.
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Overview The basic elements your overview must contain are: Your subject hook. This is the most exciting, compelling thing that you can say in as few words as possible that justifies the existence your book. It can be a quote, event, fact, trend, anecdote, statistic, idea, or joke. For example, your subject hook could combine an anecdote about someone using your advice to solve a problem that leads to a statistic about the number of people with the problem. If it’s a narrative book like a memoir, it could be a compelling paragraph from your book (but only use it once in your proposal). Your book hook includes three pieces of information: your title, your selling handle, and the length of your book. Unless it’s a serious or reference book, your title must tell and sell. It must announce what your book is and give browsers an irresistible reason to pick it up, which is said to be half the battle for selling it. Your book’s selling handle is a sentence that ideally begins: “[The title] will be the first book to ...” You can also use Hollywood shorthand by comparing your book to one or two successful books, authors, or movies: “[Your title] is The Secret meets How to Win Friends and Influence People.” The length of your book is the number of 250-word, double-spaced pages your manuscript will have, and the number of illustrations it will have if you will use them. You can arrive at this magic number by outlining and estimating the length of your chapters and the number of pages of back matter (glossary, index, bibliography, appendixes, etc.) your manuscript will need. There are also several things you should include in the overview to strengthen the case for your book, but consider them optional if they do not apply to your particular project:
• Your book’s special features: tone, humor, structure, anecdotes, checklists, exercis
es, sidebars, and anything you will do to give the text visual appeal. Use competing books as models. The name of a well-known authority who has agreed to write a foreword, giving • your book credibility and salability. If this isn’t possible, write: “The author will contact [Famous Authority A, B, and C] for an introduction.” • What you have done to answer technical or legal questions. If your book’s on a specialized subject, name the expert who has reviewed it. If your book may present legal problems, name the intellectual property attorney who has reviewed it. • Your back matter: Use comparable books as a guide. • Markets for your book: Starting with the largest ones, list both the groups of people who will buy your book and the channels through which it can be sold. • Your book’s subsidiary rights possibilities, such as film or foreign rights. Start with the most commercial one. Spin-offs: If your book can be a series or lends itself to sequels, mention up to three • other books. • A mission statement: If you feel a sense of mission about writing and promoting your book, describe it in one first-person paragraph.
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• The author’s platform: a list (in descending order of impressiveness) of what you have done and are doing to give your work and yourself continuing visibility in your field and with potential book buyers. If you are doing a book that you will promote with talks around the country and you want a big house to publish your book, you need to have continuing national visibility through talks, the media, or both when you sell your book. The promotion plan that follows must be a believable extension of what you are already doing.
• Your promotion plan: In descending order of importance, list what you will do to
promote your book. For books with a large nationwide audience that writers want to sell to big publishers, this list is at least as important, if not more important, than the content of the book. • Lists of books that will compete with and complement yours. For competing books, include the publisher, year of publication, number of pages, and the price. Then use two sentence fragments that start with verbs to describe the book’s strengths and weaknesses. For example, “Includes x. Fails to cover y.”
End with a list of the ways your book will be different and better than the competition. You may use information presented earlier in the overview, but reword it. Don’t repeat anything in your proposal. If you’re lucky and creative, there may be no competing books, but you must list complementary books, because these books (on your subject that don’t compete with yours) prove the marketability of your subject.
Resources Needed to Complete the Book List of out-of-pocket expenses for $500 or more such as permissions, travel, illustrations, or a foreword with a round figure for how much each will cost. Your agent may prefer not to include these costs when submitting your proposal, but having them there helps prove that your idea makes sense and is well planned and that you’re professional. End your resource section with: “The author will deliver the manuscript X months after receiving the advance.” If time is the only resource you need, just add this sentence to the end of your overview.
About the Author Your bio is your opportunity to prove that you are qualified to write this book. On one new page (most of us have led one-page lives), tell editors everything you want them to know about you—in order of importance to the sale of your book. Write your bio in the third person to avoid a page full of “I’s.” Include any media experience. If you have an audio or videocassette of any appearances you’ve made, mention them. If you will meet with interested editors at your expense, write, “The author will meet with editors interested in the book.” These add to an editor’s sense of your commitment to your book.
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At the end of your bio, either scan or affix a photo of you that makes you look media-genic and like a successful author and, if possible, relates to the book. This won’t be necessary if you will be including an article or brochure that includes a photo of you.
The Outline To prove that there’s a book’s worth of information in your idea and that you have devised the best structure for organizing it, write from a paragraph to a page of prose outlining every chapter. Aim for one line of outline for every page of text you guesstimate, for example, twenty lines of outline for a twenty-page chapter. This doesn’t have to be exact, but it will help you make the length of your outline relate to the length of your chapter. The Golden Rule for Writing Outlines is: Write about the chapter, not about the subject. Start your outline with a page called “The Outline,” skip a space, then type “List of Chapters,” and list the chapters and the page of the proposal that each chapter outline begins on. Make your chapter titles as effective as the title for your book, like headlines for ads that compel readers to read what follows them. At the beginning of each outline, center the number of the chapter at the top of the page, then give the title on the next line flush left. Flush right on that line, indicate how many pages the chapter will be, and the number of illustrations it will have if you’re planning to use them. Give your chapter outlines a sense of structure in one of two ways: 1. The first way is to start an outline like this: “This chapter is divided into X parts”, and then provide about a paragraph of copy about each part. 2. The second way is to begin successive paragraphs like this: a. The chapter opens, starts, or begins with ... b. The next part, section or segment of the chapter ... c. The chapter ends, concludes or closes by ... Use outline verbs like describe, explain, discuss, analyze, examine. (My book How to Write a Book Proposal lists more than one hundred of them.) Vary the verbs and how you use them as much as you can to avoid repetition and so the outline doesn’t read like a formula. You will get the knack of doing this. It’s not hard, just a new skill, and the examples in the book will help you.
A Sample Page of Outline Here’s an outline for a chapter for what became my book How to Get a Literary Agent. Chapter 12 Good Fences Make Good Neighbors: How to Handle Agency Agreements
19 Pages This chapter starts by balancing the pros and cons of agency agreements. Then it covers eleven essential points that should appear in any agreement, as well as clauses for writers
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to avoid. Four representative agreements follow, including the author’s, which appears on the next two pages. The discussion of agreements concludes that since no agreement can encompass every potential contingency, the most important basis for any agreement is the good faith of the people who sign it. The next part of the chapter presents separate bills of rights for authors and agents stating their responsibilities to each other whether or not the agents have an agreement. The chapter ends by analyzing the causes for changing agents and the three-step procedure for doing it: 1. Try to find a satisfactory solution to the problem. 2. If that is not possible, notify the agent in writing of the change. 3. Find another agent.
The Sample Chapter Choose the strongest representative chapter that will best show how well you write and what is freshest and most exciting about your idea. Agents and editors usually like to see about 10 percent of the text, twenty to twenty-five pages. Include the illustrations for the chapter if you will use them. A narrative nonfiction book, such as a memoir, that you want to have the impact of a novel may have the greatest impact if editors see all of it, so be prepared to submit the entire manuscript, along with the first part of a proposal, and a two-page synopsis instead of an outline. The parts of a proposal are listed in the order that you will submit them. But you can write them in whatever order you wish. You may, for example, find a proposal easier to write if you start with the easiest part of it to write, perhaps your bio, and then do the other parts in order of their difficulty.
O Happy Day If luck is ability meeting opportunity, you are part of the luckiest generation of writers who ever lived. Information is doubling every eighteen months, and the age of information is also the age of the writer. There are more:
• Subjects for you to write about • Ways to get your books written • Options for getting your books published • Ways to promote your books • Ways to profit from them than ever
And technology is a genie on a chip, an amazing tool for writing, researching, selling, and promoting your books, and for building and maintaining the networks you need to meet those challenges. There are also more ways than ever to test-market your book throughout the writing and publishing process. One is writing a blog or one or more articles about the
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subject. An article that is long enough and strong enough will substitute for a sample chapter. In fact, the right article in the right magazine at the right time can sell a book. Agents and editors read media, online and off, to find ideas and writers. The simplest recipe for happiness I know is to create your perfect book—the gift that only you can give, the song that only you can sing—and send it out into the world. And it’s easier than ever for the right book to change the world. So read what you love to read and write what you love to read. The passion that you want all of the gatekeepers between you and your readers to have starts with you. So make passion illuminate everything you do. Susan Taylor, the editor of Essence, once said, “What you love to do is exactly what you were put here to do.” I urge you to put your gifts for speaking and writing in the service of your ideas, your books, and your readers, and don’t just do it for yourself, do it for all of us. Good luck!
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ANALYZING A MAGAZINE FROM THE OUTSIDE IN by
Lisa Collier Cool
T
he secret to identifying promising markets for your article ideas is knowing how to size up unfamiliar publications quickly. A reader skims through a magazine reading the articles that strike his fancy and skipping the rest. But a writer analyzes everything in the magazine from the ads to the articles, looking for clues that will show him how to sell to that magazine. This attitude will give you an edge over the competition, making points with editors and ultimately paying off in sales.
The Cover While you can judge a magazine by its cover, you’re likely to get a superficial impression. New York Magazine is obviously a regional publication, but with eight million stories in the “naked city,” which one should you pitch? Say that the two article titles on the cover are: “Clinton: Fire Your Lawyer,” and “Summer Fun: The Hottest Beaches, Sports, Fashion, Shopping, Books, Food, Movies, Kid Stuff, and More.” Since cover stories are the ones editors see as the most important in that particular issue, right off we know these editors are interested in politics, current events, recreation, fashion, food, and trends—possible areas to consider for your submissions to this publication.
The Table of Contents Often writers are confused by the differing terms used in a table of contents and are unable to distinguish staff-written material from freelance pieces, or they waste time scrutinizing staff-written magazines that are not potential markets. In the table of contents, staff-written pieces often appear without author bylines, while titles of freelance pieces are normally credited to their authors. If no bylines appear in the table of contents, the magazine is almost certainly staff-written; for further confirmation compare bylines of the actual articles with the list of “contributing editors” or “staff writers” in the masthead of the magazine. (If no bylines accompany the articles either, the magazine is definitely staff-written.) Checking for author bios at the end of published articles will also
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help you identify freelance articles. “Joan Smith owns Renovations Unlimited and is currently writing a book on home renovations” implies that the author does not work for the magazine regularly. The table of contents is likely to be divided into at least two categories, one containing “articles” and “features” and another listing “columns” and “departments.” While some magazines favor more fanciful terms, or group material by subject, your goal should be to learn which articles are regular, monthly features (“Cosmo Tells All”) and which are oneshots (“Birth Control Update”). While the majority of freelance work will appear in the articles and features sections, some regular columns and departments also buy freelance material. Others are completely staff-written. To determine which columns or departments are potential markets for you, compare each bylined name with the masthead—if the writer works for the magazine, the column isn’t open to freelance work. Another test is to check two or more issues. If a byline appears each month, the column is probably done by freelancers. Also look for small print at the end of the column—some magazines include writing tips and prices paid to encourage submissions.
The Articles Having several issues on hand is particularly helpful since some article types may not appear in each issue. You’ll want to note length (one printed magazine page with no ads is usually about a thousand words; or count the number of words in one inch of columns and measure the article with a ruler to get a more exact count). Then look at what kind of research is favored: numerous quotes from experts, book references, newsbreaking reportage, popularization of scientific research, personal experience, author expertise, or intellectual analysis of ideas. Now consider tone: witty, practical, sophisticated, intellectual, sexy, step-by-step how-to, emotional, or chatty. Finally, look for distribution of subject matter: If the last three issues contain ten self-help articles and one humor piece, you’ll have some idea of the relative demand for these two article types.
The Columns and Departments In addition to being possible markets for your writing, these can also indicate what not to write about. A column may completely satisfy the magazine’s need for a certain kind of material, or it may limit submission possibilities for a particular topic. While some magazines buy freelance book or record reviews, for example, freelance sales are unlikely if a regular column already covers new releases. Sometimes taking a specialized angle may overcome this problem: “The All-Time Best Love Songs,” or “Finding Nonsexist Children’s Books.” If a column covers a very broad subject area like travel, check several recent issues before making submissions in the same area. Freelance articles on the subject, if any, are likely to be either longer or more specialized. Being aware of recent coverage also prevents you from making overlapping submissions. The regular features can also help you construct a profile of the typical reader. Consider what these departments tell you about the Cosmopolitan reader: “Cosmo Body,” “Cosmo Health,” “Style Counsel,” “Beauty Q and A,” “Best Gets” (fashion update), “Inside Hollywood,” “Cosmo Careers,” “Agony” (self-help advice), “Cosmo Cash,” “Dating and Relating,”
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and “Bedside Astrologer.” You see the Cosmo girl is interested in her looks, her body, and her mind. She’s upwardly mobile (“Cosmo Careers” and “Cosmo Cash”), but immersed in pop culture (“Bedside Astrologer,” “Inside Hollywood”), and probably single (the horoscope is for her man, not her husband). Extrapolating, you can imagine the typical reader as an upwardly mobile administrative assistant searching for her male counterpart.
The Ads Since advertisers spend vast sums to pinpoint appropriate markets for their products, put this research to use by learning all you can about the demographics of the readership: age, sex, lifestyle, income level, social class, and interests. Let’s take a look at Child magazine. Its name immediately identifies children as the reader’s most salient interest, but who exactly is that reader? Normal ads that would appear in Child include: Huggies diapers, Ford Freestar minivan, swimming pool covers, Baby Magic lotions, Claritin antihistamine syrup; this suggests that the main audience is women—mothers—with above-average income (hence the swimming pool covers and $20,000 minivan). With this in mind, finding suitable angles on articles slated for this publication is much simpler. Scrutiny of the ads can also suggest topics to write about. Since Child has many ads for diapers, baby food, infant toys, and children’s medicines, good articles might be: “The Best Over-the-Counter Remedies for Your Child,” “Starting Your Baby on Solid Food,” and “What to Do About Diaper Rash.”
The Editor’s Page and letters to the editor Though some magazines don’t carry one, the editor’s page is your opportunity to meet the top editor “up close and personal.” Often the editor either discusses what interests her about some of the major articles, or imparts philosophical reflections about the magazine’s subject matter. Both give you insights into the editor’s mental outlook and interests that can be reflected in your queries. If the magazine runs reader mail, two helpful nuggets can be gleaned from it. First, you can infer subject matter of previous articles you might have missed, broadening your understanding of the magazine’s emphasis. Second, the readers’ reactions both tell you what does and doesn’t work in this magazine. The readers’ comments can sometimes suggest affiliated article topics to consider for future queries: if reader X complains that something wasn’t covered, your query might focus on that subject.
“In the Next Issue” Announcements Like letters to the editor, such announcements clue you in to additional topics that interest the magazine and emphasizes the editor’s priorities. As you sharpen your skill to size up market needs, you’ll find the process becomes automatic—so even a casual read turns up ideas that can open new markets for your writing. Once you make reading like a writer a habit, you could soon find that your favorite magazine’s next cover story is ... your article!
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how to break in to popular magazines by Jenna
Glatzer
Y
ou get that wistful look in your eyes as you stand at the grocery checkout line. You sigh a little, fingering the glossy covers of those gloriously popular magazines. A single tear forms as you realize that, for the thirty-fifth month in a row, your byline is in none of them. Sure, you have your little successes. Your work has appeared in smaller magazines. Maybe your articles even show up regularly in local publications, on Web sites, in trade magazines, or in those midsized consumer magazines that never quite make the cut at the supermarket. But you can’t deny you ache to finally crack those glossies and feel like you’re a member of the upper echelon of freelance writers. How do I know? I’ve been there. And now that I’ve had the exciting experience of casually flipping to my articles and pointing them out to my friendly supermarket cashiers, I want to help you do the same.
Aim Big, But Think Small If you don’t have a bio and clips to die for, major magazine editors aren’t likely to trust you with a long feature assignment right away. Instead, aim for the short articles in the front of the magazine, and stay on the lookout for appropriate ideas you can flesh out in a few hundred words or less. For truly short articles, you can skip the query and just write the whole thing if you prefer—it usually requires about the same amount of effort. Linda Wasmer Andrews has now written seventeen hundred articles for a wide list of impressive magazines, but says her first big break came in 1985 when she sold several short pieces to American Health. “Back in those prehistoric days, you couldn’t just surf the Internet for leads, so I would go to the local medical library and spend hours combing through the current issues of medical journals looking for quirky ideas that would make my queries stand out,” she says. “The first one that sold was a short item about the air quality in ice-skating rinks. Other successful pitches included seatbelts for dogs and a curved-bristle toothbrush. Those short clips in a big magazine landed me long
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assignments from small magazines, which landed me long assignments from big magazines—my ultimate goal, of course.”
Find Local Subjects Savvy freelancers never discount their local newspapers, radio, and television stations. You never know when you’re going to find out about one of your neighbors who has a story worthy of a national audience. Be especially aware of local volunteers, extraordinary human-interest stories and town projects, and interesting entrepreneurs—many magazines are on the lookout for these subjects. And don’t ignore kids’ accomplishments—teen magazines use plenty of stories about outstanding youth. Sheri Bell-Rehwoldt broke into American Profile by paying attention to her surroundings. “I pitched the magazine a story on Delaware City, a forgotten town that was trying to entice tourists so it could regain some of its former grandeur.” Bell-Rehwoldt and her husband had been gallivanting around town and were smart enough to stop by the visitor’s center for research material.
Write Your Own Story Your personal experiences are potential goldmines. Think about the important life lessons you’ve learned, the challenges you’ve overcome, the stories that have captivated your friends and inspired other people. A story that is uniquely yours cannot be assigned to another writer, so your clips are not as important in this area as your compelling tale. While working at a public radio station, Andrea Cooper sold a first-person story about the station’s Celtic music program to The Christian Science Monitor. My first major credit was from Woman’s World, where I told the story of how my fiancé helped me overcome agoraphobia.
Meet Editors If you have a chance to meet editors at conferences or networking events, do it! Sometimes you’ll have an opportunity to pitch (sell a magazine idea) on the spot; other times, it’s considered poor form to do business at an event, but you can listen to the editor talk and then pitch by e-mail later. Some freelancers also got their starts by landing internships or entry-level positions at magazines and using the time, in part, to make contacts. At a writers conference many years ago, Veda Eddy listened to a Sports Illustrated editor speak about her need for “quirky pieces” on sports-related subjects. Although Eddy had never read the magazine, she pitched the editor an article about the ways racehorses are named. “She said it sounded promising and asked me to follow up with a written query,” says Veda. “That was the first of about six articles I wrote for Sports Illustrated, and it would never have happened if I hadn’t had that personal contact with the editor.”
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Write “On Spec” Writing on speculation (“on spec”) is a controversial issue among writers, but there’s no denying that it can pay off. If you have no clips, or nothing you feel would impress the editor enough to assign you a particular piece, it may be worth it for you to write the article and hope it’ll sell. Study the magazine’s format to get an idea of the right word count and style, and then give it your best shot. That’s what Lisa Marie Beamer and Janine Adams did. Beamer won a writing contest sponsored by an online writers’ group, and entrants were encouraged to submit their work to paying markets after the contest ended. She edited her entry until she thought it was marketable, and then sent it to FamilyFun. “I was shocked beyond belief when, two months later, a senior editor called to tell me they were interested in using my essay for their ‘My Good Idea’ column!” Adams queried Good Housekeeping about a profile of an animal-rescue activist, and they asked for the story on spec. It was published in 1997, and since then, Adams has written for many other national magazines.
Work Harder Than Everyone Else If you’re trying to break in, be willing to do extra work up front to give the editor confidence in your ability to handle the assignment. Research, nail down experts, perfect your lead, find anecdotes, and suggest sidebars and visuals where appropriate. “I had been writing for trade publications and smaller magazines for a few years— and unsuccessfully pitching the big women’s pubs—when I learned that editors like to see a lot of research in your queries,” says Linda Formichelli, a freelancer who has written for Family Circle, Woman’s Day, and Redbook.
No Magic Key Many writers believe if they can just land one article in a well-known magazine, they’ll be set and will never lack assignments again. The truth is most freelancers find that getting a byline in a major magazine helps, but it doesn’t guarantee future sales. Jane Louise Boursaw’s first major sale was to Woman’s Day, and she says, “I felt like the queen of the world after getting that byline. That story helped me get my foot in the door and gave me the confidence to keep going, but I still had to keep chugging forward with queries.”
Keep on Querying It may help if you give yourself a weekly “query quota.” Boursaw suggests two or three well-crafted queries per week, whereas Bell-Rehwoldt aims for five. Rather than shooting the same query letter to dozens of magazines at once, though, challenge yourself to make your pitch a perfect fit. Think of a magazine as a puzzle; your article must have all the right grooves, be the right size, and match the overall picture. If you can tell an editor just where your article belongs in the magazine and why her readers will be interested, your odds greatly improve. And if you don’t hear back
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from an editor, Adams says you should always follow up by e-mail or phone: “Don’t take silence as a ‘no.’”
Be Audacious There are many avenues that can lead you to your first big sale, but you have to be willing to take a risk. Beamer says she didn’t have any confidence her first essay would sell. “I could have easily talked myself out of sending it, but I didn’t. It sounds cliché, but you have to take what might seem like unrealistic chances if you’re going to succeed. You never know which chance might pay off.” When the odds seem insurmountable, remember: Every successful freelancer once had a blank list of credits. Keep learning, keep building those clips, and don’t be afraid to shoot for the top. Today might just be your day.
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Sell it again, sam: reprints & rewrites by
Gordon Burgett
S
elling an article once is a major accomplishment, at least while you’re earning your spurs. Selling the same article again and again, or other articles derived from the same research, is utter delight. Showing you how that is done is the purpose of this article. For clarification, let’s distinguish between the two major means of reselling. The first, called “reprints,” is in its simplest form the selling of the same article, as is, repeatedly to different markets. The second, called “rewrites,” is the taking of the same facts, quotes, and anecdotes and reshuffling, expanding, and rewriting them into new forms, each a different article using some or much of the same material.
Reprints A traditional reprint sale follows the original sale of an article to an editor who purchased first rights. That editor bought the right to use your words—that article—in print first. When those words appeared in print, the rights automatically reverted back to you, and your rights relationship with that editor ended. What remained were second rights, also called reprint rights. (Second and reprint rights mean the same thing; the terms are interchangeable.) Once your article has appeared in print from a first-rights sale, you can immediately offer that very same article, without change, to any other editor you think might buy it. It couldn’t be more straightforward. Writer’s Market tells you what rights editors buy and whether they buy reprints, or the editor will tell you when you receive a go-ahead to your query. It also tells whether the magazine pays on acceptance or publication. Who buys second or reprint rights? Mostly editors who pay on publication, plus a few whose readers would not likely have read your words in the first publication, who pay on acceptance. How much do they pay? What they can get it for, or normally pay, since editors buying reprints have no idea what you originally received. Alas, those paying on pub-
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lication often aren’t high rollers, and those paying on acceptance for a piece already used will recognize that you will sell for less (since you’ve already been paid for putting the research and words in final form), so figure a third to one-half of what the original purchaser paid, then consider it a boon if you make more. The best thing about reprints is that through diligent and creative marketing, you can resell the same piece many times. So when the final tally is made, you might have earned more money for churning the same winning prose repeatedly than you made for selling the original. Using dollars to illustrate the point, if the original article took you eight hours to sell, research, and write and paid you $450, that is a gross profit of $56.25 an hour. If you resell the same article three times, each paying $200 and taking forty-five minutes apiece to find the market, prepare a copy of the article, reprint the cover letter and get it in the mail, that is an additional $600, or $267 an hour. (You can substitute your own prep time and payment rates.) Mind you, nobody has ever sold a reprint before he sold the original article, so the hard work—the idea finding, market picking, querying, editor studying, researching, writing, editing, rechecking, and submitting—is done first. Reprints sold later are the very tasty dessert to a hard-won meal. So how do you get editors to buy reprints?
The Reprint Selling Process Sometimes editors feverishly seek you out, begging you to let them reuse a masterpiece you already sold—you name the price. (Or so I’ve heard from writers whose imaginations vastly exceed their credibility.) Yet it does happen, on a far lesser scale. Reader’s Digest and Utne Reader are two wellknown magazines that do seek high-quality reprints to use (sometimes rewritten in a condensed form) on their pages. You can shorten their searches by sending copies of a particularly strong article with a cover letter suggesting they may wish to consider that recently published work for their pages. There is no choice with the rest of the editors who might consider reusing your bought prose. You must find them, approach them in a sensible manner through a reprint cover letter, and include a copy of the article in question and an SASE.
Finding the Most Likely Reprint Buyers Common sense guides this search. Since you want to sell the reprint without change, comb Writer’s Market to find other publications similar to the one that originally printed your article. Check in the same subject category, or those with similar readerships. Start with the Table of Contents. Read carefully about every publication that might even be remotely similar or use a topic like yours, as is, or redirected to a different market or from a different setting. Now create two columns on a sheet of paper. In the first column, write the title of every magazine that might use the article exactly as it is. Note the page number of the reference next to it, for easy finding later. In the second column, write the
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title of every magazine that might use the subject if you rewrote or redirected it. Next to the name write down how you would have to rewrite the article to make it buyable: “for women: change examples, approach from female perspective,” “wants history, focus on subject in early 1990s,” “uses bullets: extract key points, create bullets,” “change the setting to France, use French examples.” Also include the page number for reference. Let’s focus on column one here, since the changes needed to rewrite the piece are obvious in column two. You’ll most likely want to contact the editors of all of the publications in column one, whether they pay on publication or acceptance. Once you’ve created a master reprint cover letter, computers make it quick to customize the address and salutation and insert a personalized reference in the text. The potential of a resale, even slight, outweighs the small amount of time, copying, and postage required to get your article and letter before a healthy scattering of eyes. Do not send the reprint cover letter and article copy to those magazine editors paying on acceptance who already rejected your query, or to those major magazines that never buy second rights. Sometimes there are reprint buyers that are flat-out foes of each other. Submit to one first (the most likely to use it or pay the most), and the second if the first says no. (Years back I sold to the Air California and PSA magazines, both fierce competitors. While I was within my rights to simultaneously offer reprints to both, since reprint sales are nonexclusive, if both had bought the reprint and used it on their pages, I would have lost two good clients forever!) Once you have identified your marketing targets, you’ll need a clear copy of the article you want to sell as a reprint. If the article is exactly one page long and includes only your copy, great. Copy and send it as is. But when there is adjacent, nonrelated copy next to the text or the prose trickles onto later pages, you’ll want to cut your article out and paste it up. Include the photos or illustrations you also wish to sell. If the name of the publication and date of the issue aren’t in the copy, add them to every page. And number the pages in consecutive order. Then head to the quick copy shop to have as many copies reproduced as you will need, collated, and stapled. Just make certain the final copies you will send to the editors are clear, easy to read, and include everything you want to be seen.
The Reprint Cover Letter It’s not enough just to have names and addresses plus copies of what you want the editor to buy. You must sell the prospective buyer through a one-page cover letter accompanying the reproduced copy of the article. Your cover letter must do five things:
1. It must make the topic come alive before the editor ever reads a word of the article. 2. It must tell what you are offering and the rights involved. 3. It must describe any additional items or services you can provide. 4. It must tell how the manuscript will reach that editor. 5. By far the least important, it might talk a bit about you and your credentials.
Let’s look at each of these areas.
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The editor doesn’t know you, already gets too much mail, and has too little time to waste on an unexpected and probably unpromising letter with an article also enclosed. So your first (and probably second) paragraph has to make the subject of the article jump off the page. It has to make the editor say, “Wow!” or, “I’d be a fool not to want to read this article,” or, at the least, “Looks interesting. I’d better read that.” This is where you show the editor you can write, discuss the topic on which you have focused your obvious talents, and why (by inference or statement) that topic would find high favor with her readers. This gets the editor to pick up the article and read it. The next paragraph is short and falls after the point where you’ve stirred the editor’s interest. It tells what you are offering and what rights are available. You must tell who bought the first rights, when the piece was in print, and what rights you are selling. I usually get right to the point, since I don’t want to dally here: “As you can see by the article attached, first rights were bought by (publication) and appeared in print on (date). I am offering second rights.” (I could say reprint rights as well.) In the following paragraph you will want to tell of other items beyond the words that you are also offering. These could be photos. Since photos are almost always bought on a one-time rights basis, you can offer the photos the editor sees in the article or any of the rest that weren’t bought. You can offer to send slides or prints for the editor’s selection, if interested. They could be line drawings, charts, graphs, or other artwork that either appears in the printed article or that you could prepare to add to the piece. You could also offer a box or sidebar that you prepared but wasn’t bought by the first editor or one you could produce. (If the text exists, you might send it along with the copy of the article to expedite the sale and show the reprint editor precisely how it reads.) Somewhere in the reprint cover letter you must tell the editor what format you will be sending the manuscript in. If you say nothing, the editor will assume that you expect the copy of the article to be retyped or scanned, neither exciting prospects. You enhance the reprint sale by offering either to send the original text double-spaced in manuscript form or on a computer disk, mailed or sent by e-mail. Electronic submissions are by far the most appealing. As for what to say about yourself, the article alone will speak volumes, and the quality of the reprint cover letter will probably fill in as many gaps as the editor needs. There are three areas you may wish to expand upon, if it isn’t done in the bio slug with the article:
• If you have many publishing credits, particularly in this field • If you have a related book in print or are an acknowledged expert in the field • If the work described in the article offers some element of original, unique knowledge or research In other words, inject more biographical information only if that significantly increases the importance of the article or why the editor should use it. Otherwise, the editor knows the most important information already: that another editor thought your writing was good enough to buy and use. The rest the editor can probably deduce from reading the text. If not, supplement.
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Finally, don’t forget to include either an SASE or a self-addressed postcard for a reply. Otherwise you’ll never know that the editor didn’t want to buy your words for reuse. The reprint cover letter is a sales letter on one exciting page. Spelling, punctuation, and grammar all count. Make the topic come alive and shout to be used on the editor’s pages. Keep the rest businesslike, forthright, easy to understand, and compelling. It’s a letter from one businessperson to another: one with space fillers to sell, another who has space to fill.
Modified Reprints What if an editor wants to use your article but insists upon changes? Fine. But is it a reprint or a rewrite? That depends upon how much change the editor wants and who will write it. If the changes are major, treat it like a rewrite, which will be discussed next. But sometimes an editor just wants to squeeze the piece a bit, dropping a few words here, an example later. Or use his own photo. He will make all of the changes. No problem. You might ask to see the final copy before it is printed, to make sure the changes make sense. Or the editor may want you to tie the topic to his locale, adding in a quote or two, some local examples, or even a sidebar that offers local specifics. He wants to use the reprint as the core, with modifications by you. The more labor you put into it, the more you might want to negotiate the price. Find out what the editor intends to pay for the reprint, then try to get that increased to compensate you for the additional research and writing.
Rewrites A rewrite, in the least complicated terms, is an article based on an earlier article and uses most or all of the first article’s information. It is rewritten to create a different article that has its own sales life. Let’s say you write an article about training in long jumping for the Olympics. You follow the usual format: complete a feasibility study, query, receive a go-ahead, do the research, write the text, and edit it. The article is printed. Then you find two other, smaller magazines that pay on publication that are interested in the same topic, so you send their editors a reprint cover letter, copy of the published article, and a return postcard. One buys a reprint. But why end there? Why not go back to that first article and see how you can reuse your research to create other solid, salable articles? For example, why not an article for the high school athlete called, “So You Want to Be in the Olympics?” From the original, you develop a long-range focus and training program for any athlete in any field, perhaps using long jumping as the example—or tying in several examples, including long jumping. Or an article based on three or four athletes each from a different country showing the paths they followed to the Olympics, with tips from each for the reading hopeful. If all four are long jumpers, you have less research but probably less salability as well.
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Or four U.S. Olympians from widely varying fields, including long jumping, to show their reflections on having competed: Was it worth the effort? What benefits have they received? In retrospect what would they do differently? What do they advise the readers thinking of following their Olympic paths? By now the process is clear: Extract something from the original article and build on it for a subsequent article. The more you can use from your original research, the less time you need at the feasibility, querying, and researching stages. The trick is equally as obvious: You need a clearly different article, one that has its own angle or slant, reason for being, message, and structure. Rewrites need their own titles, leads, quotes, and conclusions built around a different frame. You can use the same facts, quotes, and anecdotes but in a different way and for a different purpose. Once you’ve designed a different article, it must pass through the same selling phases we’ve described: the feasibility questions, the query, the go-ahead, the additional research, the new writing, the editing, and publication in a different magazine. Since rewrites have their own legal existence, you can even sell reprints of rewrites. You can even rewrite rewrites, then sell reprints of rewrites of rewrites. That’s just a name game. The editor buying a rewrite calls it an article, an original work created for that magazine and its readers. He doesn’t want to know, and you don’t want to reveal, that it’s a spin-off of earlier research. Does it have its own legs? Does it stand on its own merits? If so, the term “rewrite” has sense only to you, as part of the developmental chronology and evolution of an idea put to print. Further discussion of rewrites falls squarely under the general discussion about how you create and sell copy. Since a rewrite is based on an idea that already sold and comes from research that has passed the test of acceptability, it simply has an edge on the competing articles if it is worth using in its own right.
A summary of Reprints and Rewrites The difference is best seen from the rights perspective. A reprint is an article sold on a first-rights basis that is being sold again (and again). The original buyer purchased the right to use that article on his pages first. Once used, the rights reverted to the writer. Following the protocol described, the writer then contacts other editors offering the resale of that original piece, on a reprint or second-rights, nonexclusive basis. The copy is the same or includes few changes. A rewrite is a different article based on a previously written article and all the research that involved. It’s a rewrite only in the mind of the writer. To the buyer it must be completely different from the work sold, since first rights to those words have already been purchased and it is not being marketed as second or reprint rights. Reprints and rewrites require attention to publishing proprieties. If they are done improperly, you can lose more goodwill, and future earnings, than you earn at the outset. The most important element of those proprieties is honesty—defining in your own mind whether the piece is a reprint or a rewrite. If in doubt, discuss it with the interested editors. They don’t bite; they just hold their purse strings tightly.
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make more money with sidebars by
Gordon Burgett
S
idebars aren’t the meat and potatoes of selling, but tasty side dishes that enhance the overall flavor of the meal and increase its value. They do deserve special attention, though, particularly if you want to earn a healthy income from writing. You must know how they fit into the larger scheme of selling, when they can make the difference to a sale, and how and when they can or should be offered or provided.
When Should You Use Sidebars? Sometimes you need more than a simple, self-contained article to make the sale or to explain the topic fully. Sidebars accompany perhaps a third of the magazine articles sold, so you must know what they are and how they enhance your salability to editors. The good news: They usually earn you more money! You may hear sidebars referred to as bars or boxes. They’re the same thing; secondary information linked to an article and contained in a box or sidebar. Time and Newsweek use them frequently, often shaded a different color to set them off. If the main story is about welfare change, the box will probably contain an in-depth account of how the changes affect one welfare family or a list of changes in the law. If you’re writing about the tulip festival in Holland, Michigan, your box might be (1) other town activities this year, (2) other points of interest to see within forty miles of Holland, (3) a thumbnail history of the town and township, (4) six national figures born in Holland. You get the idea: If the main article covers the broad theme (taxation, life on Mars, illegal immigrants), the sidebar zeroes in (a state that lowers taxes annually, how microbes can exist in hostile environments, one family living in three countries). Macro/micro. Or the reverse: The article is about type B blood and the difficulty of matching donors in Finland, Spain, and Bolivia; the box tells how the mutant blood type began and spread. Or the article is a biography of Sandy Koufax; the box tells of Jewish ball players in the major leagues. Micro/macro.
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Which Editors Use Sidebars? Most do, but you must study the publication to see if the one you want to buy your masterpiece is in the majority. Newspaper editors are the most likely buyers, particularly if the box is short and tucks up in an empty hole near the article. Sidebars create more problems for magazine editors, who are cramped for space. So they are more likely to break the article into components, the body and a box or two (before or after) only if they know in advance the total space needed and why the sidebar adds appreciably to the article’s content.
How Do You Sell Sidebars? You really only have two means to get the additional copy accepted and bought. The best is probably just to write the box at the same time you write the article, create and print up each manuscript separately, and on the top of the sidebar, write in large letters “SIDEBAR” so the editor knows it is supplementary material. Then the editor has four choices: (1) buy the article alone, (2) buy the article and the sidebar, (3) buy only the sidebar, or (4) send you packing, sans sale. You won’t sell the article/sidebar package if you don’t send in a good sidebar that adds significantly to the original piece. Often enough, an editor will buy an article and not the accompanying sidebar. It’s a rare day that an editor buys only a sidebar, although not so rare to kindly refuse the article for some reason but ask you to expand the sidebar into another article with a new slant. Those are the positives, that sidebars can not only increase your income, sometimes doubling it, but also offer sales opportunities in addition to the main article. The negative is the loss of time writing sidebars that are not bought. An example might help clarify the process. Some years back I became interested in gray whales and their near extinction in California, where I had recently moved. In researching the topic, I discovered that one could take a three-hour boat trip from the San Pedro harbor, near Los Angeles, to see the giant critters up close, or as close as they want you to be. I bobbed and exclaimed in awe with other fair-weather gawkers as the whales appeared, blew mist, breathed, and gracefully disappeared. After interviewing the captain and first mate, I found my land legs and spoke to the founder of the Whale Watch program at the nearby Maritime Museum, which had an excellent exhibit about the oldest and largest extant mammals. The result was an article about how one could see gray whales by ship off the southern California coast. My choice was either to cram another thousand words of details into that magic prose about precisely which cities had wharves housing ships that took the public on such excursions, where the wharves were, the names of the ships, their whale-watching schedules, the costs, phone numbers for amplification, and other particulars—or set those aside in a box and let the editors decide if the box, all or part, was wanted for their pages. As it turned out, six newspaper editors bought the article. All paid extra and bought the sidebar, too. More often, a few buy it all but most have room only for the main offering.
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Another way to handle this problem is to suggest, in the cover note accompanying the finished manuscript, that you could write a sidebar, then explain what it would say and why it would add significantly to the article. (Savvy editors would ask themselves why, if it’s so valuable, you didn’t just write and send it.) There are distinct drawbacks to this method. One, there is too little room as it is in the cover note, and what there is should be used to sell the article itself and to explain the availability of photos. Two, the editors must put the article aside, contact you about the sidebar, wait until it arrives, and then pump up their enthusiasm a second time about the article, if they can still find it. The newspaper world spins too quickly for that many variables; too many sales will be lost. Better to take the chance, write a sidebar if it’s needed, and get something bought at the first reading. For magazines, you are far less likely to lose time writing boxes that aren’t bought. Mention the possibility of a sidebar in your query letter first, and only if the editor encourages its creation and submission will you invest the extra effort needed. Thinking about what you can put in a sidebar will also better guide you when you prepare the article itself. With a sidebar you can focus on one aspect of the topic and leave the other details or uncovered critical points to the article. Without it, you must touch every base in the text. Another cetaceous example, a bit convoluted, shows what I mean. I had just sent a finished manuscript to Dynamic Years about “Whale Watching in the United States” when, in an airplane seat next to mine, I met a sea captain who had been contracted to capture the only gray whale in existence, Gigi, kept in San Diego’s SeaWorld. Since he too was captive, I interviewed Frank Mason and asked if he minded if I shared his adventure with the world. The next morning I called the editor of Dynamic Years, explained my good fortune, and suggested that the core of the interview might make an interesting sidebar. He agreed. I wrote it up that afternoon, mailed it (during the era when a fax was presumably a female fox), and the article and sidebar suddenly became the lead piece and required a cover photo to match! The order was reversed—95 percent of the sidebars I’ve sold to magazines were suggested in the query letter and developed as a result of the editor’s interest—but the end result was the same: a better writing product, more complete with more facts, quotes, and anecdotes. A subject better developed, balanced between two angles. And a fatter paycheck for not a whole lot more work.
How and Where Do You Suggest a Sidebar in a Query Letter? If at all, I like to do it dead last, after I’ve sold the idea. My last paragraph might read: “If interested, I can also provide a sidebar about Frank Mason, the only sea captain who ever captured a gray whale (Gigi, for San Diego’s SeaWorld). Since you required those interviewed to be over forty-five, Frank, at sixty-three, is fair game. Just let me know.” If you have two possible sidebars, use the same format: “I can also provide sidebars about (A), with a quick explanation, and/or (B), with an explanation, if interested. Just
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let me know.” Three is too many. One, if too long, is too many. Keep the focus in a query on the primary topic, and only suggest a sidebar if it’s an interesting, valuable addition that adds a second dimension.
How Much Are Sidebars Worth? Certainly less than the article itself. Sometimes the editor won’t pay a penny extra, thinking that the text is all part of a larger article, however divided. But that’s rare. Newspapers might pay you from $25 to $100 or more. Magazines often increase the pay from 10 to 50 percent depending on the amount of work or research required. The truth is, you are often left to the mercy or charity of the editor. Often the real payment doesn’t become apparent until later. A well-structured article that includes a sidebar, even two, convinces the editor you are the kind of professional who should write often for her pages—main pieces, usually on assignment, travel paid. The payback is delayed but will amount to considerably more over the long run than the few extra bucks earned now from a single sale.
Can Sidebars Be Sold Any Other Way? Sell your words any way you can. You can break an epic into a hundred short poems and sell each to a different editor, if you wish. Sidebars can be sold as add-ons to an article, then rewritten and sold as a short article or a filler to another magazine. If you can find forty different ways the same facts can be resorted into clearly distinct items, you have forty different products to sell. But note the word “rewrite.” You get hopelessly enmeshed in the rights issue unless you change the title, the lead, the conclusion, and the order—that is, decidedly reslant each version. Once reslanted, go for it. You may even need a sidebar to go alongside your reformulated sidebar. If so, follow the process above!
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The Craft of Children’s Writing Lost in the Woods of Plot? Here’s a Way Out.........................................................231 by
Bonny Becker
Picture Books 101: Pay Attention to Structure......................................................238 by
Darcy Pattison
Is It Really a Crime to Write in Rhyme?.................................................................244 by
Barbara J. Odanaka
The New Rules of Teen Lit (Hint: There Are No Rules).......................................248 by
Megan McCafferty
Historical Fiction: Bringing the Past to Life...........................................................254 by
Deborah Hopkinson
Nonfiction: Can Informational Books Be Sexy?....................................................258 by
Kathleen Krull
Getting Back in the Saddle for a Tough Revision...................................................264 by
Christine Kole MacLean
Writing Groups: Succeeding Together.....................................................................270 by
Sara Grant
The Business of Children’s Writing The Synopsis: Short, But Power-Packed.................................................................275 by
Sue Bradford Edwards
Writing & Promoting Books for Babies & Toddlers.............................................280 by
Hope Vestergaard
Oh, The Places I’ve Been!: Promoting Your Children’s Book..............................285 by
Esther Hershenhorn
by JoAnn
Early Macken
Head of the Class: Tips for Successful School Visits................................................296 by
Kelly Milner Halls
License Writing Opens Doors...................................................................................300 by
Sue Bradford Edwards
Surviving the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Review.............................306 by Jeffrey
Lee
Great Expectations: Conferences Can Make a Difference...................................311 by
Darcy Pattison
Children’s Writing
Writing for the School & Library Market..............................................................290
lost in the woods of plot? Here’s a way out by
Bonny Becker
S
o you’re in the forest happily strolling along a faint, but unmistakable, path when suddenly your path disappears into a tangle of brush and you have no idea where to step next. Or maybe the path mysteriously sprouts into twenty paths and you can’t decide which one to take. You stand there paralyzed for a day, a month ... years. Welcome to “plotting,” one of the hardest parts of storytelling and the place where many—maybe most—stories and their authors get lost, at least for a while. Is there a way out of the woods other than crashing desperately through the underbrush or mindlessly following path after path only to retrace your footsteps? Yes. It’s called “classic story structure.” It’s the structure that underlies almost all stories from Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina to The Cat in the Hat. The idea that almost all stories have a common structure was expressed by Aristotle over two thousand years ago. And observers such as Joseph Campbell believe stories follow a mythic pattern as old as storytelling itself because that pattern is built into how humans perceive and respond to the world. Story structure is not an exact map or a step-by-step route through the woods. You will still have to create your own unique path, your own unique story. As Robert McKee notes in his landmark book Story, “Story is about eternal universal forms, not formulas.” But knowing something about story structure can help give you a vision of your final destination and landmarks along the way to help guide you there.
Common Story Elements These basic elements are common to almost all stories:
• You’ll have a main character (hero) with a need or a want. • In an effort to meet this need, your hero will leave the “ordinary” world and go in
quest of the solution to his problem. The story will build through rising action—the stakes will get higher, the tension • will mount, the tasks will become more difficult—until the story climaxes in an ultimate test for your character.
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• Your hero will return to his ordinary world a changed person. The Beginning Think of your story as a circle. In the beginning of the story, your hero is trapped in what writing instructors such as Christopher Vogler in The Writer’s Journey call the “ordinary world.” Quite simply, your hero is in some current situation that isn’t working for one reason or another. For Harry Potter, it’s living with a beastly aunt and uncle who treat him cruelly. For Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz it’s being stuck in Kansas—far away from a longed-for rainbow world. For the ant in my own picture book An Ant’s Day Off, it’s having to work every day underground never knowing sky or sun or rain. Struggling with how to start your story? A good place is to simply start here in the “ordinary world.” In Linda Sue Park’s Newbery-winning middle-grade novel A Single Shard, chapter one deftly shows the reader that the main character, Tree-ear, is an orphan. He lives with Crane-man under a bridge. They are poor but honest. And we see Tree-ear’s fascination with making pottery. The stage is set.
The Escape The next step in the story cycle will be your hero’s escape from this ordinary world. In screenwriting this is called the “inciting incident.” In story structure based on mythology, it’s known as “the call to adventure.” The bottom line is something will happen to upset the balance in the hero’s current life and bring about change. For Harry Potter, the inciting incident is when he receives the letter inviting him to Hogwarts. For Dorothy it’s the arrival of the tornado and the loss of Toto. It’s not necessarily the moment of change, but it’s the event that “incites” change—the event that makes change seem inevitable. In A Single Shard, Tree-ear, caught sneaking a look a master potter’s work, accidentally breaks a pot lid. Clearly life is going to change for this outcast orphan. Your hero then leaves the ordinary world. Everyone gets in covered wagons and heads west. Heidi goes up the mountain. Dorothy gets whisked to Oz. Bart, the sand ant, climbs out of the nest. Setting the stage may take several chapters or it might be virtually a single sentence as in the memorable first sentence of Charlotte’s Web: “Where’s Papa going with that ax?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.
Of course, this one sentence doesn’t fully give us Fern’s ordinary world. But we already know we’re with a family and sense a rural setting in an older time. And we know that something is going to happen here. Whatever that ax is about, we know it’s going to change things.
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The Quest So, your hero enters a new world. The world of the quest. In screenwriting, it’s your second act. In a story or book, it’s your middle. This is where the hero confronts obstacles and learns lessons. This is often where stories bog down. This is the middle of the forest. And it can be a dense, dark place full of dead ends and misleading paths. Here you may find yourself writing scenes and events just because you have to get from Big Plot Point A to Big Plot Point B and something has to happen. But oddly, even though a lot is happening, for some reason, your story feels boring and arbitrary. Or this may be where you find yourself staring at a blank cliff side. And writer’s block becomes more than an abstract term. So what do you do when you realize you’re just scribbling marks on paper? You can try to figure out why it matters. What are you really writing about? What is your theme? Without theme, the obstacles and conflict you create in the middle will just be a series of “then this happened and then that happened” and, guess what, your hero is battling giant ants from space and nobody cares. No matter how “big” and exciting you make your events, they won’t have meaning unless they tie into a deeper story question. That deeper question isn’t the plot. But it’s the thing that gives meaning to the plot.
Premise vs. Theme Figuring out theme can be tricky. It’s helpful to distinguish between “premise” and “theme.” Premise is the basic plot—the “what happens” part. In the Harry Potter series, for example, the premise (not the theme) driving the plot is how a boy learns to be a wizard. In The Wizard of Oz, the premise is Dorothy’s quest to get home. In An Ant’s Day Off, the premise is an ant daring to be the first ant ever to take a day off. But those describe plot, not theme. Theme is the “why it matters that it happens” part. In The Wizard of Oz, the theme seems to be something like: Maturity is achieved when a person internalizes various values (love, courage, thinking for one’s self). It’s a coming-of-age story. Oz could have easily collapsed into just a series of events. And then Dorothy meets this funny character and then she meets that funny character. And, in truth, no matter how clever or interesting the characters were, you would have soon lost interest if the events didn’t add up to something more. The reason this story holds our interest, I believe, is it answers an unspoken, perhaps unconscious, question in story form: What does it take to be a whole person? Theme can be a loaded word. Some writers prefer to think in terms of a story question. Or a unifying principle or controlling idea. Or they focus on character, as Linda Sue Park does. She believes theme should grow out of the character and the story. “If a writer begins with theme, the story is likely to be heavy-handed and message-y ... the kind of book kids run away from,” she says.
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Yet, in a meaningful story, theme is there. For example, to me, the theme underlying A Single Shard is the idea that craft—the mastering of a skill—can give life value and purpose. It can be very hard to recognize your own theme. Our writing minds seem to like to play hide-and-seek with us. And many writers will say that only later did they realize what they were really writing about. Often our stories are driven by unconscious choices and decisions. But most writers will at some point take a stab at what they think their story is about and will make more conscious story decisions based on that.
