Once again, I'm contemplating the purpose of writing fiction. I think fiction should primarily entertain. I don't remember which book it was (Stein On Writing by Sol Stein or one of John Gardner's books?) that made the observation that reading a piece of fiction should provide an experience more interesting than not reading it. Or something like that. And I agree. I think there's nothing wrong with simply entertaining. In fact, if a book isn't entertaining, then no matter how much it plays with form or touches on important subjects, it fails. For me, one of the great examples of this problem is Toni Morrison. Of course she's a best-selling writer and a Nobel laureate, and Beloved was voted by a group of publishing professionals to be the greatest American novel of the end of the twentieth century/beginning of the twenty-first. I have read two or three Morrison novels, and although I can analyze them for a literature course or admire the innovative way she tells a story, I simply don't enjoy reading her work. It's an entirely intellectual exercise for me with no emotional connection; the work doesn't resonate and excite me the way reading Hemingway or Roth or Salinger or Carver or so many others does. Of course, this is where the largely subjective nature of the whole thing comes in, and I recognize that regarding Morrison, my opinion is in the minority.
Anyway. The first objective is to engage, to entertain, to provide a dream that is superior to sitting around not reading. But that isn't necessarily enough, unless one is writing genre fiction. Simply being entertaining is fine for a mystery or an adventure story, and even in those cases, I think the best works have some additional resonance, some thematic elements that raise them above merely being a diverting way to spend several hours in another world. For example, The Shining is about the effects of alcoholism and abuse on a family; The Silence of the Lambs is largely about feminist ideals. But if one is writing something that is realistic, that isn't driven by high conflict or enormous events, if one is dealing with the small, the mundane, then I think by necessity the work must offer more than the experience of reading; it must have a lasting impact, leave the reader contemplating ideas. Right?
Here's part of my thinking. I wrote a story years ago about a lonely man who encounters a girl in a coffee shop and the experience affects his life; I brought it in to a grad school workshop, and my professor was able to succinctly express why it wasn't a great story: "Salinger did it first and did it better." Within the past year or so I received a rejection from a literary journal for a story about a young man contemplating having an affair; the rejection itself was a personal note rather than a form rejection slip. The editors informed me that although they wouldn't be publishing the story, they liked my writing and would happily consider more work from me. The problem with the piece I submitted is that it didn't "contribute anything new to a familiar situation." And, like my professor, these editors were exactly right. My story was well written, but it's nothing unique.
I'm not especially interested in experimenting with form and doing anything wildly different. So how do I make my work significant? How do I add something worth paying attention to? If offered a choice between my story and Salinger's, I would recommend that a reader pass over mine in favor of the master's. I'm also not interested in writing plot-driven genre fiction. So, if my work isn't gripping because of the high tension and it isn't reinventing what a story does, why should a reader bother with it? I think the answer might lie in having something worth writing about, some observations about the world that make a reader feel like perhaps they've experienced what it's like to be somebody else or to reconsider experience from another perspective. I think I have to have some sort of intellectual angle or theme that elevates my fiction.
And that is the challenge.
I've recently been working on a short story that I began last summer. When I started it, I had no idea what it was "about." I just had an image of a character in my head and then something happened, and then something else happened; another character came into the scene, and eventually I had a rough draft. I've reconsidered and reevaluated and reconfigured the plot and characters, and I'm at the point now of rewriting the story so that it will likely have little resemblance to the initial version I wrote a few months ago. But the issue I'm struggling with is this: what the hell is the thing is about? I think I've got some interesting plot details and some reasonably engaging characters, but I'm still not sure that the story has anything to say. I have some rough themes that the story touches on--death, loneliness, attempting to make connections with others, the unceasing progress of life--but I'm not sure that I'm actually saying anything about anything. Touching on a theme is not the same as actually having a position. Is it? I remember Stephen King commenting in his On Writing that theme is overrated and tends to come on its own without the writer having to stress over it too much. I suspect he's right, but he also had the advantage of writing plot-driven high tension pieces where theme can elevate the piece but isn't necessarily required to give it its purpose.
So what I wonder, what I've been wondering about more and more for the past year or two, is whether I have anything worth saying to the world. Maybe the best I can hope for is that I'll write stories that others before me have written better. Maybe I'll have one decent story that's basically a Salinger ripoff and another that is a pale version of a Carver story. Is that enough? Can one ever truly hope to add anything new? Is that a completely unrealistic goal that is best abandoned sooner rather than later? I used to shake my head at fellow students who talked about being original because I long felt it was an unattainable objective. I also felt, and still do, that having the goal of making a difference, of changing the world or changing people's minds through one's art is ludicrous to the point of nearly being delusional. Yet somehow, despite knowing that for a long time, I'm still struck by the difficulty of facing that reality. If I truly accept that I can't contribute anything new, then what am I actually trying to do? Is it enough to do something old and do it well? I hope so, but I don't know.
Showing posts with label genre fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label genre fiction. Show all posts
Friday, December 11, 2009
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Further revisions
I have in front of me a story manuscript with many slashes and new words written in red pen as well as some others in blue. On my computer desktop is an open file with a copy of this story and the number "nine," as in the ninth saved draft. Now, I don't always save every new draft as I revise. I try to only save substantial changes as completely new documents. I like to be able to go back occasionally and see previous versions, but it seems excessive to save every adjustment as a new file. So, although this is now the ninth draft, it could well be the fifteenth or twentieth thirty-eight time I've reworked this story, and that's not counting all the drafts from before I separated the piece from the surrounding novel to see if it can stand up on its own.
