Writers need readers before a book is published

Mind you, writers need readers after publication too, but as a book is being written a good reader is crucial to the process. I can't imagine writing without feedback. It's how writing works: we write; they read. This vital connection is necessary throughout the writing of a book, from first draft to last.

I've mentioned that Annie is reading Xmas Carol (update: Annie's done and she really liked it!). As she read the book, our intrepid full-time commenter sent me messages about what didn't work for her (along with effusive messages about what did work). This is so helpful.

As a writer, you never know how readers are going to respond to your words. You have some notion about how they might react but until an actual reader gets his or her hands on your book, you're working in the dark. Don't get me wrong: it's fun in the dark! But sometimes we need to look out, and readers provide a window.

My sister Maria has been my main reader through the writing of three books. She notices inconsistencies and contradictions, which is very important. It's a gift to me when a reader notices something is wrong. Now I can fix it!

I completely altered the trajectory of my second sci-fi book (more about this in the coming months) to allay Maria's concerns. It's a different book now directly because of her input. With a well-aimed critique, I'm able to rework a story in a way that makes it better -- sometimes much better. Annie did this for me as well with Xmas Carol. Her comments were spot-on and I'm going to rework some things as a result.

The only way a writer can get reader's insights is by having readers. I'm lucky to have helpful souls like Maria, cousin Carmine, Annie and five or six other readers in my life. Constructive input makes a big difference to one's writing.

A PS to budding writers: Let someone in. I know you're afraid to show your work to others but give it a shot. And then put your ego aside and listen to what your reader tells you. Just listen. Hear every word your reader says and consider the possibility that the reader's perspective may be accurate. Doing this may shake you up -- but a good shaking-up can be helpful. Don't be afraid. Hand your work to someone you trust and then cross your fingers. Heck, maybe you'll get an excellent reaction. You never know.

Waiting for the reviews is part of being a writer. So get yourself some reviews. If you pay attention to what your readers tell you, I promise you'll become a better writer.

Editing pitfalls

So Annie is reading Xmas Carol. I'll leave it to her to tell you what she thinks of the book. But while reading it, Annie brought something interesting to my attention.

In Xmas Carol, it's the year 2030 and there are some new tech toys on the scene. I called one of the inventions "Lasers" at the beginning of the book -- but Annie noticed the name morphed into "Visors" in later chapters. Okay, that's not so weird, right? I'm human, I made a mistake.

But the strange thing is that I've edited this book at least ten times and never noticed this. How could that be? It's not like I'm a sloppy editor; I'm damn good. But it got past me -- again and again. I wondered why and came up with a notion, a strange notion.

My mind couldn't see the mistake because of the trail my brain left on those early chapters when I wrote them. When I returned to the early chapters to edit them, my brain automatically slipped into its former mindset. The reason I couldn't see the error was because when I wrote those lines, that was the proper name for the tech toy. So my mind was effectively blind to the error. Is that weird or what? It's the only explanation I can come up with.

I did this once before in a book, with a character's name. It was one name -- and it magically changed to another, again without me noticing. In both cases, by the way, I kept the morphed (latter) version. In Xmas Carol we have Visors, not Lasers. Anyway, this is one reason why writers need readers. Thanks, Annie!

This ends today's installment of "Brains: Totally Weird".

Paying my debts to fictional characters

So what's been going on around here? Nothing? Same old, same old? Well, I've been editing and something new cropped up. It's interesting.

Morality is a huge chunk of the story of Xmas Carol. My idea was to present atheists in utterly strange situations so people could see that they have no problem identifying the right thing to do -- without resorting to any god nonsense. Well, I've decided this heightened sense of morality produced certain debts that I, as the author, must pay to my characters.

Up till now, I had left two background characters out at the end of the story, as if what happened to them was inconsequential. I've decided they deserve better so I'm crafting conclusions for their personal stories. I don't want to leave anyone out; that would be rude. Just because they're fictional doesn't mean they don't care. Truly, the debt feels personal. I know and like these characters. What could I have been thinking, omitting their endings? Anyway, problem rectified. Everybody's got an ending now.

So, anything new around here? Anybody want to de-lurk or tell a story? Maybe reveal a secret? Hit the comment button.

Still plucking

I'm continuing with my latest edit of Xmas Carol. I swear, it's amazing -- this must be my 14th time through the book and I'm still finding things to cut.

The golden rule about deciding whether something belongs in your book is simple. If it doesn't further the plot, it doesn't belong in the book. So by now I should have axed all the chaff, it being so simple to spot, and all. Yet I continue to bump into these little nuggets -- maybe five lines or a paragraph -- that are not essential and, worse, are not connected to anything else in the story.

I scream "Aha!" and lunge at the offending bit, plucking it out of the book with a huge pair of virtual tweezers. Poof. It's gone. But I'm amazed to find these things in the book at this point in the process. How could I not have spotted those offending lines during my last 13 passes through the story? It almost freaks me out.