The Ultimate Test After your hero has faced various obstacles, developed various skills, observed various approaches to whatever her problem/issue/need/want is (it can be as passive as observing how others live—that’s much of what Scout does in To Kill a Mockingbird—or as active as Frodo with his many battles in The Lord of the Rings), the hero must be tested. This has been variously described as “facing the dragon” or the “crisis” or the “ultimate test.” It’s what your story has been leading up to. It’s where we see how and if the hero has grown from the quest. In The Wizard of Oz, it might seem at first glance that it’s when Dorothy faces the Witch, but actually it’s when the wizard’s balloon flies away. Dorothy realizes she has to turn to herself and all that she’s learned to get home and she decides to trust the shoes. In my own middle-grade book, My Brother, the Robot, it’s when my boy hero, Chip, decides to race a robot he knows will almost undoubtedly win—but for a boy who’s been avoiding challenging himself it’s an important choice. In A Single Shard, it’s when Tree-ear decides to continue his journey even though he has only a single shard from a ceramic pot to show the royal emissary the skill of his master. He puts his faith in the craft evident in a single piece of the whole work. The key word here is decide. This is the point at which your hero makes her most important choice in the story. This is the peak moment of your story. Not the battle that follows, but the decision to battle or the way in which your hero chooses to battle. What is the peak moment in Star Wars—a film in which George Lucas relied heavily on Joseph Campbell’s ideas about mythic story structure? There’s a huge emotional charge when Luke Skywalker blows up the Death Star, but the peak moment, the most important moment, is when Luke must choose between trusting in his instruments or in the Force. He decides to go with the Force and pushes away his navigational tool. Such a tiny gesture—he merely pushes away a piece of equipment. Such an emotional moment! Because the meaning isn’t in the hero’s actions, it is in the meaning of his action—his decision to act and why. If you’re trying to figure out where to take your story other than just the next random step down the road, McKee in Story suggests you look at your climax, your ultimate test, and backtrack from there. What value are you putting forward with this test and does the rest of your story add up to this moment and this choice?
Home Again The final element to story structure is to bring your hero home a changed person. You come full circle. You’ll need to take the reader back to that ordinary world and let the reader see how the world has changed for your hero because your hero has changed.
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Dorothy goes back to the farm and sees it differently because of her experience in Oz. Tree-ear comes back to a world utterly changed from where he started. He’s “adopted” by the potter and his wife and has earned the right to make pots himself; this poor orphan outcast has a home, a valuable skill, and a distinct place in his community. My boy Chip comes back to a home where he’s accepted for who he is, but he’s also more willing to try than when he started.
Putting It All Together It’s fun to see how all this works by taking a look at what may seem an unlikely candidate for classic story structure: Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat. But it’s all there. The ordinary world and its problems are clearly established: It’s a cold, cold wet day and the two kids in the story have nothing to do. They’re bored and passive—unable to do anything but sit. There’s a distinct inciting incident with a BUMP that makes them jump and the entrance of the Cat. He changes everything about this boring rainy day. In fact, he makes life progressively more complicated. More and more is at stake as he shows off his tricks. And when that’s not enough, he introduces two characters even wilder than he—Thing One and Thing Two. What’s the ultimate test? It might seem it’s the moment when the boy runs and gets the net to catch Thing One and Thing Two, but actually it comes earlier. It’s that moment of decision when the boy finally decides that it’s not okay for these creatures to be in his home. (“I do NOT like the way that they play.”) How about theme? For me, the theme is about the power of imagination or creativity. Sounds rather grand for this “simple” little kids’ book, but look at the story. A boy is bored and passively sits waiting for his mother’s return. An amazing (imaginative, creative) creature arrives on his doorstep. What follows is a demonstration that creativity is great fun, but unchecked creativity creates only chaos. However, controlled creativity (the capture of Thing One and Thing Two) gives excitement and, oddly, responsibility to life. When did the boy act? When Thing One and Thing Two messed with his mother’s things. Creativity is a messy business, but they had gone too far. The Cat cleans up the mess—so isn’t he the one solving the problem? Breaking that old, old rule about your main character solving the problem? No, the boy character remains the active, main character because he’s the character who made the necessary “ultimate test” choice. Remember, it’s that choice around which a story swings. And having taken control of his creativity, the boy can put it to work for himself. By the end of that story, our boy is no longer bored and no longer passive. He even dares consider the possibility that he won’t tell his mom what happened that day and this feels okay. Or at least it does to this mom, because he acted responsibly when it was important. The boy then invites readers to become more than passive observers themselves. He fires up the reader’s own imagination with the ending question, “What would you do?”
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Plot Problems? Ask Yourself the Right Questions Most writers instinctively use classic story structure. After all, it’s in our nature as humans. Check out your own story. Odds are you’ll find you used many of these elements with no conscious intent on your part. But you’ll probably also find pieces missing or a middle that doesn’t add up. Or an ending that isn’t as powerful as you’d like. When that happens, you might think about these various points:
• What’s my hero’s cage/trap/problem? What’s his “ordinary” world? • What’s going to upset the balance of forces in my hero’s life? What’s going to compel
him to leave the ordinary world and search for an answer? What is the proverbial “last straw”?
• What do I think my hero is grappling with internally or thematically? And what could
happen on his journey that would help illuminate that for him? Try to be fair and thorough. The more deeply you explore your issue, the more interesting it will be to the reader. Don’t shy away from the things you have no real answer for or seem contradictory or too difficult to figure out. Asking honest questions can make the difference between an interesting story and a didactic series of predictable encounters. Theme is question you’re asking in story form. Your story will add up to an answer, but let your characters act with free will to arrive at that answer. Don’t force your story to an already concluded answer.
• What will be my hero’s ultimate test? • What is the decision he will have to make and why does he make that decision? • How will he be changed? What will be different in his “ordinary” world because of what he has experienced?
To Think or Not to Think Did Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) have this theme in mind when he wrote The Cat in the Hat? Probably not on a conscious level. He just wanted to tell a fun story having been challenged to create an early reader with a vocabulary list limited to 225 words. But he clearly struggled to make this story add up. In fact, he described the yearlong process of creating that book as something like “being lost with a witch in a tunnel of love.” Was Linda Sue Park thinking about the value of craft when she crafted A Single Shard? Probably not. But what she did have in mind was a character with a problem. “Actually two problems,” she says. “An ‘internal quest’ and ‘external quest.’ Tree-ear’s external quest is to find a way to make celadon pottery. His internal quest is to find a place where he truly belongs.”
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In writing the story, Park says there is a lot of instinct at play, but for her “all scenes must be tied directly to the quests—this is a completely conscious decision to which I adhere rigorously.” However, she notes with a smile, “I think Anne Lamont’s ‘shitty first draft’ idea—just get the whole story down and fix it later—is better advice in general.” So if your writing is flowing, don’t stop and think! Just get it down. If the path is clear, just keep walking! But eventually you’ll probably find you use both parts of your brain—instinct and conscious choices. And when it comes to the conscious choices part, take a look at classic story structure for some landmarks to guide you on your way.
Recommended Reading There are a number of excellent books that can give you more ideas about story structure and how to use it in developing your story. Here are a few, including several screenwriting books. Screenplays have a distinct structure that has been analyzed extensively. Although the structure of a novel isn’t exactly the same, the ideas from screenplay writing can be very helpful. The Hero With a Thousand Faces, second edition, by Joseph Campbell The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers & Screenwriters, by Christopher Vogler Making a Good Script Great, second edition, by Linda Seger The Weekend Novelist, by Robert J. Ray Story, by Robert McKee The Writer’s Guide to Crafting Stories for Children, by Nancy Lamb
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picture books 101: pay attention to structure by
Darcy Pattison
S
hort stories and picture books have much in common. Both are short, and both contain a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end. But a short story isn’t necessarily suited for a picture book. Picture books are short stories molded to a specific structure that includes illustrations on each page. Before we put flesh on the story you want to write, let’s look at the skeleton that must hold it up.
Picture Book Structure Picture books are almost always thirty-two pages. The reasons for this are physical: When you fold paper, eight pages folds smoothly into what’s called a signature, while any more results in a group of pages too thick to bind nicely. In addition, the thirty-two pages can all be printed on a single sheet of paper, making it cost-effective. In extremely rare cases, picture books may be sixteen, twenty-four, forty, or forty-eight pages, all multiples of eight (a signature); but thirty-two pages is industry standard. Francoise Bui (editor for Delacorte Press), who was a publisher at Doubleday Books, an imprint of Random House, says, “We’ll do a longer book if the story needs it. The most likely time is if it’s a holiday or seasonal book, that we plan to give a bigger marketing push, and it needs those extra pages to tell the story. If I’ve acquired a story I really like, and if it needs extra pages, I’ll do it.” In my book, The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman, the illustrator, Joe Cepeda, took fortyeight pages to tell the story. The text is letters or postcards, written by someone who gives a lift to Oliver, a wooden man, then writes back to Uncle Ray to report on Oliver’s progress across the nation from South Carolina to California. There are fourteen letters for fourteen spreads. Cepeda adds wordless spreads between each letter to show Oliver actually traveling. When talking about the page layout, there are two options. First, you can look at each page separately. Second, you can talk about double-page spreads; when a picture book is opened flat, the two facing pages are often illustrated as one. Thus, in a thirtytwo-page book, you would have a single page (the right hand side of the book), fifteen
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double-page spreads, and a single page (the left hand side of the book). Decorative end papers, which are glued to the boards, often enclose these. In those thirty-two pages, there is usually “front matter” consisting of a title page, a half-title page, and a copyright page. In single pages, this may take four to five pages. In double-page spreads, it’s the first single page and one or two spreads. The text, then, has twenty-seven or twenty-eight pages or fourteen spreads, plus a last single page. Concentrating on the skeleton of the picture book may seem boring or unnecessary, but it is one of the two main differences between short stories and picture books. One mistake made by beginners is to have too many or too few pages to fit into this format. Why can’t the publisher ignore the standard page limits and just print the size book needed for a particular story? Again, the reasons are physical: the way the paper folds and standard sizes of paper for printing. Tracey Adams, literary agent with Adams Literary, says, “It’s definitely easiest to market a picture book meant to be the standard thirty-two pages.”
Picture Book Illustrations The second difference between short stories and picture books is the number of illustrations. Magazine stories, for example, may have one or two illustrations for each story. Picture books have an illustration on each page: you must think visually when writing for this genre. Thinking visually doesn’t mean adjectives; illustrators can fill in colors, background, clothing, and other details. Instead, concentrate on verbs; telling your story with pic-
Strong Narrative Arcs Deborah Halverson, assistant editor, Harcourt, Inc., also suggests studying these books as examples of strong narrative arcs. Gleam and Glow, by Eve Bunting, illustrated by Peter Sylvada. Traditional prose story: A family is separated by war, but they reunite with a new perspective thanks to people they meet during the separation. The ending is brilliant and effective because of the emotional setup—uncertainty turns to fear, then to sadness, then to hope. That Summer, by Tony Johnston, illustrated by Barry Moser. Poetry: The text and illustrations use a blend of memory and present-day events to carry readers through one summer with a boy whose brother is sick with a terminal illness. The younger brother starts a quilt, stitching images of his favorite things. When he can no longer finish the quilt, the older brother finishes it for him in a tangible expression of the theme of memory. Whose Shoes?, by Anna Grossnickle Hines, illustrated by LeUyen Pham. Simple text for young readers: A little mouse tries on the shoes of different family members, making her way through the entire family until she reaches her favorite pair of shoes: her own! The ending is a satisfying confirmation of self-identity after imagining what it’s like to be someone else.
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tures requires action. Unless a description is crucial to the story, cut it. Include actions that move the story along. Thoughts and dialogue may advance the plot, but they can’t be illustrated; talking heads make for boring illustrations. Picture book stories find ways to make thoughts concrete. “Visual pacing is needed,” Bui says. “You can’t repeat the same scene over and over. It’s too stagnant. The story needs to move to provide the visual variety.” Varying the setting is important. For example, if everything takes place in a bedroom, it’s hard to provide fourteen or more interesting actions in that setting. It’s also important to vary the actions. If every character leaps about, page after page, the illustrations become too repetitive. Of course, you can return to a scene, but add visual variety each time. For example, we see each of the Three Little Pigs building a house, but the building materials are different: straw, sticks, and brick. Visual pacing also depends on whether the illustrations are single- or double-spread. To some extent, the text can set this pace. The amount of text can also speed up or slow down a story. For example, if you want the pace to pick up near the climax, then cut the number of words for these later spreads. If you want a sustained pace that slows near the end—a bedtime book—then word counts should be similar on each page until the end. To slow the pace at the end, you can either add extra words, or use words with long vowels and no plosives (p, b, k, g, t, d). Think about those page turns, too. Some stories interrupt a sentence with a page turn, which lets the reader anticipate what might be coming next. Rick Walton’s book, Once There was a Bull ... (frog), is an excellent example of this. One page reads, “Once there was a bull ...” Page turn. “Frog ...” Children love this invitation to play with the words of the story.
Structure Plus Story With picture book structure and the importance of illustration possibilities firmly in mind, it’s time to turn to your story. First, write a story just as you always do. Unless you are a poet, it’s best to write in prose. “Writers tend to think that rhyming texts are easy to write and easy to sell,” says Bui. “They are the hardest to write and I reject almost all of them. Beginning writers are better off in prose.” Adams agrees: “One of the most common errors is when an author thinks she needs to rhyme and isn’t very good at it.” Remember the audience for picture books is children, so the story should be of interest to them. Unless it is a folk or fairy tale, characters are usually children. Rarely do adult characters or inanimate objects as characters make successful picture books. Bui says, “It’s preferable to have a young child as protagonist, or an animal. It needs to be someone the child reader can relate to.” Picture book vocabulary doesn’t have to be limited, because usually an adult is reading the story to a child. Likewise, style isn’t limited to short, choppy sentences. In fact, the voice of the story is just as important as in any other writing and playing with language is welcomed. Finally, limit the story to 1,000 words or less. “There’s a range,” Bui says, “ from a very simple sparse text, to a longer, more character-driven story. Shorter
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stories are better received by book buyers. Successful manuscripts average about four pages (typed, double-spaced, standard formatting).” From an agent’s point of view, Adams emphasizes, “I’ve had the most luck by far licensing picture book manuscripts that are under 1,000 words. Most are actually under 500.” Just like a short story, you must introduce a character and his problem and provide complications before solving the problem in a satisfying manner that leaves a memorable feeling or thought in the reader’s mind. Think about the narrative arc of your story. Deborah Halverson, former associate editor for Harcourt Children’s Books, points to the narrative arc of Wilma Unlimited: How Wilma Rudolph Became the World’s Fastest Woman, written by Kathleen Krull and illustrated by David Diaz. Halverson says, “We see Wilma progress from a small girl crippled by polio (she wore a leg brace and was told she’d never walk again) to a record-setting Olympic runner. This is a wonderful example of how picture book biographies can be riveting stories for kids rather than dry recountings of chronological facts. I think the key to the power of this book lies in Krull’s decision to let Wilma’s growing sense of determination steer the story through the key events on her road to Olympic glory. This is a story about inner strength as much as physical accomplishment.” (For more examples, see the “Strong Narrative Arcs” sidebar.) In other words, the “growing sense of determination” creates the narrative arc that builds suspense and interest from the first conflict through the climax.
The Hard Work Begins Once I have a story in hand that I think might make a picture book, the real work begins. Now, I must evaluate how well the story fits the structure of picture books and how illustratable the story is. I usually begin by dividing my story into pages, either twenty-eight sections for single pages or fourteen for spreads. (This is strictly for myself to edit the story; when I send the manuscript, I don’t include these page breaks.) Right away, you may discover that your story has too few or too many pages. Revise until you are at least close to this count. There is some flexibility in layout—the illustrator may include a wordless spread, or may decide to put two of your sections onto one page—but you must be close. Once the page count is close, it’s time to evaluate how well the story fits into the storybook structure. Each page or spread must do the following: 1. Advance the story. 2. Provide an action for the illustrations. 3. Make the reader want to turn the page. Overall, the story must move from setting to setting, so the illustrations can be varied. Of course, you can return to a setting, or the rhythm of the story may return to a setting several times. But each repetition must provide a new action or new details for the illustrator. Inevitably, there are weak pages that need work. Keep reworking the story until it meets the requirements of picture book structure and the need for illustration possi-
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bilities. Authors often use storyboards or book dummies to help refine the story. (See the “Two Tools to Help You Write Picture Books” sidebar.)
Common Problems One common problem is stories that are too wordy. Because each double-page spread is a scene, you can often eliminate transitions. The page turn works like a scene-cut in film: the illustrations re-orient the reader and the words aren’t needed. Parents read picture books aloud to kids, often repeating the same book over and over. Read your story out loud. Would you mind reading it fifty times in a row? How can you adjust the language to make repetitions more satisfying? One of the most dreaded comments from an editor is “this manuscript is too slight.” Slight can mean one of several things: 1. There aren’t enough illustration possibilities. 2. The theme is universal, but this telling isn’t special enough. If you choose a classic theme for a story, such as a bedtime story, you must make your story stand out in the crowd. Study your competition and add twists, new conflicts, or wordplay to make your story unique. 3. There isn’t enough story. The conflicts are too minor; the resolution is too easy. Rethink your story. 4. The series of conflicts don’t add up to an overall theme. Rethink the conflicts. Consider adding an extended metaphor to connect the conflicts. 5. The story lacks universality. What is this story really about? What’s happening on the surface (going to bed) may not be the real issue (sibling jealousy). When you identify the real theme, go back and strengthen it.
Submitting Once you are satisfied, type the story in standard manuscript format without any page breaks. Don’t worry about finding an illustrator and trying to provide artwork with your submission. Bui says, “Sometimes writers feel they need to submit illustrations with a story. Instead, the publisher finds the appropriate illustrator and it’s our preference to take care of that.” But what if you love your friend’s illustrations? You take a chance if you send in a package submission: What if the editor decides to take only the text? Have you lost a friend? Adams advises, “Even if the author knows or is related to an artist, never include the illustrations.” When you offer a package submission, the editor must love both, so you’ve cut your chances in half. Instead, wait until your text is accepted, then ask the editor if she will look at sample illustrations and a portfolio from your friend. The creation of a picture book is a collaborative effort between a writer and an illustrator; but once the editor assigns the book to an illustrator, you may have little say about the style or content of the illustrations. Adams says, “Another common error I see is a manuscript in which many of the details are specified which should be left up to the
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illustrator.” You must trust the illustrator to be a professional and to add his unique touch to create the best story possible. There’s one last checkpoint. To bring a picture book to market, the publisher often invests $15,000–25,000. Ask yourself if this story is worth that kind of investment. Have you revised and polished it until it is perfect? Once you’ve created the best text possible, consult Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market for an appropriate publisher, take a deep breath, and send it in.
Two Tools to Help You Write Picture Books Because the structure of picture books is so important, you may want to use one of two tools to help you hone your text. A storyboard consists of a single page with rectangles drawn to indicate the two page spreads of a picture book. Draw some indication of what action takes place on each page or spread. Don’t be bashful: I use stick figures and no one else would be able to understand them. We’re not looking for great art here, but for a way to “see” the entire book at a glance. Look for ways to build in progressions, rhythms, or repetitions, while keeping the illustrations varied and lively. A dummy book is made by stapling together sixteen pages of paper along the short side. Sue Alexander, author of over twenty picture books including Behold the Trees and One More Time, Mama, suggests using colored paper to better simulate the idea of colorful illustrations with white sections of text. Cut your printed text into sections and glue or tape them into place in the book. Remember the text will start on either page four or five because of the front matter. Alexander suggests you ask someone to read it aloud, while you listen for rhythm, pacing, and voice. Evaluate how well each page advances the action and provides possible illustrations. Editors don’t want or need to see either of these. They are trained to think in terms of page divisions and illustrations. These are tools just for writers to use to polish their manuscripts.
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is it really a crime to write in rhyme? by
T
Barbara J. Odanaka
old from the get-go that verse is a no-no, the rhyming writer (a misguided creature) actually believes the rumors swirling around conferences and Internet chats: Editors despise rhyme. Serious writers write in prose. Writing in verse is a one-way ticket to the rejection pile ...
Oh, what a bucket of balderdash. I know because, until recently, I was this misguided creature. When an editor told me she didn’t buy rhyme because “children deserve better,” I nodded reverently. You could have plastered a big, scarlet R on my chest. Rhyme = Crime was my mantra. Trouble was, I could barely write without rhyming. Nearly every line that popped from my brain did so with a distinctive beat—a boogie-woogie, a rumba, a cha cha cha— that was impossible to ignore. The heck with the naysayers, I decided. Win or lose, I’d give in to the muse. I sold my first book soon after. After interviewing more than two dozen editors, agents, and authors, I’ve come to believe the odds of selling a rhyming picture book manuscript increase substantially if one follows a few simple guidelines:
Rhyme Right Sure, it sounds obvious, but editors often complain that the bulk of rhyming manuscripts they receive are just plain stinky. Mangled meter, forced rhyme, inverted sentences to accommodate rhyme ... the pet peeves go on and on. “Some of the worst manuscripts I’ve ever read have been in rhyme,” says Liz Bicknell, associate publisher/editorial director of Candlewick Press. “I don’t mean to discourage serious writers, but anyone who thinks they can dash off a great rhyming picture book text in a couple of afternoons is either a genius or deluded.” Messy meter is a prime cause for rejection. Learning to scan your verse can certainly help—prime rhymer Sarah Weeks, author of the popular Mrs. McNosh books, calls herself a “scansion maven.” Newcomer Lisa Wheeler says while she feels she has a natural ear for rhythm, she always scans her verse to be sure.
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Reading your manuscript out loud is a good idea, but don’t stop there. Have someone (an objective someone) read it aloud. If you hear glitches in the rhythm, or feel the urge to coach the reader in any way, you probably have more work to do. “It must flow off the tongue,” says Victoria Wells Arms, former editorial director of Bloomsbury USA. “If I have trouble reading it [out loud]—or worse, have trouble just reading it silently—forget it.” Consider taking a poetry class. A slew of award-winning authors—Janet S. Wong, Ann Whitford Paul, and Kristine O’Connell George among them—were taught and inspired by the late, great Myra Cohn Livingston. Author Leslea Newman (Cats, Cats, Cats!) studied under the legendary Allen Ginsberg. Most importantly, immerse yourself in verse. Great verse, that is. “The advice I would give to aspiring writers,” says Christy Ottaviano, executive editor at Henry Holt, “is to study the masters—Prelutsky, Silverstein, Kuskin, Seuss, and Florian, for starters.”
Put Story First As many editors know, a manuscript written in rhyme, even when the rhyme and meter are perfect, does not guarantee a good story. A bee and a flea can sit by a tree, but if that’s the whole of your plot, well ... “A dull story is a dull story whether it’s written in rhyme or prose,” says Grace Maccarone, executive editor of Scholastic’s Cartwheel Books, and author of Itchy, Itchy Chicken Pox, among others. Maria Modugno, vice president and editorial director of HarperCollins Children’s Books, agrees: “It’s important for the book to say something—either tell a story or describe an incident or person or place.” In other words, don’t let rhyme be your guide. A story must have story. Author Anastasia Suen says her trick is to “storyboard” her books before she begins writing them. “A line or two comes to mind,” says Suen, author of Window Music. “If it feels like it’s a picture book, then I plot it out. If I have enough story, then I write the rest of the rhyme. It took me years to learn this: story first, then rhyme. You can have the best rhyme in the world, but if you don’t have a story, why would an editor want to see it?” The challenge, of course, is to blend all the ingredients—captivating plot, unforgettable characters, etc.—with seamless rhythm and rhyme. Susan Middleton Elya, author of a dozen rhyming picture books including Eight Animals on the Town, does this with an additional twist. Elya weaves English and Spanish in her verse. “The key,” Elya says, “is telling a story so effortlessly that the rhyming seems secondary.” Mary Ann Hoberman agrees: “The rhyme,” she says, “should feel inevitable.”
Be Extra Creative “Rhyming picture books should introduce children to a few delicious new words and have some clever, surprising rhymes,” says Megan Tingley, editorial director of Megan
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Tingley Books, an imprint of Little, Brown and Company. “Anyone can find a rhyme for ‘bear’ or ‘bed.’ But the true masters, such as David Greenberg, create hilarious rhymes with more unusual language.” Like this, from Greenberg’s Bugs!:
There isn’t any question, They’re infestin’ your intestine.
Several editors noted that predictable end rhymes—cat/bat, frog/log, and so on—are a turn-off. Some resist end rhyme altogether. “I think it’s extremely difficult to write a book with regular rhyme that doesn’t drone and that isn’t exhausting to read,” says Kathy Dawson, associate editorial director at Harcourt Children’s Books. “For me, the best picture books use rhythm and rhyme but don’t often have end rhymes. I love books that feel great in your mouth when you read them.” Toby Speed’s Brave Potatoes, which Dawson edited, is a prime example. The story, about a squad of spuds evading a malicious chef ’s soup pot, features an intoxicating mix of alternating rhythms, alliteration—Maldonada mushrooms, Bastaboola beets— and various forms of rhyme, all woven into a raucous read-aloud. An excerpt:
Over at the Fair, potatoes in the air! See them flip, flip, flip on the wild and wooly Zip! See the fearless aviators in their aviating duds going over, going under in an aerial display. What a trip, trip, trip! What a perilous ballet for the mamas and the papas and the wee potato buds. See the mesmerizing,
death-defying
spuds!
Like Speed, Nancy Van Laan (A Tree for Me, When Winter Comes) emphasizes rhythm over rhyme, with fabulous results. “The only advice I can offer is this: Don’t intentionally set out to write in rhyme,” Van Laan says. “If it starts to become overworked as the verse progresses, perhaps it shouldn’t be written in rhyme after all. Settle for a nice, rhythmic prose instead.” Whatever you do, don’t aim to be the “next Dr. Seuss.” (That is something editors despise.) Develop your own style, perfect it, and strive for the freshest, most wonderful stories your muse can muster. As Ottaviano of Holt put it, writing in verse “isn’t just about ‘turning a rhyme.’ It’s about developing a poetic voice and taking the form to another level.”
Rhyme for a Reason I’ll admit, this one used to drive me batty. There has to be a reason? Can’t I rhyme just because it sounds good?
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Well, no. Most of the editors interviewed said there needs to be a compelling reason for rhyme, especially for books aimed at children older than four. Modugno is supportive of picture book verse (she edited Jane Yolen’s Off We Go!) but says rhyme schemes ought to become more sophisticated as the target age gets older. Tingley believes picture books should only be written in rhyme if the use of the rhyme is integral to the telling of the story. “In One of Each,” Tingley says, “Mary Ann Hoberman wrote a refrain, ‘One plum and one apple, one pear and one peach. Just one, only one, simply one, one of each,’ that carries throughout the book and grows into ‘two of each’ by the end. This creates tension and drama and the story wouldn’t work without it.” Of course, some authors let the work decide for itself. “The books themselves demand [whether they’ll be written in rhyme or prose],” Jane Yolen says. “I just listen to what they say.” Author Bonny Becker was listening, too, when she decided to bail on her rhyming version of The Christmas Crocodile (“There once was a Christmas crocodile/A crocka-acrocka-a-crocodile ...”). Becker had worked hard on the rhyming text, but when a new opening line suddenly popped into her brain (“The Christmas Crocodile didn’t mean to be bad, not really,”) Becker knew it was a telltale sign to switch gears. “It set up a whole different story and different voice for the story,” Becker says. “And that voice was in prose, not in rhyme.”
Aim for the Bull’s-eye We’ve all heard it’s important to target our submissions. With rhyming manuscripts, it’s downright critical. Comb the shelves of bookstores and libraries; analyze catalogs. Note which publishers support rhyme—and which do not. You’ll save time, postage, and spare yourself an insta-ject if you avoid sending verse to publishers who rarely buy it. If you find books in rhyme you particularly enjoy, or seem somewhat similar to your style, check the acknowledgments page or call the publishers’ marketing departments and ask who edited them. At conferences, ask editors to list their favorite picture books, especially those they enjoyed as a child. If they loved rhyme as a child, chances are they’re probably still receptive to it. Better yet, ask them (politely) how they feel about rhyme in general. Steven Malk of Writers House agrees some editors have an aversion to rhyme. But when it’s done well and elevates a story, he says, “It’s just as marketable as prose.” Just as marketable as prose. Now there’s a mantra I can live with.
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the new rules of teen lit (Hint: There are no rules) by
Megan McCafferty
I
’m an imposter. I shouldn’t be included in this section because I’m not a children’s book writer. Technically, I’m not even a young adult writer. My books (the novels Sloppy Firsts, Second Helpings, Charmed Thirds, Fourth Comings, and a short story collection I edited, Sixteen: Stories About That Sweet and Bitter Birthday) are published by Crown, a subsidiary of Random House that doesn’t put out children’s books. Though my core audience consists of teenagers, my books are most often shelved in the regular fiction section of bookstores. I always viewed my books as crossovers between the teen and adult markets. I began the first novel in 1999, and there were numerous examples of the teen-adult pop culture overlap. TV shows like Dawson’s Creek, movies like American Pie, and music by the likes of Britney, Backstreet Boys, and *NSYNC weren’t exclusively for teenagers. I argued to my agent that my books could capitalize on a similar multigenerational appeal. It seemed like a no-brainer to me. One book, two markets, many copies sold. I could retire to the Caribbean before I was thirty. Or not. Most publishers saw it differently. In fact, when my novel was being pitched for publication, the response was nearly unanimous: Editors loved the book, but had no idea what to do with it. Was it YA? Adult? Who was the audience? Where would it be shelved in bookstores? How would it be marketed? I explained how Sloppy Firsts was a comic coming-of-age novel that could be enjoyed by older teens and adults. Therefore, it had a better chance of reaching both if it were shelved in Fiction vs. YA, as teen readers tend to read “up” to adult fiction, but not vice versa. And—hey!—maybe it could even be shelved in both! I was told by more than one editor that I was dead wrong. Whether it’s YA, science fiction, chick lit, or mystery, I was told that my book, like all books, must fit into an easily categorized niche. Otherwise it would get lost on the shelves. And Sloppy Firsts, with its contemporary voice and ageless appeal, simply didn’t fit into a single category. If I tried to put a book about teens in the adult section of the bookstore, I was warned that I would confuse and lose everyone. Editors advised me to either make it more “literary” so it would be more appropriate for adults, or to “dumb it down” for teens.
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Fortunately, Kristin Kiser at Crown loved my book enough to go against this conventional wisdom and publish my book as it was—and as an adult title. Any author who is lucky enough to find an editor or agent who is passionate about your book should work with that person regardless of what else she publishes. As I learned, these zealous insiders are often in the best position to champion your books, and they just might make the difference between a bestseller and the remainders bin. In my own case, it’s now six years, two sequels, ten foreign translations, and nearly 500,000 copies later. I can definitely say that I was glad to have disregarded the rule dictating that I shouldn’t work with an untraditional publisher. Of course, I am not advising you to shut out others’ criticism in favor of your own grand vision all the time. I appreciate input from my editors and my agent and know that their hard work has always improved my books. But as authors, we’re often told what we can and can’t do with our writing. And quite often, that advice is misguided. Herewith follows other rules for teen lit that were meant to be broken.
Rule #1: Don’t write about sex and drugs I was ecstatic when a very famous editor offered me a generous six-figure deal for my first novel. Then she dropped the bomb: “The title has got to go. Sloppy Firsts is depraved.” Warning sirens went off: WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP! The title was a joke, albeit one that plays off a crude bit of sexual slang. If this editor didn’t get the joke, that Sloppy Firsts referred to all the first-time mistakes one makes as a teenager, how could I be sure that she would approve of other edgier aspects of the novel? What would stop her from cutting out other “depraved” things, like when Jessica discusses her confusion about orgasms? Would she also want to edit out when the very underage Jessica gets drunk at a beach party? In the end, I turned down this editor’s offer and took less money from my editor at Crown, who told me she loved the title and everything else. I don’t take sex or drug use lightly. As the daughter of two high school teachers, I took great pains in depicting this particular slice of suburban life as it really is, and not, alas, as many people wish it would be. When I was writing Sloppy Firsts I remember thinking: Okay, I can either tone this down so it won’t offend anyone or write the book I want to write. Ultimately I figured that if this stuff is being talked about in the hallways of my former high school, I would be doing a disservice by not writing about it, and in the real language that teens actually use. (More on that later.) Since my books have been published, I’ve been told that if anything I’ve toned down teens’ frankness about sexual activity and drug use. Thousands of readers—teenagers, librarians, teachers, and yes, even some parents!—have told me via e-mail and in person that they appreciate Jessica’s candor about controversial subjects and can identify with her hormonally charged confusion. Jessica makes mistakes and learns from them. That’s what my fans love about her. It’s what I love about her, too. That doesn’t mean everyone has to love it. And so, I understand when more conservative parents keep my books out of their daughters’ hands because they don’t like my use of four-letter words. (Though I can’t help but wonder what would happen if they tried discussing the content of the books instead of censoring them ...)
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Rule-Breaking Lesson There seems to be societal pressure to be safe and wholesome, and commercial pressure to be sexy and edgy. While being shocking for the sake of being shocking is never a good idea, teens do appreciate candid characters and honest portrayals of controversial subjects.
Rule # 2: Don’t be too sophisticated— teens won’t get it So much of the material about teenagers—especially girls—is insipid, insulting, or inaccurate (or all three). All too often, writers resort to horrifying plot twists in order to give their teenage narrators a story “worth telling.” I have a deep respect for the ordinary trials and tribulations of teenagerdom and I’ve always been disappointed when a promising story gets ruined by over-the-top, soap opera developments. That’s why I kept the plot of my first novel simple: You’re sixteen years old. Your best friend moves 1,000 miles away. You hate all your other friends and your parents don’t understand you. What happens next? I was confident that if I wrote honestly, Sloppy Firsts would relate to anyone who survived high school, a time when the tiniest event takes on the hugest significance, and a best friend moving away is nothing short of catastrophic. Maybe Jessica’s troubles aren’t earthshaking in the grand scheme of things, but they are to her, which is why so many teens can relate. By treating these intense issues with the intelligence and respect they deserve, my work transcends the fluff. And yet, some critics suggested that Jessica was too intelligent, too insightful. Others were afraid that teen readers would be turned off by her impressive vocabulary. All fears proved to be unfounded. By refusing to dumb down or overdramatize her plight, Jessica Darling is both universally identifiable and unique. Since no one in her world provides the model for the type of person she wants to become, she has to experience the pain and pleasure of creating herself through trial and error. Who can’t relate to that? And in terms of her SAT-ready vocabulary, I’ve had countless fans tell me over the years that they appreciate Jessica’s wordplay, and that mine is the first novel that ever inspired them to consult a dictionary because they didn’t want to miss a joke! Just because she’s a sophomore in high school doesn’t mean her wit is sophomoric. Jessica’s biting observations are funny on two levels. First, because they are so true, with an in-your-face comedic value that can be enjoyed by readers of all ages. Her insights are also funny because they often reflect her youthful ignorance, which only more mature readers will fully appreciate. I’m happy to say that my books aren’t alone. The quality of writing for teens has improved immensely in the six years since I pitched Sloppy Firsts. The best YA books have become much more sophisticated and give young readers a lot more credit. Authors such as Ann Brashares, Rachel Cohn, David Levithan, and Carolyn Mackler have really elevated the genre to the point that the YA label doesn’t do their books justice. They appeal to teen readers who are turned-off by babyish YA, and charm older readers who (like me) are suckers for anything in the teen angst genre. In fact, their novels are better written and more entertaining than many so-called “adult” books.
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Rule-Breaking Lesson Don’t underestimate the teen reader’s capacity for understanding and appreciating complex storytelling. But don’t make it like homework for them, either. The books they love best are those that enlighten and entertain.
Rule #3: Don’t use slang or reference pop culture; You’ll date your book Rule #4: Don’t forget slang or references to pop culture; Your book will seem dated without them Obviously, these rules contradict themselves, as many rules do. This is something many writers for teens struggle with—and not without good reason. When I worked at a teen magazine I observed a focus group of high school students talking about their favorite (and least favorite) books. I’ll never forget the way one sixteen-year-old voiced the most serious complaint about young adult novels. “I hate it when like, old farts try too hard to sound cool.” At the time, I was twenty-three. I already qualified as an “old fart.” Now, at thirty-three, I’m a relic. How do I avoid embarrassing myself? I write my books in “real time,” so whatever happens in the world immediately affects the tone and content of novel. But I don’t worry about my books getting outdated because I go out of my way to set them during very specific periods. That way, all pop culture details contribute to a time capsule effect: This is how it was then. My inspiration is J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, a book written in the mid-1940s that still resonates today. Do I know all the actors, movies, and songs that Holden refers to in the book? No. Does anyone say “crumby” anymore? Nope. Do these throwbacks distract from my enjoyment of the story? Not one bit. To mimic the particular patois of a millennial New Jersey teen, I became a chronic eavesdropper. (Note: This was hardly an invasion of privacy because they’re usually shouting out their personal, private business as if they want strangers to get involved.) It helped that my mom was until very recently a high school teacher at my alma mater. I could learn more about how suburban teens act by sitting in on one of her classes than I could by poring over every teen magazine on the newsstand. I’m lucky enough to live within one mile of a major university, so virtually any trip outside of my door doubled as research for Charmed Thirds, the novel about Jessica’s college years. On the surface, many things have changed since I graduated high school. Music, TV, movies, fashion, and technology are nothing like they were in the late eighties and early nineties. I mean, back then I was wearing spandex and shoulder pads, listening to MC Hammer, and typing up papers on a word processor that weighed more than I did. But what I agonized over in my journals back then—unrequited crushes, catty girl fights, brain-numbing boredom, too many zits, and too little boobage—are the same subjects many teen bloggers obsess about today. I tap into my feelings from when I was young, combine that with my eavesdropped observations from now and—hopefully—come up with a realistic depiction of teen life in the aughts.
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I’m familiar enough with teen culture to write about it without feeling like an “old fart” who’s faking it. But if you feel like a fraud when you incorporate slang into your work, find another way to tell your story. Set your book in the era in which you the author came of age, like Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Or create an alternate universe in which you invent the slang and trends, as in M.T. Anderson’s Feed. Cater to your strengths as a writer, and don’t force yourself to conform to the foreign language of teendom.
Rule-Breaking Lesson There is nothing more cringeworthy to a teen than a writer who gets it wrong. But take heart: The three As of adolescence—awkwardness, alienation, and angst—are evergreen. Focus on the emotions, and not the buzzwords of the era, and you’ll write a book that teens will enjoy for generations.
Rule #5: Don’t write a [blank] novel. It won’t sell “Why write another teen angst novel?” I was asked. Wasn’t the market saturated with novels about moody teenage girls and the boys who love them? At the time, I was told that I’d be better off if I wrote: (a) an “issue” book about some traumatizing event like rape or drug addiction and how the protagonist “came of age” as a result of it; (b) an “otherwordly” book, where a character is blessed (or cursed) with some superhuman ability; or (c) a gossipy, supertrendy book that is forgotten as soon as its finished. None of these ideas interested me in the slightest. I’ve accepted that there are a finite number of themes in this literary universe. There have been a bizillion romantic coming-of-age novels, but that didn’t stop me from adding one more to the stacks. I believed I could handle a familiar theme in a refreshing way. I cared so much about Jessica, and all the characters in her world, and was genuinely excited to find out what would happen to them as I typed away at my laptop. Writing a novel isn’t easy, and you need to be enthusiastic about your idea or you’ll never make it through the rough spots. If you don’t care about your work, you’re just a hack. How often have you read a novel and gotten the impression that the author was as bored as you are? I know that I had tried to write one of those other books, my heart wouldn’t have been in it. And it would have suuuuuucked.
Rule-Breaking Lesson A good if well-tread idea, beautifully and creatively handled, transcends all publishing trends. It’s better to pursue an idea you’re passionate about than a marketable idea that doesn’t interest you at all.
Rule #6: Don’t write for teens—Period Before I was a novelist, I was an editor at the most popular women’s magazine on the planet. Many assumed I’d write a novel that would cash in on the lucrative chick lit
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market. Or that I’d write a “literary” novel for adults that would give me a certain kind of credibility that magazines couldn’t provide. Why waste my time writing for teens? I couldn’t stop thinking about how I, like many teens before me, was blown away by The Catcher in the Rye when I read it in seventh grade, and how it still amazed me each time I revisited it. I devoured novels written from a first-person female point of view, hoping that I’d finally find Holden Caulfield’s female counterpart: a teenage protagonist that is highly observant, hilarious, and wise beyond her years, yet still has a lot to learn about life. Though I found a few well-written and entertaining books, none came close to reflecting my high school reality. Fortunately, I wasn’t alone in my longing. Hundreds of thousands of readers have also found a fictional friend in Jessica Darling, and they care about her almost as much as I do. Which brings me to the greatest perk of writing for teens: When teens love a character, they reeeeeeeeeeeeeallly love that character with an unbridled enthusiasm that simply cannot be matched in adulthood. The best compliment I can get is when a teen says, “I hate to read. But I loved your book!” Every time I make one nonreader into a fan, that’s more than enough to silence the critics—real or imagined—inside my head.
Rule-Breaking Lesson Regardless of what type of book you write, there will always be naysayers. Writing takes courage because you put something out there that’s very personal, and people will judge not only the work, but you as an individual—even if they don’t know you. That’s scary. But I’ve accepted that no writer can control the audience’s reaction. There will always be people who don’t like your writing because it’s impossible to please everyone, so you shouldn’t bother trying. Instead, write the story that you would have read when you were a teen—or now! There’s sure to be many others out there who have been searching for the same book.
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historical fiction: bringing the past to life by
Deborah Hopkinson
O
ver the years, I’ve kept copies of my (many) unpublished stories in binders on my closet shelf. Every so often I pull down a binder and peruse its contents, hoping to discover a forgotten story that somehow, like wine, has improved with age. What I usually find is more like vinegar, or worse. Did I actually write—let alone submit—a story called “The Girl Who Wouldn’t Eat Anything Green,” about a child who wouldn’t eat her peas until they danced on her plate and talked her into it? Looking back, I think it took about two years of (unpublished) submissions before I found my way to historical fiction, the genre I’ve come to love best. Along the way I dabbled in silly animal stories, badly retold fairy tales, and well, vegetable stories. Now if you’re drawn to fantasy, mysteries, or middle-grade humor, go ahead and follow your heart. But if you’ve ever thought about trying your hand at historical fiction, I’d like to offer some hints to get you started. Hopefully you’ll end up with many published works—and more closet space than I have.
Is Historical Fiction For You? If you’ve never considered writing historical fiction because you’re not sure if you have the skills, you might want to think again. You don’t have to hold a Ph.D. to write good historical fiction. You’ll know this genre fits your writing personality if you can answer yes to some of these questions:
• Do you love research? • Are you insanely curious about the details of history? • Do you ever find yourself rambling on at cocktail receptions and dinner parties
about obscure historical personages? Do • you keep a notepad by your side when you watch Antiques Roadshow, in case there might be some tidbit of history you might want to look up later? Is • documentary film producer Ken Burns one of your heroes? • Are you willing to spend time reading research books, from scholarly to popular works, to verify one tiny fact?
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• Do you search the Internet like a hunting dog on the trail, convinced that what you’re looking for just has to be there—somewhere?
• Do you have (or can you get) access to excellent libraries or interlibrary loan services? • Are you willing to make phone calls, send e-mails, or go in person to track down facts, check references, or simply ask questions? If you find yourself answering in the affirmative, then you’re probably curious and persistent, and willing to work hard for your story. Chances are you’ll love historical fiction. The next step is to find something to write about.
Finding Stories in History When I visit schools, students always want to know where I get my ideas. I usually lob the question back, “Well, I’m no different from you. Where do you get yours?” In fact, story ideas for historical fiction are all around us: in newspapers, radio, books, museums, roadside markers, the Internet, and of course, in our personal experiences. My first picture book, Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt, was written after hearing a National Public Radio piece about African-American quilts; Maria’s Comet grew out of finding Maria Mitchell’s name on an Internet calendar of famous women; and Fannie in the Kitchen evolved after reading about the real Fannie Farmer in an anthology of women inventors. But suppose you come across a promising old volume in the town library. How do you determine whether that tantalizing historical footnote you’ve found will make a good story? How do you decide whether it should be a novel, picture book, easy reader, or a magazine story? Perhaps most important, how do you assess whether something that fascinates you will be equally interesting to an editor and publisher, let alone a young reader? In general, it’s helpful to ask yourself some questions before you start your research. Here are some suggestions to start you off:
• Do the elements of a good story exist? Is there the potential for conflict? Are there characters here whose lives have the power to engage us?
• Is there a child in the story? If not, is it possible to tell the story from a child’s point of view?
• Is the subject of the story suitable, of interest to young children or teens? • How complex is this topic? Do you see it as a thirty-two-page picture book, or does
it seem to cry out for a longer treatment? Is • this a story that in your heart you feel needs to be told? • Are you the right person to tell this story?
In addition, I often find myself evaluating whether the topic will be of interest to librarians and educators. Could the subject matter be used in the classroom? Are there obvious curriculum connections? It’s difficult to research and write a book and equally hard to sell one. The stronger case you can make for your story, the better the chance that,
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instead of languishing on a closet shelf, your manuscript will someday get a binder of its very own, complete with a contract, reviews, and royalty statements. But there’s another reason to pay attention to the classroom. Since my first picture book was published in 1993, I’ve come to appreciate the role educators and librarians play as proponents and caretakers of our literary heritage. Teachers and librarians are often the driving force that keeps many historical fiction books alive. They also embrace titles that can be used in multidisciplinary ways. For example, Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt has been incorporated into social studies units as well as in mathematics activities. As I’ve become more aware of the creative ways my books are used in classrooms, I’ve been careful to include historical notes and background information in my later books. Maria’s Comet includes both a historical note on Maria Mitchell, as well as a glossary of astronomy definitions. A Band of Angels includes a historical note and, on the endpapers, biographical information on the original Jubilee Singers whose story inspired the book.
Crafting Your Story You’ve done your research, your idea has all the elements of a good story—you’re ready to write. Where to start? I wish I had one of Fannie Farmer’s foolproof recipes to offer, but when I look at my own books and how they came to be, about the only thing I can tell you for sure is to keep trying—and never throw away research or a story idea. Sometimes the biggest challenge is finding the right voice for your story. In my first draft of A Band of Angels, I told the story from Ella Sheppard’s point of view, relating her experiences as one of the founding members of the Jubilee Singers of Fisk University. But my editor felt that it wasn’t child-centered enough, and it took several more revisions to create the story-within-a-story format of the final book. Other times it’s a matter of finding the right format. Years ago I wrote an (unpublished) Civil War novel. In the course of researching it, I came across a true story of a deserter in the battle of Gettysburg. When it seemed clear the novel was destined to find a permanent home in my closet, I tried re-working the deserter incident into a picture book. That wasn’t right, either. But when I had the opportunity to write two easy readers, I pulled out my research once more. At long last, Billy and the Rebel was published as a Ready-to-Read by Simon & Schuster. So, never throw that research away. Sometimes a story simply isn’t strong enough for an entire book. I got my start writing stories for Cricket magazine. Magazines offer wonderful opportunities for working with editors, compiling a track record, and reaching young readers. The best historical fiction helps readers imagine themselves in another time and place. It should also spark critical thinking as well as emotional connections. In writing about Ella Sheppard or astronomer Maria Mitchell, my aim was not biography. Rather it was to explore through story an emotional truth or connection I myself discovered. When I first encountered these women’s diaries, I immediately felt the vibrancy of their remarkable spirits across time. I felt connected to these other human be-
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ings who preceded me and was curious to know more. In crafting my stories for young readers, I tried to share that connection and curiosity. It’s important to remember that once you put words into the mouth of a historical person, you’re creating fiction. You may find yourself stepping outside your own time, place, and culture, as well as gender, race, and class. You’ll need to grapple with difficult questions about accuracy, revisionist history, political correctness. Each writer must come to terms with these on her own. It’s helpful to consult with experts and others who may know about your story. I was fortunate that Beth Howse, a descendent of Ella Sheppard and a librarian at Fisk, was willing to read the manuscript of A Band of Angels in draft form. While working on Maria’s Comet, illustrator Deborah Lanino faxed the artwork for a small painting of Polaris to me with a question: Was it correct? Dr. Andrea Dobson, a professor of astronomy at Whitman College where I work, consulted a program that showed exactly how Polaris would have looked from a Massachusetts rooftop in January 1828. Still, errors can happen, and the best you can do is to keep scrupulous notes, take responsibility for accuracy, and, as I’m always telling my seventh grader, “Check your work!”
Why Write Historical Fiction? In a 1999 article Professor Sam Wineburg of the University of Washington wrote, “Coming to know others, whether they live on the other side of the tracks or the other side of the millennium, requires the education of our sensibilities. This is what history, when taught well, gives us practice in doing.” When I speak to school groups, historical fiction isn’t usually the genre they mention as their favorite. Scary stories, animal stories, and mysteries rank far higher. But by the end of my presentation, kids can’t wait to touch the replica of Sweet Clara’s quilt, pointing out the path she took on the Underground Railroad. History is a lifelong study, a search for truth and meaning, not just of the lives of others, but of our own. Discovering stories that have the power to inspire is one of the joys I take in reading about history and in writing historical fiction. I hope you agree.
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nonfiction: can informational books be sexy? by
Kathleen Krull
I
s it possible to esteem informational books, otherwise known as nonfiction, as a sexy genre? This article will answer in the affirmative, bolstering its case with ten tips, a list of known voids, a bibliography of role models, and even a little aerobic exercise for desk-bound minds. (At this point, the publisher of this book was to supply a line of exotic dancers. If they are missing from your copy, the burden is on me to start off with an explanation of “sexy” and how in the world this could apply to books for children.) Webster’s dictionary to the rescue—“Stimulating (see erotic),” it says. If we skip the “(see erotic)” part and leave it at “stimulating,” we’re talking about books that turn people on. Books that grab you and can grab readers. For synonyms, see cool, gripping, suspenseful, innovative, fascinating, flashy, flamboyant ... We may be children’s book writers, but I think we know the difference between sexy and unsexy. My theory is that informational books are way more stimulating than the average writer, especially the one starting out, gives them credit for. Floating about is a snobbish prejudice toward them that it’s time to dispel. This genre can be terribly attractive, and that is what I mean by “sexy.” A quick disclaimer: I don’t label myself an “informational books author” and rarely even use the term “nonfiction”—one of the world’s great ugly words. I do all kinds of writing—chapter books, picture books, mysteries—and hope to continue shaping words that reflect my passions into formats that seem to match. But I’m convinced that books containing information are the best way to get one’s writing “foot” into the publishing “door,” and that they can actually support the working writer. Paying bills may not sound too sexy, but isn’t the sound of money worth paying attention to? I believe that kids don’t distinguish as much as we think they do between fiction and informational books. Not being snobs or literary critics, they aren’t into labels. Their attitude toward a book is pretty simple: “Do I want to read this?” They have high standards for getting a “yes” to this question, and those standards don’t automatically exclude genres. Most kids—especially boys, especially reluctant readers—are and will always be hungry for books that present information in an attractive way.
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By now you might be wondering: Isn’t this genre only for those of us who are leftbrained—the organized, clear, logical ones? If I’m right-brained—creative, wild—can I stop reading now? Wait. First do this little aerobic exercise. Lace the fingers of both your hands together as if you’re going to recite, “Here is the church, here is the steeple ...” Now, which of your thumbs rests naturally on top? According to my acupuncturist (I live in California), if your left thumb comes out on top, then you are dominated by your left brain. The ideal brain for informational books—you really should give this field a try. Conversely, right thumb on top means you’re right-brained. Continue reading, because this too is ideal. Informational books can be one cool way to express creativity—and this genre needs you. This genre is perfect for anyone intrigued by the idea of transforming their areas of expertise into books. It’s just right for the person who believes that life is a continuing process of self-education, a web of learning—and that getting paid at the same time is a nice bonus. The first thing to deal with, when contemplating your informational writing, is the Eyewitness series. Published by Dorling Kindersley (DK), these are mainly illustrated family reference books, with many photos and a trademark use of white space. Familiarize yourself with them, as they occupy a large corner in this territory. In the lesser bookstores, Eyewitnesses are the only books on the “nonfiction” shelf. The point here is to make your book differ from an Eyewitness. For example, instead of having an anonymous, assembled-by-committee feeling, you will want to turn your book in some more personal direction. Instead of focusing more on the pictures than the text, you may want to polish your words into the real grabbers. In any case, this shelf is your first stop in seeing what’s out there (more later). As you might guess, informational books are published for two basic age groups: picture books for approximately ages five to eight, and middle-grade books for approximately eight to twelve. The topics, writing style, and approach should be appropriate to each. There is such a thing as young adult (YA) nonfiction, for ages twelve to eighteen, and it’s a hungry audience. But there is so little agreement on how to bridge the gap in the marketplace between books and teens that for now this area can be a dead end for a writer. There are also two markets for informational books. Books for the retail or trade market need to have wide appeal, to catch your eye in a bookstore. The school and library market favors books tied to the curriculum, the topics kids have to do reports on. (This genre is perfect for ex-teachers, by the way, as familiarity with the curriculum is a major plus.) Hitting both markets is an ambitious goal, but either one is worth your while. There are now more children under eighteen than at any time in American history (and that includes the baby boom years). In this respect, the market has never been healthier.
Now, on With the Tips 1. Ignore this genre at your peril! Sorry to sound alarming, but this is the biggest tip: According to statistics compiled by School Library Journal, some twenty-five hundred of the five thousand books published for children each year are nonfiction. That is 50 per-
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cent of the market for your writing. Can you afford to think of nonfiction as not sexy, boring, just for drones, too pedestrian to bother with? Everyone wants to do picture books or novels, and editors’ desks are glutted with them—the good, the bad, and the very bad. A well-written, well-thought-out informational book proposal really stands out. This is the best way to get your foot in the door, and beginning writers seldom think of it. A few years ago I was asked to teach a class at the University of California, San Diego. With people always hounding me for how to break into this field, and out of a sincere desire to help, I decided to focus on writing nonfiction for kids. To my disappointment, only two people showed up the first night, and the class had to be canceled. Most disappointing of all, just two weeks earlier I had plugged the class to a local Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators conference—an audience of one hundred struggling writers, not one of whom came to the class. (Now you see why I’m resorting to “sexy” to stress my point.) 2. Know thy competition. The usual tip in any genre, but essential here. Get on intimate terms with the current year’s Subject Guide to Books in Print, a reference book available in most libraries. A convenient substitute, for those with Internet access, is searching by subject at Amazon.com (www.amazon.com), the online bookstore. As soon as you get an idea, dash to find out if it’s been done, and if it has, how you can do it differently. This is the exact thought process the editor uses, and you need to get there first. With almost all of my books, I know I’m on to something when there is no competition—this is a moment of real excitement, when the blood starts flowing (sounds sexy, doesn’t it?). For example, when I got the idea for Gonna Sing My Head Off!: American Folk Songs for Children (Knopf, 1992), I discovered in short order that my nearest competition was Fireside Book of Folk Songs. This collection, illustrated by Alice and Martin Provensen, was lovely—but it had come out in 1947, and it was time for a new one. And that was the hook I used to sell the book. 3. Invest time in focusing your material. Facts are everywhere, less than a dime a dozen, really. But kids love facts presented in new ways, and you need to come up with an approach that will make your material fresh. You must take a point of view on your facts—this is the only thing people will pay you money for. So think “big,” think “small,” think “weird.” Try not to think “neighbors,” as I have already used this approach in Lives of the Musicians: Good Times, Bad Times (and What the Neighbors Thought), and its companion books. Think “one child,” as in Jim Murphy’s book subtitled The American Revolution as Experienced by One Boy. Or invent a fictional character to experience your facts. Linnea in Monet’s Garden by Christina Bjork brilliantly uses a compelling voice to “process” information in totally kid-like language. I borrowed this very technique in my own Wish You Were Here: Emily’s Guide to the 50 States, which combines fiction with nonfiction. 4. Think visual. In fact, this is one way of testing your idea: Does it have strong graphic appeal? True, the words are primary. But these days, the writer is responsible to varying degrees for the graphics in an informational book. You may have to do some photo research, or hire a researcher, or tell the publisher how to proceed. At the very least, you should have some tentative ideas for how you visualize the book, to prove
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that it is in fact illustrate-able. With my books, visuals have always factored in early on. In my Lives of series, the graphics are so crucial that they technically came first: Ever since the day I saw Kathryn Hewitt’s gorgeous caricatures, I wanted to do books to match. With V Is for Victory: America Remembers World War II, the text weaves inextricably around memorabilia, old letters, and photos from the era. 5. Have passion! (Sexiness again.) This means choosing topics of great meaning to you. School Library Journal recently did a survey of nonfiction writers and was surprised to report that “personal interest” was not the main reason writers chose their topics— 40 percent chose on the basis of “outside influence or commission request.” We all have to eat, but save part of your brain for what grabs you. An element of passion is in all of my books. With Wilma Unlimited: How Wilma Rudolph Became the World’s Fastest Woman, I was fascinated by strong women (because I know many) and polio (because I might have had it). V Is for Victory started with an interest in my own family’s history. Lives of the Musicians was inspired by my love of music—and of nearly equal importance—love of gossip. They Saw the Future came about because as a teen I was obsessed with Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock and as an adult have been rumored to visit psychics. Psychics are relevant here, actually, as they could very well help you define your passions; inspiring messages from fortune cookies give clues, too ... Anyway, the point here, as in life, is to know yourself. 6. Good writing is just as urgent here as in any other genre. Love of language will always triumph. It is always the key factor in getting an editor to say “yes.” Maintain your sense of humor, indulge your sense of play, but be concise, boil things down. Hone those research skills—there are many books on this, plus librarians love to assist. In essence, do a ton of research, but present only the tip of its iceberg. Sometimes writers have told me that this whole idea of research puts them off of trying nonfiction—“ugh, too much work.” If you think of it this way, all writing is work, particularly sweating a picture book text down to those precious few well-chosen words, agonizing over the umpteenth draft of your novel—and suffering through the rejection process when editors are deluged with picture books and novels. 7. This is cool: You can sometimes make the sale on the basis of an outline and sample chapter, or occasionally even just the idea. Fiction can’t be sold this way; editors generally won’t commit until they know you can pull off the whole thing. Nonfiction is different—editors will either respond to the basic idea or they won’t—and the decisions are quicker. Also, with nonfiction, you can do multiple submissions (sending to more than one publisher at a time, letting them know what you’re doing), something I ordinarily counsel strongly against. 8. Another cool thing in this genre is something called back matter. Back matter is a bunch of factual material at the back of the book that ties in to your topic, or extends it in weird and wonderful ways. This means you can choose a topic and treat it in a light, offbeat, fresh way—and then beef it up with solid info that will thrill teachers and librarians. What was just a fun idea becomes, with development, suddenly worth spending $15 on.
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9. Cultivate the company of librarians, who will tell you the many subject areas where they can’t fill requests. Certain librarians love doing this and can be fanatic. Here are a few voids I’ve been told about:
• most subjects for the five-to-eight age group, with the exception of animals • current topics, current political figures, current news stories • serious problems, like child abuse, spousal abuse, addictions, handicaps, stepfamilies (a huge gap), ADD, and ADHD
• gross topics done tastefully (this is not my particular forte, but my husband, Paul
Brewer, is starting his illustration career in just this way, with The Grossest Joke Book Ever and French Fries Up Your Nose: 208 Ways to Annoy People) • any topic that touches Latinos (perhaps the biggest void of all: by 2050, 40 percent of the U.S. population will be Latino, and in no way does the percentage of books for them come close) • general immigration issues (according to the Census Bureau, the children of immigrants will account for 88 percent of the increase in the under-eighteen population in the next fifty years) • gay and lesbian themes • sex (kids are asking the embarrassing questions at a younger and younger age) • spiritual and religious topics
Actually, once you start thinking in terms of informational books, ideas are literally everywhere. Getting ideas will be the least of your problems. Deciding which ones to invest your valuable energy in will be the dilemma. 10. It’s crucial to pay attention to informational books getting published. The children’s books of today are not the books we remember from childhood. Subscribe to Publishers Weekly, Booklist, The Horn Book; become a pest at your nearest bookstore; do whatever you have to do to keep up. I did have a Tip 11—how to sleep your way to publication—but there was a very rigid word count ... So I must wrap up by saying that informational books can be an exciting, exhilarating way to make a living—and the sound of money can be the sexiest thing of all.
Reading List of Nonfiction Innovators Younger nonfiction (approximately ages five to eight): Communication by Aliki A Is for Asia by Cynthia Chin-Lee The Magic School Bus Explores the Senses by Joanna Cole Hands by Lois Ehlert My Map Book by Sara Fanelli On the Day You Were Born by Debra Frasier
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Roman Numerals I to MM: Numerabilia Romana Uno ad Duo Mila by Arthur Geisert My First Book of Proverbs: Mi Primer Libro de Dichos by Ralfka Gonzalez Cactus Hotel by Brenda Z. Guiberson Seven Brave Women by Betsy Hearne I Wonder What’s Under There?: A Brief History of Underwear by Deborah Nourse Lattimore Messages in the Mailbox: How to Write a Letter by Loreen Leedy Contemplating Your Bellybutton by Jun Nanao The Seasons Sewn: A Year in Patchwork by Ann Whitford Paul How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman The Buck Stops Here: The Presidents of the United States by Alice Provensen Diego by Jeanette Winter Older nonfiction (approximately ages eight to twelve): Linnea in Monet’s Garden by Christina Bjork Victoria and Her Times by Jean-Loup Chiflet and Alain Beaulet Why Can’t I Live Forever?: And Other Not Such Dumb Questions About Life by Vicki Cobb How to Read Your Mother’s Mind by James M. Deem Kids at Work: Lewis Hine and the Crusade Against Child Labor by Russell Freedman George Washington’s Mother by Jean Fritz Period by JoAnn Gardner-Loulan When Plague Strikes: The Black Death, Smallpox, AIDS by James Cross Giblin It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex & Sexual Health by Robie H. Harris Accidents May Happen and Mistakes That Worked by Charlotte Foltz Jones She’s Wearing a Dead Bird on Her Head! by Kathryn Lasky Christmas in the Big House, Christmas in the Quarters by Patricia and Fredrick McKissack A Young Patriot: The American Revolution as Experienced by One Boy by Jim Murphy One World, Many Religions: The Ways We Worship by Mary Pope Osborne Alvin Ailey by Andrea Davis Pinkney It’s Disgusting and We Ate It!: True Food Facts from Around the World and Throughout History by James Solheim The Book of Goddesses by Kris Waldherr Gladiator by Richard Watkins A Drop of Water by Walter Wick
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getting back in the saddle for a tough revision by
Christine Kole MacLean
I
was in the middle of New York City when I fell off my horse—my writing horse, that is. I had just come from a meeting with my editor, who had given me yet another two-page, single-spaced editorial letter about my work in progress. I spent the next few months doing precious little writing. I was too busy baying at the moon, feeling sorry for myself. As far as I was concerned, the time off was justified. By then, I had been on the dusty trail of revision for almost a year. When I had first submitted the manuscript for what would become Mary Margaret and the Perfect Pet Plan to Stephanie Owens Lurie at Dutton at the end of 2001, it had been as a 1,000-word picture book. She had liked the idea, but couldn’t use it as a picture book. Would I like to try it as something longer—maybe an early chapter book? I hadn’t ever written a story that long before, but my main character was fun and the idea of spending a little more time with her appealed to me. I did the work and resubmitted the 7,000-word manuscript in February 2002. While my editor thought it was coming along nicely, she expressed some concerns in her editorial letter. Most of them seemed easy enough to address—until the one that recommended I add a major subplot. “But then it will be too long,” I said in an e-mail, hoping to deter her. “Don’t worry about the length,” she replied cheerfully. “I think it wants to be a novel.” I thought not. Having never written a novel before, the idea of building the story into one terrified me. Mary Margaret still amused me, but could I quintuple the number of words I’d already written about her? It occurred to me that I could quit. The book was not under contract; I felt I could politely decline (“Dear Ms. Lurie, I’m sorry but I think you have me confused with another writer, since I don’t actually write novels”) and remain on friendly terms. But I’ve learned that if something scares me, it’s a sign I should at least try it. So I groped and stumbled and cursed my way through that particular revision and resubmitted the story, now 30,000 words, in May 2002. Pleased with the result, my editor rewarded me with a compliment about my willingness to revise (a foreshadowing of what was to come, no doubt) and a contract. For one brief moment, I thought that perhaps I could write novels after all. Then she sent a second editorial letter. Any confidence I had gained was replaced with raw fear. But the book was under contract, and no matter how badly I was shaking
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in my boots, turning back was no longer an option. I saddled up for another revision and set out to make my main character more convincing, give her brother a bigger role in the story, and temper some of the adult humor. That fall, weary and saddle sore but satisfied that the story was better as a result of my editor’s suggestions and my work, I sent the manuscript to her again. She said she needed some time to think but her gut reaction was that it was “just a matter of pacing.” Still being a greenhorn at writing novels, this sounded a lot like “tweaking” to me. I took off my chaps and relaxed in the belief that I was almost finished with the book.
Hold Up There, Little Missy In December, I joined my husband on a business trip to New York so I could meet my editor for the first time and discuss final revisions. I knew there was still some work to be done on the manuscript, but I pictured the two of us jawing about how far the story
Editors on Revision: Caitlyn M. Dlouhy Caitlyn Dlouhy is the former executive editor for Atheneum Books for Young Readers. What qualities does a writer need to be good at revision? A great revisionist is one who will trust her editor, knowing that any suggestion is aimed toward making the text as strong as it can possibly be, and one who will follow changes throughout her entire manuscript. For instance, rather than slicing open the section that needs the fix, she will look carefully at how that change might resonate throughout the work. What are the most common revision mistakes that new writers make? One is rushing! I think especially with new or not-yet-contracted writers, they have a misperception that if they don’t get their revision in quickly enough, the editor might lose her enthusiasm for a project, and they’ll have lost their “moment,” so they’ll do a fast, perfunctory, but not necessarily well-thought-through revision that is almost always disappointing. Another common mistake is, ahem, disregarding the editor’s suggestions. If your editor is telling you a character is unrealistic or a scene isn’t working, you don’t have to take the editor’s direction on how to fix these problems, but you do have to fix them in some way. What don’t writers understand about revision that you wish they did? What I most wish writers understood is that we aren’t trying to torture them, nor are we trying to impose our own creative desires into their work. Most often we get a strong sense of how good a writer can be, and we want to help bring out her very best. We’re terrifically busy, and it would be so much easier to just slip the manuscript into copyediting; writing a six- or eight-page editorial letter can take days. But we do it because we want your manuscript to shine.
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had come. Instead, as we went over the editorial letter she had written (her third—but who’s counting?), she gently told me how far it still had to go. The pacing was off. The ending was pat. Worst of all, I needed to give my character a best friend, which definitely does not fall into the category of “tweaking.” I left her office facing the most daunting revision of all, and I was dog-tired from all the previous revisions. I took the holiday season off, thinking that I’d have a renewed sense of energy after the New Year. But January came and went, and I still couldn’t drag my sorry be-hind out of the bunkhouse. Then in February, I had several upheavals in my personal life—the kind of things that don’t get resolved in a week or a month or even six months. My old lack of energy coupled with this new lack of focus meant that I was in a heap of hurt.
Riding Herd I wish I could say that this is the part of the story where I took the bull by the horns, but it’s not. Instead, it was my editor who inadvertently spurred me into action. In an e-mail exchange with her I mentioned what was going on in my personal life. Although she hadn’t ever set a firm deadline for the revision (thinking that I’d be sending her a new draft in a few months, as I had with previous revisions), she replied that she could extend the deadline for the revision, if that would help. Deadline. The word triggered something in me. In addition to writing fiction, I write for corporate clients—nice people who don’t put much stock in writer’s block and don’t care about self-doubt or any other writer’s neuroses I might have. Their expectation is that I’ll deliver quality work on time, and somehow I deliver quality work on time. Having my editor mention the word deadline in that e-mail was an “a-ha” moment for me in which I realized it was possible to bring the same discipline to my creative writing that I had been bringing to my freelance writing for twenty years. Instead of taking my editor up on her kind offer to be flexible about the deadline, I asked her to set a firm one. I steeled myself for the journey ahead and hit the trail for what I hoped would be the last time. Once I had figured out that regardless of whether I was writing fiction or corporate brochures, I still saddled up the same way, I was able to get back to the chore at hand. Unfortunately, getting back to it is not the same thing as doing it. As with the previous revisions, I stumbled my way through. But because by now it was clear to me that I was going to be spending a lot of time riding the wide-open range of revision, this time I paid attention to how I got my footing after I stumbled. Here are a few things I learned.
To go the distance, concentrate on the miles The deadline my editor had set for me was approximately eight weeks out, and my book was about sixteen chapters long. So I put myself on a strict schedule of revising two chapters each week. That’s all. Just two chapters. This seemed manageable to me. I knew, however, that if I didn’t complete those two chapters, time would quickly get away from me and I’d be scrambling at the end to make the deadline. So I did what all good fiction writers do: I raised the stakes. I told my editor that she could expect to see 25 percent of the book every two weeks. And when I got down to work, I kept my anxiety at bay by thinking only about the work I had to complete for the next mini-deadline.
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Editors on Revision: Melanie Kroupa Melanie Kroupa is publisher of Melanie Kroupa Books, an imprint of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. What qualities does a writer need to be good at revision? A willingness to step back and look at what she’s written with a fresh eye. If a writer has a good grasp on what it is she’s set out to do—and can express that—and can keep an open mind as she (and others) look at it to consider if she’s accomplished what she set out to do, a writer’s taken a good first step in the revision process. It’s useful if a writer can listen to (and hear) an editor’s point of view—considering questions, specific suggestions, or ideas for change that an editor might suggest. The suggestions should ring true to the author. If they don’t, and they don’t work to strengthen the book, the author should consider whether she wants to make the changes. If they do ring true, then it’s important that the author internalize the suggestions, let them lead her to their own solutions that fit the author’s particular style and seem integral to the whole of the manuscript. What are some common revision mistakes? Listening to too many different critics—other writers, friends, family, even editors—and trying to revise according to the suggestions of everyone. The danger is in losing your own vision and voice, losing your grasp on the story you want to tell. If you try to please everyone the result is likely to be a mishmash.
Let amigos give you a hand I don’t usually talk about my work in progress, afraid that I’ll lose the compulsion to write a story if I talk about it too much. Furthermore, for a long time, I felt like it would be cheating somehow if I didn’t figure out every element of the revision myself. But I was so stymied during that last revision by the problem of what kind of person my main character would choose as a best friend that when a writer friend asked why I had such a hangdog look on my face, I blurted out everything. By the end of our conversation, I had a good idea of who the best friend was and why my main character would choose him. Since then, I’ve opened up and talked about my works in progress more often. There’s a difference between talking a problem through and talking the story out, and you never know when something someone else says will spark that perfect solution you’ve been hoping for. An editor can be the best friend of all during a revision. At a critical point during that last revision, my editor—who must have a sixth sense that tells her when a writer is flagging—sent words of encouragement. “Take your time and enjoy the ride,” she said in an e-mail. “Relax with the knowledge that you have my full confidence.” Those words, which I reread countless times, always took the edge off my anxiety enough so I could keep going.
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It is possible to rope and hog-tie the Muse I know. I did it every day for eight weeks because I couldn’t risk her leaving. I suppose this is just a variation on the old saying that writing is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. What I discovered was I needed to do my 99 percent first, then the Muse would— sometimes grudgingly—pitch in her measly percent. Every day I lit the same scented candle (sandalwood) and played the same classical CD (Bach: The Goldberg Variations), not as a way of summoning the Muse to do her part but as a way of signaling to myself that it was time to do mine. This daily routine helped me get into the writing groove quickly.
The right analogy is as valuable as a good cow pony Two analogies helped steady me during the final revision of my book. The first comes from Star Wars. The hardships in my personal life were making it difficult to concentrate on the revision even when I was finally ready to tackle it. I began to think of myself as Luke Skywalker in the scene at the end of the first movie where he is flying through a trench in the Death Star, at the end of which is the target that he must hit if he is to destroy the Death Star and accomplish his mission. Meanwhile, Imperial forces—and Darth Vader himself—are firing lasers at him from all sides. I thought of all the distractions in my life as those lasers that Luke had to ignore if he were to have any chance of hitting his target. When I was at my desk, I couldn’t worry about all the other things going on in my life. Like Luke, I had to block them out and focus on the mission. The second analogy came from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when Indiana’s father is dying and the only way Indy can save him is by getting water from the Cup of Life. To get to it, he must leap over a giant crevasse. Intellectually, he knows it’s impossible—no man can jump that far. But he takes the step of faith required of him and the bridge appears beneath his feet. He realizes it was an optical illusion; the bridge was there all along. Whenever I began to doubt myself, I would think of that scene and remember how Indy had to take the first step before he could know that the bridge was there. The only difference was that Indy only had to take that first step once for him to see the whole bridge, while I had to take the step of faith over and over again because I could only see my own “bridge” materialize one step at a time.
Don’t hang onto the saddle horn Throughout the revision process I was plagued by the fear that in fixing what was wrong I might get rid of something that was right. During the last revision, I finally let go of that. I realized that all editorial letters, no matter how long or how daunting, can be boiled down to three words: Make it better. After more than a year of working on Mary Margaret and the Perfect Pet Plan, I was bored with it. I needed to find a way to reconnect with it, but I wasn’t sure how. One night, because I had been doing my 99 percent, the Muse finally kicked in her 1 percent, and I came up with a new opening. My editor hadn’t told me I needed a new opening, and she may in fact have liked the old opening better. I don’t know. All I know is that the new beginning sparked my interest in the story again and if I had still been afraid to mess with something that apparently was
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working for my editor, I might never have found a way to reconnect with my story. And if I hadn’t found a way to reconnect with it, I wouldn’t have been able to keep going.
The End of the Trail Back in June 2002, the day after I got my very first editorial letter, I attended a conference where Kate DiCamillo (author of Newbery Medal-winner The Tale of Despereaux) and Kara LaReau, her editor at Candlewick, spoke about the revision process. They were honest and witty and entertaining. DiCamillo said that for her getting an editorial letter “feels like you’ve baked a cake for your editor and frosted it, and then she looks at it and says, ‘It’s a lovely cake. Now can you go back and add an egg?’” After the session, I approached her and asked her what I now realize is an impossible question: “But how? How do you add the egg?” She gave me an empathetic look and said, “You just do.” While some of what worked for me might work for others who are on that long, lonely revision trail, in truth I can’t offer a satisfying answer to the question of “how,” either. What I can offer is hope and encouragement. You may think that you’ve got nothing left for it, but you do. Maybe all you’ve got left is that you’re too stubborn to be licked by it. If so, I tip my ten-gallon hat to you, because that’s really all you need. I can also offer a glimpse of what lies at the end of the trail: a book, yes, but something that’s even better—a bit more confidence than you had before.
Editors on Revision: Stephanie Owens Lurie Stephanie Owens Lurie is president and publisher of Dutton Children’s Books (and Christine Kole MacLean’s editor). What qualities does a writer need to be good at revision? The ability to revise in the true sense of the word, i.e., envision something again, to listen to constructive feedback without getting upset, and to incorporate suggestions in a way that remains true to your vision, story, and characters. I think the latter is the most important quality. What are the most common revision mistakes that new writers make? They refuse to let go of something that isn’t working. They take input too literally and can’t go beyond the editor’s suggestions, which essentially means the editor is doing the rewriting. What are some revision mistakes that even experienced writers make? Problems occur less frequently with the veterans, of course, but sometimes it can take several drafts before the author can come up with the perfect solution. Experienced writers may suffer from the belief that they don’t need to do so many drafts.
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writing groups: succeeding together by
Sara Grant
T
hree years ago I formed a writing group with three women I met at a writers conference. Since then, we have met once a month and shared moments of insight and aggravation. When we started, none of us had been published in the children’s market. Within a year we each had received an acceptance letter, amid a pile of rejections. I credit this success, in part, to our writing group. Together we motivate each other and provide support for what can be a lonely and confusing endeavor. Is your story really good, or are you just delusional after spending hours staring at a computer screen? Is your main character believable, or is she just the cardboard cutout that you move through your plot? Is your plot interesting? Are you targeting the right editors? Writing groups give you the opportunity to struggle and succeed together.
Benefits of a Group In Writing Together: How to Transform Your Writing in a Writing Group, authors Dawn Denham Haines, Susan Newcomer, and Jacqueline Raphael note that according to Anne Ruggles Gere in her book Writing Groups: History, Theory, and Implications, writing groups are not a new phenomenon. Benjamin Franklin formed one of the first “mutual improvement” groups in 1728. His group met weekly to share their essays and discuss current events. They, perhaps, were some of the first individuals to discover the power of writers joining together. Writing groups can simply offer an opportunity to share a mutual love for writing, or they can provide much more tangible results through manuscript critiques and resource sharing. Here are some of the many benefits of belonging to a writing group:
• An audience for your work. Many writers create stories, poems, and essays years
before they share them with anyone. A writing group provides a safe place to share your work. • Objective viewpoint. Your family and friends offer kudos for your effort, but the accolades are often hollow, because those close to you do not understand the chil-
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dren’s market and cannot offer an objective review. A writing group’s sole mission is to help you become the best writer possible, not become best friends. • Constructive criticism. My family rarely feels comfortable critiquing my writing efforts. However, the members of my writing group have invested many hours helping me improve my writing. They are no longer shy about asking where the plot is or pointing out where the story is confusing. Sharing resources. In a practical sense, writing groups can save you money. Or• dering catalogs and writers’ guidelines or buying reference books can be expensive. The writers in my group bring copies of publishers’ guidelines to each meeting and share other information or publications. • Problem solving/brainstorming. Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “Many ideas grow better when they are transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up.” Writing colleagues can help you overcome plot obstacles by brainstorming possible solutions. • Conference companion. Again, from a practical viewpoint, you now know a group of people who can share traveling and lodging expenses while attending writing conferences. • Dedication. Joining a group and agreeing to meet on a regular basis certainly increases your commitment to writing. It demonstrates to you and others that you are serious about writing. • Motivation. As a member of a writing group, you are accountable to someone else. You feel obligated to each other to revise manuscripts and produce new material. You will find you go the extra mile to keep from showing up empty-handed. • Encouragement. It is easy to get discouraged when your favorite manuscript gets rejected for the fourth or fourteenth time. Your writing pals understand your artistic miseries. Fellow writers can keep you motivated and offer advice on how to revise your story, as well as provide encouragement to send it out again. In addition, your group can push you to try new styles or to move out of your comfort zone. Celebration. I find I am almost more excited to share my successes with my writ• ing group than my friends and family. My fellow writers have struggled through several drafts and appreciate what each success—big and small—means.
Getting Started Before you can reap the rewards of a writing clique, you must first determine what type of group will enrich your writing goals. Do you want a structured group that will critique your work and offer marketing suggestions? Or, do you want, what I call, a writers’ support group—writers who meet to share their love of the written word and develop their craft together? Perhaps you want a combination of both? Before you join or form a group, set your expectations, then you are more likely to find a group that meets your needs. I belong to two writing groups. My critique group specifically focuses on marketing stories to the children’s market. Our goal is to prepare each piece for publication. We critique each other’s work in detail and offer suggestions as to which publishers or
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magazines to target. Each month we set goals for ourselves and are accountable to each other for meeting these goals. My other writing group is less structured. We share a love of writing in all forms—poetry, drama, songwriting, fiction, and nonfiction. Typically we do a timed writing that may focus on character development, dialogue, or another aspect of fiction writing. We share stories, trade books, and leave refreshed and energized for the weeks of writing ahead. Once you have decided what you want from a writing group, your search begins for like-minded writers. Finding a group of authors to share and grow with represents a significant challenge. Odds are you will not have trouble finding writers. It is surprising how many people have manuscripts tucked in a drawer or books already outlined in their heads. The trick is to find a group that meets your needs. I have found that local workshops and conferences are the best places to collect a roster of interested writers. Other groups have formed by placing advertisements in small local newspapers or special interest magazines, such as regional magazines written for women, children, or teachers. You may want to consider creating a simple flier to post in your local library, bookstores, colleges, or coffee shops. The advisor for your local chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) has a roster of members. If you are a SCBWI member, the SCBWI advisor may be able to connect you with other writers in the area. The Web is another option for writers who are isolated in rural communities. This high-tech option will be covered later.
Ironing Out the Details You have decided what you want from a writing group, and now you have a list of potential candidates. Next, you need to set your first meeting. This is a time for some tough decisions. Your group will need to agree on certain ground rules immediately. Other decisions can wait or will be sorted out as time goes by. Below is a list of questions to pose at your first meeting. 1. Who will lead the group? The group leader should be responsible for maintaining the group. The leader does not, and probably should not, facilitate every meeting. But without an identified leader, the group may quickly fade. The leader should organize the meeting schedule, call members if meeting dates are changed, and make sure each meeting runs smoothly. 2. How often will we meet? There is no magic cycle for writing groups. Some successful groups gather twice a week; others meet only once a month. Again, decide what you want from your group, then outline an intense or relaxed schedule that meets your needs. 3. When and where should we meet? I recommend that you immediately select several meeting dates. Although the dates may change later, you will at least have the time blocked on your calendar. This minimizes absences and reduces excuses. Find out where your group members live and select a central meeting location.
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Also, consider what activities you want to do together. If you plan to read aloud or do timed writing, you may want to select a quiet spot, such as a member’s house or the library. However, if you will discuss writing and review each other’s manuscripts, a restaurant or bookstore may work fine. 4. How long should each meeting last? Set aside two or three hours initially. If your group meets weekly, you may reduce the time of each meeting. Overall, let the activities you choose determine how long each meeting runs. 5. What will the group do together? At your first meeting, you may want to ask each member what she expects from the writing group. The responses should give you a good feel for the group’s expectations. If the group’s goal is to get published, your meetings should be structured to share information on writers’ markets and to prepare each other’s manuscripts for submission. Alternatively, if your group members have diverse writing interests, you may want to plan writing exercises and discussions about general writing principles. 6. How many writers should you invite? SCBWI recommends starting with three to five members, with a maximum of ten to twelve. For initial planning purposes, having five to six members is ideal. Six is enough to expect a manageable group at each meeting. Because some writers immediately drop out and others will lose interest, you may want to make a list of alternates. Ask group members up front how they want to add new members. Never invite someone to the meeting without asking the group first. Each new member will add something unique to the group, so be prepared. Remember to explain the group’s objectives and meeting format to the new members.
Critiquing Tips If your group decides to critique each other’s work, you should set expectations for the way critiques will be conducted. When you have spent hours creating your literary masterpiece, it is difficult to hear that your characters are not believable or your plot is rough. The following list of questions drawn from the book Writing Together may help you establish some ground rules to make sure the critique process runs smoothly.
• Will you read the work aloud at the meeting or hand out manuscripts to review
before your next meeting? How many manuscripts will you critique at each meeting? • How will you decide whose manuscript is critiqued? • • What type of feedback does the author want—grammar, flow, character, plot, etc.? • Will the author remain silent through the critique or lead the discussion?
Giving and receiving feedback on each other’s stories should be a positive experience. When reviewing someone else’s work, you should start by telling the author what you liked most. No manuscript is without merit. When pointing out both the positive and negative aspects of someone’s work, be specific. Do not say, “Your main character is weak.” Offer specific examples from the story that have led to your conclusion. If points in the
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story are unclear or confusing, ask questions of the author. Everyone in the group needs to recognize that you are offering an opinion. Offer your suggestion to the author, allow him to consider your comment, and then either accept, reject, or absorb your criticism. Although it may be difficult, be honest. You joined the group to help each other improve. Do not hold back or remain silent if you think a manuscript needs work. The quality of the entire group will increase with open, honest, and specific feedback.
Web Options If your location or schedule will not accommodate a writing group, the Web provides another option for you to share your work. Beyond offering a number of wonderful resources—from publishers’ writing guidelines to help from grammar experts—the Web can also provide interaction with writers around the world. By surfing the Web, you will discover bulletin boards where writers post questions and other writers provide answers. Many of these same Web sites offer electronic mailing lists, such as LISTSERV. These are basically e-mail newsletters that are primarily made up of messages from members. If you want to start an online critique group, you can post your want ad on bulletin boards and in some electronic mailing lists. Although the Web has become a great tool for writers, it also has many limitations. How comfortable are you with posting your story on an e-zine (a Web magazine) or sending it to people you do not know well? If you are looking for a writing group to share insight and inspiration, a Web group probably will not meet your needs. If you want to exchange manuscript critiques and get feedback from a variety of writers, the Web could be your answer. The tough part will be finding a critique partner or group. Some writing groups have formed from meetings in chat rooms or after meeting someone at a writers conference. The Web can offer isolated writers another avenue for interaction, but it should not replace the multiple benefits of actually meeting face to face with writers.
Patience and Commitment Every writing group will have its ups and downs. Each member should commit up front to attending the meetings regularly and taking this commitment seriously. Your group may not gel right away. Periodically each group should take a pulse check and discuss what’s working and what’s not. If you stick with it and remain flexible, open, and honest with your writing colleagues, you will eventually settle with a productive and supportive core of writers. Whether you’re a published author or a novice, the right writing group can elevate your writing to new heights.
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the synopsis: short, but power-packed by
Sue Bradford Edwards
W
hen publishers’ guidelines request a letter and synopsis or a synopsis and sample chapters instead of a complete manuscript, many writers pass over these publishers. Some don’t know that a synopsis is simply a brief introduction that allows busy editors to judge whether they want to invest the time needed to read the entire manuscript. Other writers know what a synopsis is but not what it should include. As explained by author Kathleen Duey, “The trick is to communicate the character essence and event‑logic of the book, the emotional arc of the protagonist, and a satisfying ending. Then stop. Anything that can be eliminated without weakening that purpose should be.” Still other writers don’t understand why they should write a synopsis. Haven’t they already crafted a complete manuscript? They need to realize how a synopsis can diagnose potential problems within their manuscript. The first step in solving all these problems is learning to write a strong synopsis.
Plot Without Spoilers When asked to describe their books, many writers launch into a blow-by-blow plot description. They recount every detail, no matter how minute, until their audience nods off. An overly detailed synopsis has the same affect. “A writer should explain the plot, but a blow‑by‑blow will bore the reader to tears—whoever it is,” Delacorte Press editor Krista Marino says. “A general summary of the plot is needed, but I would suggest approaching the plot summary as one would approach writing flap copy for the jacket of the book. You want the reader to know what the book is about, but you don’t want to tell them the entire story.” Avoid lengthy plot recitation with a narrow outlook. “A good synopsis will focus on overarching themes and character motivation,” Candlewick Press executive editor Mary Lee Donovan says. Duey expands on this. “Follow the emotional arc of the protagonist,” she says, “and include the plot events needed to make it vivid and easily understood.” What does the main character want? Why? What does he have to do to get it? What stands in his way?
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Author Gary Blackwood does so in this excerpt from his The Shakespeare Stealer synopsis: Widge, the protagonist, is an orphan who’s hired by a mysterious (and, yes, sinister) man named Falconer to copy down, in an early system of shorthand (which really existed), the whole text of Hamlet as it’s being performed at the Globe Theatre. He’s caught in the act, but his facility for lying saves him. He claims he’s come there to be an actor and, to his dismay, the troupe takes him on as an apprentice. At first he sees this as just an opportunity to copy the play more easily. But as he comes to know the members of the company, he begins to experience a feeling new to him—loyalty. For the first time in his life, he has made some friends. But he’s also made a very dangerous enemy—Falconer. And as if his life weren’t complicated enough, he finds himself having to play the role of Ophelia in a command performance before the Queen herself.
Blackwood doesn’t tell how Widge meets Falconer, how he planned to hide long enough to record the play, or what leads to his capture. Still the reader knows enough of the plot and can identify the themes. Highlighting Widge’s emotional shift gives editors what they seek. “An editor will read and consider the synopsis in much the same way she would a complete manuscript,” says Donovan. “In other words, she expects a taste of the emotional experience she’d get from reading the entire book.” Pursue the character’s goals, and emotions follow. But how much detail is enough? “A synopsis should give the level of detail you’d tell someone over lunch, some friend, not completely close, who asked you what your new book was about. Enough of the plot should enter to get across the theme,” says author Vicki Grove. Can you state your theme in one sentence? If not, you may need to give it some thought and rework your manuscript. Test your plot summary by actually telling it to someone. “If you get halfway through,” says Duey, “then hear yourself say something like, ‘Wait, wait, I forgot to tell you that she follows her father to work one night in the first chapter and ...’ Whoa. Anything that makes you backtrack in your oral storytelling probably needs to be included in its proper sequence in the written synopsis.” When you can relate the bare facts without backtracking, you’ve found the details you need. Doing all of this with brevity takes practice and is incredibly difficult with your own story. “I’d advise trying to encapsulate the plot of a favorite book that is similar in scope and length to their story into one paragraph so as to get a better handle on how it can be done,” says Cecile Goyette, executive editor of Alfred A. Knopf and Crown Books for Young Readers. Practice this with several books, then try your synopsis again. Cut every plot element that isn’t essential to give your reader the big picture. If your synopsis feels choppy, fill in a few blanks. “A succinct and graceful listing of some of the plot events that fall between the pivotal scenes you must describe lets the editor know that the emotional arc is gradual, faceted, but keeps the focus clear,” Duey says. “The character’s emotional arc is the heart of the book.” After all, character is central to the story. Characters present the next hurdle in creating a brief synopsis.
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Which Characters to Include Just as the entire plot cannot be included, neither can every character. But who do you drop? Turn again to the main character’s emotional arc for the answer. “The synopsis should touch upon characters that have primary influence in the main character’s struggle,” says Donovan. Duey agrees: “It makes sense to name as few characters as possible. Any character who is not key to the plot arc of the protagonist can be left out.” Look again at Blackwood’s synopsis excerpt. He lists only three characters: Widge (the protagonist), Falconer (the antagonist), and the Queen. Though Widge certainly interacts with numerous actors at the Globe Theatre, none of them are named although their roles are understood. Look at your synopsis. Do you need to name each and every person in your protagonist’s sixth-grade class? Cut anyone you can and generalize the rest. Because of the synopsis’ brief word count, scant information can be given about any character. “The reader of a synopsis needs a distillation of characters,” says Donovan, “rather than a great many specific details about them.” When asked how she condenses characters, Duey gave this example: Shaken by the apparent suicide of the girl who had been her best friend since third grade, Trina is facing high school, her first real boyfriend, and her mother’s growing attachment to a man she can’t stand, in the worst possible way: alone.
Much more than this comes out within the story. “The friend’s name was Joey. She was brilliant and funny and beautiful and in despair over her father’s mental illness,” Duey says. “This might deserve a lot more ink in the book—but not in the synopsis.” Still unsure what to include? “I pretty much stick to the character trait or traits that are the basis of the story’s conflict,” Blackwood says. “For example, if the character is lost in the woods, the fact that he has no wilderness skills whatever is obviously important.” Because so many stories hinge on the characters’ wants and fears, Grove’s narrative focuses on these details: Jess prefers the glow‑in‑the‑dark stars on her bedroom ceiling to the scary, moving stars outside. And then she meets Lolly, who works the migrant stream and has never slept anywhere but under those scary, dancing stars—she loves them.
What Jess fears has been shown, not told. Examine your synopsis line by line. Is each character mentioned involved in the main character’s emotional changes? Do you present only those details that drive the plot forward? Once you sort out the details, it is time to perfect your framework.
Open Sesame! While plot, theme, and character form the main body of every fiction synopsis, how to open the synopsis varies from project to project. “I like the unexpected and I love to see unconventional cover letters and synopses, so for me normal openers and closers aren’t really going to get my attention,” says Marino. “Though it’s different for everyone, I
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think most editors are hooked by things that are different, so I would stress individuality, creativity, and confidence in your own written voice.” Duey’s opening varies from synopsis to synopsis. “I always start with whatever propelled me into the project,” she says, “usually the characters. It could be a conflictive plot event, or an unusual setting that begins the synopsis—once in a blue moon some very clever, very short statement of the theme that fascinates me.” A strong hook is as essential in a synopsis as in a query letter or the manuscript itself.
Enough Is Enough Perhaps the most difficult part in writing a synopsis is achieving the necessary brevity. Simply stated, you want it to be as short as possible. When asked about length, the editors gave different answers. “Ideally, one page; two at most,” Cecile Goyette says. How can this be enough to judge the merits of a manuscript? “We allow our longer submissions (such as chapter books or novels) to include a synopsis plus ten pages of the text,” Goyette says, “and that in concert is usually enough to determine whether or not the manuscript is something we may have an interest in.” Other editors willingly read a bit more—but not much more. “Novels for older readers might require two to four pages,” Mary Lee Donovan says. “I won’t read through pages of summary,” says Krista Marino. “If I open a submission and find a lengthy explanation of what I’m about to read, I’ll probably just give it a quick glance. If a writer decides to include a synopsis of her work outside of her cover letter, it should be brief and punchy.”
The opening should also reveal some of what will come. “I start it out the same way I begin most books or stories or articles,” says Blackwood, “by making a promise of some sort to the reader, letting him know what to expect.” Here’s the opening of his synopsis for The Shakespeare Stealer: Deceit and disguise, sinister villains and swordplay ... Sound like a classic adventure novel? I hope so, because that’s the tradition I’ve tried to emulate in The Shakespeare Stealer. Widge, the protagonist, is an orphan who’s hired by a mysterious (and, yes, sinister) man named Falconer to copy down, in an early system of shorthand (which really existed), the whole text of Hamlet as it’s being performed at the Globe Theatre ...
The editor immediately knows this swashbuckling historic fiction focuses on adventure and mystery. Don’t just tell them. Give them a taste. “If this is a humorous piece, make the synopsis make the editor laugh a bit,” explains Grove. “If it’s high drama, make their hearts beat fast.” Let the editor sample the romance, science fiction, or humor. The opening must tell the editor more than what type of book it is. “A synopsis should open in a way that the editor knows immediately who the main character is,”
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says Donovan, “what the conflict or problem is, and a bit about the setting.” Look at Blackwood’s synopsis and the answers are obvious—Widge, stealing a play, Elizabethan London, all in three sentences. A strong beginning must be followed by an equally well-crafted ending. “A synopsis should close with a clear explanation of how the main character has changed by the end of the book,” says Donovan. Authors who fail at this should heed Goyette’s warning. “Don’t be cryptic, don’t be cryptic, don’t be cryptic,” she says. “For me, the mission of a synopsis is not to tease but rather to provide straightforward information, conveying all major plot elements, especially the ending. It should avoid metaphor and instead favor clarity, simplicity, and precision. Too often authors try to tease by leaving out critical information, such as the ending.” If you aren’t being cryptic and your character’s growth remains unclear, does your manuscript also fail in this regard?
Who, May I Ask, Is Speaking? As with the manuscript itself, voice in the synopsis is a vital part of grabbing and holding the editor’s attention. And not only must it be gripping, it must mirror that of the novel. “I use basically the same sort of style I use in all my writing: I try to keep it clear, concise, and conversational,” Blackwood says. “As for tone, if it’s a humorous novel I try to reflect that in my prose; if there’s mystery or adventure, I try to use lots of action verbs and atmospheric words.” A quick glance at The Shakespeare Stealer synopsis reveals how he does this. Disguise, swordplay, and apprentice reflect suspense, danger, and a bit of history. What terms can you use to mirror your story’s tone? If you’ve tried to use specific mood-setting terms and the voice and tone still don’t come across, do a little research. “A good warm‑up to writing the synopsis is to read the jackets of favorite books,” Donovan says. “Jacket copy is a selling tool, must tell a lot in little space, and must capture the tone, spirit, and style of the book. The synopsis, too, is a selling tool, and must tell the editor what she can expect if she were to request the entire manuscript.” Note how the copy for a dark mystery differs from a lighthearted fantasy or a touching romance. Then sit back, relax, and write. Yes, relax. Because once you know what to include, it’s just a matter of practicing until you know you have it right.
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writing & promoting books for babies & toddlers by
Hope Vestergaard
A
rrive at my house unannounced and you might see something strange through the picture window. What’s a grown woman doing crawling around the house on her hands and knees? Research! Bookshelves loom like skyscrapers when you’re thirty inches tall. Imagine flipping pancakes using a shovel. Think about never getting to see all the interesting stuff that happens up on the countertop. These are typical experiences for small children who inhabit a grownup-sized world. In order to write compelling books for babies and toddlers, you need to meet them at their level: talk with them rather than at them. To get a good sense of what makes babies and toddlers tick, spend time observing them: at the park, the store, or a child development center. If you’re brave (and patient), help out in a classroom or children’s library. Take note of interesting situations, phrases, and behaviors. These tidbits may or may not evolve into actual stories, but paying attention to details will breathe authenticity into your writing. My own stories Wake Up, Mama and Driving Daddy hatched when I noticed that children would rather climb on their teachers than on the fancy equipment that graces their classrooms and playgrounds. The most compelling books for young readers feature children just like them. Infants and toddlers are egocentric, and they look for people and problems that are familiar. This is why “perfect” kids are a lot less appealing than imperfect ones like Maurice Sendak’s Max or Ian Falconer’s Olivia. Much of the conflict in very young picture books centers on developmental challenges: learning to share; separation anxiety; feeling powerless. If your main character waltzes through life without stumbling, she won’t be compelling to most kids who “stumble” on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Toddlers’ love for the familiar doesn’t mean that they don’t enjoy books about new experiences or cultures, but those stories will be more engaging if they speak to universal themes and struggles.