But I am seeing these things now and I'm tossing them out of the book. Soon, very soon, there will be only essential text in the book. But as I've said here before: phew! What a long process this is. First I had to learn how to write an interesting novel, and then I had to learn to edit like a pro.  

"When you see a need you cannot fill, you learn the skill and fill it." -- Keith O'Connor.

That's always been my motto. And it's a good thing too, or I might have gotten lost along the way with this "becoming a writer" thing. What can I say? I'm still learning. In fact, to be a writer is to learn. It's the way it is.

Making a scene sing

When I read a draft of one of my books, I assess its worth as I go along. One of the things I ask myself about a scene is, "Does it sing?" What is the special element about this scene that will stay with a reader? What makes the scene? And if that element is missing, I have some work to do.

For example, imagine you've written a scene where a conversation is going on between two people in a quiet music room. You thought you wrote it well but as you read it again, an idea occurs to you.

You decide to include a metronome keeping time atop the piano. In the silences between the words of the couple, it is always there, monotonously ticking, as if asking them to keep pace. It lends a sense of tension and inevitability to the scene. Now it sings.

I think we have to ask this question with every scene. What's special about it that will make it memorable for readers? If this component is missing, it's time to re-imagine the scene and come up with a fresh angle, something that lifts it to a higher level.

In the end, it's a bit like touring your home right after you've decorated it. You look into each room and ask, "Does this room really work?" And maybe you realize the lighting in one of the rooms needs a little help. So you create illumination that showcases the best design elements of the room. And suddenly it sings. Quick, call Architectural Digest!

This has to occur in a unique way for every scene in the book. If that special something isn't there you may have a scene that works but is easily forgotten. Think about it in a design sense: what could you add to perfect it? What would give the scene added texture, fragrance, luminosity, allure? Until you answer this question I don't think you're done.

At least, this is how I do it in my books. What about you?

Work Update: editing Xmas Carol

Yesterday and today I drank a ton of espresso and edited Xmas Carol. As I said in a recent post, this is my current push: to get Xmas Carol into final form and out the door to a potential publisher. I'm on the case.

It's been fascinating. My specific task during this edit/rewrite is to decide what to cut. What survives the cutting process will be the final draft of the book. I've never done anything like this before. Cut entire scenes?! It seemed like blasphemy at first glance but that is exactly what I'm doing. Readers like the book but think it's too long. And when I asked them what they liked least, thinking that might point me toward an area to cut, none wanted to lose anything. It seems it's up to me to figure out how to wield the axe.

Today, I suddenly began to understand my job when I saw how some scenes sparkled and moved things along swiftly, while others seemed like detours. Today I axed an entire scene, plus I carved away a large section of another. Poof, they're gone (though due to the magic of Scrivener, they're only hidden from view).

I get it! I'm beginning to see the underlying book, the essential text. It's like being a paleobiologist -- I see the creature hiding in the fossil. And I like it!

I swear, everything about writing is a learning experience. It's as if the book exists within a heavy mist and it's finally becoming visible to me. This editing process is going to blow away the mist and leave a gleaming, streamlined story behind. 

(See how happy I am? I'm mixing my metaphors like mad!)

It this a painful experience? Yes. But anything that moves the book forward is a positive thing. Therefore I applaud it. You have to go with the flow, wherever it may lead. I'm very pleased with what's happening.

Reading "The Worlds"

It's very peaceful in the country, something I never suspected when I lived in Manhattan. Or maybe I thought "peaceful" meant boring. Turns out I like it. This is a photo of the pond in my backyard. (When the water vapor rises from the pond surface like that, I always hope a dinosaur will pop out. Never happens. Darn!)  I'm still amazed that I don't live in a concrete jungle anymore. Mind you, I loved my concrete jungle and cast no aspersions in NYC's direction.

As promised, I began reading my first sci-fi book, The Worlds, today. I was hesitant to begin. After not looking at it for over a year, would I be in for a rude awakening? Would I learn that I've been dreaming for the past two years and the book isn't good? I still get those fears from time to time.

But lo and behold, I'm enjoying it a lot. I tried to read it as an ePub on my Sony Reader at first, but that didn't work. I can't look at my words without an urge to improve them, so I went to the computer and read it in Scrivener instead. This gave me the freedom to change a word here and there, not that I did very much of this. It sounded fine.

In fact, I think it sounded quite good. I'd be proud to release this to the public, and I suspect that time is not far off. Hang on, the book is coming.

LGBT characters

Are there gay characters in my books?  Of course -- because there are gay people in the world.  My books reflect reality. 

But am I a "gay writer"?  Well, I'm gay and I'm a writer but I don't see myself as a "gay writer", in that it's not the main thrust of my books.  They are sci-fi or horror, not gay.  But in most of my books there will be gay characters. 

Of my first three books, two contain gay characters and one doesn't.  As for the one that doesn't, it's not that I said, "Oh, I think I'll leave gay people out of this book."  It just so happened that the characters I visualized for that book were straight.  That's because there are also straight people in the world, and I have no problem with straight people.  They're fine.