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Online Resources There’s no shortage of wonderful organizations dedicated to promoting literacy in young children. Bookmark these Web sites to stay in touch with news and conferences about early literacy:
The International Reading Association (www.reading.org)
The National Association for the Education of Young Children (www.naeyc.org)
The National Education Association’s “Read Across America” initiative (www.nea.org/ readacross)
The National Center for Family Literacy (www.famlit.org)
Zero to Three: National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families (www.zerotothree.org)
Arts and Crafts Well-crafted picture books for babies and toddlers can look deceptively simple, but great ones have all the elements of a classic story: interesting characters, lively language, and a satisfying beginning, middle, and end. Beginnings must be immediate. Toddlers have short attention spans and only vague concepts of time and place. They live in the here and now, and that’s when your story should begin. Young readers find all the setting information they need in the illustration: the story happens inside or outside, it happens on a farm, etc. Toddlers also don’t need a lot of descriptive information about characters—they glean everything they need to know from the action. We meet Max the Wild Thing in the throes of a tantrum and we immediately know a lot about him. On the first spread of Nancy Shaw’s Sheep in a Jeep, we meet the characters and their problem: “Beep! Beep! Sheep in a Jeep on a hill that’s steep!” If you get to the crux of your story quickly, even little wigglers will tune in. Another way to immediately draw the reader into the story is to write intimately. Do You Know New? by Jean Marzollo speaks directly to the reader in a playful, lyrical voice that is hard to resist: “Do you know new?/Oh, my, I do!/Brand new, I do.” Books that speak directly to the child say, “This is your story, and you are the important person here.” What about the middle of young picture books? Many young picture books do have clear plots or themes, but they tend to be much simpler than those in older books. “Slice of life” stories often depend on patterns for their structure. Repetition is one popular tool. Repeating phrases, incidents, and refrains let children predict what happens next—and thereby feel powerful. Call-and-response books are another kind of repetitive format. In Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr., a narrator asks each animal (and each reader) what it sees. Children are active learners and active listeners, so stories that require their participation are more likely to hold their interest. In cumulative stories, each new scene includes a listing of all the events leading up to it, as in the folktale This Is the House That Jack Built. In Mem Fox’s Harriet, You’ll Drive
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Me Wild!, Harriet’s mother corrects young Harriet’s missteps with an increasingly impatient refrain. She starts out, “Harriet ... you’ll drive me wild,” and adds a line through each of three scenes until she finally loses her temper. The lengthening refrains underscore Harriet’s increasingly messy antics and her mother’s growing frustration in a great example of format that truly serves the story. Predictable stories also leave room for surprise when the established pattern is broken. The cumulative, rhyming refrain suddenly disappears at the peak of Harriet’s mischief: “There was a terrible silence.” Children love rhyme because it’s predictable and challenging. Writing in verse provides structure, but it should complement a story rather than prop it up. Rhyme can be very engaging, if done well: it must have flawless meter and true rhymes, in addition to telling a great story. Choppy meter makes a story lurch and stall, rather than sing. Rhyming refrains or internal rhymes in prose (as in, “please don’t squeeze”) are fun alternatives to stories written entirely in verse. If you want to rhyme well, read aloud all the rhyming texts you can get your hands on. Have people read your work to you, to see if it scans. Even if your story is prose, it should have rhythm. Make sure that the natural flow of the text suits the story. Young children enjoy experimenting with speech sounds as they learn to master them. Jane Yolen’s Off We Go! is a beautiful example of delicious language: “Dig-deep, diggity deep/Down where day is dark as sleep/Off to Grandma’s house I creep/sings Little Mole.” Some very young stories take their entire structure from playful language. Jamberry by Bruce Degen takes the word “berry” and runs with it. There’s no particular conflict or plot, just a series of silly vignettes tied together by language play. Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault is another popular book in this vein. The fact that all of these examples, originally published in hardback, are now available in board book format indicates their appropriateness for babies and toddlers. Use language “flourishes” (see “Shoptalk” sidebar) judiciously. If they don’t enhance the story, they’ll distract from it. When a story really works, readers don’t notice the techniques that make it sparkle—they’re integral to the story itself. So what about endings? Many popular books for babies and toddlers come full circle: the main character ends in the place where he began. The forward motion of the story needs to bring the main character all the way to his destination (a safe place, usually) and not leave the reader wondering if he’ll make it okay. Even though Mem Fox’s Harriet and her mom have had a row, we see they are fixing things. In No, David! by David Shannon, mischievous David finally hears the word “yes”—when his mom says, “Yes, David, I love you.” Hopeful endings are comforting. Depending on the mood of your piece, it may need to wind down or close with a bang, so be sure to choose an ending that serves your story.
Reaching Your Readers So your well-crafted story is finally published. Hurrah! Now you’re ready to tackle the p-word: promotion. I’ve heard authors of young picture books complain that they have few opportunities for promotion. Nonsense! Look beyond typical bookstore events
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and library readings. Your books may not be ideal for elementary school visits, but the early childhood community is a great place to share your work. When teachers like your book, they’ll use it in the classroom and recommend it to parents. An added bonus is the contact with your audience, which will enhance your future writing. Start your tour of the early childhood circuit with a center to which you have personal connections—the one your children attended, or a center in your neighborhood. Many early childhood programs offer special events in conjunction with the Month of the Young Child (April) or other seasonal events. When a center contacts you to set up an event, find out who your audience will be. Events for young children generally include an exuberant reading and some related fun: songs, fingerplays, or dances. Parentcentered events tend to be lectures on selecting books for children, reading readiness, or writing. Since many childcare centers have lean budgets, you may need to lower your fee for workshops or sell books at the event as a fundraiser. Whenever you present at a childcare center, be sure they publicize it in their newsletter. Contact a local newspaper to include your event in the community calendar and perhaps do a write-up. Authors can also do workshops for childcare staff on literacy topics. Teachers need information about hands-on activities to extend learning. They like handouts—reading lists and activity ideas—and they love freebies like bookmarks. Stipends for workshops vary greatly: I’ve received between $50 and $250 for a two-hour session. Contact your local community college or university to let the education and English departments know that you are available as a guest speaker or lecturer. Register with childcare referral agencies, which provide speaker lists to the early childhood community as well as put on their own events. Consider submitting a proposal to present at a National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) or other early childhood conferences. These generally do not pay presenters, but sessions are short and you can arrange to have book signings at vendor booths. Your publisher may even be willing to subsidize your trip—it’s worth asking. Many teachers are aspiring authors and they pack into conference sessions on becoming an author (I did, too). One big bonus at the national NAEYC conference is the presence of book and magazine publishers. I’ve met editors at exhibitor booths and conference sessions. Some educational publishers even offer conferees on-the-spot appointments with editors who are seeking submissions. If you’re overwhelmed at the thought of presenting workshops, you can introduce your book to local children and teachers on a smaller scale. Many communities have literacy groups such as the Family Book Club in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which donates new books to low-income families and coordinates reading programs for disadvantaged children. These organizations welcome author visits and are a great destination for authors’ surplus books. Think about “adopting” a local childcare center or preschool program. You might donate signed copies of your books and stay in touch with teachers by visiting the classroom for an occasional story hour. Give the center a stack of your promotional postcards or bookmarks for their reception area, and participate in annual picnics or fun days. Besides keeping you in touch with your audience, this kind of relationship is a great way to contribute something meaningful to your community.
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Staying Dry Doing a book event with children who drool, crawl, and cry is a special kind of challenge. Before you plan your first book event, it’s wise to establish some ground rules with your sponsors:
• Children should be accompanied by adults. Make it clear with your host and in
your promotional flyers that parents are expected to sit with their children during a reading. Otherwise, they may stroll over to another department or the coffee bar and you will be outnumbered by wigglers. • Before you begin reading, tell the adults what you need from them: “Please help your children participate or remove them if they are overwhelmed.” • If you plan to sing songs or do fingerplays in a childcare center, send the songs and words ahead of time so the teachers can practice with the children. • Limit the group size with young children. In a bookstore, several readings with ten children are infinitely more manageable than one reading with thirty. The same goes for community events. If you must do one session, enlist some help for crowd control. Large crowds can be overwhelming for small children (and harried authors). • Sit where all the children can see you. If no chair is provided, stand up or perch on your knees, or you’ll be drowned out by a chorus of “I can’t see!” Expect very young children to fidget, loll, or get up and move around. They are kinetic learners and kinetic listeners. • Don’t read several books at a stretch. Babies and toddlers can’t concentrate for more than five minutes or so. Break up your routine with simple songs or fingerplays. Songs that require kids to get up and move are great, as long as you end on a “sit down” note. All told, the performance aspect of an event with babies and toddlers shouldn’t last more than fifteen or twenty minutes. • If you use props during your presentation, expect the children to touch them. They can’t resist—they haven’t learned to delay gratification yet. You can cut simple shapes out of felt for the children to hold—circles for pretend cookies, for example. Don’t expect to get them back. • If a child comes unglued while you’re reading, pause so his parent can remove him from the group. Recruit another adult to help you if parents don’t get the picture. • Young children have a hard time with negative phrases. If you say, “No jumping,” they have a hard time figuring out what not jumping is. It’s more effective to say the thing you do want them to do: “Put your feet on the floor.” • Be flexible. If the children aren’t interested in your story but they love your songs and fingerplays, go with the flow. You’ll all have more fun, and parents will remember you fondly.
My best advice? Honor babies’ and toddlers’ perspective and experiences in your writing and in the presentation of your stories. Whet children’s appetites for literature by writing rich stories that they’ll want to savor again, and again ... and again.
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oh, the places I’ve been!: promoting your children’s book by
Esther Hershenhorn
M
y author’s copy of my first published picture book, There Goes Lowell’s Party!, arrived at my door January 19, 1998, two months prior to its mid-March publication. Unfortunately, my publisher, Holiday House, didn’t enclose readers in the book’s padded mailer. No matter how far I gazed, too, through my front door window, not one lone child appeared on the horizon. I was an author, finally, after years of hard work. Yet I still had work to do for my book to reach readers. I held and stroked my book like a first-time mother. Then I packed my bags and readied for the road. I’d been mentally scheduling my promotional tour for years. I knew places to go and people to see. I knew I’d need to show my book to the very same people who’d taught me my craft and introduced me to the industry: booksellers, librarians, teachers, reviewers, fellow writers, and publishing professionals. They were the folks who would bring my book to children. Let me tell you: Oh, the places I’ve been, traveling about, promoting my book! Let me tell you: Oh, the places you can go, once you’re prepared to promote your book, too!
Two Rules of the Road Thinking about the trip was scary sometimes. For one thing, the word promote has its root in the Latin word promotus, “to move forward.” I preferred the safety of my writing room and life. For another, my dictionary’s first entry for promote stated, “to help or encourage to exist or flourish.” Help and encourage were ambiguous verbs. It was the “flourishing” part that pushed me out the door. I put aside my fears, reviewed several colleagues’ wise words, and sought my publisher to specify my tasks. Actually, my publisher sought me. Diane Foote, who was at that time Holiday House’s director of marketing, wrote me soon after I signed my contract in 1996—two years before my book’s publication. That’s when I learned the Rules of the Road: (1) Work with your publisher. Your publisher, too, wants to see your book flourish. (2) Begin the process early. It was my job to inform Holiday House of my interest, ability, and availability to promote my book, to share local resources who could create promotional opportuni-
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ties, and to notify my publisher of such events. It’s often the publisher who supplies books to sell at such events, if given a lead time of four to six weeks. I needed to listen to Holiday House, as well. They’d been publishing children’s books for over sixty years. Their marketing department would submit my book to review journals, reading professionals, my local media, and various award committees. They’d represent my book at trade shows and conferences, publicize it in catalogues and special outlets, consider it for additional advertising and promotional materials, and coordinate my school, conference, bookstore, library, and trade show appearances. True, Holiday House is an independent, relatively small company, publishing fiftyfive books each year. But it’s also true that most trade children’s book publishers are committed to promoting new titles and authors. Most publishers encourage new authors who are eager to join the process. Just remember that promotional support varies from house to house, from author to author, in dollars and substance.
Three Homework Assignments I welcomed the opportunity to start my preparations early. I seldom left homework to the eve of its due date. My first written assignment was to create an author’s bio—a reusable description to fit all promotional events. I described my book, my life, my publishing experiences—in under 200 words. I intentionally left room to reshape the
Names to Add to Your Rolodex American Booksellers Association 200 White Plains Road, Suite 600 Tarrytown, NY 10591 www.ambook.org American Library Association 50 East Huron Street Chicago, IL 60611 www.ala.org Association of Booksellers for Children ABC National Office Kristen McLean, Executive Director 62 Wenham Street Jamaica Plain, MA 02130 www.abfc.com International Reading Association 800 Barksdale Road
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P.O. Box 8139 Newark, DE 19714-8139 www.reading.org Modern Postcard 1675 Faraday Avenue Carlsbad, CA 92008 www.modernpostcard.com Publishers Weekly 360 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10010 www.publishersweekly.com Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators 8271 Beverly Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90048 www.scbwi.org
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material to match my audience. For instance, I underscore my elementary education degree when speaking to teachers, my Illinois SCBWI Regional Advisor position when speaking to writers. My second assignment was to compile a list of resource people—local and state children’s book community folks—who would welcome a Holiday House courtesy copy, review copy, or at least, notification of There Goes Lowell’s Party! I spun my Rolodex, queried colleagues, and fingered through directories. My list included:
• my local children’s librarian • the director of my state library • my local bookseller • prominent booksellers in my area • my local and area newspaper editors and book reviewers • the head of my state’s and district’s education departments • the director of my area’s local book festival • my local and area children’s museums
Authors should also include resources for their books’ specialized subject areas. In my case, I added the names of those experts who’d helped me research my picture book’s Ozark setting. I also added local meteorologists, since my book dealt with weather proverbs. I abandoned my shyness to complete my third assignment: Tell everyone I know in both the real and virtual worlds—in person, by hand or fax, by word of mouth or e-mail—about my book’s scheduled publication. And I do mean everyone, from my brother-in-law’s cousin to my dental hygienist. I also spread the word via professional newsletters, such as the SCBWI Bulletin and local chapter newsletters, electronic mailing list memberships, alumni magazines, and former hometown newspapers. Networking flourished. Serendipity bloomed. Before I knew it, I’d accepted invitations to speak at many of the places I’d planned to visit anyway.
Two Useful Guidebooks Of course, I still had questions that needed answers. Fortunately, I discovered two books that, when combined, told me everything I needed to know about promoting my children’s book: Susan Salzman Raab’s An Author’s Guide to Children’s Book Promotion and Evelyn Gallardo’s How to Promote Your Children’s Book: A Survival Guide. A publicist, Raab specializes in promoting children’s books and authors. She understands how the various members of the children’s book community work together to create a book’s success. Raab’s book suggests ways authors can reach the key decision makers (teachers, librarians, booksellers, and reviewers), with special emphasis on media sources. Her directory gave me organizations to add to my resource list and helped me brainstorm even more opportunities. The guide is especially helpful to authors who self-publish or to those whose publishers offer minimal promotional support. An author herself, Gallardo offers any-time promoters step-by-step instructions and a user-friendly manual. I consulted her book often, rereading her two-minute
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bookstore pitch or Web site suggestions or studying her bio, press kit, and brochure samples. Her overview of school presentations was especially useful once I began my round of school visits. Gallardo’s book helps make formidable tasks doable, from conference networking to book fair attendance.
Two Important Promotional Tools I couldn’t wait to have my very own promotional postcard—a color reproduction of my picture book’s cover. The 4×6 postcard proved an excellent investment. I used Modern Postcard (www.modernpostcard.com), based on colleagues’ recommendations. The California-based company walked and talked me through the ordering process. Thanks to early conversations with Diane Foote, I knew to obtain my illustrator Jacqueline Rogers’s permission to reuse the art and to include ordering information, such as my book’s ISBN number and price. Because my illustrator and I were friends (a rare happening), we shared the production costs and the finished product. The postcards continue to serve me well. I use the blank reverse side for book signing invitations, publication and bookstore appearance announcements, or handouts with excerpts from book reviews. The cards are perfect for reader correspondence and come in handy if my book sells out at signings. I also couldn’t wait to create my very own business card. I’d been saving effective cards for years while eyeballing the work of local SCBWI illustrators, to discover the perfect graphic designer. Whether memorable in shape, size, color, graphic image, or wording, all business cards should contain your name, mail, and e-mail addresses and phone and fax numbers.
Some Last-Minute Instructions For my promotional travels, the following items proved useful to pack: my smile, my sense of humor, my business cards, and my book. Luckily, I’d also packed reserves of faith, pluck, and courage. Authors too have hang-ups and bang-ups. For instance, I found myself noticeably idle for long stretches of time at my first public book signing at a Midwest children’s literature conference. I’d been seated smackdab in the middle of a long row of tables of Newbery-winning authors and Caldecottwinning illustrators. I watched endless lines of attendees gather for hours to have their books signed by everyone but me. At my first public speaking engagement to librarians and teachers, I was the last presenter in a long day of programs, scheduled right before dinner and the cocktail hour. I stood front and center, while stomachs growled and bodies shifted in their seats. My knees knocked as loudly as my thumping heart. And pride, I learned, does indeed goeth before a fall. At my first well-publicized story time at a children’s bookstore, the snaking lines of adults with children in tow, queued up since sunrise for the store’s opening, weren’t there for me. They were Beanie Baby collectors awaiting the day’s delivery.
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I recommend Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss for times like the above, when you’re scared right out of your pants or feel all alone. Dr. Seuss’s words had cheered me on before. I had to keep moving to meet new folks who would make things happen so I could happen, too. At that first Midwest children’s literature conference, I used my free time to help the event’s bookseller discover my book and its birthday party tie-ins. She now recommends it for birthday presents. At that second conference, I greeted those shifting bodies enthusiastically and booked a spring’s worth of school visits and library programs. And once the children arrived at that first story-time venture, they sparked book-related birthday party games I now use successfully. So whatever situation you find yourself in, make the most of it. Have fun, and remember that you and your publisher share the same goal: to sell books!
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writing for the school & library market by JoAnn
Early Macken
E
very year, scores of publishers produce thousands of books that never appear on bookstore shelves. Where do they all go? To schools and libraries, both huge buyers of children’s books. Educational publishers cater to this monstrous market by publishing books that are linked to the school curriculum. Writing for educational publishers is one way to break into the children’s book market, satisfy your desire to write for children, and earn a reliable income. I’ve written dozens of these books and edited hundreds more, and I’m still tickled to be working on them. You might find your own joy in the field.
What Is an Educational Publisher? Educational publishers produce books specifically aimed at the school and library market. The audience for these books ranges from prekindergarten to twelfth grade. The books are often published in series. They are not textbooks, but many expand on subjects studied in schools. Younger children use them in classrooms to learn how to read. Older children use them to research and write reports. Subjects include science, social studies, history, math, and almost anything else you can imagine. Some of the better-known educational book publishers include Capstone Press, Enslow Publishers, Heinemann-Raintree Publishers, Lerner Publishing Group, Marshall Cavendish, Rosen Publishing Group, and Scholastic Library Publishing. Many less familiar book publishers offer equally rewarding opportunities to writers who are willing to do their homework. Other publishers produce supplemental classroom materials such as teachers’ guides, activity books, workbooks, reference books, tests and test preparation materials, flashcards, and software components. Writers with teaching experience might be especially suited for writing supplemental materials. A book sale in the educational market can be different from one in the trade market in several important ways. Payment is one of them. Copyright is another. In a typical sale to a trade publisher, an author receives an advance against royalties and keeps the copyright. An educational publisher might pay an advance against royalties, royalties
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alone, or a flat fee. Fees vary widely according to the publisher and the project. Many educational publishers only offer work-for-hire contracts. Under such an agreement, the copyright belongs to the publisher, not the author. The publisher can revise the material to fit its perception of the market and publish it in any form. The author’s name may or may not appear on the book. As in trade publishing, contracts come with a wide variety of clauses. The format of an educational book can also be different from that of a trade book. It might include extra features at the end known as back matter. Glossaries, indexes, time lines, and lists of related books and Web sites all fit into this category.
Finding Educational Publishers Have you already written something you think is appropriate for an educational publisher? Look for one that accepts unsolicited manuscripts. Do you have an idea for a book or series? Search for a publisher that accepts queries. Are you an established writer looking for a new assignment? Send a résumé and writing samples to a company that accepts them. Whatever your situation, you can start by looking at publishers. Research each company thoroughly before you submit. A wealth of information is available about educational publishers if you know where to look. Start with Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market (educational publishers are marked with an apple symbol). Check the listings in CWIM to locate an educational publisher and find out what the company accepts. Visit the company’s Web site to see what kinds of work it publishes. See if the catalog is posted, and study it to find out if the work you want to do fits into a category and age level the publisher already provides. You may even be able to contribute titles to an existing series. Write the librarians at your local schools. For the price of a lunch and a thank-you card, they’re likely to be happy to show you around their school libraries and answer questions about what they look for in the books they buy and which publishers they favor. Book producers, also known as packagers or book developers, work with publishers to prepare books for publication. Book producers sometimes suggest topics to publishers and sometimes respond to requests from publishers for books on specific topics. They often hire freelance writers. They rarely accept unsolicited submissions or queries. (In Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market, book producers are marked with the symbol of an open book.) If you are a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), you can order a copy of the “Directory Guide to Educational Markets” or download it from the Web site (www.scbwi.org). It lists educational publishers, their locations and contact information, the kinds of publications they publish, details about submissions, and company Web sites. SCBWI also offers a list of book producers. Members can order a copy or download it from the Web site. The American Book Producers Association Web site includes a member directory at www.abpaonline.org/directory. html. The directory includes links to more detailed information about member companies. Many member companies have Web sites, too.
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You can also find educational publishers through the books they publish. Spend some time browsing in a school or public library. Check the nonfiction section for books on topics that appeal to you and find the publishers’ names inside. After you study enough books, you’ll get a feel for the kinds you like and the companies that publish them. Searching online will reveal more companies. I entered “educational publisher” into a search engine and found thousands of results. The first few pages alone included many names I recognized. Attend trade shows and pick up publishers’ catalogs. Study the catalogs for examples of series and titles the company produces. Network! Other writers can be the best sources of information and might even know which companies are actively seeking authors. Go to conferences, join electronic mailing lists, and check writers’ Web sites. Some educational publishers avoid controversial subjects. Others specialize in problem-solving books, biographies, nature, or crafts. Some focus on specific age levels. One company might have several imprints with different requirements. Look for publishers that accept what you have to offer.
Ideas You Can Sink Your Teeth Into You’ve probably heard the old advice to write what you care about. What do you care about? What have you always wanted to learn more about? Do you have expert knowledge of a subject you can put into language young readers can understand? Pick a topic you can live with for the time it takes to investigate it and share what you discover. Explore Web sites intended for kids to see what interests them. Keep a file of topics that capture your attention. These subjects can be the basis for query letters. Because many educational books are tied to the school curriculum, it helps to know what children study in each grade. If you know in what grade students study a certain topic, you can target your writing to that age level. The Education World Web site lists national education standards for Fine Arts, Language Arts, Mathematics, PE and Health, Science, Social Sciences, and Technology at www.education-world.com/standards/national/index.shtml. The site also provides links to state standards. If you want to know what second graders study in science in Texas, you can find out there. State standards are helpful because many national standards stretch across several grades. In reality, publishers can’t keep up with all the standards of individual states any more than writers can. It’s probably enough to check the standards of several large states such as Texas, California, and New York.
Searching and Researching Meticulous research is critical. SCBWI members can download or order a copy of “From Idea to Completed Project: Resources You Can Use.” It includes lists of reference books and journals, books about writing and illustrating, and research tips. Some publishers require authors to use only research materials written for adults. In theory, a book intended for children might already be simplified; if you simplify what
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you read in a children’s book, you risk accidentally altering the meaning. As you research, keep track of important terms, dates, and events to include in the back matter. You might need to provide several sources for the facts you include. Try to find at least two or three reliable sources for each fact. Be sure to keep good records! Find out what documentation is required by the publisher. It’s always a good idea to photocopy the title page, copyright page, and every book page where you find information. Highlight the facts so the editor doesn’t have to search for them. For Web sites, include the site name, URL, and date accessed along with the printed pages. Reliable Web sites usually end in .gov, .edu, or .org. Be wary of sites that end in .com because they might be biased, and be especially leery of personal Web sites. You might not be able to tell whether the contents represent expert knowledge or personal opinion. If printing or photocopying isn’t practical, take careful notes. A good researcher once told me that if you always write exactly what you read, you’ll never be confused about whether you are paraphrasing or plagiarizing.
Getting the Words Down I realized that I really wanted to write for children when our kids were young. I had worked as a technical writer for many years, and I was ready for a change. I enrolled in the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Vermont College. There, I concentrated on writing picture books and poetry. I also absorbed tons of general information about writing for children. After graduation, I worked as a freelance writer, editor, and proofreader. As a freelancer, I learned some valuable lessons. Keep your options open. I started as an editor and later took on writing and proofreading work. Occasionally, I helped with photo selection. Eventually, I started contributing my own photographs. The department also hired fact checkers, translators, indexers, and other freelancers. If you have another related skill, offer it. If you have an opportunity, be willing to learn. Be flexible. Educational publishers sometimes have unusual requirements. My first writing assignment was a series of four books, each about a different habitat and eight animals that lived there. The company had purchased the rights to use the illustrations from an existing series but not the text. I had to write new text to match the illustrations—the opposite of the typical process. Be sure you understand the specifications for a project before you begin. For one series I wrote, I was given a word count for each book that included the glossary, the index, and a list of related books and Web sites. I made the mistake of thinking that the word count only applied to the main text. The books were intended for beginning readers, so a small change in the number of words made a big difference. All six books were too long, and I had to revise them quickly to meet the deadline. Ask for samples and guidelines. If you write for an existing series, you might have to follow established standards for consistency. I wrote six books in a series that had six previously published titles because the original author was too busy. To understand the format, I studied the previous books. If you contribute to an existing series, be sure you know which features are consistent throughout a series and which are subject to change.
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Keep a lookout for new ideas. The first series I wrote were assigned to me. After I became comfortable with the process, I suggested some topics of my own and was thrilled to be able to write those series myself. When you write for children, remember the books you read in school. Some were deadly boring, and others made you want to learn more about the subject. Model your writing after the intriguing ones.
• Use lively, figurative language and active verbs. Let your enthusiasm for the subject show.
• Relate the facts to a child’s world by using examples that a child would recognize. • Make your descriptions clear and concise. • Use transitions to make the reading flow smoothly. • Vary the sentence structure to keep it interesting. • Avoid stereotypes. Strive for diversity and balance in the characters you portray.
All the books I’ve written for the school and library market are intended for first and second grade beginning readers. I love writing for this age because keeping the writing at an appropriate reading level is like a solving a puzzle. If you write for younger readers, keep the sentences simple and pay special attention to the vocabulary. Children’s Writer’s Word Book by Alijandra Mogilner contains lists of words that children should be able to understand at age levels from kindergarten through sixth grade. It also includes a thesaurus that lists the grade level for each word and its synonyms—a very helpful tool for finding age-appropriate substitutes. Your word-processing software might have a feature for checking the reading level of a document. In Microsoft Word, for example, you can determine the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level for a sentence, a paragraph, or an entire document. Although the number might not correspond exactly to other leveling systems, it can give you a clue to the readability of your work.
Submitting As in trade publishing, you’ll find a range of submission policies. Some educational publishers accept unsolicited submissions. Some only accept agented material. Others prefer to receive queries or résumés with writing samples so they can assign work based on their needs. Some publishers focus on a narrow age range or a specific topic or geographical area. Know your market before you submit. If you haven’t been published before, you might have better luck submitting a query for a topic you know well. Rely on your expert knowledge to sell your idea.
An Editor’s Point of View After several years of freelancing, I took a job as a managing editor for an educational publishing company. The company published about two hundred books every six months. From the other side of the desk, I gained a whole new perspective.
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In a little more than two years, I was responsible for editing or supervising the editing of nearly three hundred books. Every editor in the department worked on dozens of books in many different series each year. Very few were written by authors we contracted directly. Most were either developed by book producers or co-published with other companies in foreign countries. Most of the books I worked on were short and simple, but producing them was still a complicated process. I worked with authors, designers, photo researchers, book producers, reading specialists, translators, and production people. Changes in the schedule were constant and inevitable. Manuscripts came in late, problems cropped up with photo permissions, authors got sick, translators took unexpected vacations, and no matter what happened, the books had to be finished on time. Sometimes a book or series had to be switched from one editor to another. Close to deadline time, many projects were shuffled around or shared by several editors. So if you have a book or a series in progress and you don’t hear from an editor for a while, it may be that she’s struggling to keep her head above water. Don’t contact her without a good reason. Do ask questions if you’re not sure what’s expected of you. Keep your editor informed if anything changes in your schedule, especially if it affects your deadline. Each step in the publishing process depends on previous ones. If you are late and don’t notify the editor, you can create havoc with the rest of the schedule. When I started editing those beginning reader books, I asked authors to submit the first book in each series for approval before writing the rest of the series. I recommend a similar process for any series project. Having the initial approval can alleviate your concerns while you write the remaining books. Making a correction in one book is much easier than fixing six with the same problem. Depending on the length of the books you write, you might need to submit an outline first. Consider it a road map that keeps you on the right track. My experience is certainly not typical, but I’m not sure there is such a thing. People find their way into this type of writing from many different angles. As I write this, I’ve just returned to freelance writing. I have a stack of ideas I’m itching to explore, and I’m about to venture back into the realm of market research and query letters. I can’t wait to see which of those ideas become books. If you are bursting with enthusiasm for a subject you’d like to investigate, try sharing it with children through school and library books. The best reward will be knowing that somewhere a child will open a book you wrote and be wowed by the fascinating facts you’ve provided.
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Head of the class: tips for successful school visits by
Kelly Milner Halls
A
ccording to a National Writers Union study, the median or average writer’s income is around $10,000 a year. Even the most frugal of artisans would find it tough to finance three square meals, utilities, and a mortgage on $27.40 a day. But before you shred your business cards, take heart. Your annual income could double if you go back to school, say, thirty to forty days a year. Are we talking higher education? Not even close. We’re talking author/illustrator school and library visits. And once you’ve learned how to deliver the kind of presentations people are willing to pay for, your creative outlook could be money in the bank.
What Is an Author/Illustrator Visit? At first glance, the concept seems generic. An author/illustrator visit is a carefully planned meeting between the people who create books and the people who read them. But upon closer examination, the most popular presentations are clearly anything but run-of-the-mill. “On my school and conference visits, I bring slides that reveal how I built a life-sized Tyrannosaurus rex,” says Atlanta-based illustrator Rick C. Spears (Dinosaur Mummies). “They like the fact that I draw dinosaurs for books and magazines, but they are truly amazed by the fact that I sculpt museum models, too.” Best-selling author Chris Crutcher (King of the Mild Frontier, Whale Talk) customizes his presentations to meet his hosts’ individual needs. “If the class is reading Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes, I’ll focus on how that book came together. If they are studying censorship or creative writing, I’ll address those topics. I’m always flexible.” Picture book author Alexis O’Neill (The Recess Queen) agrees. “A good presenter creates a powerful opening, a meaty middle, and a satisfying ending, while being adaptable to the audience’s experience and needs.” Humorist and author David Lubar (Dunk) has one unfailing last resort. “Behind the scenes stuff about how a book evolved is always good,” he says, “anything that shows that writers are just as human as anyone else. And if all else fails, I’ll read a really gross story.”
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Precisely, say event hosts like librarian Betsy Fraser of the Calgary Public Library in Alberta, Canada. Flexibility and personal energy is essential to a good presentation. “If a speaker isn’t willing to bend, to use emotions in relating to an audience, there will remain a wall between them,” she says. One of Fraser’s favorite author guests, Eric Walters (Rebound), delivers more than a speech. He delivers himself. “Eric can make an audience laugh or cry talking about any of his books. It doesn’t matter if they start out with the background knowledge of the subject or not. He takes an audience on an emotional journey with him.”
Who Are Your Hosts? Teachers and media specialists like Fraser are the keepers of the keys when it comes to school visit invitations, so it’s important to know what they want. Unique and personable speakers are first on the list, but value can also help put you on top. “In an age of Learning Standards, all educational time is high-stakes time,” says Toni Buzzeo, co-author with Jane Kurtz of the school visit primer Terrific Connections With Authors, Illustrators, and Storytellers. “Author visits must help to improve student achievement and they will if the author and the host work together to identify areas of curriculum intersection and the host makes a commitment to preparing students for the visit.” Beyond curriculum there is heart. Though she has had less than generous author guests in the past, Martha Walker Baden, a middle school media specialist in Falmouth, Virginia, was impressed with the giving nature of author Ben Mikaelsen (Touching Spirit Bear). First, he skillfully executed his presentations. “He enlivened them with slide shows, humor, and lots of revelations about himself as an adolescent. His presentations for our school focused on bullying and personal responsibility, and those were topics that directly addressed our concerns,” Baden says. But once his obligations were met, Mikaelsen went the extra mile. “He was not at all stingy about his time between presentations,” Baden remembers. “He signed books, chatted with kids, and had lunch with some of the faculty and volunteers. He is one of two authors we have had that teachers and students have suggested we have back.” Wisconsin Media Specialist Pam Gardow, who also runs the Teen Literacy Initiative, an experimental student bookselling group to fund author visits, says Chris Crutcher was also a great value. “We worked him really hard,” she admits. “He was scheduled starting at 7 a.m. for a breakfast with kids from our Teen Literacy Initiative, then a morning session at the high school, followed by a reception in the library, followed by a lunch, followed by an afternoon at the middle school, followed by supper with fans, followed by a performance at the public library. He didn’t get done signing autographs until after 10 p.m. Only Chris Crutcher would be gracious (and crazy) enough to do all that for one daily fee!” Crutcher admits that schedule was a little grueling. “But when people pay me to speak, I’m there to work,” he says. “I do my best to be accommodating.” Has his philosophy been a success? Considering he logs thirty to forty speaking engagements a year, the answer is yes. “I’ve been to forty-nine states and half a dozen countries,” he
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says. “But I’m about ready to do a school in West Virginia for free, just so I can say I’ve visited all fifty.”
Where Do I Sign? If you’re thinking, “Great, where do I start?” the answer is elementary, according to Bruce Hale, author of the popular Chet Gecko middle grade mysteries. “When I started out, I sent out flyers to schools in my area, called them up, and pitched myself to them,” he says. “Then, as I improved, I hooked up with school districts in other areas that staged Author Fairs—sending authors out to several schools in the course of a week (for minimal pay). Now I’m fortunate that most schools contact me.” “My contacts with independent children’s booksellers really got me off the ground when I started out,” says Alexis O’Neill. “Many teachers, librarians, and PTA program planners in my area often ask booksellers about which local authors make great presentations, so I do lots of bookstore visits.” Poet Kenn Nesbitt contacts area schools—whenever he travels for business or pleasure—to see if they would like to schedule an author visit while he’s in town. He simply does an Internet search for elementary schools in his targeted destination and e-mails the media specialists and the principals with a message including a link to his Web site. “Some say yes,” he says, “some say no.” But he insists the success ratio is well worth the effort, and the speaking fees help keep him writing fulltime.
Dollars and Sense How productive is the school visit cash cow? “That depends on your experience levels and your strength as a speaker,” according to Buzzeo. “When you’re starting out, you might charge as little as $100 to spend half a day at your local elementary school.” One media specialist said her dream best-selling children’s author quoted her a fee of $7,000 for a full day. “Fees also vary from one part of the country to the other,” Hale says. “So I think the best way to set fees is to strike a balance between your need for cash and the value of the presentation you offer. Obviously, the more experienced and more widely published you are, the more you can charge. Here in California, I’ve seen fees range from $175 to $500 for newer authors, and up to $2,000 to $3,000 for the heavy hitters. Newer writers should ask authors in their area what the going rates are.” Mining that personal information could be a challenge, since many authors hold their fiscal specifics close to the vest. But a quick survey of those who do share actual numbers supports Hale’s general estimates. Unknown writers with growing résumés seem to command between $200 and $500 a day, for up to four presentations, while the bigger names ask $1,250 to $2,500 per day. Writers who have become household names (in almost any household) rake in $3,000 and $5,000 per day (with two authors allegedly charging a whopping $7,000 to $8,000 for a oneday contract of participation).
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Those superstar totals may sound good, but remember, very few school, library, or even national conference budgets can afford such big-ticket expenses. So top league paychecks can be few and far between. In fact, some authors set the fee high so they can avoid frequent travel, but still stay in the stratosphere of the public speaking game.
Author/Illustrator Visit Fees Laurence Pringle (nonfiction) $1,200 • Terry Trueman (YA) $1,250 T.A. Barron (YA) $1,500 • Joseph Bruchac (all genres) $1,500 Patty Campbell (YA editor) $1,500 • Will Hillenbrand (picture books) $1,500 Deborah Morris (nonfiction) $1,500 • Patricia Polacco (picture books) $1,500 Julius Lester (YA) $1,500--conferences only Chris Crutcher (YA) $1,750 • Todd Strasser (YA) $1,600 to $1,800 Paul O. Zelinsky (picture books) $1,800 Frank Asch (picture books) $2,000 • Tomie dePaola (all genres) $3,000 Jon Scieszka (picture books, chapter books) $2,000 Steven Kellogg (picture books) $2,200 to $2,500 Joni Richards Bodart (YA specialist) $2,500
Do It Right Like all fine arts, there is a right way and a wrong way to execute an author/illustrator visit. To do it right, “look for curriculum connections between your books and the curriculum taught in the school,” says Buzzeo. “Provide ways for schools to actively engage students in your work (curriculum guides, fabulous extension activities other schools have used, etc.). And use visuals. Don’t rely on talking alone.” O’Neill says to learn by observation—of other experts and yourself. “Watch authors and illustrators in action—as many as you can. Keep a journal of what you found worked and what didn’t. Make special note of how the audience reacted. Map out your presentation, creating a solid opening and closing. When you do a presentation, videotape it and analyze it. Invite colleagues to view your presentation and offer specific feedback on your performance.” Beyond academia and preparation, Crutcher says, “Remember who you are. Get a speech ready. Have it fresh in your mind. But in the end, remember your audience, young or old, wants more than a lecture. They want you. Be sure they walk away with a little better sense of who you are and why you write the things you do, and you’ll be okay.” Not to mention a little richer for the experience—body, bank account, and soul.
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License writing opens doors by
Sue Bradford Edwards
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ome clean. Did you find yourself engrossed in The O.C.? Do you watch Scooby-Doo reruns every afternoon? If you answered “yes,” a publisher may be ready to draw on your media enthusiasm. Bookstore shelves sag under Disney picture books and beginning readers. Series sections bulge with media tie-ins. Each of these books is produced under a license, the right to write a type of book based on a property such as a movie or character. Publishers purchase these licenses then create a product line that may include chapter books, coloring books, and much more. And all of these books are written by someone who managed to get his foot in the door.
Finding the Door To find out what licenses are being sold, get a glass of iced tea, sit on the sofa, and grab the remote. “Licensed properties can originate from TV shows, films, videos, books, toys, and more,” explains the editor-in-chief of Golden Books Young Readers Group, Chris Angelilli, “so authors should keep their eyes and ears open. They should watch TV, including commercials, and visit bookstores, toy stores, and other retailers to learn which properties are out there, and to what extent they’re being licensed out. To really get a head start, authors can read publications like Publishers Weekly, ToyFare, and License magazine to find out what licensing deals are on the horizon.” Says Scholastic editor Fiona Simpson, “It’s the same as finding out which publishers are accepting submissions. Look at the publishers’ Web sites or browse the bookstore. Look at the licensed character books and see who is publishing heavily in that area. Look for the big Nickelodeon or Disney or Warner Brothers logo, for example. It’s on all the books. Then you can see which publishers are working with those studios.” An author new to licensed work should start broad. “Read as many samples as you can get,” Simpson says. “Pick up a couple of movie novelizations, some chapter books, and just read them. Get them from different publishers, different licenses. To learn how to write them, you have to read what’s out there. Get a feel for how it’s done.”
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Look at what type of books each publisher does for each license, because several publishers may hold licenses on the same property. “Scholastic did a lot of Powerpuff Girls books, for example, but another house did the color and activity books. We are getting into the color activity field now but we weren’t at one time; now that’s a growth area for us,” Simpson says. “Licenses get sliced up as a result. Sometimes its a case of a license having been bought by one house and then another publisher goes to the ultimate license holder (the studio) and says, ‘We notice no one is doing this format. Do they have the rights? If not, we’d like to do it.’” One publisher may do movie tie-in picture books while another does coloring books, beginning readers, or activity books. Once a writer finds a property and learns who holds that license, it’s time to make contact.
Knocking on the Door “Once authors know who the publisher is for a particular license, they should send a list of published works, along with samples, to the editorial director of the appropriate imprint,” says Angelilli. “It is helpful to include a cover letter that clearly describes the types of writing assignments they are interested in.” But what about the author who doesn’t have licensed work for samples? “It’s also good to see samples of work that isn’t licensed to see if a writer can hit the right age groups. You still get a feel for what they write,” Simpson says. “But the writer also has to show that he or she has a real interest in the licensed publishing world. I’ve spoken to authors who said, ‘Oh, I love that show. I never miss an episode.’ I want to work with that author because she is so enthusiastic.” Those without age-appropriate sales needn’t give up. “Write a brief piece on spec that is tailored to the editor’s book needs and submit it,” says Suzanne Weyn, author and former Scholastic editor. “At best, it will fulfill an instant need and be bought. At the least, it could bring future work. This is a fun form of writing, but it requires paying attention to the details.”
In Preparation Because writing for a license involves a pre-existing world, writers must learn all they can. “The important things to do before writing a piece on a licensed character are to learn the details of the ‘world’ the character inhabits, to try to internalize the voice of the character, and to study the style of already existing material,” says Weyn. “Most licenses have a life on TV and some are in movies. It helps to hear the speaking voice—the cadence, repeated phrases, and the attitude—that the character uses. It’s also essential to identify the audience the license is geared to so the writer can be sure to use the appropriate vocabulary and concept level.” All of this works together to give each license a particular feel. Once a writer is invited to work on a particular license, the publisher supplies information on the world and character. “With Barbie, Mattel sent a one-page profile that went something like this ... Barbie is kind, Barbie loves animals, Barbie is a good friend, Barbie does not make mistakes, although Ken and her friends do,” says author Barbara
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Where Did They Begin? Wondering how the authors in this article got started writing for licenses? Here are their stories. Karen King: “I got into writing for licensed characters almost twenty years ago when I approached Marvel Comics with some short stories. They asked me to write for a new licensed character comic they were launching called Acorn Green. Since then, I worked for lots of licensed characters: Winnie-the-Pooh, Rosie & Jim, Thomas the Tank Engine, Barbie, Sindy, Tom and Jerry, Sooty, My Little Pony, Polly Pocket, Popples, Teddy Ruxpin, Postman Pat ... I can’t remember them all!” Barbara Slate: “I started writing licensed characters for Marvel Comics. Tom DeFalco was editor-in-chief then, and he got the Barbie rights from Mattel. I wrote the Barbie Fashion comic book once a month for five years. I also wrote Disney characters for several years. Beauty and the Beast and Pocahontas.” Kathleen Duey: “I didn’t set out to write licensed characters, but enjoyed it, and was happy to have the extra income. Puffin Books, an imprint of Penguin, contacted me to write three prequels to the DreamWorks movie Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. After the first one was finished, they asked if I would write the novelization as well. Why did they call me? I shared a ride with a Penguin editor at an SCBWI event and I happened to mention my lifelong love of horses. They were already aware of my historical novels—and the Spirit books were set in the 1800s—so I seemed a logical candidate. “I am the writer on the three-person creative team at Big Guy Books. The amazing digital illustrations in our Time Soldiers series caught Marvel’s attention and they called us. I ended up writing a Spider-Man book and an X-Men book.” Suzanne Weyn: “My first experience with licensed characters was as an editor at Scholastic, working on their third grade magazine, Hotdog. The magazine ran a Peanuts comic and I was the liaison between the magazine and Charles Schulz’s licensing company. Our department also put out books featuring other licensed characters. I worked with Mercer Mayer on the Little Critter books and on The Littles. After that I worked for a children’s packager, working with licensors and authors on characters as diverse as X-Men, Transformers, G.I. Joe, Ghostbusters cartoon, and Fisher-Price Little People. During that time I learned what was required for licensed writing and began to write some of the assignments myself, which became some of my earliest commercial writing credits. It gave me the experience I needed to begin a career as a freelance writer. “Since that time I’ve written for a lot of licenses. Some of them are: Barbie, Bratz, Bob the Builder, Clifford, Flintstones, Scooby-Doo, Chip ’n Dale, Magic School Bus, Baby Disney characters, Sesame Street, and Little Mermaid.”
Slate. “The Disney profile could fill a storage box. Each character had sketches as well as very detailed personality traits. Along with the Beauty and the Beast research came the movie, which I watched about twenty times. Once I got the voices of the characters in my head, it was easy going.”
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To discover this voice, immersion is key. “For the novelization of the movie, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, I was given an early version of the script and visited the studio to see footage of the film in progress several times,” says author Kathleen Duey. “I was given a meeting room and a VCR so I could replay scenes, taking notes on a laptop. The Puffin editor provided Xeroxed color stills from the whole movie as well. I also saw storyboards while at DreamWorks.” Thus, Duey gained the insight needed to create an accurate novelization.
The Challenges Each licensed project brings a different set of demands. “Sometimes authors are asked to adapt existing TV episodes or movies into manuscripts. Other times they are given a plot or theme to write about. And sometimes writers are given the opportunity to develop a completely original story. No matter what the assignment,” Angelilli says, “authors should always write within the confines of the characters’ personality traits and universe.” Fitting a particular story into the licensed universe is all important. “Warner Brothers, for example, knows Scooby-Doo inside out and they stop us from going wrong when we’re doing a Scooby book,” Simpson says. “You learn through working with the licensor what is and isn’t acceptable. It’s a learning experience for all of us, but the licensor is there to help us avoid making mistakes and to keep the books interesting and appealing to fans.” Adapting film or animation to the written word presents additional challenges because not all actions in film lend themselves to straightforward description. “The Spirit novelization was difficult simply because scenes that make sense in animation are wildly improbable in narrative. In the film an Indian boy grasps Spirit’s mane—and he is pulled along, floating above the horse’s back,” says Duey. “This was pivotally important to the DreamWorks concept of the horse; he was not to be truly ridden until at the end of the book, and then by ‘choice.’ Gravity is harder to defy in print than in animation!” It’s tough, but many writers relish the opportunity to concentrate on story. “Coming up with new ideas for stories is a creative challenge, especially if you’re writing regularly for a comic that comes out every month, as I often do,” says author Karen King. “That means I sometimes have to think of three or four new stories every month. I wrote the Winnie-the-Pooh comic for five years, so imagine how many stories that was!” Writers with a wealth of ideas find an outlet in licensed properties.
The Pluses Among the benefits of writing for licenses is visibility. “Learning to write for a license also opens a large area of freelance work to writers,” says Weyn. “Children’s publishing is increasingly connected to properties with one or more media and/or product tie-ins.” This means greater demand for those who can do it. “Once you’ve established a reputation in this field you can get a regular supply of work,” King says. And with steady work comes more. “Steady work is steady pay,” Slate says, “and steady pay is ... nice.”
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In addition to regular assignments, writing for licenses brings the opportunity of large single-title sales. “Depending on the property,” Angelilli says, “licensed book sales can be quite high—often in the hundreds of thousands. So writing licensed books can be a great opportunity to become a best‑selling author!” Weyn confirms this. “My adaptation for Scooby-Doo: The Movie put me on The New York Times bestseller list in July of 2002.” Writers also learn to write fast. “There are incredibly tight deadlines that teach you to write under pressure. You rarely have the luxury of months and months,” Simpson says. “For a movie, scripts change until the last minute. You have to be adaptable.” Authors must also write with great clarity. “It’s a great way to get rid of some bad habits,” Simpson says. “It’s all show, don’t tell. Your readers know the characters, in most cases, so you don’t have to spend a lot of time explaining them. You learn to pick up what’s important about them.” Weyn agrees. “Writing for licensed characters,” she says, “has given me the opportunity to look at what makes strong characters and appealing premises (as well as what doesn’t work). This, naturally, is useful in constructing my original work.” Licensed writing opens doors for even well-published authors. Duey explains, “I had never published anything through Penguin before the DreamWorks books. [After that, I wrote] Hoofbeats—a series of historical horse stories in four-book sets. It led to an eight-book contract, and I am really enjoying the research and the writing.”
The Minuses In spite of the many bonuses licensed writing offers, drawbacks include a lack of author royalties. “The majority of licensed writing assignments are work‑for‑hire, flat-fee payments,” says Angelilli. “It is extremely rare that an author receives a royalty for a book featuring licensed characters.” Simpson explains: “The royalty goes to the studio or other ultimate copyright holder,” she says. “For some writers this is a shock.” It can also be difficult to become part of a publisher’s stable. “These days many licensed manuscripts are being written by in‑house editors and the licensors themselves. Despite the fact that there are more licenses than ever,” Angelilli says, “assignments are sometimes a little hard to come by. Editors generally work with an existing pool of trusted authors, so getting a foot in the door can be challenging. Having patience is extremely important. Still, if an editor has a project, and thinks an author may be right for it, believe me, that author will get a call!” The greatest difficulty for some authors comes with the revisions. “Because there are more eyes looking at manuscripts for licensed titles, both the publisher and the licensor need to approve them,” says Angelilli. “There are sometimes more revisions required than with nonlicensed assignments.” Slate agrees. “The hardest part of writing about licensed characters was the first story. Not only did my Marvel editor, Hildy Mesnik, pick away at it, but many Mattel and Disney editors also had a lot to say,” she says. “It took a few months before it was second nature what Barbie or the Disney characters could and could not do.”