Gay people, trans people, lesbians, and bisexuals will never be portrayed as "lesser than" in my books.  Equality is my middle name.  Respect will always be shown to gay-related issues.

One of the helpful things about science fiction is that by definition, it pretty much always takes place in the future.  In terms of gay people, this is great because I can jump to a world where gay people are not considered odd at all.  In my third book, two of the main characters are a man and his husband.  It's totally normal in the book because it's 2030.  Anti-gay stuff is a thing of the past in America, with the exception of outlying, little, pointy heads here and there.

I like the idea of presenting gay characters as normal people, and that's what I do.  Until a day comes when we're considered a regular part of the human race (and we're not there yet, not at all), then I think it's important to present positive images of us all.

I think my tally so far is that I've got two main gay characters in one book, along with a trans character, and in another book, there are two main gay characters.  That's a pretty solid showing for gay people, I think.

But they're far outnumbered by straight people in every book -- because that's the way it is in the real world.  I like the real world.  So in the end, I don't think I'll be seen as a gay writer, though certainly as a gay-friendly one.  That's fine with me.

Structure

I didn't think too much about structure before I began writing my novels.  I don't mean that I didn't think through the story idea, looking at where it needed to go, and how I could get the reader there.  I did that.  But "structure", as in how often a type of scene or device appeared in the book, was something I only saw in retrospect.  It just happened as I was writing the books.

On the other hand, I did spend time thinking about today's reading audience before I began, and continued to think of my potential audience as I wrote the books.  There are so many people today who don't read.  And of those who do, most seem to read books that don't challenge them.  They're not looking for ideas, they're looking for diversion.

Not only do people not read much, but they have no staying power when they do.  I had a friend who used to say that some people possess the "attention span of a flea."  Such people are legion today.  So how was I going to tell a tale to people who have a tiny attention span and don't like to read?

One obvious answer was to keep all the scenes short.  No section in any of my books goes on at length.  To address the attention-span issue head-on, I decided to keep moving, to stay with nothing for too long.  I adopted a technique of jumping from character to character in my scenes.  First a scene about this one, then we visit another character, and so on.  It's essentially a method to avoid boredom on the part of readers, and I find the result compelling.

Plus, when it's written like this, readers can easily finish a scene and put the book down for a bit.  When they return, it's never to the middle of a scene, where they're flipping backward to remind themselves of what happened.  Each time they pick the book up again, a totally fresh scene greets them.  It's kind of like watching an "episode".

And because each scene has, I like to think, a magical element to it, the book encourages the reader to absorb the book a scene at a time.  I hope people will walk away from each scene with a sense of wonder, and that they'll continue to think about the ideas the scene brought up.  Then they can come back when they're ready and read another scene (or two). I suspect this will work well with today's rushed, multi-tasking, attention-limited audiences.

One of my readers, a male, told me, "There was never one page where I was bored."  This was a comment about "The Worlds," the first book of the sci-fi trilogy.  This is the highest compliment I can be paid by readers.  I thought, "It worked!"

In the two sci-fi books, I included a type of section that is not typical in fiction.  The sections appear in almost every chapter in the second book, and in every other chapter of the first.  Each of these sections provides four vignettes that paint a vivid picture of the strange worlds which a new technology has created.  I included the sections as breaks in the story, something to inject a bit of fresh air.  Each is a tale that will either surprise the reader or make her smile.  I'm told by most of my readers that these were their favorite parts of the books.

In those two books, there is indeed a structure punctuated by the appearance of the vignette sections.  I have to admit, however, that they appeared not by design but rather organically.  They just grew themselves onto the page because they seemed necessary.  For readers to have a global view of the action in the book, they needed to see it all.  This device let me show many strange and interesting ideas to readers.

So that was the structure: a friendly, easy-to-read story with the vignette sections to provide a break and some extra goosebumps.  Seemed to work.  I haven't had any complaints.

One other technique, before closing.  In the second sci-fi book, "The Pod, the God and the Planet", I opened each chapter with an excerpt from a book written by one of the characters.  He is a trusted journalist and his book is a commentary on the times in which he lived.  It broadened my brush, because I could use him to discuss the changes that were happening on the Earth.  It even gave me a place to muse about the goings-on, and to speak about what they might mean for humanity in the long run.   I think this device worked too.

Again, I didn't plan this structure beforehand.  I find these things do indeed happen organically.  As I was writing the Pod book, I found I was writing sections that were not part of the story.  They were grand overviews of the cultural changes on Earth.  I liked them, but how could I use them?

Duh.  I realized my main character was a writer who could easily have written these things.  So I transformed them into excerpts from "his" book, and that's how these sections came to open every chapter.  Hopefully, if I can publish the books in 2011, readers can chime in on how they reacted to these devices.

Beyond that, I vowed to use simple words when they would suffice.  I want to include readers, not exclude them.  If I can get through to readers, maybe I can open their minds to new ideas.  That's the goal, overall.  That, and to help people see that the future is worth dreaming about and protecting.  We need to understand this in order to manage the world we have today.  Without protective action on our part, there will be no future.

So I say: let us dream of the future.