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This level of editorial input is common. “When I was writing for Barbie, I was frequently corrected because I’d have Barbie say something pessimistic. Mattel wanted Barbie to be depicted as always upbeat, optimistic, and enthused,” says Weyn. “It can be challenging for a writer to keep in mind that a character he or she is trying to bring to life never has a negative thought and is never discouraged. But, ultimately, these kinds of restrictions have forced me to think outside the box of what I might normally write, and that’s always a good thing.” Writers cannot take such rewrite requests personally. “You are writing stories for someone else’s character, not your own,” King says, “and licensors are very particular how their characters are portrayed. If you’re working on a new character that even the licensor hasn’t fully developed, this could mean several rewrites until the licensor is sure what they want. So you need perseverance, patience, the ability to bring other people’s characters to life, to work as part of a team, and to not be precious about your work. There’s no room for egos in this field of writing!” Licensing is still an excellent field for the right people. Simpson encourages writers to consider their passions. “If you enjoy media, if you have an interest in pop culture, there are no minuses,” she says. “I love doing it. I love trying to figure out what is going to be hot and fun and what kids are going to enjoy learning about.” As she likes to remind writers, “It’s a great excuse to sit around watching cartoons.”
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surviving the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad review by Jeffrey
Lee
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ooking back, I think I would have taken it better on a different day. It still wouldn’t have been pleasant, but it might not have been so demoralizing. I guess it’s true what they say, though—pride goeth before a fall. It happened on the day my book was released. After all the months of revising, rewriting, and obsessing, my first novel was about to enter the world. So far, the feedback had been good. The advance reviews were mostly positive—not the unrestrained adulation of my fantasies, but not bad for a debut novel. And besides, congratulations from friends and family were pouring in. I was a published author now. I had arrived. I was innocently checking the Amazon.com sales rankings for the twelfth time that day (2,367,422—that’s almost a hundred better in less than and hour!), when I noticed a new review from one of the trade journals. It began by summarizing the beginning of my book. A bit bland perhaps, but innocuous enough. Then, just as I let down my guard ...
“... unexpected and unlikely turn of events ...” “... without much weight or substance ...” “... shallow and lacking in originality ...” “... worse than drinking battery acid ...” “... something only a monster could have written ...” Okay, maybe I exaggerate. But it was bad. Really bad. She didn’t like the plot. She didn’t like the characters. She didn’t like the writing. She didn’t like my mother. She mentioned another novel with similar themes—an award-winning, best-selling novel no less—and implied that, in comparison, reading my book was like having an enema. She did everything but rip off the binding and flush the pages down the toilet. And worst of all, she seemed to enjoy it. She wasn’t just critical—she was downright mean. It was as if a stranger had walked up to admire my newborn baby and slapped her across the face. My first reaction was shock and disbelief. But then, like any good parent, I was enraged.
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Who would do such a thing? Who dared to abuse my child this way? Then I saw it. At the bottom of the review was a name (changed here to protect the innocent—me):
Susan Johannsen Lake Placid, NY
“That was your first mistake,” I muttered. “Now I know where you live.” Immediately, I began to concoct wild schemes of poetic justice. I’d stalk her, I thought. I’d photograph her at the beach and put her on a billboard comparing her unfavorably to a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model. I’d take out full-page ads in the Lake Placid News describing her children as “shallow” and “lacking in imagination.” Next I’d send threatening letters, cut out and pasted together like ransom notes:
STOP WRITING LIES OR ELSE! Finally, I’d kidnap her and tie her to the front of a bobsled at the Lake Placid Olympic training center. I’d fill the sled with three hundred copies of my book and shove it down the run. “How’s that for weight and substance?” I’d scream, cackling hysterically as she hurtled to her doom. Let’s just say it didn’t bring out the best in me. I’m not proud of it, but it got me through that first day. You’ll be glad to know I never did commit any felonies. And once the pain had faded to a dull ache, I began to get a grip. Surely I wasn’t the only writer who’d ever been blindsided by a rogue review. Maybe someone out there could tell me how to get back on my feet. Maybe I could learn something useful at the same time. I needed to hear from someone who’d been down this road before. I began to talk with other writers. Pretty soon, I realized that my experience wasn’t unique. As a matter of fact, it was almost universal. Everyone I spoke with had a horror story of his own, many of them worse than mine. But they all agreed that the first bad review is the hardest. After that, each time is less painful. Sort of like childbirth. Or maybe herpes. And like many nasty diseases, a nasty review assaults its victim in stages. Different people may suffer one stage more than another, or in a different sequence, but the overall experience remains remarkably similar from one writer to the next.
Stage 1—Shock and denial Stage 2—Revenge fantasies Stage 3—Self-loathing Stage 4—Inner peace
Stage one is the most consistent. After the exhilaration of finally getting published, that first bad review is like a punch in the stomach. It takes your breath away. One writer admitted reading hers over and over again, like running her tongue over a sore in her mouth. She couldn’t believe it was real. Maybe if she read it enough times, she’d realize she had misunderstood.
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The second stage is more variable. Not all revenge fantasies were as elaborate as mine. Most involved confronting the reviewer with a brilliant rebuttal and having her recant everything, perhaps groveling at the writer’s feet for good measure. Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen much in real life. The few writers who had actually sent in rebuttals either got no response or a polite: “Thank you for writing, but I still think your book sucks.” One writer/illustrator even confronted her tormentor in person. Her book had received a terrible review in the New York Times Book Review, and the editor of the children’s section came to town to promote a book of her own. The writer went to the editor’s reading and waited patiently for the question-and-answer period. Why, she asked,
The Path to Inner Peace (Or At Least Away From Self-Loathing) As you make your way through the stages of Nasty Review Syndrome, you may find yourself stuck at the I’m-a-pitiful-writer-and-a-worthless-human-being stage. That’s when it’s time to pull out these handy-dandy universal truths. Everyone gets bad reviews. Don’t believe me? Talk to your fellow writers. They’ll welcome you to the club, and tell you that their initiations were just as awful. If you write something that no one has a problem with, you probably aren’t taking enough chances. And then they’ll just rip you for being bland. The only people who don’t get bad reviews are people who don’t publish. You’re in good company. Be thankful. It’s only one person’s opinion. Granted, it may be a loud, scathing opinion posted on a Web site visited by millions of people an hour, but it’s still just one opinion. It doesn’t negate all the wonderful things that others have told you. What’s that, you say? Those people are biased? Yes, it’s true. Some are biased because they know you, and some may even love you. That means their opinions count most of all. Don’t take it personally. Why not? Because the reviewer didn’t. They don’t even know you. They don’t know that you volunteer at the food bank on your day off. They don’t know that you’re a loyal friend and a wonderful parent. They don’t know that you tell great jokes and give fabulous dinner parties. They don’t know any of the other things you’ve written, or the wonderful things you’ve yet to write. All they know is one book. Yes, that book is a piece of you—but only a small piece. They may be wrong. Maybe they had a migraine that day. Maybe they ate some bad sushi. Maybe their own novel just got rejected for the thirty-seventh time. Maybe their boss chewed them out, or their husband left them, or their hemorrhoids flared up just when they sat down to read your book. Or maybe they don’t know what they’re talking about. Just because they wrote it and someone printed it doesn’t make it the truth. They may be right. Painful but true. When I hold my book up next to that award-winning bestseller, do I think mine is just as good? No. I’ve got a lot of growing to do as a writer, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. Everyone needs something to shoot for. That’s how we get better at what we do.
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would they decide to print a completely negative review? The editor claimed they would never do such a thing. The writer said that she herself had received just such a review. Well, replied the editor, that’s the only way your book could have made it into the Book Review in the first place. Ouch. But if stage two can be difficult, stage three is even worse. Though most writers develop thick skins from all the rejection letters they receive, they are still a sensitive bunch. Their art, after all, is the intentional baring of their most vulnerable selves. When you criticize their work, you criticize the writer. At least, that’s how it feels. Then there’s stage four. As you probably guessed, the transition from stage three to stage four is a little tricky. But in the end, most writers get there, more or less. Unfortunately, they pay a price—the loss of innocence. After that first punch in the gut, they never let their guard down again. When they send their work out into the world, they try not to send their tender hearts with it. They know that the vultures will be circling overhead. Most writers acknowledge that even the most vicious review can contain valid points, and they try to extract whatever useful information they can before tossing it aside. But some have decided to stop reading their reviews altogether. “What’s the point?” says one writer. “Good or bad, they’re only a distraction. They don’t really help with the work at hand.” For most writers, that was the bottom line—focusing on the work at hand. If they could keep in mind what compelled them to write, and for whom, the opinion of some reviewer seemed insignificant by comparison. But for many, a lingering question remained. Why write a nasty review in the first place? Why not direct readers to books you like, rather than taking potshots at the ones you don’t? To answer that question, I went directly to the source—the reviewers. Surprisingly, many of them agreed. “I almost never review a book I don’t like,” says one. “People want to know what’s good. Why tell them about a book if you wouldn’t recommend it? It’s a waste of their time.” But others saw negative reviews as a necessary part of their job. “You know those movie critics who like everything?” asks one reviewer. “Even if they rave about a film, it’s meaningless. I don’t want my reviews to be like that—I want them to serve a purpose.” It seemed like a reasonable goal. But the more I thought about it, the more I wondered. What is the purpose of a book review? Do they really affect what people read? One editor I spoke with wasn’t so sure. “It’s hard to get children’s books reviewed in newspapers,” she says. “We try, but it’s kind of like the lottery. Most reviews are in trade journals, and besides the people in the industry, I don’t know who really reads them—certainly not kids and parents. Most people either browse the shelves or go to a store looking for something they heard about from a friend. I’m not convinced that reviews have that much impact on sales.” What about bookstores? The big chain stores aren’t that selective in their ordering, but the smaller, independent stores have to be. Do they rely on reviews when they decide what to stock? I asked Chauni Haslet, owner of the venerable All for Kids Books & Music in Seattle.
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“Reviews are important,” she says, “but not the only influence determining whether or not we carry a book in our store. We try to have a diverse selection for all readers, but because we are so ‘small,’ we know many of our customers and their reading tastes. This helps determine what we buy and how many copies. Our strength is in hand-selling when we know the interest of the reader.” And of course nowadays, reviews are also available online. On the big Internet book sites, like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, reviews come in two flavors. First there are reviews from journals from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, etc. These are posted according to contracts between the journal and the online seller. That means that a journal review cannot be removed, altered, or displayed out of order (even if the reviewer was on hallucinogens when he wrote it). The other reviews on these sites are posted by readers. In some cases, these can be removed at the request of the publisher or writer—particularly if the reader seems to have an axe to grind. For instance, if your ex-spouse posted a review that detailed your fondness for latex undergarments, you could probably get it removed. Among the people I asked, there was no agreement about which type of online review had the biggest impact on sales. But many writers took solace from the fact that reader reviews are often more positive than the ones from journals. “A lot of them are written by kids,” says one author, “and that’s refreshing. On the way to publication, your work is judged and critiqued mostly by adults. It’s nice to hear from the audience you’re actually trying to reach.” Do writers ever stack the deck by having their friends post reviews? “Of course,” says one. “Why not? It’s not like they’re making things up—they read the book and they liked it. Their opinion is just as valid as anyone else’s.” After discussing bad reviews with just about anyone who’d talk with me, that’s what I ended up with: a bunch of different opinions and no shocking revelations. I did come away with a new perspective. I’d started out thinking of my first bad review as a terrible car wreck right at the start of my journey. Eventually, I decided it was more like a pothole. Jarring? Yes. Frustrating? Definitely. Unavoidable? Maybe. But in the end, just one bump in a very long road. So I guess I’m living proof that you, too, can survive your first bad review. Yeah, it’ll sting for a while, but you’ll lick your wounds and eventually get back to work. I’ve got another book in production now, and I’m hard at work on a third. I’ve even torn up all of the threatening letters I wrote to Susan Johannsen. Okay, maybe I kept just one. It describes the unspeakable things I could do to her house pets. But I swear, I only keep it around for my own amusement. I’d never send it. That would be downright mean.
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great expectations: conferences can make a difference by
Darcy Pattison
I
’m just here to see the editor,” said the lady. I put on my best Conference Director smile. “Everyone comes to see the editor. But you still have to pay for the entire conference. In fact, you’ll learn—” “But the editor only speaks for an hour. Why should I come for anything else? Why should I pay for a whole day?” The lady left the lecture hall in a huff. This is a true story. This is a sad story. The would-be writer missed a great opportunity. Conferences are great places to learn more about your craft, to meet other writers and illustrators, and to take the first steps toward furthering your career—no matter what stage that career is in. But expectations make all the difference. Will you be “discovered” in a conference? Doubtful. (Let’s be realistic. Really. It’s doubtful.) Then what good is the rest of that long day of meetings?
Attend a Conference to Learn Something First, expect to learn something. There are four stages of learning: 1. Unconscious Incompetence—You don’t know, and you don’t know that you don’t know. 2. Conscious Incompetence—You don’t know, and you know that you don’t know. 3. Conscious Competence—You know, and you know you know. 4. Unconscious Competence—You know, and you don’t know that you know. When you attend a conference, your expectation should be to move from one level of learning to the next level in a couple areas. This may mean that you find out that you’re incompetent in your characterization. This moves you from Unconscious Incompetence to Conscious Incompetence, which means that you now know what you have to work on. It sounds discouraging: “I went to a conference and found out that I can’t characterize very well.” But I call that a successful conference.
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Conferences cannot give you competence in a one-hour presentation. Of course, you know that, but sometimes expectations become unreasonable. At most, a conference can help you recognize a deficiency. You’ll have to study and practice the skill on your own. Speakers can and do point you in the right direction, give you valuable exercises to practice, and provide examples to follow. However, competence is a hard-won prize that comes only with practice. Expect serendipity. I usually go to a conference anxious to hear one specific speaker. But more often that not, it’s one of the other speakers that surprises me with a new way of looking at something or with a tip that makes all the difference in a story. Kristin Wolden Nitz, a children’s writer who lived for several years in Italy, went to the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) conference in France. She says, “I was disappointed that an entire afternoon was dedicated to illustrating, since my primary interest is novels. But author/illustrator Deborah DeSaix demonstrated how every page turn in a picture book is an event and described her process of coming up with a series of images before writing a word of text. I went for information on novels, but instead, I learned about picture books.” I’ve learned to expect and to look for surprises like this. When you attend a conference, keep an open mind and attend as many sessions as you can.
to Be Inspired “Local Illustrator Garners National Attention!” Many conferences include inspirational stories such as this, and for good reason. Writing is a lonely business and we all need to hear stories about successful writers and illustrators. When Plain Jane succeeds, it suddenly seems possible for us to succeed. Plain Jane doesn’t have any more charisma than I have, she isn’t more intelligent, she isn’t even very pretty. In fact, it seems like the only advantage Plain Jane has is that she’s too dumb to give up. If she can persevere, so can I!
to Meet People Jane Yolen, author of over two hundred children’s books, says, “The best thing about conferences is networking, networking, networking.” Take a stack of your business cards and be ready to pass them out. Gossip, share the joy of a sale, comfort a discouraged friend, make a new friend—any way you look at it, conferences mean people. Editors are people. It’s one of the best things you’ll learn at a conference. Editors have specific likes and dislikes, just like any normal person. You’ll learn not to put them on a pedestal, not be scared of them, not to revere them. When you hear an editor speak about her passions, her failures, her children, her bum knees, her frustrating search for a new apartment in the expensive New York housing market—suddenly, the name in a market guide becomes a real person. You begin to understand what she is looking for when she reads a manuscript. By the way, an editor is like a snake: She’s just as nervous about meeting you as you are about meeting her! But she’s a lot nicer than a snake. She doesn’t have fangs or a poisonous bite.
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How to Pick a Conference When you consider various conferences, there is a trade-off between certain things. Here are some issues to take into consideration when choosing a conference: Location: How close to your home is the conference? How much will it cost to get there and for room and board? Cost: How does this expense fit into your budget? Local or regional conferences may be as inexpensive as $5 or as expensive as $150. National conference fees can run $350–$1,000. Why so expensive? Conference directors must pay speaking fees and expenses, room rentals, publicity costs, etc. Out-of-state speakers mean expensive airfares. Conferences are often on tight budgets and appreciate your support. It’s only when a group of people pool their money that it is possible to bring in a great speaker! Speakers: Is there a speaker you particularly want to meet? Have you carried on a correspondence with a particular editor or art director for a while and think that a personal meeting could help? Program: Are the topics discussed of particular interest to you? Are you interested in a particular genre, a tricky skill, a business matter such as negotiating contracts, or just interested in hearing a particular writer or illustrator talk about her work? Study the program carefully. Your goals: How can a conference help you further your career? Do you need to meet a particular person? Do you want your portfolio critiqued by a certain art director?
Other writers and illustrators are people, too. In your rush to make a good impression on the editor, don’t overlook the person sitting next to you. That person may be the next Plain Jane. And she may live in your town and be willing to be your mentor. Or her cousin might be the editor at the publishing house you’ve wanted to break into. She might even be your next best friend. Take the time to meet other people, not with the idea of using them, but with the goal of making a friend. We all need friends in this difficult business.
to Further Your Career One of the single most important things you can do at a conference is to have a manuscript or portfolio critique. If the opportunity is offered, I’d advise you to grab it. This typically means that for an extra minimal fee, you may have your work personally evaluated by one of the conference staff. For writers, a typical arrangement is for you to send in your manuscript several weeks before the conference so one of the staff can read and evaluate your writing. Finally, you say, a chance to be discovered! Sorry, still doubtful. But where else can you find an editor or an expert writer or illustrator who will focus on your work and give you feedback for a concentrated moment of time? Nowhere. Send your best work for evaluation, or if you are having specific problems, send a manu-
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script or bring artwork that represents that problem. Leave your easily bruised ego at home, but take with you your student’s attitude. Be ready to ask questions, to respond to comments, and to find out where you’re going wrong and where you might find help for any deficiencies. If you think of it as a learning experience, it will be positive and will ultimately help you find your way into print.
for the Future Writing and illustrating are not flash-in-the-pan careers. Ten to fifteen years is not an unusual apprenticeship time frame. When you attend a conference, think long term. The editor may be “just” an assistant editor, but she will move up soon to editor, then to senior editor. A friend made now could be the friend who buys your stories or artwork for the next fifty years. JoAnne Stewart Wetzel, author of Onstage/Backstage and The Christmas Box, says, “The best thing about a writers conference is hearing someone who’s been coming for five or six years announce that she’s just sold her first book.”
With Great Expectations Expect to learn that you are competent in something. (Move from Unconscious Competence to Conscious Competence.) Expect to learn that you are incompetent in something. (Move from Unconscious Incompetence to Conscious Incompetence.) Expect to be inspired. Expect to develop contacts that will last a lifetime. Expect to eat too much. Expect to meet a new friend. Expect to have a great time!
Six Tips for a Successful Conference
1. Request conference information early. If you want to participate in a manuscript or portfolio review, there may be early deadlines.
2. Often speakers are free for breakfast. Ask the conference director if you can take that special speaker to breakfast.
3. Offer to accompany a speaker to lunch. Invite him to sit at your table. He is a stranger in a large crowd and will probably appreciate a friendly word.
4. Volunteer to help. The conference director will be your friend for life. You may be invited to a special pre- or postconference party at which you can make more friends for life. You’ll have a blast!
5. Rest before and after the conference. Take maximum advantage of the limited amount of time that the speakers will be there.
6. Take your business card and give it to everyone.
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The Craft of Poetry Elixir to the Spirit: Finding Fresh Subject Matter.................................................315 by John
Drury
The Unspeakable Nature of Trauma......................................................................320 by
Fred Marchant
Ten Ways to Improve Your Poetry With Haiku.....................................................323 by
Michael Dylan Welch
The Sonnet: Creating Your Own “Little Song”.....................................................331 by
William Baer
A Moment of Intensity: The “Minute” Form.........................................................334 by
Cathy Smith Bowers
Carried Away: Free Verse.........................................................................................338 by Judson Jerome
Learn the Craft of Metrical Poetry to Free Your Verse..........................................348 by
Katie Darby
Revision: Finding the Heart of the Poem................................................................355 by
Amy Ratto Parks
The Business of Poetry Out of the Trunk: Approaching Publication..........................................................358 by Judson Jerome
Meet the Poetry Community Through Open Readings.........................................366 by
Carolyn Peyser
In Praise of the Humble Chapbook..........................................................................370 by
Vivé Griffith
The Art of Self-Promotion........................................................................................375 by
Leah Maines
Poetry
elixir to the spirit: finding fresh subject matter by John
Drury
A
lthough some poets strive to evade a definable subject in their poems, the easiest way to pique the reader’s interest is by making your poems about something in particular, something interesting. Wonderful, fresh, captivating subject matter will often, in fact, make the poem. And what interests us? Other people—like or unlike ourselves. Nature, the planet we live on, the animals and plants and rivers and mountain ranges and ice caps and rain forests. Places. Stories about people and creatures and the places in which they find themselves. “Human interest” explains it in part, but “Nature” would encompass more. Either, though, would be elixir to the spirit.
Choosing a Subject In “Writing Off the Subject,” an essay in The Triggering Town, Richard Hugo notes, “A poem can be said to have two subjects, the initiating or triggering subject, which starts the poem or ‘causes’ the poem to be written, and the real or generated subject, which the poem comes to say or mean, and which is generated or discovered in the poem during the writing.” He adds that the poet “may not be aware of what the real subject is but only have some instinctive feeling that the poem is done.” Wallace Stevens once taunted Robert Frost by saying, “You write on subjects.” Frost retorted, “You write bric-a-brac.” Covering a subject is not really the point, unless you want a poem that sounds like a term paper. It’s really a question of how much you want to include or exclude, whether you want to hold things steady or let them fly. Do you think of your subject as the diving board or the pool itself? Or is it more like the air—transparent, indefinable, hovering over the familiar world? Your sense of how hardedged a subject should be will probably vary from poem to poem.
Crafting Story Poems Stories are a wonderful way to enchant and entrance a reader. Sometimes we may feel they belong in prose, not poems, that novels let a story unfold naturally, that poems
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should be lyrical and songlike, but that’s an unfortunate and artificial limitation. Homer is our master here, and his Iliad and Odyssey give us enduring models of how words can both sing and tell. Narrative poems (which tell a story) are usually strengthened by the virtues we associate with lyrics: economy, word music, images, and metaphors. Similarly, good lyrics often have a secret or camouflaged plot, a suggestion of action either in the poem or around the poem (just before or just after). Lyric poems capture the moment of crisis, narrative poems the unfolding of a conflict. Lyric poems represent stasis, the “still point of the turning world” in T.S. Eliot’s words, while narrative poems represent action and motion, the turning itself (just as we have plot turns and twists). Story poems can draw on all the techniques of fiction but must concentrate them in lines. (Prose poems that are narrative will inevitably seem like short short stories.) Plot, character, setting, scenes, dialogue, description, and exposition all have a place in narrative poetry. The poet will want to consider the point of view (who’s speaking): Is it subjective (I) or objective (he or she)? Is it omniscient (all-knowing) or limited (giving only the observable facts)? Is it spoken or thought? Is it wide-awake or dreamlike? Is it straightforward or stream-of-conscious? Is it colloquial, perhaps in dialect, perhaps mangled or misspelled, or is it conventionally proper? The poet can use flashbacks or flashforwards. Vivid images or gestures can foreshadow or suggest actions to come later, like omens or portents. (The clatter of pans, for example, might foreshadow a later explosion.) Narrative poems take some time to set forth and resolve, but they can’t ramble carelessly. Even if the poet wants a strolling pace, the language must be tight, economical.
Writing About People Many poems include people, but it’s also possible to focus on a single person, to make a character sketch or a full-scale portrait, much as a painter or photographer would do. The poet can use the wiles of language to capture the person’s speaking voice or the way he thinks. The portrait poem can be starkly objective or wildly subjective but should try to suggest something beyond or beneath the surface—to get at character itself.
Occasions Occasional poems have a bad reputation: We think of them as hack pieces that a laureate might be forced to write for the Queen’s birthday—flowery, vacuous, uninspired stuff, pro forma and perfunctory. But Goethe calls occasional poems “the first and most genuine of all kinds of poetry.” By occasional we usually mean “to celebrate or commemorate an occasion,” but we could also mean “once in a while, when the mood strikes.” Conviction and imagination determine whether an occasional poem matters or not. And the best occasions may not be public holidays but private moments of awareness and insight—happenings worth celebrating. Here are some types of occasional poems: Elegy: One of poetry’s most ancient functions is to mourn the dead, to lament what has passed away. Wallace Stevens writes, “Death is the mother of beauty.” Shakespeare
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notes that what intensifies our affections is “To love that well which thou must leave ere long.” A poem that laments a death (and thereby celebrates the life) is called an elegy. (Related terms include dirge, eulogy, lament, requiem, and threnody.) Aubade and nocturne: An aubade is a dawn or morning poem, in which the lover—Romeo, for example—bids farewell to his beloved. A nocturne belongs to the evening. It is really a musical form, as in the nocturnes of Chopin, but there’s no reason a poet can’t borrow the term. One occasion often worth celebrating is simply a particular moment in the day: dawn, midmorning, noon, late afternoon, evening, midnight. Another occasion might be the day of the week, or a birthday, or a holiday, or an anniversary, or New Year’s Day, or the eve of something important, or the morning after. Poets also celebrate individual years, as in the Greek poet C.P. Cavafy’s “Days of 1896,” “Days of 1901,” “Days of 1908,” and “Days of 1909, ’10, and ’11”; or in James Merrill’s “Days of 1964” or Gerald Stern’s “Days of 1978.” We celebrate—and lament—these times because they are passing, or have already slipped into the past. We seek to capture, or hold onto, or at least detain, something fleeting and rushing beyond our reach. That’s the urge behind all occasional poems: to snatch the passing moment and make something tangible out of that evanescence. Other kinds of occasional poems: An epithalamion (or “epithalamium”) is a poem written to celebrate a marriage, originally intended to be sung outside the bridal chamber. A panegyric is a poem of praise (like an “encomium” or a “paean”). Political verse responds to some news event or political action (or inaction), often in righteous indignation.
Cultivating Place Places can provide fertile ground for cultivating poems. Richard Hugo spoke of the “triggering town,” a place that set poems into motion. As Shakespeare points out (or rather as Theseus points out in A Midsummer Night’s Dream), poets must “give to airy nothing/ A local habitation and a name.” Just as a play needs a setting, the capsule drama of a poem often gains from taking place in a particular locale. It gives us map coordinates for the interplay of language. It gives the scene a sharper focus. It opens up a wealth of specific details that can ease or crowd into the poem. It offers many proper names (cities, streets, shops, rivers, hills) that can act almost as images in themselves. Frequently there is an almost mystical connection between poet and place, the sense that anywhere one has spent time will have infused the sojourner with a vivid feeling for that place, as if it glowed and resonated. These are our “holy places,” wherever they might be, whatever we think about religion. Like the giant Antaeus, our strength comes from contact with the earth. There are many poems, of course, that don’t have a particular setting. Sometimes they seem to take place in the mind itself, or in an airy realm that is nowhere. But places can be extremely magnetic, whether they’re faintly suggested or lavishly reproduced in miniature. They are a good point of departure for the poem, even if we leave them behind as we plunge deeper into the poem.
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The Drama of Modern Life We may associate poetry with nature, but much poetry lives, like many of us, in the city, whether it’s Charles Baudelaire’s Paris, Walt Whitman’s Manhattan, Langston Hughes’s Harlem, Charles Bukowski’s Los Angeles, or even Catullus’s Rome. Poetry can thrive anywhere, in any surroundings. The important things are to give a sense of place, wherever it may be, and to bring as much life into the poem as possible. We should be able to write about the lives we really live, in suburbs or in slums, on the farm or in the office. We shouldn’t delude ourselves that only the pretty has a place in poetry. It can be hard to make city life into poetry. But, as the “Ashcan” school of painters painted the dingiest and grubbiest parts of New York City, poets like William Carlos Williams found they could depict and celebrate the city in poems like “January Morning.” Ugliness could either be presented realistically or transcended. And was it in fact ugly?
Animals and Plants In his “Daydream College for Bards,” W.H. Auden would require every student to “look after a domestic animal and cultivate a garden plot.” Certainly an astonishing number of wonderful, memorable poems have been written about flowers and trees, both wild and tame animals. It may be easier to praise and celebrate these things that are separate from our human entanglements and yet alive. In Poetry in the Making, Ted Hughes devotes a chapter to “Capturing Animals.” He says, “Maybe my concern has been to capture not animals particularly and not poems, but simply things which have a vivid life of their own, outside mine.” A good way to practice this escaping from the self is by looking closely at an animal, observing its habits, reading up on it maybe, trying to think and feel from its point of view. Ultimately we’re trying to plunge deeper into the self, the real one, beneath the surface of our everyday personalities. If you write about plants, try to avoid portraying a “still life”—the French term is nature morte, or “dead nature.” You need the sense of plants and animals thriving, alive, unless your poem happens to deal with mortality—and even then, there should be a sense of the life that’s gone. You want the poem to give you an almost palpable sensation of a living thing: the feel of a hog’s bristles, the scent of honeysuckle, what Galway Kinnell calls “the rank, enduring odor of bear.” It doesn’t need to be pretty; it needs to leap out at the reader. Think of the myth of Orpheus, the poet whose singing was understood by wild beasts, which listened raptly to his performances. There’s a sense of communion there, a living connection, and likewise in the story of St. Francis preaching to the animals. Many writers, of course, use animals symbolically, as in Aesop’s fables and Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Nun’s Priest’s Tale,” which is about the rooster Chauntecleer. Since the early nineteenth century, many writers have written about wildlife more literally, although William Blake and others interested in symbolism have continued to write memorable poems that treat plants and animals as emblems, as in Blake’s “The Sick Rose.” Walt Whitman, who called his collected poems Leaves of Grass, boasted, “I think I could turn and live with animals.” He believed a leaf of grass was “no less than the journey-work of the stars.” Marianne
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Moore is known for her curiosity about practically everything, in particular animals, such as “the elephants with their fog-colored skin” (“The Monkeys”). Theodore Roethke wrote a series of “greenhouse poems”; Sylvia Plath wrote numerous poems about beekeeping. Both poets have a personal stake in these subjects, since Roethke’s father was a florist and Plath’s father was an entomologist who specialized in bees, but they focus directly on the living things, their locations, and the activities taking place around them. Their poems are so vivid, and so obsessive, they have great resonance. We’re encouraged, by those reverberations, to take the poems both literally (about the plants and animals themselves) and figuratively (about what all that blooming and buzzing might suggest). Even though we may focus on a plant or animal, we can still hint at other meanings, other significances. The great danger in writing about plants or animals is sentimentality. Most of the bad poetry about living things comes from an insistence on the “pathetic fallacy,” the idea that nature mirrors us and our feelings. The first step away from that self-indulgence should be to treat the plant or animal on its own terms, rather than imposing our own. Being objective does not rule out feelings; it’s simply a necessary act of respect. This may be an ethical consideration, but it has an aesthetic point, in that good poems discover something unexpected about the familiar world; they don’t rehash our personal opinions and superficial feelings. There are several good ways to approach plants and animals. First, by direct personal observation, looking until you’ve discovered all you can. Second, by consulting field guides, such as the ones by Roger Tory Peterson and the Audubon Society. Third, by reading what naturalists and other writers, such as John McPhee and Annie Dillard, have written. Fourth, by joining a bird-watching club or taking a course in gardening or participating in activities of organizations like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace. Remember that one of the worst kinds of sentimentality is assuming that “nature” will always be here for us, even in our technological world. Don’t treat plants and animals as scenery—among other things, it makes for bad poetry.
The Thing Poem Pablo Neruda tells us, “It is well, at certain hours of the day and night, to look closely at the world of objects at rest,” at the “used surfaces of things, the wear that the hands give to things.” Other poets have echoed this feeling. In a section of his anthology, News of the Universe devoted to “The Object Poem,” Robert Bly mentions Rainer Maria Rilke’s “seeing” poems, such as one about the “Palm of the Hand,” and Francis Ponge’s “object” poems, such as one about an oyster and another about “The Delights of the Door.” The Germans even have a word for it: Dinggedicht, meaning “thing-poem.” Thales, a preSocratic philosopher, observed “There are gods in all things.” One of the poet’s jobs is to find the divine in the everyday, the beauty in ordinary things, to be (as Thomas Bolt puts it) a “reporter of the unimportant.” Keep in mind, too, that a poem is also an object, something palpable, something with heft.
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the unspeakable nature of trauma by
Fred Marchant
A
ll the pundits said everything changed, changed utterly on 9-11-2001, but I am not so sure. As days and weeks unfolded afterward, I found myself thinking the chatter about everything changing seemed part of some after-trauma syndrome. I also thought we were all in shock, stopped in our tracks. I noted in myself a strange combination of numbed feelings and hypervigilant alertness. I began to think the ubiquitous flagwaving and nearly celebratory war planning were masking a host of perplexities and helpless feelings. In Boston, where I live, there was a flurry of readings and literary benefits, and underneath them all, one could hear a terrible and frightening perplexity stirring. How to talk about what had happened—and was still unfinished? How on earth could one hope to write poetry about it? I would check in with others to see if they had been able to write at all. Some poets were generating plenty of new work; others felt they were weighed down under a pall of silence. Though I was somewhere in between, I recognized a shared feeling among my fellow poets: That words were filling the air around us but not capturing the things that most needed words. More and more had begun to feel like less and less. The psychiatrist Judith Lewis Herman in Trauma and Recovery helps clarify some of this moment’s texture for me. She writes that to witness trauma is to be traumatized oneself. Herman also says that traumatized people often find themselves governed by a pair of contradictory desires. There is the sense that the story must be told, yet traumatic experiences by their nature are unspeakable. The traumatized person then oscillates between the desire to speak and the knowledge that no words can do the experience justice. To even speak about trauma sometimes seems the shattering of a decorous and protective silence. At the same time, one can feel something inside urgently needing words that will help bring the unspeakable back into a realm of dialogue and community. If there is a first lesson in writing poetry at all, especially poems about traumatic material, it is that one need not try to say everything at once. One could start with the fragments or edges of the experience. In doing so, one creates a little bit of free space; that is, psychic space in which one can be freer with the material than if the intent was
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somehow to capture the whole experience. An “angle” of vision might yield more than the attempt at panorama. You can see this in this classic haiku by Yosa Buson (translated by Robert Hass): I go, you stay; two autumns.
In this poem’s dramatized moment of parting, it doesn’t really matter whether the loved one is leaving on an ordinary journey or the parting is as final as a death. Either way, the poem is exquisite in its expression of loss. There is something more to this poem than its palpable sorrow, though. In that last line’s quick, intuitive, and nonliteral connection between parting and autumn, the poet tells us that both of these people are dying just a little. Out of the friction of the two literal facts of one person going and the other staying, the third line has leapt into an expressive domain, saying something that is both “fanciful” and a measure of just how deep this parting is wounding the poet. This haiku shows us how valuable it is to honor the fanciful, the nonliteral, the metaphorical, the nonrealistic element in the imagination. The poet has to be alert to these imaginative stirrings, even if they seem to draw us away from factual description. It is in those stirrings of the nonliteral that one often finds that which is hardest to say and yet most in need of saying. That lesson first came home to me in writing “Butterfly Chair” from my first book, Tipping Point. It was just about the most difficult poem I had ever written. It concerns a scene of domestic violence, recalled from childhood. I can see it again tonight in rough outline
where the clear-cuts
rise and slant up the valley:
the middle room of the flat where I grew up,
where I watched
a corner space for the television,
the quarrels spill like hot oil flowing from
my father holding my mother
kitchen to parlor,
by the forearm to keep her steady while
silvered, and me slung
he hit her, the two of them
in the butterfly chair, the rounded canvas
bottom so deep, my feet
didn’t reach the floor.
Transfixed, a moth awash in the light
of what it wants so much,
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I would stare through them,
into the window of the tube, and its brightness, holding onto a glossy wish that I would die.
It took me many years to write this poem, and so it is more a model of “emotion recollected in tranquility” than a model of what it means to write in the midst of difficult times. But there is some hard-earned lesson embedded in this poem. I remember the hardest thing for me was to focus the poem somehow on the little boy’s helplessness. At first, I didn’t consciously know that was my real topic; I thought my real concern was the horror of the violence. In taking the poem through drafts, however, I began to recognize that the helpless, almost paralyzed state was what I was really reaching for. I didn’t have to explain, understand, or solve all the problems implied by this scene. What I had to do was stay with that boy’s inner life and its freezing up. I had to flee with him into the snowy screen of the television. And when I did, I arrived at the comparison of the boy to a moth transfixed by a light. For me, that metaphor is the climactic moment of the poem, shifting the poem into another realm; namely, the range of feelings that include the wish he could die, happily, like a moth into a flame. Buson’s haiku and my “Butterfly Chair” are poems of more or less private trauma. But lessons similar to theirs also can be found in some very great poems about contemporary social issues. Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, for example, came of age as a writer in Northern Ireland during many years of sectarian violence. He could not help but feel the need to write about that suffering. His goal, he once said, was to find images and metaphors that were somehow adequate to his experience. A breakthrough came when Heaney encountered the photographs in P.V. Glob’s The Bog People, an archaeological book about Iron Age corpses retrieved from peat bogs in Denmark. These bodies were remarkably well preserved by the peat, and all signs indicated they had been ritual sacrifices. To Heaney’s mind, these victims resonated with victims of the violence in his own time. He grasped a basic metaphorical connection between both, and this led him to write a remarkable series of poems about “bog people,” presenting these bodies as appalling yet archetypal images of tribal killing, both ancient and modern, Protestant or Catholic. The African American poet and National Book Award winner Lucille Clifton wrote a poem in response to the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper, Texas. How to express her own horror and disgust at racist violence? She did not write directly about his violent death, but made a leap of imagination to write in this man’s voice, or rather in the voice of James Byrd’s ghost: “Who is the human in this place,/ the thing that is dragged or the dragger?” Imagining this voice, Clifton bears witness to the unspeakable nature of the trauma, and in the process finds the words to express her own disgust and despair. The lesson I discern in these poems should not be thought of as a recipe or a road map. It is not a lesson about poetic device or strategy. It is much more a lesson in the rewards a writer gains by trusting the imagination’s extensions beyond the literal facts of a trauma.
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ten ways to improve Your poetry with Haiku by
Michael Dylan Welch
I
n his poem “Japan,” former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins revels in the experience of reading a haiku—“the one about the one-ton temple bell / with the moth sleeping on its surface.” He repeats the poem to himself over and over in various parts of the house, even bending down to the dog, whispering the poem “into each of his long white ears.” When he says the poem to himself in the mirror, he explains that he becomes the heavy bell and that “the moth is life with its papery wings.” He nears the end of his thirty-fiveline poem by saying that, “later, when I say it to you in the dark, / you are the bell, / and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you.” We flow along with the poet’s thoughts, going where the haiku takes him. We, too, see the image, the contrast, and may ponder what it means for us. All good haiku have this open and expansive quality, a capability for resonance that engages the reader. Billy Collins reads Buson’s tsurigane ni tomarite nemuru kochô kana in translation and is able to dwell in the poem for a day, to meditate upon it, to let it enlarge for him. “It feels,” he tells us, “like eating / the same small, perfect grape / again and again.” Because of its brevity, haiku can say only so much. Yet it really does say so much. It does this by relying on implication, on what is not said. No wonder haiku has been called an “unfinished” poem. The reader must finish it, bringing his own experience into the picture. The poem itself makes the most of this expectation by focusing on the universal in the particular, and the particular in the universal. A haiku makes us aware of what we already know, but may not know that we know. But how does haiku do this? And how can understanding the strategies of writing haiku aid you in improving your poetry? No matter what lengths or sorts of poetry you prefer, haiku techniques can help you write better poetry. Here are ten tips for improving all your poetry with haiku.
1. Focus on Concrete Images Good haiku are concrete and objective. They are not about abstractions such as beauty or ugliness—which are interpretations of the mind—but focus on things themselves
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that may only happen to be beautiful or ugly, qualities that may even be irrelevant. Haiku have things in them like glossy pebbles that are smooth to the thumb. They do not present subjective interpretations such as how you feel about these things. Haiku have real toads in them. If you don’t like the toads, you are free to jump if you want—without the poet having to tell you how to react. By including such clear images in your writing, as haiku does, you can bring stories and experience to life. By describing things, rather than your reaction to things, you trust these objects to have their own emotional impact. And by choosing certain objects to name or describe, you can begin to shape or direct the emotional response you desire. Here’s a poem of mine that relies on objective imagistic description:
meteor shower ...
a gentle wave
wets our sandals
My hope is that this haiku provides a contrast between up and down, fire and water, cosmic and personal, and even offers a sense of the gravitational cause of tides. Moreover, I hope the reader will enter into the poem to feel the absorption of watching the meteor shower only to be surprised by the gently rising tide. T.S. Eliot talked about this technique of detachment as the “objective correlative,” which he defined in the essay “Hamlet and His Problems”: “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.” Haiku poets rely on objective correlatives all the time, even if they never think about them. Did Buson ponder how we feel about the weight of a temple bell, or the delicateness of a moth or butterfly on its dull or shiny surface? That doesn’t matter. What matters is how these images make us feel, and how we react to them. Buson, like many other masters of haiku in both Japanese and English, has the grace to let the image be itself, and trusts us to react to it however we will. In an essay titled “Images,” from Twentieth Century Pleasures, Robert Hass writes that “Images are not quite ideas, they are stiller than that, with less implication outside themselves. And they are not myth, they do not have that explanatory power; they are nearer to pure story. Nor are they always metaphors; they do not say this is that, they say this is.” He also adds later that “It simply presents and by presenting asserts the adequacy and completeness of our experience of the physical world.” That’s exactly what a haiku does. It says, simply, this is, and trusts the image to work in asserting the adequacy, and even joy, of pure existence.
2. Come to Your Senses The image, of course, need not be purely visual. As Eliot notes, the objects or situation or events we describe terminate in a sensory experience. This is what haiku focuses on as the “image”—sensory experience. Whatever we see, hear, touch, taste, or smell is
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ripe as haiku fodder. What we imagine, think, conclude, or feel emotionally quickly begins to interrupt and be inappropriate—we want to produce these results, not start with them. This is an extension of that old writing adage, show, don’t tell. There’s also a fundamental difference between “ice cream is good” (simply a judgment) and “ice cream tastes good” (a sensory focus). Poets are concerned with exactly that difference, especially in haiku, which relies so heavily on the senses. Just as sensory impressions make an immediate connection with readers in haiku, so, too, can they get under our skin in other poetry. It is through the senses that the world enters our bodies, how the future becomes our past, how we experience life in the present moment. Our five senses tell us we are alive, and make real what we know and feel around us. Lee Gurga, in his book Haiku: A Poet’s Guide, reminds readers that haiku “focus on perception rather than invention, so writing them trains poets to become aware of all their senses.” Poetry, because it is a language of the body, can communicate strongly through the senses. As a result, sharpening sensory awareness, as commonly happens with haiku, is a worthwhile goal for any poet.
3. Control Objectivity and Subjectivity Haiku focus on objective images in the here and now. But what is objective? What is subjective? The best haiku tend to be objective, partly because the objective description (of the thing, the noun) works well to bring about emotional response when we trust the image to do so. As William J. Higginson explains in The Haiku Handbook, “words that are too concerned with how I respond prevent you from responding freely to the object or event that caused my response.” Thus, it’s helpful for us to draw back, to be aware of when “we” (the self, the ego) intrude too much in our poetic descriptions. It’s a sort of poetic graciousness, where the poet is a good host for the reader’s emotional reactions, enabling them to flower where they will.
4. Distinguish Between Description and Inference One thing we can do in our poetry is to realize where we are being subjective, where we are being objective, and why. A related skill is to learn the difference between description and inference. Scientists, who typically seek objective proof, are cautioned against inference in drawing certain conclusions, for inference can be subjective. Description, as is common in haiku, dwells on actual observation—the concrete and objective. Description may imply certain things, but implication is not the same as inference. The poet, if writing about her own inferences, runs the risk of deflating her poems by not allowing the reader to draw conclusions. The poet may imply something. The reader may infer. It’s effective for the poet to imply, and central to the enjoyment of poetry, particularly haiku, for the reader to infer, to figure something out based on hints in the poem. But this enjoyment starts with the reader “holding back,” and the example of haiku provides a fine way to do that. Inference dwells on logic or intuition rather than
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direct observation. The haiku may present the premises of a syllogism, but never the conclusion. The reader provides the intuitive conclusion, and this sort of collaboration is what a good haiku seeks. As a result, the poet can add energy and strength to her writing by converging on what is actually observed rather than what she infers. If you smell a rose scent, you can infer that a rose is nearby, but if you want to describe this, the subtlety of describing just the scent is typically more powerful than naming the rose. And then you let the reader figure out just as you do that a rose is around the corner (or perhaps figure out something less obvious than that). A rose may always be a rose, but saying only that you smell the rose may make it more immediate and profound than naming it. By being aware of what you really do perceive, as opposed to infer, you can tap into the perceptions you have and rely on those in your poetry so that the reader, too, may make the same leaping inferences that you do. In The Haiku Apprentice, Abigail Friedman writes about her experience as an American diplomat learning how to write haiku in Japan. In haiku, she learned to describe things as they are and discovered that this was an extension of her professional life as a diplomat, observing and reporting on the North Korean nuclear threat and that country’s human rights issues. Her job was to describe events in North Korea as they were, not as she interpreted them, and once she realized that this restraint also applied to haiku, she was able to plumb the deepest of haiku’s strengths.
5. Seek Immediacy and Accessibility A good haiku often captures or produces a moment of epiphany—a moment of realization, understanding, or suchness. One way haiku crystallizes epiphanies is by being immediate and accessible, avoiding artifice. The poem happens now, in the present tense, and focuses on the common and the simple. Yet somehow the ordinary becomes extraordinary, because the effect of the poem is transcendent. Yet it begins with something as immediate and everyday as a nail clipping getting lost in the carpet. Whether haiku can mean something larger or not is a matter of debate. Roland Barthes, in Empire of Signs, said that haiku signifies only itself, the thing as it is. This may be true, and there is certainly value in seeing and respecting the thing itself. Or, as poet David Ignatow has said, “I should be content to look at a mountain for what it is and not as a comment on my life.” Ultimately, by focusing on the objects of existence, haiku engages the possibility of representational and numinous transcendence. This may be why haiku are often described as having an “aha” moment. Life is full of penetrating moments, and haiku notices them and seeks to freeze the instant, not coldly or lifelessly, but with the profound immediacy of a lightning flash. In poetry, there’s a place for the erudite and challenging (or what Owen Barfield calls “strangeness”), but if it’s too obscure or difficult, it can alienate. Jack Kerouac said that haiku should be as simple as porridge. What he meant is that it dwells in the ordinary, the everyday—in other words, the immediate and accessible. A haiku using a common Anglo-Saxon word rather than a Latinate one, such as “dog” rather than “canine,”
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becomes more primal, more universal. This is how the ordinary has strength, and part of how haiku celebrating the ordinary—using ordinary rather than elaborate language— somehow becomes extraordinary.
6. Control Formal Devices As Ezra Pound once wrote, “I believe in an ‘absolute rhythm’ ... in poetry which corresponds to the emotion or shade of emotion to be expressed.” In longer poetry, sometimes such a rhythm might be metrical, but in a poem as short as a haiku, metrical form and other devices quickly overpower the poem. This is why haiku never have titles, almost never rhyme, alliterate only occasionally, and tend to minimize or eliminate metaphor, simile, and other poetic tricks. Some of these devices point to the poem or the maker’s cleverness rather than to a sensory perception or an intuitive physical experience. In The Way of Haiku, James W. Hackett has given good advice on this topic: “A haiku,” he said, “is a like finger pointing at the moon, and if the hand is bejeweled, we no longer see the moon.” A longer poem has room for a wider range of devices than haiku, of course, but it’s worth noting the limitations of these devices, and how they can be signs of themselves rather than signs for a transcendent reader experience.
A Proposed Definition Haiku is typically a three-line poem that uses concrete sensory images to convey or imply natural and human seasonal phenomena, using a two-part juxtapositional structure as well as simple and primarily objective language. Originally a Japanese genre of poetry, now written and adapted in many languages worldwide, traditional haiku in Japanese consists of seventeen morae (not to be confused with syllables) in a pattern of 5-7-5. Because of language differences, this rhythm is generally not followed for literary haiku in most languages other than Japanese. As intuitive and emotional poems, haiku often capture a sense of wonder and wholeness in presenting existence such as it is. Rather than presenting one’s emotions, haiku present the cause of one’s emotions, thus empowering the reader to have the same intuitive reaction to an experience that the poet had.
7. Find the Right Form It’s a common belief that the defining characteristic of haiku is form. Haiku, however, is better understood as a genre of poetry, of which form (and not necessarily a particular form) is only one aspect. Writing in the Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, Japanese scholar Shigehisa Kuriyama asserts that “The 5-7-5 pattern by itself does not make a haiku.” The 5-7-5 arrangement applies to traditional (meaning not all) haiku in Japanese, but such a set syllabic form does not apply to Western languages for various reasons, the chief of them being that Japanese sound symbols are not equal to syllables.
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Copying merely the number without understanding what is being counted is like saying a hundred yen is equal to a hundred dollars. Many haiku scholars, translators, linguists, and poets have frequently written about this—for example, read appendix I, “The Japanese Mora,” in Kôji Kawamoto’s The Poetics of Japanese Verse. Schoolteacher pronouncements die hard, though, and it may therefore come as a surprise that it’s not a set syllabic form that matters most in haiku, but seasonal reference and a twopart juxtapositional structure. But what is one to do with haiku if it is not 5-7-5? The three-line arrangement common in English is a Western contrivance, for haiku in Japanese is written in a single vertical line. The three lines do give the haiku a sense of being a poem, but how long should the lines be? What most leading haiku poets writing in English have done, as readily seen in anthologies such as Cor van den Heuvel’s The Haiku Anthology, is to let form arise from what needs to be said—an organic form. Though she does not address haiku, Denise Levertov’s essays on this topic are worth a read for some of this theory. As Roland Barthes writes, “The brevity of the haiku is not formal; the haiku is not a rich thought reduced to a brief form, but a brief event which immediately finds its proper form.” Thus, in haiku, one does not compress into the fewest words possible, but the fewest words necessary. In Japanese, the prescribed syllabic form comes very naturally, and the malleability of the grammar allows greater flexibility in word order than English, making it easier to achieve the 5-7-5 arrangement (Keiko Imaoka addresses these issues succinctly in an essay titled “Forms in English Haiku,” first published in my former journal Woodnotes and readily available online). English has capacities that Japanese does not, but a poet’s slavish adherence to syllabic form in haiku, in English, immediately makes the reader aware of the form ahead of the intuition. But why write like that when you want to mean something, or convey a keen perception, rather than merely fill a bucket? Regardless of the form, the poem’s scaffolding should be nearly invisible. To return again to Barthes, “the work of reading which is attached to [haiku] is to suspend language, not to provoke it.” What poets can learn from haiku in this regard is an awareness of the effect of form on the poem. Finding the right form, whether metrical or organic, or deliberately violating a form, can set the poem’s tone the way a string quartet can transport diners in an upscale restaurant.
8. Follow Seasonal Rhythms As just mentioned, one of the two key characteristics of haiku is seasonal reference. Haiku center on season words—known as kigo in Japanese—that not only anchor the poem in time, but allusively embrace other poems that employ the same season word. The seasons in Japan are highly pronounced, so it is no wonder that Japanese poetry celebrates seasonal change. As we know from Ecclesiastes, everything has its season, and across the world we intuitively interpret seasons as metaphors for life’s passages. As poets, if we can be more aware of seasonal archetypes and the subtle seasonal changes around us,
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and tap into them, our poetry can become more connected to nature and to the earth we live on—the ultimate environmental poem. With seasonal connections, our poetry can also be more entwined with the primal human progression from birth to death. The seasonal reference can be subtle, however, and need not stoop to the cheapest seasonal trick of naming the season. The Japanese have categorized the multitudes of seasonal phenomena in haiku almanacs known as saijiki. An example of such a book in English is William J. Higginson’s Haiku World, where we can learn that “cicada” is a late-summer season word, and that “pothole” is classified as late winter. The reasons for such classifications have to do with Japanese seasonal traditions and when a given phenomenon reaches its typical zenith, reasons that are challenged by problems of latitude and altitude. Despite the hazards of classification, haiku poets recognize these archetypes, and use them to gain greater evocativeness than the haiku’s three brief lines would otherwise possess.
古池や
f
蛙飛びこむ
水の音
uruike ya
old pond ...
kawazu tobikomu
a frog leaps in
mizu no oto
water’s sound
Bashô’s famous frog poem, here in Higginson’s translation, is not just a poem about the frog’s splash (written in 1686 when predominately the frog was celebrated for its croaking), but an archetypal evocation of spring and change. As a spring season word, the frog and its vitality contrast with the veneration and possible stagnation of the old pond. The new focus on the frog’s jump and the sound it makes in water rather than the sound of its singing provides a freshness of image that matches the vitality of spring. The seasonal awareness thus enlarges the poem, much as the butterfly on the temple bell in Buson’s poem contrasts the fragility of spring and youth with the winterlike permanence of the ageless bell. Haiku translator R.H. Blyth has described haiku as “a hand beckoning, a door halfopened, a mirror wiped clean. It is a way of returning to nature, to our moon nature, our cherry blossom nature, our falling leaf nature.” The moon is autumn, the blossom spring, the leaf autumn. It is this seasonal essence and everything it implies that haiku reveres and relies on, and these evocations can extend to longer poetry.
9. Trust Juxtaposition The other key characteristic of haiku is its two-part juxtapositional structure. In Japanese haiku, a kireji, or cutting word, separates the poem’s two parts (one of the parts, in English, is spread over two lines). This juxtapositional structure is not only grammatical, in that one line is a separate fragment, distinct from the rest of the poem, but often imagistically juxtaposed as well.
thunderclap ...
the frayed shoestring
snaps
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In this haiku by Peggy Willis Lyles, what does the thunder, redolent of summer, have to do with the snapping of a shoestring? That’s the technique of juxtaposition at work, like the montage and cutting techniques of modern film, where the juxtaposition of images implies a progression or emotion (in “The Cinematographic Principle and Japanese Culture,” an essay in Experimental Cinema, Russian film theorist Sergei Eisenstein specifically credits haiku for influencing cutting techniques in film). Something is not stated, and does not need to be, because the reader can figure it out. Does the thunder’s suddenness cause the person tying her shoe to be startled, thus jerking the shoelace with enough force to snap it? Or does the juxtaposition suggest that the unexpectedness and quickness of a thunderclap is akin to the sudden snapping of a shoestring? Probably both. Haiku translator Harold G. Henderson, in Haiku in English, talks of this as “internal comparison,” where one thing may be compared with another, sometimes obliquely, without the relationship being explained. Thus, the objective in haiku is not merely to juxtapose, but to create an effect with that juxtaposition. The two parts of the haiku create a gap that the poet trusts the reader to leap across, much like the instantaneous process of getting a pun. This is leaping poetry of the smallest size but largest order, and the same techniques of juxtaposition and internal comparison can be used in longer poetry.
10. Discover More About Haiku A basic starting point for learning more about haiku, in addition to the books mentioned here, is William J. Higginson’s “Open Directory” portal site for haiku, located at www.dmoz.org/Arts/Literature/Poetry/Forms/Haiku_and_Related_Forms/. Every rule or suggestion can prove the value of its opposite, so certainly poets have a variety of ways to approach poetry. The techniques I’ve presented are common to haiku published in such journals as Charles Trumbull’s Modern Haiku, the Haiku Society of America’s Frogpond, and my own publication, Tundra: The Journal of the Short Poem. These techniques may be more readily apparent in haiku than they are in longer genres, but understanding how they work in haiku may help some poets extend them to their longer poetry—or even other kinds of writing such as memoir, fiction, or drama. These techniques are also common in the related Japanese poetic genres of tanka (the lyrical five-line precursor to haiku), senryu (a more humorous or satirical version of haiku), haibun (elliptical prose, usually autobiographical, interspersed with haiku), haiga (paintings combining haiku and calligraphy), and renku (formal linked verse). More than just applying these techniques to your longer poetry, though, how about writing haiku? Roland Barthes once wrote that “The haiku has this rather fantasmagorical property: that we always suppose we ourselves can write such things easily.” He is right, but why not explore haiku to see why it is not as easy as it seems? There is much to discover.
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the sonnet: creating your own “little song” by
William Baer
T
he sonnet, from the Italian sonetto (“little song”), is one of the most popular and exacting of all poetic forms, and it’s the most popular fixed form in English-language poetry. Usually lyric in manner, the little sonnet has contributed to countless and unforgettable works of art to the history of Western civilization. In the various European languages, extraordinary sonnets have been written by Dante, Petrarch, Camões, Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay, Goethe, Pushkin, Charles Baudelaire, Stephane Mallarme, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Jorge Luis Borges. Similarly, a listing of the Englishlanguage masters of the sonnet reads like a virtual who’s who of English and American literature: Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Elizabeth Browning, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Frost, Millay, Nemerov, and many others. The sonnet is a rather short poem, being only fourteen lines of iambic pentameter. Thus, the challenge is to say something significant and memorable in such a limited space (approximately 140 syllables). Ezra Pound once claimed that “six lines can make you immortal,” and this is certainly true if we extend the number of lines to fourteen. Wordsworth, in his classic sonnet “Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent’s Narrow Room,” discusses the seemingly contradictory fact that confinement can actually create not only power but freedom.
Nuns fret not at their convent’s narrow room; And hermits are contented with their cells; And students with their pensive citadels; Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom, Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom, High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells, Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells: In truth the prison, into which we doom Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me, In sundry mood, ’twas pastime to be bound Within the Sonnet’s scanty plot of ground;
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Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be) Who have felt the weight of too much liberty, Should find brief solace there, as I have found.
Thus, the isolated nun praying in her small cell does not feel inhibited at all. Instead, she’s able to more effectively concentrate on higher things and be content. Similarly, the sonnet itself is never a “prison” for the serious poet, but rather the perfect place of “solace” where writers can pursue the sublime.
The Origins of the Sonnet The first sonnet was created in the medieval Sicilian court of Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor, in the thirteenth century. It was later used by Dante, but it truly came into its own with Petrarch and the Renaissance. Later, as the Renaissance spread west and north, so did the sonnet, moving into Spain, Portugal, France, and finally England. The first English sonnets were composed by Sir Thomas Wyatt, and the English form of the sonnet was created by his friend Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey. Eventually, the sonnet was taken up by Edmund Spenser, Shakespeare, Donne, and Milton. After the Augustan age of the heroic couplet, Wordsworth and the Romantics revived the sonnet, and it has been written by serious poets ever since.
The Italian (Petrarchan) Sonnet Although there are numerous variations on the sonnet form, there are two fundamental formats: the Italian sonnet and the English sonnet. The Italian sonnet employs a two-part structure consisting of an octave and a sestet. The octave always rhymes abbaabba, whereas the sestet can rhyme in a variety of ways, most commonly cdecde or cdcdcd. Given its two-part structure, the Italian sonnet is generally seen as a response format, in which a theme (or issue, query, problem, or argument) is raised in the octave, and a response (or solution, reflection, or conclusion) is offered in the sestet. Since its rhyme scheme demands at least four rhymes on two different sounds, it would be reasonable to assume that Italian sonnets would be very difficult to compose in English, but this difficulty has not discouraged countless English-language poets from writing masterful Italian sonnets.
The English (Shakespearean) Sonnet The English sonnet consists of three quatrains rhyming abab, cdcd, and efef followed by a concluding couplet, gg. The advantages of the English sonnet are obvious: a less demanding rhyme scheme, the potential power of the final couplet, and more structural options (since the lines of the English sonnet can be divided in numerous ways: 4-4-42,12-2, 8-6, 4-4-6, etc.). The concluding couplet is especially attractive to many poets because its natural compression, emphasis, and epigrammatic nature allow it—when used effectively—to end the sonnet firmly and memorably.
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Originally, of course, the sonnet was exclusively a love poem, but the Portuguese poet Camões (and later, Milton in England) expanded the form’s thematic parameters, and now there seems to be no subject that the little sonnet can’t tackle.
A Note About Difficult Themes New poets are naturally attracted to difficult themes—love, death, religion, patriotism and war, and social issues (like the environment, etc.). This is perfectly natural, since these are subjects of momentous importance in all our lives, but for that very reason, they’re potentially dangerous topics for poetry. The reason is twofold: (1) so much has already been written about these subjects in the past, and (2) there can be a tendency in writing such poems to get rather preachy. Regarding the first problem, the solution is clear: Poets must find unique ways to deal with these subjects. Often this can be achieved by combining an interesting starting point with specific images and details. Regarding the second problem, there’s nothing more doomed to failure than those countless well-intentioned poems that tell us how important peace is, or how wonderful the rainforests are, or how terrible racism is. Such poems often sound rather self-righteous (and childish), and sophisticated modern poets wisely deal with such subjects through specificity and understatement. One of the best poems about racism in the twentieth century is Dudley Randall’s “Ballad of Birmingham.” Randall’s poem speaks for itself; it doesn’t have to preach. In fact, it’s far more effective in its intentions because it refuses to fall into any of the obvious clichés about the evils of racism. Thus, poets can certainly have strong opinions about difficult subjects, but they need to find new and intriguing ways to make them work poetically. Donne, Milton, and Gerard Manley Hopkins (to name a few) wrote powerful poems about their Christian faith that are still memorable today because they found new and interesting ways to avoid clichéd and simple-minded thinking.
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a moment of intensity: the “Minute” form by
Cathy Smith Bowers
I
n the spring of 1998, I was invited to direct a workshop and give a reading at a writers conference in Oklahoma City. A few months earlier, my youngest brother Paul had died after a long and courageous battle with AIDS. How else to say it other than through the most cliché of clichés: He was the light of our lives. Blessed/cursed with a Richard Corey kind of grace, my brother glittered when he walked; but, unlike the enigmatic Corey of Edward Arlington Robinson’s famous poem, he wanted more than anything to live. I would say that, if such a thing were possible, his death altered my DNA. So when I flew from my home in Charlotte, North Carolina, to Oklahoma City, I was a much-mutated incarnation of the person I had once been. Since my brother’s death, I had avoided words, avoided confronting that unspeakable loss. I thought if I extended my visit to Oklahoma City, I might, somehow, in the postconference quiet of that distant place, allow again into my life the words I had relegated to its periphery. On the last day of the conference, I attended a reading by a local poet whose name, I regret to say, has escaped me. She began reading a series of poems whose clarity and brevity quickly drew me in. She explained the poems were written in a form called “the minute,” a twelve-line poem consisting of sixty syllables, with a syllabic line count of 8, 4, 4, 4, 8, 4, 4, 4, 8, 4, 4, 4. The form also consists of rhyming couplets. I wondered, perhaps, if the rigid mechanics of this form might not provide a safe container for the raw, emotional subject matter now begging to be articulated. I would use the form, I thought, simply to buffer my journey back into the writing life, and eventually back into the world of free verse where for the last twenty years I had lived contentedly. Four years after that conference in Oklahoma City, I still was enamored with the form that seems an elegant weaving of Elizabethan sonnet and early Eastern haiku. To my surprise, I began to take the poems that resulted from this exercise more seriously than I had intended. I wondered if any magazine editors might be open to them, and was delighted when such journals as The Atlantic Monthly, The Southern Review, and Shenandoah accepted the poems for publication. Soon, my editors at Iris Press, Bob Cumming and his son Beto, suggested I write a whole book of minutes. They also did some research that revealed the creator of this form: Verna Lee Hinegardner, at that time the
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poet laureate of Arkansas, whose official definition of the minute form included several elements I wasn’t aware of: “a strict iambic meter ... capitalized and punctuated like prose and capturing a slice of life.” My intention at the beginning of every poem was to adhere strictly to rhyme scheme and syllable count. Rarely did I manage to do so, deferring always to sound and sense, rather than to form. What resulted was a collection of small prayerlike poems, each a reactionary move away from the often cumbersome, complexly cerebral poems that seem, these days, to proliferate. It’s a form that holds me to my own dictum: Our major task in writing a poem is to shine a light on a moment of intensity. I appropriated for A Book of Minutes the structure of the Book of Hours, the medieval prayer book that was its age’s own version of today’s literary bestseller. These little prayer books represented a genre that, for the first time, put direct access to God into the hands of the laity, an access that until that time had been controlled by those ordained by the Catholic Church. The Book of Hours was arranged in accordance with the eight canonical hours of the day, beginning with Matins, moving all the way to Vespers, and ending with Compline. Each of the eight sections contained a sequence of prayers to be recited at specified hours throughout the day. The first poems I composed for A Book of Minutes were poems about my brother’s illness and subsequent death. These poems became the penultimate section, Vespers, or evening prayers. Labor Day
Morning’s IV done, all his pills, he turns to Bill’s gift of Melon; icy sweet chunks of honeydew brought home from the local deli. I watch each bite he takes then wipe his chin. Unbelievable, he says and lifts a bite to me. Says, here, just taste this.
It was always a satisfying experience when I was, indeed, able to adhere to the rule of rhyme and syllable count without compromising sound and sense. “Labor Day” is an example of this success; with, of course, the help of slant rhymes or half rhymes: melon/ chunks, he/a, and says/this, for example. This strategy also softened the impact of what is known as true rhyme. True rhyme creates a perfect match in the vowel of a stressed syllable and any consonant that follows, as with the rhyme of leave and retrieve. More often than not, however, I found myself participating in a delicate dance with the form. If I could not, as the form dictated, achieve the appropriate end-rhymes, I
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might settle instead for an internal rhyme. Such is the case with “Watching Bill’s New Lover Prepare Our Evening Meal”: into/room (lines 3-4), here/array (lines 5-6), kitchen/ hands (lines 7-8), his/dexterous (lines 9-10), and able/beautiful (lines 11-12). Watching Bill’s New Lover Prepare Our Evening Meal
Not much, really, has changed. The San Anselmo sun streams still into the room so bright it almost blinds. And, yes, here still, the vast array of kitchen tools that loved your hands. See how they glisten now in his. Dexterous and able. Almost as beautiful.
I must admit, though, that some of the rhymes were so “slant” I began referring to them simply as “identities.” My idea of an identity is exemplified in lines 3-4 of “The Trunk” with the identification of the “g” in morning with the “g” in twig. Allowing myself to take such liberties with our traditional notion of rhyme, however, prompted my good students to suggest it might be time for me to purchase a new rhyming dictionary. The Trunk
I envied my dog that option; the rattan trunk chewed this morning to twig. All night I had warded off that dream, my brother alive once more, asking if I’d like to see the trick again. All night, this, and beyond the wall, the gnashing of my dog’s teeth.
Often, rhyme wasn’t the only trope I found myself dancing with. The poem “Torge” was written deliberately to fill in the time gap between the poems “The Trunk” and “Watching Bill’s New Lover Prepare Our Evening Meal.” It was this impetus for the poem, perhaps, that led me away from all pretenses of rhyme and syllable count. The big white horse that breaks the boundaries of stanza and syllabic count seems an appropriate metaphor for my brother’s breaking the boundaries between this world and the next.
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Torge
Three years after your death, when I can smile once more, I recall the story you loved to tell, about asking your grade school teacher to spell torge for you. Torge? she asked in sheer bewilderment. Torge, you said again. Like “The Prince rode torge the castle on a big white horse.”
The whole process, which might seem an exercise in ultimate control, indeed proved otherwise. Ironically, I had to give up much of the control that free verse allows over line length, stanza, and diction. For four years, at all times during the creative process, I was obliged in my writing practice to keep a fine balance between the intuitive and the rational, reason and emotion, the head and the heart. This ongoing focus on balance had its effects not only in the writing of poetry, but also in the human enterprise of love. In the writing of this book, I was able to let my beautiful brother go, and to once again experience joy and hope, and at times sheer silliness, in a world without him. Such levity in tone can be seen in this poem from section 4, the sequence that represents the fourth canonical hour Terce. For My Dog, Who Listens to All My Poems
How entranced, each time, she sits there, her eyes, I swear, filling with tears at her master’s inimitable brilliance. It’s clear to me what’s bounding through her head: The greatest, yet, of all the generations! My husband says she’s just waiting for her rations.
The challenge of this new form and the gratifications can be every bit as powerful as traditional forms such as the sonnet, terza rima, villanelle, sestina, and pantoum. Try it. You, too, will enjoy the dance.
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carried away: free verse by Judson Jerome
W
hen the discussion of Robert Frost’s “Home Burial” appeared in my column in Writer’s Digest, a reader commented in a letter to me, “I can’t believe Frost bothered with counting feet and syllables and all those technical things. He was a poet, not a mechanic. He listened to his heart, and the music poured forth.” Well, it is amazing that it poured in such craftily varied regularity. My correspondent was unconsciously echoing the theme of Sir Philip Sidney’s sixteenth-century sonnet: “Look in thy heart and write.” It was not original with Sidney. One of the most ancient postures of the artist has been that of one inspired, carried away. This is the posture of the free verse poet. I call it a “posture” because, frankly, I don’t believe it is often, if ever, a genuine explanation for where poetry comes from. Sidney gave the game away by seeming to advocate spontaneous expression in an intricately crafted sonnet. Any intelligent reader could see that the poem was not a simple pouring forth of the heart’s excess. Free verse is more deceptive. It looks as though the poet were actually carried away. It is the use of form to convey the illusion of spontaneity. It is difficult to know how serious poets are when they claim inspiration. Regularly I hear from people around the country who tell me they just write what “comes,” and, indeed, the examples they send me seem not to have been subjected to much rational thought or have much clear intent. But the occult infests poetry at more sophisticated levels, too. James Merrill has produced (in three books) a long poem, which Newsweek compares to Dante’s Divine Comedy, a poem “dictated” to Merrill and his friend David Jackson by a Ouija board. “I have taken this down by dictation,” Merrill said in an interview. Rather than author, he is more like an editor, for “It seemed unethical to use it verbatim. Rather like plagiarism.” I don’t deny that some poets have had mystical experiences and that such experiences have been the basis for good poems. Some of my own poetry (some rather good, some dreadful) has “just come” to me, and I recorded relatively spontaneous words and thought. But when poets and critics talk about “the” poem in this way, they imply a norm—one that would encompass all the poems of, say, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Pope, Browning, Frost, even of Edgar Guest. Such talk seems to me dangerous nonsense.
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The implication is that one cannot learn to write poems. They happen. The emphasis is not upon craft but upon the nature of the poet, who is a chosen priest or priestess or medium or oracle transmitting a sacred text. Whether the resulting poetry is free or metrical is irrelevant, though most of it tends to be free (as metrical form implies too much control and forethought). In earlier times, poems were clearly products of craft. They told stories, dramatized, entertained, conveyed experiences, communicated ideas and values. They were assumed to be very much under the control of the poet (though, as a matter of convention, many poets utter free-flowing sentiments of the heart). If the reader understood something the author had not intended, communication had broken down. Either the poet didn’t write well or the reader didn’t read well. But in today’s cultural climate it is widely assumed about poetry and the other arts that anything goes, either in the making or in the interpretation. Perhaps because of widespread disillusionment with conventional forms of religion, art has become a surrogate religion. People look to poetry for ultimate truths—not in the form of moral prescription or philosophical exposition, but in the form of mystic utterance, cryptic as an oracle, delivered by a special kind of person, one with a “gift” for receiving revealed truth. In such a climate, the emphasis is not upon what a poet does but what a poet is. If you want to write poetry, be inspired. No need to study, to count feet or syllables. That is the way to be a mechanic. I cannot tell you how to be inspired or how to detect phony inspiration in yourself or others. But I can, I think, show you that free verse has techniques just like any other form of verse, that some techniques work better than others, and that posture, or the attitude assumed by the poet, is of prime importance in this kind of poetry.
Line Length First, you should recognize that freedom in free verse is basically one of line length. Flexibility of line length (or of measure) has always, since the ancient Greeks, been a signal to the audience that the poet (or speaker of the poem) was carried away. Variation in line length asks a kind of indulgence of the audience, saying, in effect, “Look, folks, I know I am violating your expectations and my own sense of form, but I can’t help it right now. I just have to get this off my chest. Forget about formalities.” For example, study the mid-nineteenth-century poem “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold, which begins with these lines:
The sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits;—on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, ...
The mood here is not of extreme emotion, but probing, thoughtful meditation, and the poet slowly builds up to a pentameter norm with a three-foot line, a four-foot line, then pentameter. If you read the rest of the poem you will find that he maintains the pentameter (rhymed in an arbitrary fashion) until the last two lines of the first strophe,
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when he drops back to tetrameter. In the remaining three strophes the lines are freely varied from three to five feet (a hinge line, “The Sea of Faith,” has only two). The whole poem can be scanned as iambic. We associate free verse with the “modernist” movement in American and European poetry in the early decades of this century, but its patterns were already well established. Whitman’s free verse was cadenced much like the King James Version of the Bible. (He was also strongly influenced by operatic arias.) Whitman’s contemporary, Emily Dickinson, used basically a ballad (or hymn) stanza of alternating four- and three-foot lines, but her variations were so radical that sometimes the original form is hard to recognize. She starts this poem in pentameter, and then abandons that meter:
After great pain, a formal feeling comes— The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs— The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore, And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
The Feet, mechanical, go round— Of Ground, or Air, or Ought— A wooden way Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone—
This is the Hour of Lead— Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow— First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—
This is the authoritative text published in 1955 by Harvard University Press, which restores the form Dickinson actually used. (Earlier versions in print are distorted by the tinkering of various editors.) Why did she make two lines of “A wooden way / Regardless grown”? Had she put all that on one line, the stanza would at least be a quatrain, rhyming aabb like the others, though the number of feet per line would not be consistent. Presumably she was carried away. She broke the line for special emphasis, or clarity, or simply because she felt like it. Notice that the final couplet returns to the pentameter of the opening stanza. Another nineteenth-century American poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, occasionally used free verse methods. In his “Hamatreya” there is a section called “Earth-song” in which the Earth is commenting on the vanity and transience of human ownership of Earth:
“Mine and yours; Mine, not yours. Earth endures; Stars abide Shine down in the old sea; Old are the shores;
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But where are the old men? I who have seen much, Such have I never seen.”
The “Earth-song” goes on in this manner for four strophes (of, respectively, nine, seven, nine, and seven lines)—then the poet responds in his own voice:
When I heard the Earth-song I was no longer brave; My avarice cooled Like lust in the chill of the grave.
The free verse here suggests a supernatural, mystical experience. Similarly, the parablelike poems of Stephen Crane were like short broken paragraphs, drawing their authority for abandonment of meter from something like religious inspiration, suggestive of the gnostic tradition:
In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, Who, squatting upon the ground, Held his heart in his hands, And ate of it. I said, “Is it good, friend?” “It is bitter—bitter,” he answered; “But I like it Because it is bitter, And because it is my heart.”
That little phrase “ate of it” has a biblical echo—and is a clue to the poet’s intention. He is taking the stance of the prophet. He can’t help it if his lines are flat, unmusical, prosaic. That’s how they came to him. One reads such poetry purely for the content, for the “wisdom” or vision it contains, less than for the use of language as art. Such a poem would lose little in translation to another language. Only the line breaks make it poetic. These are some of the precedents poets had in the early twentieth century when they felt stifled by their cultural climate and broke out in rebellion, kicking the traces, casting off traditional forms. One of the first things they chose to thumb their noses at was the expectation that lines of poetry would have a predictable number of feet per line or, indeed, any rationale at all for poetic form. Though most of their work was lyrical, here is a strophe from a narrative by Amy Lowell, “Patterns”:
In a month he would have been my husband. In a month, here, underneath this lime, We would have broke the pattern; He was for me, and I for him, He as Colonel, I as Lady, On this shady seat.
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He had a whim That sunlight carried blessing. And I answered, “It shall be as you have said.” Now he is dead.
The rhythm does not vary much from an iambic norm; the rhymes are irregularly spaced but persistent. Most lines are closed, the line breaks being used almost as a kind of punctuation.
Intensity and Rhythm Free verse for the early modernist poets was not the exception but the rule. It was not a device to be used at special times of great intensity of feeling; it was the norm. They were carried away all the time. Blank verse came as a stabilizing force, a means for maintaining a sense of poetic texture, for providing unobtrusive richness. But free verse, especially when linked to the forces of self-conscious modernism and rebellion, is a disruptive force, seizing attention, implying by its very nature some uncontrollable emotion or mood or mystical force. Why not be intense all the time? It might be argued that to qualify as poetry at all language should be so intensely felt that any thought of format regularity would be a violation of its raw power. Modernist poets (remember, this “modernism” is of the era of the Model T) tried to achieve a sensitive, original, momentary responsiveness to content, shaping their lines according to the feeling and intent of the poem, asserting individuality, strong will, and a mysterious, indefinable capacity that made poets different from other mortals. Unrelieved intensity is a hard act to follow. At times this approach produced works of great beauty and power, as in T.S. Eliot’s “The Hollow Men.” This poem is grand and visionary in manner (much in the vein of Emerson’s “Earth-song” from “Hamatreya”). The poet drapes himself in the robes of an oracle or prophet and utters wisdom mystically received. Hence we don’t expect literal sense. In the first line, “We are the hollow men.” In the second, “We are the stuffed men.” The contradiction is apparently deliberate: we are like dummies, empty of soul. In the next lines we learn our “headpiece” is “filled with straw.” This seems to suggest scarecrows—but not a lonely scarecrow in a field. Apparently, we are a group of them, “Leaning together.” As the strophe continues we find we are in a cellar with broken glass on the floor and rats crawling over it—a strange place for scarecrows. Obviously the poem is not intended to make literal sense. Oracles and prophets tend not to be very coherent. But the rhythms of the poem are authoritative, strong, and strange, sounding vaguely biblical, something like a chant or prayer. The enjambments are subtle and tense, as in:
Remember us—if at all—not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men ...
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In such poems the poet assumes the stance of an oracle, an Aeolian harp played by the wind, or a passive instrument of supernatural will. Free verse is appropriate, for the poet is (or pretends to be) out of control. Another stance that seems to evoke much free verse is that of the bard—a kind of “official” poet whose job requires him to celebrate institutions, heroes, victories, or other aspects of society (or sometimes, in its negative form, to lambaste society in vituperation or satire). Much of Whitman’s work was bardic in this sense, and he has influenced many American poets from Edgar Lee Masters, Carl Sandburg, Robinson Jeffers, and Kenneth Fearing to Allen Ginsberg and current poets. Such poetry has a suggestion of platform eloquence, of public speaking, as in the opening of Carl Sandburg’s “Chicago”:
Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler Stormy, husky, brawling, City of the Big Shoulders: They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys. And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
The lines are closed, the rhythm pumping and strong, though irregular, and much use is made of rhetorical devices such as balance and parallelism. One does not experience the subtleties, ironies, tensions, and probing thought often associated with lyric poetry. Oracular and bardic poems are very public. The “I” is a kind of stage figure rather than the poet speaking in his own voice.
Imagery, Form, and Pace But free verse is also used for intensely personal poems, when the emotion that carries the poet away is not religious inspiration or platform eloquence, but rambling free association, sexual passion, rhapsodic joy, or some other overwhelming feeling. In Sylvia Plath’s “Fever 103°” it is delirium. Here is the conclusion of the poem:
I think I am going up, I think I may rise— The beads of hot metal fly, and I love, I
Am a pure acetylene Virgin Attended by roses,
By kisses, by cherubim, By whatever these pink things mean! Not you, nor him
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Nor him, nor him (My selves dissolving, old whore petticoats)— To Paradise.
The triplets, usually closed but sometimes startlingly enjambed—as in the “I / Am” above—give a kind of formal consistency to the poem, but for the most part Plath depends on rich sound texture, occasional internal and end-rhymes and off-rhymes as formal devices. What makes the poem powerful—and this is true of much free verse—is spectacular imagery and racing thought patterns. When the emotional level is less intense, and the language is less charged with imagination, free verse may, indeed, seem merely broken prose. What makes these lines poetry?
To the sea they came— 2000 miles in an old bus fitted with brittle shelves and makeshift beds and cluttered with U.S. canned goods
—to the Sea!
—and the lowhovering Sun—
on which they paddle innertubes
from which the old woman hides her head under what looks like a straw wastebasket.
“Yep, they cured me alright,
but see, it made my breasts grow like a woman’s.” And she: “Something hurts him in his chest, I think
maybe it’s his heart,”—and her’s
I can see beating at the withered throat.
That is the first strophe of “Pure Products” by Denise Levertov. It is poetry only because she says it is, and the Bureau of Standards has no specifications that can prove her wrong. She is one of the abler poets writing this kind of generally low-key, flat, unrhythmic poetry in completely arbitrary or whimsical line lengths. In my view it would save space and not seriously alter the effectiveness or meaning of the poem to print it as a prose poem—a paragraph not using the line as a unit.
Measure I have argued that accentual syllabic poetry, especially iambic pentameter, has an organic relationship to the inner nature of our language, but free verse poets have claimed quite the opposite—that it distorts the language and a new measure must be found to break the iambic yoke. Here is William Carlos Williams, writing in the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics:
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The crux of the question is measure. In free verse the measure has been loosened to give more play to vocabulary and syntax—hence, to the mind in its excursions. The bracket of the customary foot has been expanded so that more syllables, words, or phrases can be admitted into its confines. The new unit thus created may be called the “variable foot,” a term and a concept already accepted widely as a means of bringing the warring elements of freedom and discipline together. It rejects the standard of the conventionally fixed foot and suggests that measure varies with the idiom by which it is employed and the tonality of the individual poem. Thus, as in speech, the prosodic pattern is evaluated by criteria of effectiveness and expressiveness rather than mechanical syllable counts. The verse of genuine poetry can never be “free,” but free verse, interpreted in terms of the variable foot, removes any artificial obstacles between the poet and the fulfillment of the laws of his design.
The term “variable foot,” which Williams invented, has not, in fact, gained wide acceptance, for there is no way to tell what it means. Does a line consist of a given number of variable feet? How can you tell? Is a whole line one foot, or an arbitrarily broken third of a line? I say “third” because Williams, apparently trying to illustrate variable feet, typically broke the lines of much of his later poetry into three parts:
Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
like a buttercup
upon its branching stem—
save that it’s green and wooden—
I come, my sweet,
to sing to you.
We lived long together
a life filled,
if you will,
with flowers. So that
I was cheered
when I came first to know
that there were flowers also
in hell.
Today
I’m filled with the fading memory of those flowers
that we both loved,
even to this poor
colorless thing—
Is each of the three parts a foot? Many can be read with one stress, but others cannot be read that way. Maybe stress has nothing to do with it. Certainly phrasing has nothing to do with it—nor does idiom, naturalness, expressiveness, effectiveness, or what you will. What do we make of a foot such as “with flowers. So that”? So far as I can tell, if this is a way of bringing the warring elements of freedom and discipline together, it does so by defeating discipline entirely. I can’t see that these lines
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gain anything whatsoever from being broken into three parts, or, indeed, from being written in lines of verse. As a prose poem, it would read like this: Of asphodel, that greeny flower, like a buttercup upon its branching stem—save that it’s green and wooden—I come, my sweet, to sing to you. We lived long together a life filled, if you will, with flowers. So that I was cheered when I came first to know that there were flowers also in hell. Today I’m filled with the fading memory of those flowers that we both loved, even to this poor colorless thing.
It is disjointed prose, not very effective or expressive (or coherent), but is, in this form, at least free of pretense. I like it even better as iambic pentameter—blank verse—which we can get by reversing two words in the fourth line:
Of asphodel, that greeny flower, like
a buttercup upon its branching stem—
save that it’s green and wooden—I come, my sweet,
to sing to you. We lived together long
a life filled, if you will, with flowers. So
that I was cheered when I came first to know
that there were flowers also in hell. Today
I’m filled with the fading memory of those
flowers that we both loved, even to this
poor colorless thing.
Williams wrote so naturally in the alternating stress normal to English poetry that he may not have realized it was the iambic texture that made his free verse musical. Much of his earlier poetry was in straightforward accentual syllabic meter, and the echoing fragments of traditional poetry stayed with him, for all his self-conscious modernism.
Final Words From these examples you may derive some principles for your own guidance in writing free verse. If you want long lines, as used by Whitman and those in his tradition, they probably should be closed, definite rhetorical units, sustained by a strong cadence and frequent parallelism. It is a form best adapted to the bardic stance, the public speech, the pronouncement, because its sonority and rhetorical quality make it seem stilted for other purposes. You will find short lines generally more effective. These permit enjambment, which is the one device most commonly relied upon by free verse poets for impact. Surprising enjambments are not surprising if used too often, so the technique is limited. Probably not only the lines but the poems themselves will be short (twenty lines or less). It is difficult to maintain the intensity of strong emotion and tension in longer poems. (Plath’s “Fever 103°” is an exception, as are several other of her poems; but, as free verse poets go, she was remarkably metrical, used rhyme powerfully, and tended to use stanzalike strophes which give the appearance of symmetry and design to her free verse.)
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If you do not have the support of measure, you will probably draw more heavily on other poetic elements to maintain the sense that your poem is indeed a poem, not just broken prose. These include strong imagery, strong rhythms, irregular but frequent rhymes, and other kinds of sound echo. Incoherence amounts almost to a technique. A reader expects it of someone who is carried away. For this reason free verse poets use startling juxtapositions, abrupt transitions, darting syntax, incomplete sentences, strange diction. In some ways free verse resembles the “stream of consciousness” technique in fiction, an effort to simulate the unfettered rambling of reverie or dream states. The poem seems to ride the burning point of now, as though the poet had no past or future, only the hot moment of present consciousness. Often there is an affectation of derangement or of surrealism, characteristics imitative of dreams. The stance or posture I have described is also a technique. You have to be subtle about it, but in some way you are inviting attention to the speaker in the poem as a special sort of person, be it prophet or oracle or madman or some other figure so caught up in the rush of inspiration as to cast off the bondage of meter. We have seen how flat free verse becomes when it lacks that posture. But free verse may now be exhausted as a technique. Echoes of old music made the free verse of the early part of our century effective. Today the norm is mere randomness or arbitrariness of line length, without those echoes. Free verse has become no more than broken prose. It is no longer a rebellion. If a poet wants to be rebellious today, she will have to write in meter. There is no longer a norm of metrical verse to rebel against. The modernist movement began to dominate literary or intellectual poetry nearly a century ago. By now a generation of teachers has grown up accepting and passing on free verse as standard. Few people these days are taught to hear meter. Poets have a long, hard job ahead if they wish to restore music and measure to poetry. The effect of saturation of a culture with free verse is ironic. When being carried away becomes the normal state, it is no longer poetic in its effect. There have been few efforts to use free verse for longer forms. Imagine a Paradise Lost or Hamlet, or even “Home Burial,” in free verse. Such a major undertaking would quickly break down into prose. These longer forms have almost disappeared from the poetic scene, and most poetry published now is in the form of short, intense, personal lyrics, the genre to which free verse is most suited. Another factor is that most poems are first published in magazines, where they are used as filler material in the spaces at the ends of prose pieces, so there is a premium on brief, sensational poems. All these tendencies combine to create an impression that poetry is ragged, nervous, broken, highly subjective self-expression such as few people care to read. The modernist movement started in the early years of this century as an effort to reach out to a new readership, to create a larger audience for poetry. For a time it succeeded in doing that, but as modernism creaks on through a new century, it is alienating readers and dulling the ears and sensitivities of those few it retains. You may be the one to find a way to reach out anew to a popular audience with poetry that sings, and its singing may not be that of accentual or of accentual syllabic meter, but some new form yet to be invented. But I predict it will not be through further loosening of the discipline of measured verse.
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learn the craft of metrical poetry to free your verse by
Katie Darby
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hen I was first learning to drive, my mother told me that if I ever wanted to learn standard, I needed to learn it before I drove an automatic. “Once you’ve driven an automatic,” she’d remind me, “You’ll have no reason to go back and learn.” She was right. Years later, I still only know how to drive an automatic. And so far, I don’t think it’s limited me. I don’t know what I’m missing, so I don’t miss anything, and to be honest, being an incredible driver has never been on my shortlist of priorities. For years, I felt the same way about poetry. I already knew how to write free verse— according to Walt Whitman, all I had to do to be a poet was express my inner self, my own barbaric yawp, and I was a poet. Nothing more to learn.
Rude Awakening Pretty quickly, though, it became clear that I was no Walt Whitman. My free verse, while very descriptive, was lacking something. The “it” factor that makes a poem a poem was missing. I was able to write about “poetic” things, like flowers and beaches, but I wasn’t able to capture any nuance or truth about them. My poems were like the pictures that come in a store-bought picture frame—pretty, but not meaningful, even to me. And though many of my poems did begin in delight, like Robert Frost advises, certainly none of them ended in wisdom. I knew I could write a long, adverb-filled sentence, break it in a couple of places and call it a poem, but when I read poets I really respected, I realized that was not their technique. If someone were to ask you to list the differences between poetry and prose—quickly, without much consideration—you might say that what separates poetry from prose are the poetic devices like metaphor, repetition, imagery, and point of view. The only problem, you’d quickly realize, is that all of those devices are also commonly used in narrative prose. To me, the only devices that seemed unique to poetry were meter and rhyme. I hadn’t ever read a novel written in iambic pentameter, and rarely could an author keep up an
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abab rhyme scheme for ten or more pages, much less a novel. This, to me, meant that everything I’d learned from T.S. Eliot was out, and Shakespearian sonnets were in. I quickly began to mimic classic poetry, not only in form, but in diction and tone, as well. Much to my dismay, this also did not make me a poet. (I do, however, have notebooks full of musings interjected with “O!” and “Gods!” ... I try to remind myself that I am lucky to have something to reference in case I need a laugh.) This was frustrating beyond all belief. I decided I would write fiction instead.
Back to Square One Of course, that’s not the end. I think anyone who has ever started writing poetry feels like they are abandoning it if they leave, and eventually, I think everyone comes back. Poetry has a pull over humanity that few other art forms have: It is a form of concision, derived to share with and also to inspire thought and creation in other human beings. Maybe, though, the most noble part of poetry is the actual letting go—a poet has to finally release her poem to the world, and, much like a mother to a child, hope that it is understood, but know that it might not be accepted. In Anne Bradstreet’s poem “The Author to Her Book,” she says of her poem, “My rambling brat (in print) should mother call. / I cast thee by as one unfit for light, / Thy Visage was so irksome in my sight, / Yet being mine own, at length affection would / Thy blemishes amend, if so I could.” This natural process draws an introspective reading base and protective writers. But if the process is so natural, why isn’t the writing itself? Though writing free verse seems natural—you don’t have to limit yourself with form and meter—metrical poetry actually taps into biology. The process of writing metrics is natural not only because people have a biological urge to create, raise, and release, but also because the rhythms and forms of metrical poetry often mimic biological rhythms. For that reason, the writing itself cannot sound natural until the writing becomes a matter of biology, as well. Of all of the meters in English, the most commonly used and perhaps the most natural is iambic. An iambic foot is unstressed-stressed (- /), and it feels comfortable because it is—iambic rhythms actually mimic the human heartbeat. By using and varying the iambic meter meaningfully, a poet is actually able to manipulate his audience biologically. There are several other types of meter, and each of them elicits a different biological response in the reader. For example, a spondaic meter (/ /)—or two stressed syllables next to each other, scanned—creates a plodding rhythm in the reader, whereas anapests ( - - /), or two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed, tend to carry a reader quickly from one line to another. Depending upon a writer’s substitutions, whether he uses plodding spondees or light anapests, he can actually change the reader’s demeanor by barely slowing or speeding the reader’s heart, if he writes an effective enough poem and the reader becomes involved. Trochaic meter, which is a stressed-unstressed meter, seems to create a driving force, a tension that pulls the reader through the poem. This meter is particularly good at creating a hypnotic rhythm that gradually increases—like the rhythm of a train—and seems to drive towards an important conclusion. Consider Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”:
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And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating ‘’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door— Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; This it is, and nothing more,”
This stanza, even out of context, is exciting and paralyzing, all at once. The trochees help lead the reader from line to line, and the other poetic devices that are at play help to increase the tension: The repetition and the use of anapest substitutions gives an eerie allusion that the narrator is actually going crazy as the poem continues, and the internal rhyme seems to suggest a delight in the narrator that is inappropriate for the situation. The lightness and speed of the anapests suggest a spiraling downward. This also helps with characterization. The substitutions, which also include iambs and dactyls, help the poem from sounding singsong and also give a feeling of losing control. The trochaic meter here creates the same effect as watching a horror movie where the character is about to be face-to-face with the bad guy. There is an impending horror, but also a sensation of helplessly moving forward. Imagine how different this stanza would read without any of the poetic devices that Poe uses:
The curtain moved, and I was scared, So I told myself, “It’s just some guy Who wants to come in my door. That’s all.”
A little less interesting, to say the least. Note that few poems are perfectly metered; in fact, a poem with perfect meter often reads singsong and is less effective than a poem with substitutions. It is important to establish a meter, but it is equally as important to make the writing sound natural. (I learned from experience that cursing deaf heaven with bootless cries is an art left best to Shakespeare.) Thinking that this may finally be the breakthrough for my poetic self, I decided to learn how to write sonnets, villanelles, and blank verse. I practiced classical forms over and over until they became an old pair of jeans—I could always sit down and have a comfortable structure, but there was also room to expand.
Come Together There’s something fantastic about finishing a metrical poem that I had never experienced with free verse: Finishing a metrical poem was like climbing a mountain. Whether it was good or not, I could be proud of the effort. During my poetic adolescence, I was lucky to have a constant mentor. Rob Griffith, a professor and poet, had seen my transition from glorified sentence writer, to nonpoet, to aspiring metrical poet, and he was the person who suggested I use the things I’d learned from writing metrical poetry in my free verse.
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I’d never thought of combining the two. Metrical poetry and free verse seemed to be as naturally separate as red states and blue states, and most famous poets seemed to be either one or the other. Metrical poets tended to value the process of learning how to put their words in time-honored forms; free verse poets didn’t want to stifle their voice or emotions with the constraints of metrical forms. Professor Griffith, however, introduced me to writers like James Wright, who was able to skillfully compose a metrical poem long before he was writing powerful free verse like “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota.” It became clear that, even though “Lying in a Hammock” was nothing like a sonnet, it had an internal rhythm and used poetic devices in the same ways that many metrical poems do. I finally was able to give my own definition to the difference between poetry and fiction: While fiction does use many of the same literary devices, poetry has a different purpose. Fiction is expansive; every detail can be discussed and painted in vivid detail. In poetry, while no less vivid, the writer has to consider the weight of every word. Indulgent language and pages of description are not an option, and a poet has to create the environment and the atmosphere with fewer words. To achieve the same emotional impact with fewer words and sparser description is what makes poetry interesting. It is an exercise in concision and rhythm, whether it is metrical or not. In my experience, learning to write metrical poetry was a necessary step, and even after I had practiced it, I didn’t want to move strictly to free verse. I’ve always been more comfortable with free verse poetry; I have more room to decide where the poem is going. Robert Frost, however, in his essay “The Figure a Poem Makes,” says, “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader,” and whether I wanted it to be true or not, it was easier for me to surprise myself when I was writing in a metrical form. The confines of the form and structure forced me to consider words and patterns that I would not ordinarily, and though sometimes it was frustrating—I’d run out of words to rhyme with “ocean,” and then I’d have to figure out a new repeating line—most of the time, it was liberating.
making the Switch So how could I go back to free verse poetry after learning to respect the art of meter? I had to learn to blend the two forms. Metrical and free verse poetry are vastly different schools of thought, but they do share some similarities. Any good free verse poem knows some boundaries that are poet-imposed, and through my brief work as an exclusively metrical poet, I knew I could learn to impose those. All poetry needs boundaries. One effective exercise for learning those boundaries is to make yourself write in accentual verse. In accentual verse, there are a certain number of stresses in every line, no matter how many other syllables there are. Though this isn’t a common verse pattern in modern English, when looking through popular free verse poetry, most of it seems very loosely accentual or very loosely iambic, so learning to write those two forms is essential to a free verse writer.
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Six Commonly Used Metrical Feet Iambic meter (unstressed stressed): Often represented as x /, iambic meter is the most frequently used meter in modern English. The meter of many basic forms (the English sonnet, the villanelle, blank verse, etc.), iambic meter is usually the first a poet is taught: After all, Shakespearian plays (and sonnets!) are written in this meter. Remember to substitute here and there, though, to avoid sounding singsongy. ex: x / x / x / x / x / To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. Trochaic meter (stressed unstressed): Expressed / x, trochaic feet are often used to substitute in many iambic forms, especially as the first or last foot in a line. Perhaps the most famous example of this meter in English is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Hiawatha.” Trochaic meter is also common in children’s rhymes, probably due to its simplicity. ex: / x / x / x / x / x / x / x / x Peter, Peter pumpkin-eater/ Had a wife and couldn’t keep her. Pyrrhic meter (unstressed unstressed): x x, or Pyrrhic meter, is used often to speed the rhythm or tempo of a line. There are pyrrhic substitutions in poetry, but often what appears to be a pyrrhic foot is actually the first two syllables of an anapestic substitution. Since different people scan poems differently, this can be difficult to tell apart. (Fun fact: A pyrrhic battle is one with no real winner, so it makes sense a pyrrhic foot would have no stress!) Since there is no such thing as a line of poetry written in pyrrhic feet, the only way to give an example is to show one embedded as a substitution. Keep in mind this could be scanned in other ways, as well. (Instead of bolding the stresses on this example, I have bolded the pyrrhic foot.) ex: / x / / x / x x x / That’s my / last duch / ess paint / ed on / the wall Spondaic meter (stressed stressed): This foot ( / / ) is used to create a plodding feeling and to slow down the rhythm of a poem or focus a reader’s attention on a single phrase or word. It is also impossible to write an entire poem in spondaic feet, both because it would be literally impossible to find so many spondees that meant anything when strung together and because the reader needs variation in meter to keep the poem interesting. The best way to give an example of a spondaic foot is to use words that are stressed twice. ex: / / / / / / Batman; lawn darts; hobo Anapestic meter (unstressed unstressed stressed): Anapests are represented x x / and are commonly used at the end of poetic lines to lead the reader to the next line quickly. It usually speeds up the pace of the poem and can be used to create a feeling of breathlessness or suspense.
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ee: x x / x x / x x / x x / ’Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house Dactylic meter (stressed unstressed unstressed): Dactylic feet ( / x x ) are, again, rare in English, but are occasionally used as a falling meter. This foot was most commonly used in epic poetry in Greek and Latin. When it is used, there is often a repetition of phrases. ex: / x x / x x / x x / x x Picture yourself in a boat on a river with Or /xx/xx/xx/xx Woman much missed how you call to me, call to me
Accentual verse, however, is difficult. Writing it is not nearly as easy as it sounds, and it makes finishing a free verse poem seem even more accomplished than finishing a sonnet. By imposing some rules on my free verse, I was able to rein in the ideas, focus, and bring much stronger images and emotions to the table because I wasn’t trying to. The easiest way to kill a poem is to try to say something. By focusing on the external—how you are going to tell it—you are able to let the truth of the situation rise to the top. This, I think, is what Robert Frost meant when he said that, “like a piece of ice on a hot stove, the poem must ride on its own melting.” Another exercise that stretches your poetic muscles is writing in blank verse. It is definitely a metrical form—unrhymed iambic pentameter—but because it does not rhyme, it is a good starting place for many free verse poems. I have written several blank verse poems that eventually turned into free verse because there were so many trochaic substitutions; however, it is still a “success” to me, as a writer, because I’m still able to write a first draft, whether it’s what I initially had planned or not. I’ve also learned that sometimes forms have a dynamic for a reason. In an English sonnet, the couplet twist at the end is a standard that readers have come to expect. In a free verse poem, however, the same idea can be used with a different effect. Though a random couplet would seem suspicious, using a two- or three-line twist at the end of a free verse poem surprises readers because, since the poem is not formal, they do not know to expect it. Sometimes borrowing not meter or rhyme but actual style from a metered poem helps free verse stay fresh.
Keeping the Free Verse Free Through learning how to impose rules on my free verse, I’ve been able to tighten my ideas and achieve some of the concision I want. I recognize that free verse is not supposed to be metrical, and to be honest, I don’t really have a preference between the two forms. I have favorite poems written both ways. (For example, I cannot imagine “Sunny Prestatyn,” Philip Larkin’s scathing description of a poster defamed, told as a sonnet, or worse, something cyclical like a villanelle; likewise, there is no way to convey the emo-
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tions in Dylan Thomas’s classic, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” without the repetition and contrast between comfort and foreboding.) When it comes down to it, writing poetry is a lot like driving a car. As long as you have the keys and you know how to start it and where to finally end the journey, it is possible to learn to write either metrical or free verse and never bother with the other, never knowing what you are missing. The best free verse writers know how to write metrical poetry, whether they practice it or not. Any free verse writer who claims never to use meter should try scanning some of his poems and see if there are iambic and trochaic patterns—it’s almost impossible to avoid them in English. Exercises that allow you to write free verse within confines (like writing in accentual meter) improve technique. Though metrical poetry is not for everyone, using form as a warm-up or a rough draft can be helpful, even to the most devout free verse writers. I know—I still consider myself to be a free verse poet. In the past couple of years, it’s become clear to me why I couldn’t just write free verse and never try to write in metrical forms—metrics were the keys that eventually helped me start writing better free verse.
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revision: finding the heart of the poem by
Amy Ratto Parks
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nyone who has ever returned to an old draft knows that moment of quiet sadness when you realize your piece is not, after all, the Poem of the Century. You might also recognize the mental silence that occurs when you try to decide how to “fix” the poem. At any given bookstore there’s a wide variety of books about the art and craft of poetry; look for books on the art of revision, however, and you have a long search ahead of you. Yet, in many ways, revision is where the true craft and technique of poetry take place. While the original concept or inspiration is important, it is the revision process that draws out and accentuates the heart of the poem. The art of revision is the art of establishing a good critical distance from the poem so you can see everything it’s doing at once. In her book of essays, Nine Gates, Jane Hirschfield writes, “Every good poem begins in language awake to its own connections— language that hears itself and what is around it [and] sees itself and what is around it.” In a good poem, every word, every line break, every silence works together to create a unified expression. When we read others’ poems, it’s often easier to see what is working and what isn’t; when it comes to our own poems, we’re blinded by what we had set out to do. In order to understand the connections in your own poems, you have to be able to make an important and difficult divorce: you have to forget what you want the poem to say in order to be able to hear what the poem actually says. Although we want to believe the divine muse of inspiration has fused those two things, it’s very rare in early drafts. That kind of unity is the job of revision.
Give It Time Time away from your work is the easiest way to create distance. I’ve often heard it said that the best “cure” for a poem is to let it sit untouched in a drawer for a year. Quite often something miraculous happens when we review the draft of a poem we haven’t read in a long time; suddenly we can spot exactly what the poem needs.
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Even more miraculous is when we realize the poem is strong and doesn’t actually need much revision. Time brings inherent distance because the emotions and experiences that originally motivated the piece have faded. At this point it’s easier to ask yourself, “What will this poem make other people see, hear, smell, taste, think, and feel?” Sometimes you won’t be able to wait a year to work on a poem again. But even a week can change your perspective on the piece. I’ve also heard of poets taking more creative measures to establish distance, such as trying to imagine they just found the poem on the sidewalk, or that it was e-mailed to them anonymously. I even know one person who mails his poems back to himself so he can look at them in a fresh and different way.
Focus on the Specifics Another way to force some distance between you and your poem is to focus on specific craft elements. At this stage of the writing process, it’s helpful to think of the poem as a puzzle and of revision as a rearrangement of the puzzle pieces. I make a list of elements to consider, such as images, similes, metaphors, line breaks, meter, rhyme, stanza arrangement, title, and so on; then I consider each particular word and think about its connotations. Can each word support its own weight in the poem? You can also ask yourself questions like:
• How do the first lines set the tone for the rest of the poem? Are they vital to the work or do they just function as an introduction?
• Are the images sharp? Do they enact the five senses? • Are my line breaks interesting and effective? • What do my similes and metaphors imply about the subject? • Can I change the syntax by adding questions, direct thoughts, or fragments? • Where do the last lines leave the audience? • Could this poem benefit from a more/less formal structure?
On a broader scale, you could be more drastic and cut a stanza, a line, or an image in order to find out what that part was contributing most to the rest of the poem. In any case, when you focus on specifics, you should be examining the way the small details support the larger emotional picture of the poem.
Get Feedback Working on poems alone can be isolating and frustrating. Often you will need to rely on others to tell you if your poem is communicating effectively; or at the very least, to tell you what they hear the poem saying. In his poem “On Revision” in The Art of Writing (Wen Fu), Lu Chi says, “Even with the right reason, words / sometimes clang; sometimes language flows, / though the ideas themselves remain trivial / Know one from the other / and the writing will be clearer; / confuse the two, and everything will suffer.” Understanding the difference between
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these two things often requires the help of another reader; finding perspective about your poems is a process that can take years of practice and conversation with others who are enmeshed in the same struggles. If you don’t know others who write, there are a number of ways to search them out. Many poets find writing communities through local readings and workshops, online or correspondence classes, or college courses. Fair warning, however: A lot of feedback can be a mixed blessing unless you remember not to take the responses personally. It’s common to be confronted with contradictory feedback about a poem as well. How should you respond when two people love the first two lines, two people hate them, and another person thinks they should be moved to the end of the poem? Of course, there is no simple answer. The best thing you can do is consider those lines carefully. When a number of people focus on a specific element in a poem (whether word, line, or image), it means there’s energy there. It’s up to you to decide whether it’s good or bad energy. No group of people ever agree about everything in a poem, but the patterns in feedback can be very informative.
Be Adventurous When all else fails, just start making changes. As long as you have an original draft, you can always return to it. Adventurous revision is a great learning tool in its own right as it gives us a chance to see the effects of a variety of different changes. Experiment with the suggestions you receive from other readers and see how they transform the poem. The best results can come from letting go of the reins and simply playing with words.
Know When to Stop In his poem “Introduction to Poetry,” Billy Collins suggests we “take a poem / and hold it up to the light / like a color slide / or press an ear against its hive.” Later he laments, “all they want to do / is tie the poem to a chair with a rope / and torture a confession out of it.” When you are particularly energized by a poem (or, to be honest, if you’re particularly neurotic about your work), it’s all too easy to revise a poem until the emotion and movement are gone. A good friend of mine often tells me, “Put it away. Quit strangling your poems.” Remember that revision doesn’t guarantee a better poem—it’s possible for it to become less clear and less powerful. Sometimes the best way to help a poem is to love it, work with it, then let it rest.
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Out of the trunk: approaching publication by Judson Jerome
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nce you have all these fine poems written, what do you do with them? Emily Dickinson got ahead by storing most of hers in her trunk—and I know many poets who are following the same route in hope of immortality. Poetry is a lonely art, offering little reward in fame or fortune, as I will explain in this chapter. But before discouraging you, I will try to answer some of the common questions beginners have. First you probably want an audience—someone besides your family and friends, preferably someone who might respond both sympathetically and critically, appreciating the strengths in your work and helping you overcome your weaknesses, at least by pointing out what doesn’t seem to work. Such an audience is hard to find: I have rarely had one myself. But you are most likely to find it in a writers’ group or workshop.
Finding a Group Contact the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (www.nfsps.com) to find out if there is a chapter of your state poetry society that meets in your vicinity. Ask around at the library or any nearby college or university to locate other groups. Or start your own! For example, you might take out an ad in a local paper asking writers, specifically poets, to get in touch with you for the purpose of forming a group. Attend one of the dozens of workshops given around the country every year that are advertised in Writer’s Digest. Perhaps you could take a course in creative writing, such as one often offered through a university extension programs or those given at local community centers, Golden Age centers, libraries, or other adult education facilities (and you don’t technically have to be an adult to participate in most). In cities and university communities there are often coffeehouses, bookstores, or other settings in which informal poetry readings are given. Attend, get acquainted, and see whether you can find the nucleus of a group to meet on a regular basis. What makes such a group work is the willingness of each poet to trade attention and criticism for the same in return; but in spite of good intentions, the discussion is often frustrating and impressionistic. It might help if the group were to study together a text such as this book or On Being a Poet to focus disagreements and provide some
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common background regarding fundamentals. Each poet should provide enough copies of work to be discussed so that each person in the group can have one to look at. Practice reading your work aloud—and it helps to trade off and to take turns reading one another’s work aloud, so that you can find out whether the sounds and rhythms and emotional expression you think you put into the manuscript are actually there or they remain in your head. Many such groups offer prizes or competitions, and there are many national prizes offered by the NFSPS. These provide a way to test the effectiveness of your work outside your local group.
Doing Your Research When I began thinking of submitting my work for publication, I had just finished reading a book by the critic Edmund Wilson, who had a reputation for discovering new writers. I sent him several of my poems, with a flattering letter—and the batch came back, several months later, with a severe printed card saying Edmund Wilson does not do a whole list of things (and reading amateur poetry was one of them) except for a fee. That was a more personal response than you will get from most well-known writers, who will simply ignore such correspondence. Now that I have some reputation, I get hundreds of such packets a year, and answer them with a printed refusal. Don’t waste your time. It isn’t as though well-known writers are heartless or mercenary: it is simply impossible to open oneself to a flood of such requests and have any time for one’s own work. For much more detailed (and encouraging) advice on seeking publication, as well as descriptions of thousands of markets, read Poet’s Market, or look for publishers’ guidelines online. The suggestions which follow apply to most, but not all, publishers. If you want to submit poetry for publication in magazines (I’ll come to books later), face it, you are on your own. Do not fall for the advertisements of “agents” or others who say they are willing to read your work and place it. They are after your money. Reputable agents simply do not handle poetry; there isn’t enough money in it to make it worth their while. (Occasionally as a sideline agents may handle the poetry written by successful prose writers, but they earn their commissions on the prose, not the poetry.) Go to the library (a university library if one is available to you) and read the poetry in literary magazines. You might find some in avant-garde or literary bookstores, too, though not in the chain bookstores. Subscribe to, or buy sample copies of, those magazines that interest you. You are looking for your level, for the magazines that reflect the taste and skill and values you share. Ask yourself, “Can I imagine my poems in this magazine?” If the editors like what they have published here, would they be likely to respond to my poems? Read the editorial statements, usually published on the page with the masthead, to find out how (and whether) to submit.
Preparing Submissions In general, your poems should be typed, no more than one to a page, usually doublespaced, on 8½˝×11˝ paper, your name and address on each poem (as the packet will be
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shuffled around, and you don’t want your poems lost on the editor’s desk). Keep a copy as well as careful records of where your poems have been sent. Proofread carefully—and if you are weak in spelling, grammar, or usage, get help. (I have often had to advise beginning poets that they need to study basic English before they begin thinking of professional submission.) The poem as submitted should be exactly as you would like to see it appear, down to the last comma and capital. Editors tend to be very impatient with careless or illiterate manuscripts, especially of poetry. Submit three to five pages of poetry in a packet. Always enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE), or you may get no reply at all. A cover letter is not necessary—and you should not include one unless you have something of substance to say. In any case, keep it brief, a business letter, sticking to facts. Don’t try to tell the editor how good these poems are or how he should interpret them. Let the editor find out. Let me say a word about titles. Most poems, of course, have titles, and those which do not are referred to by their first lines, which then, in effect, become their titles. Avoid titles that are mere abstractions, such as “Courage,” or “Love,” or “Infidelity.” Those sound like the titles of essays (and not essays that many would want to read!). A good title of a poem is part of the experience of the poem, not a label for it. It may not at first make sense to the reader, but at some critical point in the poem the significance of the title should become clear. A fairly common practice is to use some image or phrase or variation of one of these for the title, so the title will echo in the reader’s mind when he encounters it in the poem. Your title should be typed plainly, without quotation marks unless it is a quotation from another writer, at the top of the page. Your name and address should be at the upper right-hand corner. Some poets put the line count at the top of the page, but that is unnecessary, as are all such pseudo-professional phrases as “First North American Serial Rights Only.” You do not need to copyright your poem before submitting it. It will be copyrighted with the whole magazine by the editors (in most cases), and if you want to use it again, for a collection or some other purpose, write to the magazine and ask to have the copyright transferred to you, which is usually done without question (and, of course, without fee). I have been talking primarily about the literary magazines and quality general magazines (such as Atlantic Monthly or The New Yorker). If you don’t identify with or like the poetry in magazines such as these, you might do better to explore church magazines, popular women’s magazines, pulps, and other markets. Or it may be that your verse is suitable for greeting cards. These popular markets usually pay much better than the literary markets, but the poetry which appears in them is not held in high critical esteem. (You couldn’t care less if you are a popular poet.) Find the audience and the media appropriate to your talents and interests and forget about the literary world. In each case, study the market carefully before submitting. For example, if you are interested in freelancing greeting cards, study the cards on the stands, noting which varieties come from which companies. Take down the addresses of the companies and write (with an SASE) to inquire whether they are interested in freelance submissions and, if so, whether they have tip sheets regarding their current needs. Some newspapers have poetry columns,
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and instructions for submission are usually given. Wherever you see the kind of poetry you like and think you can write, explore the possibilities and find out the proper methods of submission. In any case, do not respond to advertisements asking for poetry. There are dozens of “vanity” gimmicks for exploiting beginning poets—contests turn out to be lures for anthologies which accept your poetry only if you buy an expensive anthology. (If you fall for this, you may be sure that all the other poets in the printed volume will be suckers like yourself.) Sometimes “Poets Wanted” ads are from people who will offer to put your work to music and market it for a fee. There are a hundred variations on these schemes to fleece unsuspecting poets, and you can usually detect them by the flattery that accompanies their correspondence. If you want to stay abreast of contests of genuine literary merit and of publishing opportunities in general, subscribe to reputable trade magazines, such as Poets & Writers. This is an informative and worthwhile periodical that serves writers in the same way that the Wall Street Journal serves businessmen. You will almost never get criticism on your rejection slips. Editors have far too many submissions to deal with to open themselves to much correspondence with poets. When a packet of poems comes back from one magazine, send it out to another (having determined by studying the magazine that your kind of poetry is an appropriate submission). Don’t send the same poem to more than one magazine at a time. And don’t be discouraged by continual rejections. Next to zucchini squash, poetry must be the most overproduced commodity in the world. You might ask yourself how much poetry you yourself read in current magazines; how many books of poetry you buy per year. If poetry were dependent upon people like you to survive, how well would it thrive? Are you sure you are submitting to the right sorts of places for the kind of poetry you write? Talk these matters over, along with your poetry and that of others, in your writing group. Study the magazines listed in Poet’s Market and Writer’s Market, or The International Directory of Little Magazines & Small Presses, which lists many of the small literary magazines where poets can get a start. Order a sample copy of magazines you don’t know but which sound interesting. And, of course, the more contemporary poetry you read and analyze, the better prepared you will be to write poetry that will be accepted.
Publishing a Collection in Book Form It is when you begin thinking in terms of a book that the poetry market truly becomes depressing. After you have a number of “good” acceptances—that is, those in magazines respected in the literary world—you probably would begin thinking about a collection. Go to the library and study the volumes of poetry by individual poets (not anthologies). In the front of each, there is usually a list of credits indicating where the poems first appeared in magazines. Find a poet you respect and see where her poems have appeared. A page of credits will be of great importance to you in getting your first book accepted. Book publishers are not likely to consider seriously poets who have not established a fairly impressive record in the magazines.
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When you have your collection (with its all-important credit page) typed up and organized in the form in which you want it to appear, you begin the difficult job of finding a publisher. Unless you have connections with one of the trade publishers—that is, the important, big houses, mostly in New York—it is a waste of time to send your book of poetry to them. It may have happened that such a publisher received a book by an unknown and brought it out, but I have never heard of such a case. You will have more luck with the small publishers listed in Poet’s Market and Writer’s Market or the International Directory or Dustbooks’s Directory of Poetry Publishers. Study the descriptions of the publishers carefully, and inquire first, perhaps sending a small sample of your poetry. Some publishers will offer cooperative arrangements, by which you pay part of the cost of publication. That is a perfectly respectable practice—and not to be confused with the well-known “subsidy publishers” or “vanity presses,” the big companies which advertise widely that they will publish your work at your expense. These are called “vanity” operations because they customarily respond even to the poorest writing with fulsome praise, with maybe a touch of criticism here and there for credibility. Their prices are high, and—fairly or not—their label on a book is almost a guarantee that it will be ignored by reviewers, who receive dozens of such books (all mailed out at the author’s expense) and usually bypass them without looking at them, so prevalent is their reputation for publishing work of poor quality. You will do much better with a small and relatively unknown publisher, even if you have to pay part of the publication costs. Or you may want to consider self-publication, which is a time-honored recourse of many good (and more not-so-good) writers. You should understand the difference between a printer and a publisher. A printer prints and manufactures books. A publisher is a broker who, at least theoretically, undertakes to market books, or make them available to the public. Some publishers have printing plants and do their own work, but many—even the big ones—also farm out work to printers. If you want to have your own work printed, go to a printer, not a publisher. It is much cheaper. You can put any name you can think of on the cover as publisher: Perma Press, or whatever. It is not the business of the printer to judge the quality of the work: he prints what you pay him to print (unless it is illegal). You can find advertisements for mail-order printers in magazines, or local printers in the yellow pages of your phone book. Even the small “quick print” printers have facilities for producing relatively good-looking pamphlets—and that may be the simplest and least expensive way for you to get some of your work into print. A publisher (not a subsidy publisher) pays for the printing and manufacture of the books in exchange for exclusive control of your copyright. Like printers, publishers are in business for profit. But the publisher’s business is more of a gamble. An editor makes a judgment on a manuscript: “I think we can sell enough copies of this book to pay the printing costs and make a profit.” He then offers the author a royalty contract, often with an advance. The advance is a cash payment to be deducted from royalties. For example, the contract might offer you royalties of 10 percent and an advance of $500. That means you will get 10 percent of the list price of the books sold. Some contracts are based on net, rather than list, price. If the book lists at $10 per copy, you will start
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getting royalty checks after the first 500 are sold (covering the $500 which was advanced to you). Meanwhile, you have promised not only not to offer the same work to any other publisher, but also not to have it printed yourself. This means that the publisher has the sole right to print and distribute copies of your work. All this makes sense in terms of prose books, which have a market. If a publisher has a hot item, it pays to advertise and promote the book, arrange personal appearances for the author, see to it that the book is widely reviewed and discussed. In fact, however, not even most books of prose are “hot items,” and publishers bring out many more books each year than they actively advertise and promote. These are gambles—like buying mineral rights on farms in the hope that someday someone might find oil in the vicinity. Maizie Blaze is an unknown whose writing appears to have promise. Blowhard Press brings out a book of hers, sends out review copies, and waits. Nothing much happens. The printed books remain in the warehouse. Maizie writes a second book (and by contract has agreed to send it to Blowhard). It is printed, and still nothing happens, and those books, too, are in the warehouse. But for some reason her third book attracts attention. (Maybe she has meanwhile married the Sultan of Zuq and left him for a trapeze artist.) Once a book begins to sell, the publisher begins to promote it. And if there is now a lot of interest in Maizie, it is mighty convenient for the publisher to have the rights to those first two books tied up. But you can imagine that such a story has almost no relevance to poetry. There is simply is no market to speak of. Even the books of the best-known poets are often published in editions of only a thousand or so, and fewer than that are ever sold. Advances, if any, are small, promotion is minimal, and neither the poet nor the publisher makes money. Books of poetry are considered by the publishers as “prestige” items, published for the same reason that an oil company or greeting card company might sponsor a production of some major cultural event on television, not directly to sell oil or greeting cards, but to enhance the reputation of the company. How much prestige are they going to get out of publishing your work? Because of these conditions, even the best poets are likely to start with the small presses, with self-publication, or with cooperative publishing arrangements. Sales of even a few hundred copies of a book of poetry are remarkable. Poets support themselves by other means. Their reputations as poets may lead to foundation grants or awards or promotions or reading engagements or other advantages, but they earn little by direct sales of their poetry. Most literary magazines pay only in contributor’s copies, or nominal sums of a few dollars for a poem. (Rates of a dollar a line are excellent and rare—which adds up to $14 for a sonnet.) And rates in the magazines of general circulation are not much better. I was (in the 1960s) paid $10 per line for a twenty-line poem by Ladies’ Home Journal. That was tops. And a very successful poet cannot expect to have more than, say, a dozen poems in national magazines a year. There just aren’t many spots to fill, and editors will not take more than two or three poems from a given poet in a year. The currency of a poetic career is not cash but reputation—and that, too, is a mixed bag in regard to its merits. At any given time in the United States there are about two
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hundred “known” poets. (How many can you name?) These mostly know or know of one another. They show up on the committees to grant awards and prizes, give readings at colleges and elsewhere, appear regularly in the respectable literary journals. Often they not only give but get the grants. Though they represent a diversity of talents and tastes, they constitute the literary establishment—at least in regard to poetry. They are not to be confused with writers who make money on books—writers such as Norman Mailer, John Updike, Herman Wouk, Saul Bellow, or Erica Jong. (Of these, Updike and Jong are poets, but that is a sideline in regard to making money.) Getting into that circle of two hundred requires a lot more politics and pull and personality than it does poetic talent. Given the whimsicality of taste in our culture, there is no way of saying which poets are actually “best,” or even which are likely to be read twenty years from now. (A list from twenty years ago would be almost totally obscure to us today.) I am not sure I would recommend to any poet that she play the game of trying to become one of the “known” poets under these circumstances. I played it for some twenty years, with some success, but I found it corrupting, and decided I had better things to do with my remaining years.
Poetry Is Its Own Reward Such as write poetry. This is the point most difficult to explain, but the one I would most like to make to those who contemplate devoting a substantial portion of their lives to poetry. Like virtue, poetry is its own reward. Well, sure, we are likely to respond, but aren’t there some other rewards, too? Some, indeed, may accrue, but you have little to do with it. Poetry has made some few famous, but none very rich, and the circumstances that create this kind of success are very much a matter of chance. Will the poetry that you write touch a public nerve as sensitively as T.S. Eliot did with The Waste Land, as Allen Ginsberg did with “Howl”? It depends on a lot more than your talent and efforts or the quality of your poetry. Even those two poems, which spoke to their times about as effectively as any poetry ever did—and brought their poets a considerable degree of recognition and material success—are not widely read (and, when read, not well understood) today, within their own century. Set your sights higher. Will you write a poem that will endure, as Milton’s Paradise Lost or Goethe’s Faust have endured? You will never know. Certainly, these poets could not know how their work would be received in later centuries. By whom? Scholars and critics? How many people do you know who have read Paradise Lost or Faust? Have you? The immortality game, like that of getting into the circle of the two hundred, can be wicked and delusionary. If you were a physicist you might measure your success in terms of having solved some recognized problems in the material structure of the universe. If you were an engineer, you might measure it by having erected specific structures or managed forces that have some discernible effect in the world. And the models of careers we have available in our society are based on premises such as these. But there really is no “career” as a poet. You will never know whether you are successful in publicly recognized terms.
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That leaves you with perhaps the most important reward of all: personal satisfaction. I was talking to a poet recently who said that, at this point in his life, he wrote only for himself. I pointed out to him that although he obviously was intelligent and talented and capable, his work (which he showed me—so I guess he wasn’t writing only for himself) was careless in structure, needlessly obscure, marred by cheap flamboyance of language, and more intellectual than deeply felt. He acknowledged these faults but guessed that since he was writing primarily for his own satisfaction, he didn’t worry much about them. He wasn’t motivated to clean up his act because he wasn’t going to take it out into the public arena. That seems to me like eating nothing but potato chips because you are dining alone. Keep it up long enough and you’ll suffer from malnutrition. I have no more exacting audience than myself. Since I have no expectations of any other reward from most of the poetry I write than the reward of personal satisfaction, I have no reason to write anything other than the very best I can. There’s no hurry: I can work on a poem for years. No one is hammering at the door wanting my copy for the printer. I don’t have to worry about what others may think, and so am not concerned about current fashions. My only concern is quality—as I perceive it—for that is the only thing about writing poetry which brings me satisfaction. Well, to be honest, I am not as pure as these sentences suggest—and I am at times lured by a desire to be widely read and recognized. But to the extent that I am so lured, my poetry suffers. You are more likely to succeed in poetry, as in love, if you get success out of your head. Concentrate on quality. Learn the joy of creating excellence—whether or not anyone else recognizes it. You will soon find that your own standards are higher than those around you, anyway (that is, your standards for your own work; others might have higher standards for what they are trying to do). You will probably find your life in poetry a stirring mixture of all these elements, sometimes requiring compromises. It certainly helps to have a circle of other writers with whom you exchange work and opinions. (Incidentally, especially if you are isolated, it helps to have a few pen pals with whom you can exchange poems and reactions. You can find beginning poets whose work you admire in the little literary magazines—and write them in care of the magazine to establish contact.) You will, of course, want to try your poems in magazines and eventually to think of the possibilities of book publication, but I hope this discussion will help you put that process into some perspective, to realize that, after all, the primary objective is the satisfaction you have yourself in practicing a difficult art, and that the question of your public acceptance as a poet is of secondary importance.
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meet the poetry community through open readings by
Carolyn Peyser
S
tanding just inside the door of New York City’s Nuyorican Poets Cafe, I had barely adjusted to the darkness of the room when the guy making announcements at the mic stopped midsentence, smiled at me, and said, “Hi, do you want to read?” I froze. I’d never been to a reading before (wasn’t even sure what one was), had never written a poem on my own, and for no apparent reason had elected to visit the café for an “open room” I’d heard about on the radio. By now, the ten other people in the room had turned in their seats and were looking at me. “Can I just listen?” I asked. That was September 1991, when I first stumbled into the poetry scene—discovering there an empathy that quickly became a molten desire to read and hear other people’s poetry and to write and read my own poems. That’s what this article is about: getting out there, getting into it, getting your voice raised and your words heard. Open readings, in which anyone can participate, introduce you and your work to the community of poets. Each reading is a time and place to share your poetic voice, try new ideas, hear different ways to write and perform poetry, keep your mind open and your heart flexible. And if you’re lucky, you’ll get to hear someone haltingly, delicately read a poem to an audience for the first time. That gives me incredible chills.
Nervous About Reading Aloud? Of course, when you first want to read your work, getting up in front of an audience is half the battle. Yes, most people’s knees have knocked at some early point when faced with performance. But that’s okay. From all the readings I’ve listened to and participated in, here are some suggestions to ease the fears for new readers:
• Try poems out on yourself, full voice, first. Then corral one or two friends and read to them. If they happen to have performing experience of any kind, that’s a plus, but it’s not necessary. While your friends will most likely be honored to hear your poems, what’s most important is to get feedback on volume and whether you’re reading too fast, so your words will have the vocal clarity they deserve.
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Microphones are tools towards this end. Most of them need the reader to be not more than two inches away. Practice with a mic if you can.
• Memorize only if you want to. There’s nothing wrong with reading from the page
in an open reading—or in a featured guest reading, for that matter. Letting the audience see your face as you see them, and being unencumbered by paper, however, can be a powerful experience for listeners and readers. • If you are reading from the page, occasionally finish a line from memory as you look at your audience. If you’re uneasy about meeting people’s eyes, skim the tops of their heads as you scan the room; the listeners will think you’re looking right at them. Worried about your hands shaking noticeably? Try placing your poems in a light• weight vinyl binder that can fold back on itself so you can hold it with one hand as you read, freeing the other hand to gesture if you want. Be • as supportive and attentive to other poets as you’d like them be for you. And follow the “house rules.” Sometimes it’s one poem per reader, or the time limit might be three to five minutes. Know how long your work takes to read—time your poems as you read them aloud—and be respectful of the other poets in the room. We all want to be heard and the good news is there are a lot of us. Keep “your time” in mind. Just want to listen? That’s great, too. Poets eager to read their poems and people • hungry to hear them feed each other. But try not to talk during readings. This is fresh air—in the midst of ever-intensifying pollution. If you want to leave before the reading is finished, try to wait until a poem has ended so you don’t interrupt the focus of the poet and listeners. Also, don’t be shy about telling a poet you like the work once a reading is over. That can mean as much as, or much more than, applause levels. That said, don’t hesitate to clap.
Where, oh Where Yet, before you can decide if readings are right for you, you must first discover where they are held in your area. While open-mic readings, or open mics as they’re often called, are in urban centers and suburban areas across the country, sometimes it takes a little work to find them. Check with your state’s arts council. Some—including Alaska, Hawaii, Illinois, Ohio, and Wyoming—are very tapped in to this information. Are there any colleges or universities in your area? English departments and student activities lines are good prospects for information about readings. Also contact the public library adult education centers and bookstores—particularly those with a literary bent. Weekend arts sections in your daily paper—and smaller weeklies—will often carry listings of poetry events. And looking in the business section of the phone book under “poetry,” “writer” etc., might bear some fruit, too. Or contact one of the literary centers springing up around the country. If these centers don’t know where local open mics are, they are bound to know where to direct you for information. You might also learn that independent literary centers—like my “home base,” Poets House in New York City—are presenting poetic events not necessarily geared toward
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poets reading their own work but, for example, poets reading and discussing the work of poets who have influenced them. Support these nonprofit centers. They are yet another way to keep the wide world of poetry open and accessible to all.
And Then There Was the Slam! In your search for open mics, by the way, you may run across information about slams. A slam is an age-old contest that began its twentieth-century incarnation as a poet/performer-controlled show in Chicago in the early 1970s. It is often a three- or four-round mock poetic competition among three or more poets who are scored Olympic-style by judges chosen from the audience. At the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, this is preceded by a poet performing in a twenty-minute spotlight and followed by an early morning open room where anyone may read one poem. Today, slams—like open mics—are popping up across the country. The slamming poets are usually booked ahead of time, and prize money often isn’t much—and needn’t be. Slam opens, where anyone who walks in can compete, are often crowded with participating poets, so there might be fewer rounds. They are chances to put your toes in the waters before you jump headlong into a regular slam. If winning is the highest priority among the participating poets and hosts, if poets write and perform work whose raison d’être is to score well, or if anybody takes the whimsically chosen judges’ scores too seriously, people are missing the point. A slam at its usual best is challenging, energized, poetic entertainment that sharpens your mind and tunes your ears as you experience a great deal of poetry. I’ve participated in (and lost several) full-length slams, and have heard many more during the past few years. I’ve had a great time, learned a lot, and my exposure hasn’t been fatal—or even damaging.
Want to Start an Open Mic? Above all, know that there are no hard-and-fast rules as to how to organize an open-mic reading. If it’s in a living room or a fairly small public space, you don’t even need the mic. It can be as freewheeling and informal as Our Unorganized Reading Series, held in the basement of ABC No Rio (a rock club in Manhattan’s Lower East Side) on quiet Sunday afternoons when there’s “no time limit, list, features, b.s.” ... and no regular host. Biblio’s Café Book Store in New York’s neighboring Tribeca is the softly lit, snug home for various reading series each week, including Matthew Courtney’s open mic every Thursday night. The times I’ve been at No Rio the proprietor was not present and food and drink had to be purchased outside; most of the time there was heat when needed. At Biblio’s the owners are in rapt, supportive attendance, offering (for sale) a variety of beverages and other treats. And, at the heart of the East Village/Lower East Side poetry scene, at The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, there have been several weekly, nighttime feature and open-mic reading series held in the landmark church since 1966. My point is readings can be held anytime, anywhere.
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When you’re looking for a presenting space in which to start an open-mic reading, check public libraries, local colleges and bookstores (which often have free space available for public use), coffee shops and cafes (which are more apt to ask for some kind of fee), and bars (which most likely will demand one). Often weeknights, normally quiet weekend afternoons, or early evenings are good times to try at first. Whatever the case, be sure to find out what the owner’s ideas are about poetry. I recently heard a story where an open mic became an ongoing platform for derisive speeches (with line breaks, presumably) about people in town and in the room. The disgruntled proprietor—who had been expecting a more conventional kind of verse—soon silenced the series. The emcee (or organizer, if they’re different) may need to use a sense of humor, humanity, and strength of conviction to defuse possible problems so a series can continue. The lesson here is mainly to keep in touch with the hosting staff. It doesn’t need to be much, but you’ll get a lot more leeway—and have much more fun—if things stay open and friendly. The fact that things poetic usually aren’t major moneymakers, a current reality we all live with, is another reason to keep your host on your side. However, bend only as much as you can bear. And remember to publicize, publicize, publicize!
A Few Notes for Emcees First, be sure to use a mic if the room size demands it, if you expect an audience of more than fifteen people, or if you want to record the reading. Remember to test equipment before the reading begins; obvious, maybe, but it often gets overlooked. Know that serving hungry poets, the audience, and the word is a true responsibility. It behooves you to set an example by paying attention to the reading—and to be fair. Let poets know if they’re running over their time limits. Use your judgment, though; sometimes rules can be bent when an earnest poet needs to read. Just be ready afterwards to deal with other poets who want equal time. Many emcees begin open-mic readings by booking a reader to give a ten- to fifteenminute featured reading to warm up the room or set a mood. These poets might (rightfully) expect a piece of the door receipts, so settle that before the evening is over. Warming up the room with a poem of your own (or that of another poet) is a great thing to do, but it’s my opinion that a five- to ten-minute emcee feature is out of line. So is peppering the reading with your own poems. Be generous, and give the mic to the poets supporting the reading. If you’re working with a nonprofit group that wants to sponsor an open mic and can budget for it, good suggestions are found in Poets & Writers’ Author & Audience: A Readings and Workshops Guide, a terrific resource for writers and presenters which also lists national venues. While open mics are not for everyone, I’ve lived in and loved the reading scene for a number of years, and I encourage everyone of any age to get involved. Try different venues, and find a situation that is comfortable for you. Not only will you have the opportunity as a poet to share your work with other poets and lovers of language, but as part of the audience you will hear what other people are thinking about and how they fashion their thoughts into the gorgeous variety of verse that poetry is today.
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in praise of the humble chapbook by
Vivé Griffith
T
hey can be held easily in the hand, tucked graciously into a bag, slipped safely into a pocket. They can be read in one sitting. They are inexpensive to produce and purchase, and thus provide a perfect means for getting more new poetry into the world. Their compressed form encourages innovation. Their established relationship with the fine letterpress makes them a vehicle for collaboration between artists and writers. They are so easy to read and pass around that conversations and communities are built around them. These unique gifts of the poetry chapbook indicate why it has long played a vital and important role in American poetry. Many discussions treat these slim volumes as full-length books in waiting, almost-books, even practice books. But as a chapbook author and a chapbook fan, I see in that approach a diminishment of what the form has to offer. These approachable, accessible books serve their art today as they have since their inception hundreds of years ago.
Early Editions The word chapbook derives from the “chapmen” of England and Scotland, itinerant agents who traveled from town to town peddling small books for a few pence apiece. I love the image of these men of yore with their packs stuffed full of stories. The original chapbooks were often made from one piece of paper folded into a single gathering, and they generally ran twenty-four pages, roughly the same length of today’s chapbook. Quality varied, but their popularity was secure. It was through these chapbooks that the stories we still tell today were spread and savored. Chapbooks told the tale of Tom Thumb, Mother Hubbard, and Jack the Giant Killer. They contained abridged forms of Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe. They were often illustrated with a few crude woodcuts, and they captured the imagination from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. It’s impossible to point to the moment chapbooks entered the American poetry scene, because they’ve almost always been around as pamphlets, artists’ books, and selfpublished books. Thus, they are inseparable from how poetry developed in our culture.
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Advice About Chapbook Preparation Here are specific things to keep in mind when preparing your own chapbook: 1. Make it coherent. This is perhaps even more important for the chapbook than for the full-length collection. The compressed form dictates that what’s inside not be simply a disconnected sampling. For this reason, the chapbook is especially friendly to the poetry sequence and the long poem. If you are not working with a sequence, consider what elements will help the poems speak to one another. I have chapbooks on my shelf that contain poems linked by subject matter—the life of Christ, a difficult relationship with a mother, a year spent as a foreigner in Japan. But subject matter is not the only means of creating coherence. Sometimes a strong sense of voice, music, or form can connect a chapbook. 2. Pay a lot of attention to order. Because the chapbook often is read in one sitting, the flow from one poem to the next is extremely important. Readers are less likely to pick it up and read from a random spot. Sarabande’s Sarah Gorham says the successful chapbooks she’s seen have a real sense of narrative arc. They have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Offer the reader a sense of completion when the chapbook ends. 3. Work with the physical form. Eavan Boland says, “Because the chapbook is brief in the space it sets out and often handsome in the frame it offers, it raises the reader’s expectations in a subtle way.” The reader is holding in his hand an object that suggests it is complete in itself. Think about the placement of poems on a page. Think about integrating artwork and the visual, especially if you are self-publishing. The Center for Book Arts in New York City runs an annual chapbook competition that relates to their mission of keeping alive the tradition of letterpress and fine press printing. Former executive director Rory Golden says the connection between the letterpress and the poet is obvious. “Poets appreciate the attention to the work and the fine object.” 4. Be willing to play. The chapbook finds its roots in the experimental. While many contests are geared toward seeing the chapbook as a step toward a full-length book, many chapbook readers are still looking to the chapbook as a way of rooting out the new and interesting. Chapbooks open up dialogues. They create communities. Treat them with that possibility. Editor’s Note: If you’re interested in self-publishing a chapbook, take a carefully assembled collection of your poems to several local printers to discuss format, paper, coverstock, and costs. Get several quotes, and don’t overlook “quick print” shops. Don’t forget to discuss how your home computer can save you money (from typesetting and laying out the chapbook yourself to having it printed directly from your disk).
Alice Quinn, executive director of the Poetry Society of America (PSA) and poetry editor at The New Yorker magazine, believes the chapbook has played a key role in American poetry. “They have had a long and fabulous history,” she says. Some of that history rises from the chapbook’s close relationship with experimental work. Historically, poetic movements that didn’t find their voices being heard in the
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mainstream press turned to self-publishing. And that self-publishing often took the form of chapbooks. It still does today. I’ve seen chapbooks sitting next to the register in little coffeehouses or for sale after readings by local poets. I’ve had a poetic acquaintance slip me a chapbook after chatting over our latest projects. The result is inevitably one of being treated to something I couldn’t have found elsewhere.
The Growth of Chapbook Publishing To poet Joshua Beckman, this through-the-back-door sensibility is how chapbooks make their greatest impact. It’s less important that they be sold in bookstores across the country than that they are distributed hand-to-hand, that they make the direct connection between poet and reader. “Publishing a chapbook provides an opportunity to be part of a poetic community,” he says, “and to become part of a dialogue with other people who are writing.” While many chapbooks have been and are being published off the radar, chapbook publication by established presses and organizations has grown steadily for fifty years. Quinn points to longstanding series like the Pocket Poet Series from San Francisco’s City Lights Books. Though not titled a “chapbook,” these tiny books that first sold for a dollar each brought the words of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Diane di Prima, and others directly to readers both serious and curious. Ferlinghetti’s Pictures of the Gone World, first published in 1955, runs twenty-seven pages, and the lines move helter-skelter across the page. Maybe this could have been part of a full-length, full-size book, but there’s something perfect about its incarnation in these small pages. There is a narrative, and there is a sense of form, and the chapbook holds them both. Its ultimate adaptability may partly account for the recent explosion in chapbook publication. Take, for example, Sarabande Books’s launch of their Quarternote Chapbook Series featuring such poetic superstars as James Tate, Frank Bidart, and Louise Glück. Editor Sarah Gorham explains, “We wanted to add some of our favorite poets to our list without infringing on their established publishing contracts.” Chapbooks were allowable within those contracts, and Sarabande could publish a complete piece by each poet. In addition, choosing chapbooks as its medium gave Sarabande other benefits. “Our philosophy was to make this series accessible to students,” says Gorham, “and the low price makes it possible for people to buy them. Plus, the chapbook is highly collectible, and we hope to be able to offer a boxed set at some point.” The bulk of the expansion in chapbook publishing still comes in providing a forum for new and emerging poets. This isn’t surprising. Despite a corresponding burgeoning in first-book publications, there is far more good poetry being written than there are means of disseminating it. Book contests are glutted with submissions, and journals can’t keep up with the amount of work coming in. Plenty of poetry languishes for years out of sight of readers, and this isn’t good for the individual poet, nor for poetry as a whole. Poet Eavan Boland has judged several chapbook contests for emerging poets. She says, “In the work of a new poet, [chapbooks] serve both as a sampling and shape of the first
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book which is to come. They allow the new poet to assemble the very best of their work in an intense and representative way.” The PSA recently inaugurated a series of four annual chapbook fellowships, confirming the respect chapbooks garner today. Four distinguished poets will choose a manuscript each for publication, and the published chapbooks will be sent to approximately 350 top PSA contributors, as well as being available for sale. In this forum the chapbook is guaranteed a national readership. Managing editor Brett Fletcher Lauer says, given what the PSA was already doing with its Norma Farber First Book Award and other awards, the chapbook “seemed like the most organic form for opening the field and presenting more poets to the public.” Quinn explains the original intent was to have a festival featuring twenty new American poets. “We thought it would be exciting and dramatic if a few of the poets were at a very early stage in their careers and if we could publish them for the first time ourselves,” she says. “We knew it would mean a great deal to these poets if their manuscripts were selected by tremendously distinguished poets, so we asked John Ashbery, Eavan Boland, Carl Phillips, and C.D. Wright to be the judges. Their choices and our original sixteen make up our list of twenty.” The PSA received nearly seven hundred manuscripts, and clearly the chapbooks they publish will provide a luminous introduction for the new writer.
Value of Chapbook Publication On any level, chapbook publication has great value. When Kent State University Press published my chapbook Weeks in This Country in 2000, I knew it would help facilitate the career I was building as a writer. However, the experience was much larger than I ever imagined. It started years before I won the contest. In fact, it started with the very first chapbook I put together. As a new writer, I took on creating a chapbook manuscript as a way of consolidating work that felt, until then, rather scattershot. We tend to write poem by poem, without a larger conception of what we are creating. The first time I made a collection of my poems, I realized I had never looked objectively at what I had written. I had to identify themes, find connections, see what fit and didn’t fit. Once I had done that, I started thinking about my future work as part of a larger whole. Beckman says, “Once you have the idea of a book available as an option, your imagination is expanded in terms of what you can do with your poetry. You see the chapbook as an imagined future for it.” He goes on to say, “Each time you put together a book, you are doing something interesting and challenging for your own work.” With Weeks in This Country, I knew I had been writing for several years around themes of travel. When I pulled the poems together into a cohesive whole, I found the group was stronger than the poems standing alone. And when Maggie Anderson, editor of Kent State’s chapbook series, called me to say they wanted to publish my chapbook, I was thrilled. One of the great gifts publishing a chapbook offers the young writer is the chance to experience the publishing process firsthand, even before she has a full length collection. In finalizing my chapbook with the press, I made edits based on Anderson’s
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suggestions. I collected endorsements for the back cover. I wrote a synopsis for marketing materials, dealt with an author photo and an acknowledgments page. There were readings and signings and all the things I thought I wouldn’t experience until I had a full-length book. As important was the chance to have my poems read by people who weren’t sitting next to me at a workshop table or related to me by blood. Chapbooks may not appear in bookstore windows, and they are rarely reviewed in newspapers and journals. But they inevitably get work out into the world. By definition they are a means of sharing poetry, and I found handing my poems to another person in published form gave them a power and validation they hadn’t had before. Even a small run chapbook accomplishes this, and the fact that a chapbook is so cheap and accessible encourages people to give poetry a try. Friends, friends of friends, new acquaintances, strangers, and distant relatives read my book. I really believe that even if we write for ourselves, the future of poetry asks that we conceive of our work as something to be shared. This is why the chapbook exists. Those of us interested in the future of poetry in America must be grateful for that existence and the ease with which the chapbook puts work into the world. Quinn, who worked at Knopf for fifteen years before going to The New Yorker, says, “Poetry is very popular now. You just have to get it into people’s hands.” With the humble, friendly chapbook, there is a perfect fit.
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the art of self-promotion by
Leah Maines
D
on’t wait for your publisher to promote you!” This is the best advice I could offer a fellow poet, whether seasoned or starting out. Even if you already have a book under your belt, it’s unlikely your publisher will do much to promote your latest collection (unless you’re being picked up by a big-name press). If you’re new to the trade with no book or chapbook in print, you need to work even harder to get your name out to the public. This isn’t to say having work published by a small press is a bad thing. In fact, it’s wonderful! I never would have seen my poems in journals and anthologies if it weren’t for small presses, or my book in print (at least, I don’t think so). The truth is, though, most small presses just don’t have the time, staff, or resources to promote their writers beyond the initial book ad or new book announcement mailers. The poet who wants to be successful must step up and take charge of the promotion effort. There are numerous ways you can promote your work. The following suggestions are presented to help you make a splash in your local literary community. They worked for me, and I’m sure they’ll work for you.
Make Business Cards When I first started writing poetry for publication, I made business cards using the title of “writer/researcher,” my name, telephone number, e-mail address, and regular mail address. (Although I’m mainly a poet, using “writer/researcher” kept my options open for other writing opportunities.) I didn’t spend a lot of money on the cards. In fact, I did a nice job using my computer and printer. (Later I made cards showing a picture of my book cover, and I still use them.) I distributed cards at poetry readings, social events, pretty much everywhere. Once I got an e-mail from a radio host with a talk show about writers and artists. He had been given my card by a woman I’d met at a college alumni reception. I’d given her my card casually and told her about my poetry. (She’d never read one of my poems, but she liked me and was impressed by my business cards.)
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The talk show host asked if I was interested in being on his show. Not only did I do a fifty-minute interview, I returned several times to promote events and talk about new writing projects. Another time I gave my card to an old friend who was working for a local cable television show. She passed my card along to the producer and in less than a month I was on the air. All that from a tiny business card and a little bit of friendly conversation. Which leads me to my next point—networking.
Make Connections Networking is vital to a poet’s career. You may be saying, “It’s talent that will get me published.” True to a certain extent. However, persistence and networking can make the difference. The talented poet who throws himself into the spotlight will get the coffeehouse gigs, radio and TV appearances, newspaper write-ups, and so forth. The exposure you get from these various media outlets can lead to more demand for your work in print. I’ve been approached by several editors and publishers who heard me on the radio, saw me on TV, or read about me in the newspaper and asked me to submit poems to their journals. Publicity sparked interest in my work, and I’ve had some nice publishing opportunities (and successes) because of it. Not sure how to start networking? Why not ... Join a local writers’ group. This is the best way to make contacts in your literary community. Getting together with others who share your passion for the written word is always helpful and motivating, and it’s a good way to keep informed about what’s going on locally. Such groups may offer workshops and public speaking opportunities. My writers’ group often arranges poetry readings at local bookstores and occasionally publishes anthologies. If you have few or no publishing credits, appearing in your group’s anthology can be a good start to building publication credits. (And it feels great to see your name and work in print.) Join your state poetry society. You’ll stay better informed about what’s happening around your state. These groups often put out a monthly newsletter with publication and grant opportunities as well as information about which members are publishing and where. If you get a poem accepted, win an award, or schedule an appearance or reading, inform your newsletter editor—it’s a great way to keep your name in the public eye. In addition to the free publicity, it encourages your fellow poets to share their accomplishments as well.
Do a Public Reading I know this sounds a little scary. It is at first, but it can really boost your reputation. If you suffer from stage fright, try reading at an open-mic (i.e., microphone) event. These have become very popular at bookstores and coffeehouses. Open-mic readings are easy, and there’s no pressure to read unless you want to. Usually there’s a sign-up sheet at the door, so go, sign up, read a poem or two. It’s fun, and there’s always the possibility that
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an editor is in the audience. (I know of a noted poet who met his future publisher at an open mic. The publisher heard him read some of his poems and the next thing he knew, he had a book deal.) Check your newspaper for listings, and keep an eye out for flyers and bulletin board notices at coffeehouses and bookstores. And when you go, don’t forget to take along your business cards. Once you’ve braved an open-mic reading, consider going solo. Let the manager of a local coffeehouse know you’re a poet and available to do special readings. Suggest that you could be their featured reader with an open mic to follow. If you’ve published a book or chapbook, show the manager a copy. If you don’t have a book but your work has appeared in journals and magazines, inform the manager (you could even make copies of the printed poems to show him). Volunteer to prepare flyers and write a news release. This is no time to be shy. Remember to be polite, though, not pushy. You could also offer to do a reading at your local bookstore. (This can be a little tricky to maneuver, but it’s worth a shot.) Contact the bookstore manager or events coordinator, if they have one. Show her your book or copies of your published poems and explain that you’ve given successful readings in other venues. Maybe the bookstore would be open to hosting a local poets night; you could gather fellow poets, perhaps from your writing group, to stage a reading. I’ve participated in such events and they’ve always been a great success. Again, be bold but polite. The bookstore will probably handle the news release, but when in doubt you can send one out yourself.
Contact Your Local Newspapers Whether the newspaper is a big urban daily or a community weekly, send them a news release. Most papers have a calendar or similar section where they announce various events of public interest. Contact the paper for the name of the section editor to whom you should submit information. Follow the paper’s guidelines and respect deadlines! Your release should be brief and to the point. No fluff—just the who, what, when, where, and why of the event. Remember, deadlines for print include the necessary planning and assigning of coverage, and can be several days or weeks before publication, so allow plenty of time to include your event. While you’re at it, why not contact the appropriate editor and let her know you’re available to be interviewed? Tell her about your publication successes and any other information she might find unusual and interesting about you. It worked for me. While living in Japan, I decided to keep a daily journal in which I wrote poems that eventually grew into a book. I thought my story was unique and hoped the editors of my local newspaper would think the same. As the cliché says, one thing led to another. Much to my pleasure, The Kentucky Post ran a half-page article about my life in Japan and my poetry book. Do you have any unique hobbies or life experiences related to your poetry that your newspaper editor should know about?
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Contact Local Radio and TV Stations This sounds like a big step, but if I can do it successfully (and I have), so can you. When you schedule a poetry reading, let your radio and cable stations know. Find out if the station has a program that might be interested in having you come on and talk about your event, maybe even read some of your poems (public radio and TV stations are more likely to have such shows). Don’t be afraid to ask! The worst they can say is no. A side note about public stations: Local PBS stations often have annual televised auctions where merchants donate goods to be sold on air. This is a fantastic way to get some free publicity. Does your writing group publish an anthology? Suggest they donate some copies for the auction. Do you have a book or chapbook of poems? Donate some to the station; or better yet, ask your publisher to contribute some. My publisher donated copies of my book to our local PBS Action Auction, and they did a great-looking on-air display. If you don’t have a book but still want to tap into this free publicity source, why not donate something else and attach a note “donated by local poet _____ _”? Every year I donate items I’ve purchased from my travels abroad, and I always meet someone who heard my name announced on TV or radio as a result of my donation. Self-promotion is an art that can really open doors. There’s nothing sweeter to a poet than to see her poems in print. The promotional work you do to further your writing career is meant to spark people’s interest in your poetry. So keep writing and submitting your work to keep up with your public’s demand. And remember that exciting possibilities will open up for you when you promote yourself!
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Contributors
Lee K. Abbott is the auuthor of the short story collections Dreams of Distant Lives, Strangers in Paradise, Love is the Crooked Thing, The Heart Never Fits Its Wanting, Living After Midnight, Wet Places at Noon, and All Things, All at Once: New & Selected Stories. His many short stories and reviews, as well as articles on American Literature, have appeared in such journals and magazines as Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, The Georgia Review, The New York Times Book Review, The Southern Review, Epoch, Boulevard, and The North American Review. His fiction has been often reprinted in The Best American Short Stories and Prize Stories: The O’Henry Awards. He has twice won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and was awarded a Major Artist Fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council in 1991. He was also the recipient of the 2004 Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award at Ohio State University. Will Allison is the author of the novel What You Have Left (Free Press, 2007). Allen and Linda Anderson are authors of
the popular Angel Animals anthology series featuring inspiring stories about the beneficial relationships between people and animals. Their book RESCUED: Saving Animals from Disaster won the 2007 American Society of Journalists and Authors Outstanding Nonfiction Book Award.
Their Web sites are writingontherun.com, angelanimals.net, and rescuedsavinganimals.net. William Baer, a current Guggenheim fellow, is the author of fourteen books, including “Borges” and Other Sonnets; The Ballad Rode into Town; and Luís de Camões: Selected Sonnets. The founding editor of The Formalist (1990-2004), he’s the poetry editor at Crisis, the contributing editor at Measure, and the director of the Richard Wilbur Poetry Series. Bonny Becker is the author of nine children’s books ranging from the best-selling picture book The Christmas Crocodile to her most recent middle-grade novel Holbrook: A Lizard’s Tale. She is an instructor for the Institute of Children’s Literature and a frequent conference speaker with an expertise in story structure. She is also a freelance editor and writing coach with clients ranging from beginners to published authors. You can learn more about her at www.bonnybecker.com. Stephen Blake Mettee is the CEO and publisher at Quill Driver Books (www.quill driverbooks.com). Nancy Breen is editor of Poet’s Market as well as a published poet and hopeful fiction writer. Sue Bradford Edwards studies the magazine and book markets from her home office
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in St. Louis, Missouri. She writes a variety of nonfiction, specializing in history, archaeology, and nature pieces. Her work appears regularly in a variety of testing and educational publications, Children’s Writer newsletter, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Visit her Web site at www.SueBradfordEdwards.8m.com. William Brohaugh has immersed himself in words throughout his career. He has worked in publishing and has been writing about writing both as editor and writer since 1976. Bill is the author of several books for writers, including Unfortunate English: The Gloomy Truth Behind the Words You Use; Write Tight: How to Keep Your Prose Sharp, Focused and Concise; English Through the Ages; and Professional Etiquette for Writers (all from Writer’s Digest Books). He served as editor of Writer’s Digest from 1982 to 1990, and as editorial director of Writer’s Digest Books from 1990 to 1998. He has written several hundred published or produced magazine articles and short radio pieces. Visit his Web site, www.unfortunateenglish.com. Gordon Burgett has written thirty-three published books, more than seventeen hundred freelance articles, and given more than two thousand paid speaking presentations. He has owned a publishing company since 1982 and is currently expanding his program and coaching in the fields of niche publishing and empire building. His Web site is www.gordonburgett.com. Lisa Collier Cool is the author of How to
Write Irresistible Query Letters and How to Sell Every Magazine Article You Write, both from Writer’s Digest Books. She’s also authored countless articles for a host of publications, from Cosmopolitan and Essence to Reuters and Harper’s, and she’s written for Web sites such as Johns Hopkins/Intelihealth and Parents.com. Cool has been a contributing editor at American Health, Cosmopolitan, and Child. Among her many writing awards are the Henry R. Luce Award for Public Service and two ASJA Out-
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standing Article Awards. A Good Housekeeping package, for which she wrote one of three articles, won a National Magazine Award for consumer service. Jennifer Crusie was researching her disser-
tation on the differences in the way men and women tell stories when she got sidetracked into writing romance novels. Her first book was published in 1993 and her sixteenth, Don’t Look Down, written with Bob Mayer, was published in 2006, all of which she considers a minor miracle, especially since she is also a New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestseller and a two-time Rita Award winner. Her latest novel from St. Martin’s Press is a romantic adventure written in collaboration with military thriller writer Bob Mayer, an experience that reinforced everything she was going to say in that dissertation. It’s titled Agnes and the Hitman (or, if you’re Bob, Shane and the Food Columnist) and it was released in August 2007. She is a very happy woman. For more information, see www.jennycrusie.com. Katie Darby spent the summer of 2007 as an intern at Writer’s Digest Books. Her last forays into editing were at Measure (a metrical poetry magazine), the Evansville Review, and The Ohio River Review. She feels exceptionally lucky to be able to say to her five-year-old self that she is working as a “professional reader,” just what she always wanted to be. Greg Daugherty has been a successful magazine editor and writer for more than twentyfive years, with credits that include Good Housekeeping, National Geographic Traveler, Parenting, and Smithsonian. He is also the author of You Can Write for Magazines, published by Writer’s Digest Books. John Drury is a professor of English at the
University of Cincinnati. He has also taught at the Antioch Writers’ Workshop during the summer. His poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Antioch Review, The Paris
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Review, and other periodicals. His poetry collections include Burning the Aspern Papers and The Disappearing Town (both published by Miami University Press). He is also the author of Creating Poetry and The Poetry Dictionary (from Writer’s Digest Books). JoAnn Early Macken writes poetry, picture
books, nonfiction, and novels for children and young adults. Her newest books are the rhyming picture book Sing-Along Song (Viking) and the biography Gary Paulsen: Voice of Adventure and Survival (Enslow Publishers). Her forthcoming books include Flip, Float, Fly! Seeds on the Move (Holiday House, 2008) and Waiting Out the Storm (Candlewick, 2010). JoAnn has also written more than one hundred books for the school and library market. She is a graduate of the MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults Program at Vermont College. She speaks to children and adults about poetry and writing. Visit her Web site at www. joannmacken.com. Philip Gerard is a professor of creative writing and the department chair at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. His nonfiction books include Secret Soldiers: How a Troupe of American Artists, Designers and Sonic Wizards Won World War II’s Battles of Deception Against the Germans; Creative Nonfiction: Researching and Crafting Stories of Real Life; and Writing a Book That Makes a Difference. His novels include Hatteras Light, Desert Kill, and Cape Fear Rising. His Web site is www.philipgerard.com. David Gerrold started writing professionally in 1967. His first sale was “The Trouble with Tribbles” episode of Star Trek. Within five years, he had published seven novels, two books about television production, three anthologies, and a short story collection. He was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula awards six times in four years. Since 1967, he has published more than forty books. Several of his novels are considered classics, including The
Man Who Folded Himself, When HARLIE Was One, and the four books in The War Against The Chtorr series. You can find him on the Web at www.gerrold.com. Stephen E. Gillen, Esq. is an attorney with Greenebaum, Doll & McDonald PLLC. Formerly house counsel for an educational publisher, Steve’s practice emphasizes publishing and entertainment transactions and disputes, Internet issues, advertising law, computer law, copyrights, trademarks, technology transfer, trade secrets, and related matters. He has served on copyright and permissions committees with the Association of American Publishers, has written and spoken nationally on various publishing and copyright topics, and he teaches courses in media law at the University of Cincinnati. Jenna Glatzer is the author of sixteen books,
including Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer and Celine Dion’s authorized biography For Keeps. She’s a contributing editor at Writer’s Digest, and a proud new mom. Visit her at www. jennaglatzer.com. Sara Grant is a published author, freelance writer, and editor for Working Partners, a book packager focusing on series fiction for children. Her publication credits include stories in Spider and Pockets children’s magazines. She also wrote on assignment for U.S. Kids and Indianapolis Monthly magazines and Children’s Writers’ & Illustrator’s Market. She recently earned a master’s degree in creative and life writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She currently participates in two writers’ groups to improve her writing and maintain her sanity.
Beginning with Anthony winner Caught Dead in Philadelphia, Gillian Roberts’ schoolteacher, Amanda Pepper, has been at the center of fourteen City of Brotherly Love crimes for two decades, most recently, the final installment, All’s Well That Ends. Roberts is also the author
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of two books featuring Northern California P.I.s Emma Howe and Billie August; the instructional text You Can Write a Mystery; and a collection of short stories, Where’s the Harm? Writing under her actual name, Judith Greber, she’s also published four novels in which people do indeed die, but nobody sleuths. Vivé Griffith’s poetry chapbook, Weeks in
This Country, was published by Kent State University Press in 2000. Her poems, stories, and essays have appeared in Oxford American, Gettysburg Review, Antioch Review, and other publications. She lives in Austin, Texas, and is at work on a travel memoir about retracing her grandmother’s 1946 cross-country road trip sixty years later. David Groff is a poet, writer, and independent editor focusing on narrative. For the last eleven years, he has worked with literary and popular novelists, memorists, journalists, and scientists whose books have been published by Atria, Bantam, HarperCollins, Hyperion, Little Brown, Miramax, Putnam, St. Martin’s, Wiley, and other publishers. For twelve years he was an editor at Crown, publishing books by humorist Dave Barry, novelists Colin Harrison and Paul Monette, and journalists Patrice Gaines, Michael D’Antonio, and Frank Browning. He co-authored The Crisis of Desire: AIDS and the Fate of Gay Brotherhood by Robin Hardy, and An American Family, with Jon and Michael Galluccio. David’s book Theory of Devolution was published in 2002 as part of the National Poetry Series. Jack Heffron is editorial director of Clerisy
Press and has been a professional editor for more than fifteen years. He is author of three books for writers—The Writer’s Idea Book, The Writer’s Guide to Places, and The Writer’s Idea Workshop. A founding editor of Story magazine, he is a two-time winner of the National Magazine Award for Fiction and editor for the critically acclaimed Best Writing on Writing series.
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He has published short stories in many literary journals and twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His nonfiction has appeared in Oxford American, ESPN Magazine, and Utne Reader, among others. His work has been cited in Best American Travel Writing. Esther Hershenhorn wears many hats, including those of author, teacher, and writing coach. Esther’s titles include Chicken Soup By Heart, winner of the Sydney Taylor Book Award, and the middle-grade novel The Confe$$ion$ and $ecret$ of Howard J. Fingerhut, a 2004 Crown Award nominee. Esther teaches Writing for Children classes at the University of Chicago’s Writer’s Studio, Chicago’s Newberry Library, and Ragdale. SCBWI’s membership elected her to the Board of Advisors in 2002. Deborah Hopkinson’s most recent books include Sweet Land of Liberty, Sky Boys, How They Built the Empire State Building, and Into the Firestorm. Visit her on the Web at www.deborahhopkinson.com. Judson Jerome was the creator and former
editor of Poet’s Market. Suzanne Kirk spent eight years in Hong Kong, Japan, and Viet Nam as a foreign correspondent and book editor. She returned to New Jersey to work for Scribners, where she was involved in fiction and nonfiction projects, as well as acting as judge of the Maxwell Perkins Prize and Scribner Crime Novel Award. At the time she wrote the article included in this book, Kirk was a senior editor. Kathleen Krull (www.kathleenkrull.com) is the award-winning author of biography and nonfiction for young readers, known particularly for her six-book series “Lives of.” Her picture books include Pocahontas, The Boy on Fairfield Street, and Harvesting Hope. Her wellreceived new series, Giants of Science, profiles individual scientists. With her husband, children’s book illustrator Paul Brewer, she
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has written what is possibly the most unusual biography of 2008—Fartiste, illustrated by Boris Kulikov. Michael Larsen is a partner in Larsen-Pomada Literary Agents, a San Francisco agency founded in 1972. He is a member of AAR and the author of the third edition of How to Get a Literary Agent. With Jay Conrad Levinson, author of Guerrilla Marketing, and Rick Frishman, president of Planned Television Arts, he is co-author of Guerrilla Marketing for Writers: 100 Weapons for Selling Your Work. Mike is a cofounder of the San Francisco Writers Conference, www.sfwriterscon.org, and the San Francisco Writing for Change Conference, www. sfwritingforchange.org. He would greatly appreciate your suggestions for the best, most effective way to write a proposal. You can reach him 11-5 PST M-Th at 415-673-0939,
[email protected], or www.larsen-pomada.com. John F. Lauerman left freelancing in 2001
after twelve years to return to full-time journalism and now writes about science and medicine for Bloomberg News. He lives in Brookline with his lovely wife, two beautiful children, and one cat. He fully expects to return to freelancing some day. Jeffrey Lee is a family physician who practic-
es medicine, writes books for adults and children, and raises his two wonderful daughters in Seattle, Washington.
House) and This Business of Writing (Writer’s Digest Books). He has written for the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, Omni, Psychology Today, American Health, Reader’s Digest, New Age Journal, and many others, as well as for corporate, promotional, and television projects. A former adjunct professor of journalism at the University of New Mexico, and former columnist and reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer and USA Today, he is the recipient of a first-place writing award from the Associated Press, and a Genesis Award for “Outstanding Newspaper Commentary” for a New York Times Magazine essay. Christine Kole MacLean writes picture
books, chapter books, and novels. There is now a series of Mary Margaret books, including Mary Margaret, Center Stage and Mary Margaret Meets Her Match. The fourth, Mary Margaret Mary Christmas, will be released in the fall of 2008. Find out more at www.christinekolemaclean.com. Leah Maines is former poet-in-residence of Northern Kentucky University. Her first book, Looking to the East with Western Eyes, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Williams Carlos Williams Book Award. Her most recent collection, Beyond the River, won the Kentucky Writers’ Coalition Poetry Chapbook Competition.
Donna Levin has twenty years experience as a writer and ghostwriter of fiction and nonfiction, and as a teacher, editor, book reviewer, and author interviewer. Her books include the novels Extraordinary Means and California Street and the nonfiction books Get That Novel Started! and Get That Novel Written! Her papers are included in Boston University’s Howard Gotlieb’s 20th Century archives.
Fred Marchant is the author of three books of poetry, including Full Moon Boat (Graywolf Press). He is the co-translator (with Nguuen Ba Chung) of From a Corner of My Yard, poems by Tran Dang Khoa. He is also the editor of Another World Instead: The Poetry of William Stafford, 1937-1947 (Graywolf Press). His next book of poetry, The Looking House, is forthcoming from Graywolf in January 2009. He is the director of the Creative Writing Program and The Poetry Center at Suffolk Univerity in Boston.
Gregg Levoy is the author of Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life (Random
Megan McCafferty is the author of Sloppy Firsts, Second Helpings, and Charmed Thirds. She
Contributors 383
also edited a short story collection, Sixteen: Stories About That Sweet (and Bitter) Birthday. The fourth book in the Jessica Darling series, Fourth Comings, was an instant New York Times bestseller. She is currently working on the fifth and final installment. Alyce Miller is the author of two short story collections (Flannery O’Connor Award, Mary McCarthy Prize), a novel, and a forthcoming memoir. Her poems, essays, and short fiction have appeared in more than one hundred literary magazines and anthologies. She teaches in the graduate creative writing program at Indiana University and is also a part-time attorney with a focus on animal law. Kelly Milner Halls is a freelance writer spe-
cializing in sparky nonfiction for young readers and the people who love them. Her work has appeared in Highlights for Children, Boy’s Life, Dig, US Kids, Teen People, Family Fun, the Chicago Tribune, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and dozens of other publications. Her latest book, Mysteries of the Mummy Kids, was published by Darby Creek Publishing, as were her last four. She is a frequent speaker at schools and conferences all over the United States. Kelly makes her home in Spokane with two daughters, two dogs, too many cats, and a four-foot rock iguana named Gigantor. Sean Murphy has contributed to Writer’s Market, The Sun, Yoga Journal, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Mandala, and Mountain Record: The Zen Practitioner’s Journal, plus the anthologies You Are Not Here and Other Works of Buddhist Fiction and NOW WRITE! Fiction Writing Exercises from Today’s Best Writers and Teachers. Sean teaches creative writing and literature at the University of New Mexico in Taos and leads writing workshops around the country. His third novel for Bantam/Dell, The Time of New Weather, was released in January 2005. His Web site is www.murphyzen.com.
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Ben Nyberg retired from Kansas State University in 1997 after teaching fiction writing there for thirty-one and a half years. He is currently trying to write a murder mystery set aboard one of the steamships that ply Sweden’s Gota Canal. He continues to travel, review arts events for his local newspaper, and enjoy life. Barbara J. Odanaka is a former Los Angeles Times reporter who gave up journalism to travel around the world and write children’s books. She is the author of Skateboard Mom, Smash! Mash! Crash! There Goes the Trash!, and the forthcoming Critter Cafe. Visit Barb at www.skateboardmom.com. Darcy Pattison teaches the Novel Revision retreat nationwide, writes the Revision Notes blog (www.darcypattison.com), and writes picture books and novels for children. Her latest picture book, 19 Girls and Me (Philomel/ Penguin), is about friendship in a kindergarten classroom with nineteen girls and one lone boy. Look for Darcy Pattison’s Novel Revision Workbook to be released in 2008. L. Peat O’Neil teaches travel writing online for UCLA in the Journalism Certificate program. She is currently living in Shanghai and working on a travel mystery series.
At the time she wrote the article included in this book, Carolyn Peyser was the public relations director for Poets House, New York City’s poetry library and literary resource center. Co-producer of the spoken-word CD Nuyorican Symphony, she also worked on project development and fundraising for the five part PBS series The United States of Poetry. Gary Provost (garyprovost.com) authored seven critically acclaimed books for writers, including NAL’s The Freelance Writer’s Handbook and 100 Ways to Improve Your Writing, and several Writer’s Digest Books top-sellers, such as How to Write and Sell True Crime and Make
The Craft & Business of Writing
Your Words Work. After his death in 1995, How to Tell A Story: The Secrets of Writing Captivating Tales was completed by agent/author Peter Rubie and published in 1998. His final work of nonfiction was Bogart: In Search of My Father (Stephen Bogart’s autobiography about actor Humphrey Bogart) and his final work of fiction was the first of a new mystery series for Berkley Prime Crime, Baffled in Boston. He and his wife Gail founded the Writers Retreat Workshop (WRW) in 1987, which still thrives. Amy Ratto Parks, a former editor for Writer’s Digest magazine, has master’s degrees in poetry and literature from the University of Montana, where she has been teaching composition and literature courses in poetry. Her poems have been published in Camas, You Are Here, and The Thorny Locust, and she has been the recipient of numerous awards including a writing residency at the Soapstone retreat. She was a Bertha Morton Scholar at the University of Montana, and was the editor-in-chief of CutBank, the university’s literary journal. W.E. Reinka, who frequently writes about
books and authors, contributes to publications nationwide. Bill Roorbach (www.billroorbach.com) is the author of eight books, including the Flannery O’Connor Award-winning collection Big Bend, the novel The Smallest Color, and the nonfiction books Temple Stream and Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: The Art of Truth. A fully revised and updated tenth-anniversary edition of his instructional book Writing Life Stories, originally published by Story Press in 1998, will be released in June 2008. M.J. Rose (www.mjrose.com) is the interna-
tional bestselling author of nine novels: Lip Service, In Fidelity, Flesh Tones, Sheet Music, Lying in Bed, The Halo Effect, The Delilah Complex, The Venus Fix, and The Reincarnationist. Rose is also the co-author with Angela Adair Hoy of How to Publish and Promote Online, and with Doug
Clegg of Buzz Your Book. She is a founding member and board member of International Thriller Writers and the founder of the first marketing company for authors: AuthorBuzz. com. She runs two popular blogs: Buzz, Balls & Hype and Backstory. Cathy Smith Bowers was a winner of the 1990 General Electric Award for Younger Writers and a South Carolina Poetry Fellowship. Her poems have appeared widely in publications such as The Altantic Monthly, The Georgia Review, Poetry, Shenandoah, The Southern Poetry Review, The Southern Review, Kenyon Review, and many others. Cathy’s first book, The Love That Ended Yesterday in Texas, was the first winner of the Texas Tech University Press First-Book Competition in their Poetry Award Series, subsequently named for Walt McDonald. Iris Press republished that book, as well as her other books, Traveling in Time of Danger and A Book of Minutes. Cathy teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at Queens University of Charlotte.
Despite anything you may have heard, Art Spikol is not dead. He is happily married, writing, painting, drawing, shooting pool, listening to jazz, playing bad piano, and eating a lot of vegetables and fruit on Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia. His novel, The Physalia Incident, which should have been a cult classic, is unfortunately available all over the Internet for pennies on the dollar. Former Rodale Press executive editor David (D.W.) Taylor currently serves as senior writing
adviser at the University of Maryland University College. Anthony Tedesco is co-founder of The
Student Publishing Program (225pm.org), coauthor of Online Markets for Writers (MarketsForWriters.com Press), and publisher of free e-books for writers, including America’s Top Writers Share the Advice That’s Helped Them Most and The Top 250 Free Resources for Writers (all available at MarketsForWriters.com/cbw2008).
Contributors 385
Glenda Tennant Neff is a former editor of Writer’s Market and author of the first editon of Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript as well as The Writer’s Essential Desk Reference (Writer’s Digest Books). John Tibbetts is a fiction writer and a sci-
Michael Dylan Welch is editor and pub-
lisher of Tundra and Press Here haiku and tanka books. Formerly editor of the haiku journal Woodnotes, he is a longtime vice president of the Haiku Society of America, founder of the Tanka Society of America, and founder of the
ence writer in Charleston, South Carolina.
Poets in the Park poetry conference. He is a
David Vann (www.davidvann.com) is author
sociation and a contributing editor for Spring:
of the best-selling memoir A Mile Down: The True Story of a Disastrous Career at Sea. His story collection, Legend of a Suicide, has won the Grace Paley Prize awarded by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs and will be published fall 2008. He’s written features for Esquire, Men’s Journal, Outside, and Outside’s GO, and his work has also appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Writer’s Digest, and other magazines and won various awards. He’s been a Wallace Stegner Fellow, taught at Stanford and Cornell, and is now a professor at Florida State University. Hope Vestergaard (www.hopevestergaard. com) is the author of eight picture books for young children and Weaving the Literacy Web: Creating Curriculum Based on Books Children Love, published by Redleaf Press. She’s had several articles published in Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market.
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board member of the Washington Poets AsThe Journal of the E.E. Cummings Society. In 1996, he co-founded the American Haiku Archives in Sacramento, California, and he is also a director of the biennial Haiku North America conference (started in 1991). In 2003, he also served as one of the editors of Poets Against the War. He has won Henderson, Brady, and Merit Book Awards from the Haiku Society of America, and his own poetry, including haiku and tanka, has been published in hundreds of journals and anthologies in more than a dozen languages. He lives with his wife and two children in Sammamish, Washington. Monica Wood is the author of four novels, in-
cluding the ABA bestseller Any Bitter Thing, and several books for writers, including the Writer’s Digest Books titles Description, The Pocket Muse, and The Pocket Muse Endless Inspiration.
The Craft & Business of Writing
“Writing on the Run: Finding Time to Write,” by Allen and Linda Anderson, first appeared in Writer’s Market 2006. “Nine Habits of Frequently Published Authors,” by Stephen Blake Mettee, first appeared in Writer’s Market 2004. “Building a Writing Career,” by Sean Murphy, first appeared in Writer’s Market 2004. “The Writer-Editor Relationship,” by William Brohaugh, first appeared in Writer’s Market 1988. “Making Manuscripts More Salable,” by Glenda Tennant Neff first appeared in Writer’s Market 1989. “Overcoming Writer’s Block,” by Anthony Tedesco first appeared in Writer’s Market 2006. “What to Know Before Your Book Comes Out,” by M.J. Rose first appeared in Writer’s Market 2005. “The Scams Are Out There!,” by Nancy Breen first appeared in Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market 2004. “Literary Agents: What They Do and How to Get One” first appeared n Writer’s Market 2004. “A Writer’s Guide to Money,” by Gary Provost, first appeared in Writer’s Market 1995. “Smooth Sailing for Full-Time Freelance Writing,” by John F. Lauerman first appeared in Writer’s Market 1998. “The Art of Negotiation,” by Gregg Levoy first appeared in Writer’s Market 1999. “Book Contract Clinic: Quick Fixes for Bad Clauses,” by Stephen E. Gillen, Esq., first appeared in Writer’s Market 2001. “In Defense of the Short Story,” by Lee K. Abbott first appeared in Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market 2001. “More Than Form: The Novel and the Story,” by Jack Heffron, first appeared in Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market 1991. “Why True-Life Stories Don’t Make Good Fiction,” by Alyce Miller, first appeared in Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market 1995. “Weaving Plot and Subplot,” by Donna Levin, first appeared in Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market 1994. “Plotting the Mystery Novel,” by Judith Greber/Gillian Roberts, was excerpted from You Can Write a Mystery, Writer’s Digest Books, 1999. “How to Write Today’s Horror,” by D.W. Taylor, first appeared in Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market 1990. “Not Just Happily Ever After: Writing Real Romance,” by Jennifer Crusie, first appeared in Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market 2001. “Believability in Science Fiction and Fantasy,” by David Gerrold, was excerpted from Worlds of Wonder: How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy, Writer’s Digest Books, 2001. “Jump-Start Your Fiction Through Your Characters, by John Tibbetts, first appeared in Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market 1991. “Adding Life With Dialogue,” by Monica Wood, first appeared in Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market 1991. “Writing the Query That Sells,” by Suzanne Kirk, first appeared in Fiction Writer’s Market 1984. “Agents’ Roundtable” first appeared in Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market 1991. “The Big Challenges of Publishing in Little Magazines,” by Will Allison, first appeared in Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market 2002. “The Serious Business of Choosing Literary Fiction,” by Ben Nyberg first appeared in Fiction Writer’s Market 1986. “Superior Bambini and Other Samples from the Slush,” by David Groff first appeared in Fiction Writer’s Market 1986. “Rejection Slips: A Writer’s Guide to What They Mean,” by Will Allison, first appeared in Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market 2005. “Self-Promotion: Maximizing Your Novel’s Visibility,” by W.E. Reinka, first appeared in Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market 2006. “Where to Get Great Article Ideas,” by Greg Daugherty, first appeared in Writer’s Market 2002. “The Art of the Interview,” by Philip Gerard, was excerpted from Creative Nonfiction, Writer’s Digest Books, 1996. “The Real Deal: Writing Memoir,” by David Vann, first appeared in Writer’s Digest, October 2006. “Take Back the Essay!,” by Bill Roorbach, was excerpted from Writing Life Stories, Story Press, 1998. “Travel Writing: From Journal to First Draft,” by L. Peat O’Neil, was excerpted from the second edition of Travel Writing, Writer’s Digest Books, 2006. “The Creative Magazine Query Letter,” by Art Spikol, first appeared in Writer’s Market 1980. “Writing an Irresistible Book Proposal,” by Michael Larsen, was adapted from the third edition of How to Write a Book Proposal, Writer’s Digest Books, 2004. “Analyzing a Magazine from the Outside In,” by Lisa Collier Cool, first appeared in Writer’s Market 1998. “How to Break in to Popular Magazines,” by Jenna Glatzter, first appeared in Writer’s Market 2005. “Sell It Again Sam: Reprints and Rewrites,” by Gordon Burgett, first appeared in Writer’s Market 2000. “Make More Money With Sidebars,” by Gordon Burgett, first appeared in Writer’s Market 1999. “Lost in the Woods of Plot? Here’s a Way Out,” by Bonny Becker, first appeared in Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market 2004. “Picture Books 101: Pay Attention to Structure,” by Darcy Pattison, first appeared in Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market 2003. “Is It Really a Crime to Write in Rhyme?,” by Barbara J. Odanaka, first appeared in Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market 2002. “The New Rules of Teen Lit,” by Megan McCafferty, first appeared in Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market 2007. “Historical Fiction: Bringing the Past to Life,” by Deborah Hopkinson, first appeared in Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market 2001. “Nonfiction: Can Informational Books Be Sexy?,” by Kathleen Krull, first appeared in Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market 1999. “Getting Back in the Saddle for a Tough Revision,” by Christine Kole Maclean, first appeared in Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market 2006. “Writing Groups: Succeeding Together,” by Sara Grant, first appeared in Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market 1999. “The Synopsis: Short But Power-Packed,” by Sue Bradford Edwards, first appeared in Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market 2004. “Writing & Promoting Books for Babies & Toddlers,” by Hope Vestergaard, first appeared in Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market 2003. “Oh, the Places I’ve Been! Promoting Your Children’s Book,” by Esther Hershenhorn, first appeared in Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market 2000. “Writing for the School & Library Market,” by JoAnn Early Macken, first appeared in Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market 2006. “Head of the Class: A Guide to Successful School Visits,” by Kelly Milner Halls, first appeared in Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market 2005. “License Writing Opens Doors,” by Sue Bradford Edwards, first appeared in Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market 2005. “Surviving the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Review,” by Jeffrey Lee, first appeared in Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market 2005. “Great Expectations: Conferences Make a Difference,” by Darcy Pattison, first appeared in Children’s Writer’s & Illustrator’s Market 2001. “Elixir of the Spirit: Finding Fresh Subject Matter,” by John Drury, was excerpted from Creating Poetry, Writer’s Digest Books, 1991. “The Unspeakable Nature of Trauma,” by Fred Marchant, was reprinted from Poet’s Market 2003. “Ten Ways to Improve Your Poetry With Haiku,” by Michael Dylan Welch, first appeared in Poet’s Market 2005. The translation of Bashô’s “old pond” is from William J. Higginson with Penny Harter, The Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku, copyright © 1985, published by Kodansha International, by permission of William J. Higginson. “thunderclap” is from To Hear the Rain: Selected Haiku of Peggy Lyles, published by Brooks Books, Decatur, Illinois, 2002, by permission of Peggy Willis Lyles. “meteor shower” is from Frogpond XXIV:1, Spring 2001, by permission of Michael Dylan Welch. “The Sonnet: Ten Ways to Improve Your Own ‘Little Song,’” by William Baer, was excerpted from Writing Metrical Poetry, Writer’s Digest Books, 2006. “A Moment of Intensity: ‘The Minute’ Form,” by Cathy Smith Bowers, first appeared in Poet’s Market 2007. All poems in that article from A Book of Minutes [Iris Press], ©2004; reprinted by permission of Iris Press. “Carried Away: Free Verse” and “Out of the Trunk: Approaching Publication,” by Judson Jerome, were excerpted from The Poet’s Handbook, Writer’s Digest Books, 1980. “Revision: Finding the Heart of the Poem,” by Amy Ratto, first appeared in Poet’s Market 2005. “Meet the Poetry Community Through Open Readings,” by Carolyn Peyser, first appeared in Poet’s Market 1996. “In Praise of the Humble Chapbook,” by Vivé Griffith, first appeared in Poet’s Market 2004. “The Art of Self-Promotion,” by Leah Maines, first appeared in Poet’s Market 2002.
Permissions 387
INDEX
A Added value, 47 Advanced reading copies (ARCs), 31–32 Advances, 47–48 Agents author attraction, increase, 144–145 author judgment, 146–147 business manager role, 148 roundtable, 144–148 usage, decision, 166 American Booksellers Association, 286 American Library Association, 286 Anapestic meter, 352–353 Animals, poetry, 318–319 Anthologies, scams, 35–36 Articles ideas, discovery, 179 resale, 47 Association of Booksellers for Children, 286 Association of Writers & Writing Programs, 12–13 Author/illustrator visit defining, 296–297 fees, 299 hosts, defining, 297–298 process, 298 productiveness, 298–299 Authors. See Writers Authors Guild, 13 Awards, entry, 10
B Baby books
388
arts and crafts, 281–282 book event, ground rules, 284 online resources, 281 readers, impact, 282–283 writing/promoting, 280 Background facts, 185–186 Bargaining power, usage, 59–60 Book completion, resources, 210 Book contract clinics, 63 Book doctors, scams, 35 Book hook, 209 Book proposal assembly, 208–210 author description, 210 book length, 209 introduction, 208 opportunity, 212–213 outline, 211–212 sample, 211–212 overview, 209–210 sample chapter, 212 writing, 208 Books, reading (importance), 180 Bookstore appearances, 177–178 Brand name, construction, 174–175 Business cards, creation, 375–376 Business plan, usage, 53–55 Buyers, lists (compilation), 175
C Chapbook, 370 early editions, 370–372 preparation, advice, 371 publication, value, 373–374 publishing, growth, 372–373 Characters action, usage, 130
care, 166 change, display, 82–83 creation. See Composite characters; Smart characters development, 81–82 impact, 125, 163 inclusion, decisions, 277 naming, 126 revelation, dialogue (usage), 135–137 Children, co-authoring, 4 Children’s books guidebooks, 287–288 homework, assignments, 286–287 instructions, 288 opinions, understanding, 308 promoting, 285 promotional tools, 288–289 rejections, 306–310 reviews, problems, 306–310 rules, 285–286 Collaborative bargaining, 59 Composite characters, creation, 128 Conferences, 311 career boost, 313–314 expectations, 314 exploitation, 311–312 inspiration, 312 people, interaction, 312–313 selection process, 313 success, advice, 314 Connections, making, 376 Contests, entry, 10, 11 Contracts details, importance, 64–74 negotiation, 147–148 strategy, 67–69
The Craft & Business of Writing
Control, taking, 19–20 Copyrights, negotiation, 72–74 Cover letter. See Reprints Creative magazine, query letter, 203 editor rejections, 206 mistakes, avoidance, 204–205 writing, 203–204 process, 205–206
D Dactylic meter, 353 Deadline, usage, 4, 28 Description, 166 inference, distinction, 325–326. See also Haiku Details, importance, 164 Dialect, writing (problems), 137–138 Dialogue absence, usefulness, 138–139 tags, 133–135 usage, 131. See also Characters; Story
E Editing, importance, 31 Editors ideas approach, 182–183 theft, possibility, 181–182 interaction, rules, 19 job appreciation, 162 manuscript reading time, allowance, 167 meeting, 218 relationship. See Writers revisions, 265, 267, 269 workloads, reduction, 7–8 Educational publisher defining, 290–291 discovery, 291–292 Electronic rights, 49 English sonnet (Shakespearean sonnet), 332–333 Essay writing, 194 characteristic, 196 conversational style, 195–196 expertise, usage, 196 Exercise, usage, 28 Experiences, writing, 218
F Fellowships, application, 13 Fiction jumpstarting, 125 synopsis, 275
usefulness, 162–163 Financial advice, 54 First serial rights, 49 Freelancers characteristics, 50–52 charges, amount, 55–56 toolboxes, 52–53 Freelance writing, 50 Free verse, 338 continuation, 353–354 discussion, 346–347 examples, 339–346 form, 343–344 imagery, 343–344 intensity/rhythm, 342–343 line length, 339–342 measure, 344–346 metrical poetry, contrast, 351, 353 pace, 343–344 problems, 348–349 Freewriting, 27
G Gestural pauses, 133–135 Grants, application, 13
H Haiku concrete images, focus, 323–324 definition, proposal, 327 description/inference, distinction, 325–326 form, discovery, 327–328 formal devices, control, 327 immediacy/accessibility, 326–327 juxtaposition, trust, 329–330 objectivity/subjectivity, control, 325 research, 330 seasonal rhythms, usage, 328–329 senses, usage, 324–325 usage, 323 Historical fiction, 254 decision, 254–255 format, discovery, 256 notepads, usage, 254 research, 254 initiation, 255 story, crafting, 256–257 writing, reasons, 257 History, stories (discovery), 255–256 Home, writing time, 1–2 Horror novels appeal, 106–108
believability, 114 characters, importance, 110–111 checklist, 115–116 gore, amount, 112 guessing game, 113–114 plot/pace, 111–112 readers avoidance, 112–113 demands, 108–109 setting, 111 suspense, 109–110 violence, problems, 114 writing process, 106
I Iambic meter, 352 Ideas, exploitation, 182 Imagination, usage, 164 Informational books, appeal, 258 International Reading Association, 286 Interviews, 184 answers, listening, 188–189 listening, importance, 187 location, 186 physical surroundings, 187–188 process, 185–188 questions, 186 quality, 188–189 reasons, 185 recordation process, 186 subject statements, attention, 187 Italian sonnet (Petrarchan sonnet), 332
J Job, writing time, 2–3 Journal entries impression, 200 usage, 199–201 Juxtaposition, trust. See Haiku
K Knowledge, usage, 11
L Language, usage, 165–166 Leads, usage, 7 Librarians, interaction, 262 Library market, writing, 290 editor perspective, 294–295 ideas, exploitation, 292 process, 293–294 searching/researching, 292–293 submission, 294 License writing, 300
Index 389
authors, initiation examples, 302 benefits, 303–304 challenges, 303 disadvantages, 304–305 entry, 300–301 process, 301 preparation, 301–303 Life clichés, avoidance, 90–91 drama, 318 Listening, importance, 181 Literary agents contacting, basics, 42–43 nonusage, 41 scams, 35 usefulness, 39–41 Literary fiction acceptance, 156–159 affects, 154–155 authority, 158–159 complexity, 158 criterion, 160 efficiency, 157–158 excellence, 155–156 honesty, 156–157 originality, 159 selection, 154 Literary magazines challenges, 149 editor, ally, 150 feedback, appreciation, 152–153 multiple submissions, simultaneous submissions (contrast), 152 recognition, 149–151 rejection, handling, 153 story, submission, 151–152 Local newspapers, contact, 377 Local radio/television stations, contact, 378 Local subjects, writing, 218
M Magazines advertisements, importance, 216 analysis, 214 announcements, examination, 216 approach/aspirations, 217–218 articles, analysis, 215 audacity, 220 columns, usage, 215–216 covers, 214 departments, 215–216 editor page, 216 entry process, 217 letters to the editor, 216
390
reading, importance, 180 table of contents, examination, 214–216 turnaround times, 172 Manuscripts flaws, 163–164 mechanics, 167 salability, increase, 21 submission, 69–71 Marketing plan, 32 questions, 33 Market requirements, learning, 5–6 Media coverage, garnering, 11 usage, 14–15 Memberships/affiliations, usefulness, 12–13 Memoir writing, 190 antagonist, discovery, 193 initiation, 191–192 narrative, action, 192 protagonist approach, 191 engagement, 192 scenes, usage, 191 selection/emphasis, 190 truth factor, 192 Merchandise, handling, 178 Metrical feet, usage, 352–353 Metrical poetry completion, 350–351 craft, learning, 348 initiation, 349–350 Minute (poem form), 334–337 Modern Postcard, 286 Modified reprints, 225 Money myths, 44–45 rights, 49 writer’s guide, 44 Montaigne, Michel de (essayist), 195 Mystery novel midsection, 101–103 plot clichés, avoidance, 104 plotting, 99 problem, presentation, 100–101 scenes, analysis, 104–105 subplots, 104
N National Federation of State Poetry Societies, 358 National Writers Union (NWU), 38
Negotiation approach, 61–62 art, 58 homework, 63–64 importance, 56–57 tactics, 62 Networking, 12, 376 News hooks, invention, 175–176 Newspapers contact. See Local newspapers reading, importance, 180 Noncompete agreements, 71–72 Nonfiction, 258 advice, 259–262 back matter, 261 competition, knowledge, 260 genre, avoidance (problems), 259–260 librarians, interaction, 262 material (focus), time (investment), 260 passion, exploitation, 261 reading list, 262–263 visual approach, 260–261 writing, quality (importance), 261 Notebooks, usage, 4 Novels, 79 dynamic, 85–86 plot/pace/structure, 83–84 visibility, maximization, 174
O Objectivity/subjectivity, control. See Haiku Occasions, subject matter, 316–317 One-time rights, 49 Online reading, importance, 180 On spec writing, 219 Ordinary world, problems (establishment), 235
P Passions, exploitation, 7 PEN, 13 People, subject matter, 316 Perfectionism, problem, 25 Periodicals, pay rates, 45–46 Per-word basis, payment, 56 Petrarchan sonnet. See Italian sonnet Picture books, 238 dummy book, usage, 243 effort, 241–242 illustrations, 239–240 narrative arcs, 239
The Craft & Business of Writing
pages, responsibilities, 241–242 problems, 242 storyboard, usage, 243 structure, 238–239 story, addition, 240–241 submission, 242–243 visual pacing, 240 vocabulary, 240–241 Place, cultivation, 317 Plants, poetry, 318–319 Plot. See Subplot difficulties, 97–98 interaction. See Theme issues, 231 problems, questions, 236 spoilers, absence, 275–276 weaving, 93 Poems. See Thing poem cessation, knowledge, 357 collection, book form (publication), 361–364 feedback, obtaining, 356–357 minute form, 334–337 open mic event emcees, protocol, 369 initiation, 368–369 open readings, 366 locating, 367–368 nervousness, 366–367 publication approach, 358 research, 359 revision, 355 setting, 317 specifics, focus, 356 submissions, preparation, 359–361 Poetry community, interaction, 366 groups, contact, 358–359 improvement, 323 learning. See Metrical poetry reward, 364–365 slams, 368 writing, initiation, 349–350 Point of view, 84–85 writing, 126–127 Postage, usage, 8 Premise, theme (contrast), 233–234 Problem solving, 17–19 Promoters, lists (compilation), 175 Promotional angles, invention, 175–176 Protagonist. See Memoir writing Publication initiation, 29–33
leverage, 63 rush, avoidance, 38 Public reading, value, 376–377 Public relations personnel, interaction, 181 Public speaking, 14 Published authors, habits, 5 Publishers, knowledge, 166 Publishers Weekly, 286 Pyrrhic meter, 352
Q Query letters advice, 142–143 continuation/repetition, 219–220 editor, impact, 141 elements, 205 formatting advice, 143 impact, 140 sample, 207 writing, 140–143, 166
R Radio appearances, 177–178 Radio stations, contact. See Local radio/television stations Readability test, 22–23 Readers hooking, 7 senses, usage, 128–129 Reading, importance, 180 Referrals, importance, 145–146 Rejection exploitation, 171–173 language, interpretation, 170–171 personal note, 170 slips, understanding, 169 types, 170 Reprints, 221–225. See also Modified reprints buyers, discovery, 222–223 cover letter, 223–225 selling process, 222 summary, 226 Research, importance, 163–164 Research test, 23–24 Research time, efficiency, 46 Residency programs, application, 13 Revisions, 264. See also Poems action, 266–269 analogies, usage, 268 completion, 269 concentration, 266
deadlines, 266 discussion, 265–266 editors, assistance, 267 Revision test, 24 Rewrites, 221, 225–226 summary, 226 Rhyme writing creativity, importance, 245–246 problems, 244 quality, 244–245 reasons, 246–247 story, importance, 245 submissions, 247 Romance novels conflict, absence (myth), 118–119 happy endings, myth, 118 myths, 117–120 similarity, myth, 117–118 soft porn, myth, 119 women’s fiction, relationship (myth), 119–120 writing, 120–121 Royalties, 47–48 contract strategy, 67–69 Rules, observation/breaking, 6–7
S Scams, 34–36 victim, 35 warning signs, 36–38 School events advice, 296 hosts, defining, 297–298 process, 298 productivity, 298–299 visit fees, 299 School market, writing, 290 editor perspective, 294–295 ideas, exploitation, 292 process, 293–294 searching/researching, 292–293 submission, 294 Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. (SFWA), 38 Science fiction/fantasy, 122 bolognium, impact, 122–123 Second serial rights, 49 Self-doubt, problem, 25 Self-promotion, 174 art, 375 Shakespearean sonnet. See English sonnet Short stories creativity, 80 dynamic, 85–86 usefulness, 75–78
Contributors 391
Sidebars, 227 editor usage, selection, 228 query letter selection, location/ timing, 229–230 selection, 228–229 selling process, 228–229 alternatives, 230 usage, timing, 227 value, 230 Skills, cultivation, 8 Slams. See Poetry Sleep, writing time, 3–4 Slush piles, 161 Smart characters, creation, 129–130 Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, 286 Sonnets, 331. See also English sonnet; Italian sonnet example, 331–332 origins, 332 themes, difficulties, 333 Spondaic meter, 352 Star Trek mistake, avoidance, 123–124 Story assembly, 235 audience, 270 beginning, characteristics, 232 cycles, 232–235 elements, commonness, 231–235 escape, 232 home, return, 234–235 poems, creation, 315–316 quality, 163 quest, 233 readings, recommendations, 237 repetition, of topics in magazines, 183 revelation, dialogue (usage), 131–132 self-analysis, importance, 236–237 ultimate test, 234 Structure test, 21–22 Style test, 23 Subconscious, exploitation, 179–180 Subject matter, selection, 315 selection, 315 Subject hook, 209 Subplot. See Thematic subplot action, 95–96 social context, 96–97
392
weaving, 93 Subsidiary rights, 48, 49 Subsidy publishers (vanity publishers), avoidance, 34 Success, usage, 10–11
Truth examination, 88–90 factor. See Memoir writing invention, 88
U
Suspense, 109–110
Ultimate test, defining, 234, 235
Synopsis, 275. See also Fiction opening, approach, 277–279 voice, decision, 279 writing, difficulty, 278
V Vacation, writing time, 3
W
T
Web sites, creation, 176–177
Technobabble, science (confusion, avoidance), 123–124
Wit, 165–166
Teen literature, 248 angst, avoidance (rule), 252 pop culture references, avoidance/usage (rule), 251–252 rules, 249–253 breaking, lessons, 250–253 sex/drugs, noninclusion (rule), 249–250 slang, avoidance/usage (rule), 251–252 sophistication, rule, 250–251 writing, avoidance (rule), 252–253
Writers (authors) agent attraction, chances (increase), 144–145 community, entry, 11 editors, relationship, 16–17, 30–31 encouragement, 167–168 readers, equivalence, 8 selection, 183 warranties/representations/indemnities, 64–67 work, agent marketing, 147–148
Television appearances, 177–178 Television stations, contact. See Local radio/television stations Thematic subplot, 93–94
Work, amount, 219
Writer’s block causes, 25–26 cures, 26–28 overcoming, 25 Writing career, construction, 9 conferences, attendance, 11 efficiency, 46–47 focus, 15 quality, 6 absence, realization, 9–10 time, scheduling, 4
Theme contrast. See Premise decision, 235 plot, interaction, 97 Thing poem, 319 Time management, 1 problem, 26 Toddler books arts and crafts, 281–282 book event, ground rules, 284 online resources, 281 readers, impact, 282–283 writing/promoting, 280 Trauma, 320 poetry, usage, 321–323 Traveling, writing time, 3 Travel journal entries, usage, 201–202 Travel writing, 197 journal/first draft, process, 198–202 True-life stories advice, 91–92 fiction quality (problems), 87
Writing groups, 270 benefits, 270–271 constructive criticism, 271 critiquing, advice, 273–274 dedication/motivation, 271 details, 272–273 encouragement/celebration, 271 initiation, 271–272 leader, decision, 272 meeting, location/timing, 272–273 objective viewpoints, 270–271 patience/commitment, 274 problem solving/brainstorming, 271 resources, sharing, 271 Web options, 274
The Craft & Business of Writing