So I sit down with my marked up manuscript and go to type up changes. Although I only have a few marks indicated on my hard copy for the first sentence, I'm not satisfied with the sentence as I read it over. It's not bad, exactly. But it doesn't flow. It doesn't pop. It suggests a bit of what the story is about, but it doesn't resonate. So I start a new sentence. I begin with a new first word. I change the order. I try three short simple sentences instead of one complex sentence. I alter that again and try two simple, one complex, and a compound sentence. I fiddle and twist. I replace words that seem dull and lifeless with others that have multiple connotations. I consider the story's themes and try to insert phrases or terms into this first sentence that will subtly suggest the themes immediately, or if a reader doesn't pick up on them right away, they will be there on a second reading. I delete and rewrite. I add and subtract. I cut and paste. Finally, I'm a little bit happier. I think there's something reasonably decent there. I have a start to the piece that might encourage a reader to keep going, to think, "maybe this will be interesting; I want to see where this writer takes me."
Twenty minutes, and I have a stronger batch of sixty-four words. Now all I need to do is continue on to the other four thousand, nine hundred. And then return to these sixty-four to find I don't much care for them anymore.
So I sit down with my marked up manuscript and go to type up changes. Although I only have a few marks indicated on my hard copy for the first sentence, I'm not satisfied with the sentence as I read it over. It's not bad, exactly. But it doesn't flow. It doesn't pop. It suggests a bit of what the story is about, but it doesn't resonate. So I start a new sentence. I begin with a new first word. I change the order. I try three short simple sentences instead of one complex sentence. I alter that again and try two simple, one complex, and a compound sentence. I fiddle and twist. I replace words that seem dull and lifeless with others that have multiple connotations. I consider the story's themes and try to insert phrases or terms into this first sentence that will subtly suggest the themes immediately, or if a reader doesn't pick up on them right away, they will be there on a second reading. I delete and rewrite. I add and subtract. I cut and paste. Finally, I'm a little bit happier. I think there's something reasonably decent there. I have a start to the piece that might encourage a reader to keep going, to think, "maybe this will be interesting; I want to see where this writer takes me."
Twenty minutes, and I have a stronger batch of sixty-four words. Now all I need to do is continue on to the other four thousand, nine hundred. And then return to these sixty-four to find I don't much care for them anymore.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Reading Habits
As everybody knows, it's essential as a writer to read in order to gain a greater understanding of how language works, how novels are constructed, how characters are created, what works and what doesn't. Sometimes it's kind of annoying though. Not that reading is annoying. I love reading. But sometimes I wish I could completely submerge into a book and not analyze it at all. Not think like I'm a writer trying to deconstruct. Okay, so it would an exaggeration to imply that my mind is always working like that. Sometimes I do get sucked in and forget about analyzing craft at all. But usually, at some point in a book I have this commentary going on in my brain that is about how it's written rather than what's going to happen next in the story. But the advantage of that is obvious. I feel like I'm always gaining new appreciation for writing that I hope I can then apply to my own work.
When I was a kid I never understood how my dad could read more than one book at a time. He always had a handful of books with bookmarks sticking out of the top. They sat next to his bed in piles. He read often, but what was the point? How could he "get into" a book reading that way? And now I've become him. I haven't counted up the number of books I'm in the middle of right now, but it's probably in the double digits. Some of that is due to the variety of things I read. For instance, I've read some stories from a collection, marked how far I am, but then not returned for a bit. Does that count as being "in the middle" of a book? Or how about a collection of essays? Then there are science books about theories on the brain or addressing big questions of nature versus nurture. Dipping in and out of that over time isn't the same as setting down a novel in the middle, right?
But, alas, I also have several novels I'm in the middle of. Part of the issue is that I don't feel the same obligation to read a book to its conclusion that I felt when I was younger. For the first twenty years or so of my life, I almost never put a book down unfinished without returning to it. If it was boring, well, I had to plod through. If it was interesting but I wasn't quite in the mood for it, too bad. I had to finish that one before I could start another. Now, however, if a book fails to hold my attention, I feel little guilt about setting it down and picking up something else. The problem, however, is that I often am interested in a book, want to finish it, but it's not absolutely compelling me to read, so I set it down with every intention of picking it up only to start another book. So at the moment I'm probably in the middle of a few novels that I plan on finishing, but for whatever reason they weren't holding my interest every second.
So, back to the issue of learning from writing. I've been thinking that it's a good idea to read more widely than I've always done in the past few years. In grad school, they tell you to read widely, but then that's not really what they encourage you to read in classes and for the comps exams. You pretty much stick to "classics" and "literary" stuff. I like a lot of that, sure, but what about the majority of what people actually read. I work at a bookstore, and not only do we only carry a handful of the type of book I studied in grad school, but what we do have, we rarely sell. In fact, the store has probably sold more of that since I started working there than in the previous year because I keep recommending stuff to customers or buying stuff for myself. So when professors tell us to read widely, do they actually mean to read as widely as possible, or do they merely mean we should read both James Joyce and Italo Calvino?
One problem with only studying classics or literary stuff is that it's often difficult to get much from those as far as learning what those writers do. I was reading a Philip Roth book last fall, and rather than thinking, "Ah, here's how he puts this stuff together; I need to try that myself," I kept simply being stunned by how good it was, yet completely unsure why it was so good since he seemed to be breaking a whole slew of the craft rules I learned in workshops. I'm actually not sure how much can be gained by studying the masters. They might simply be so far above the rest of us that they're untouchable.
However, I think we can learn a lot from writers whose work actually sells to normal people. For one thing, there's the major question of why does this appeal to the average reader? That's an issue that is pretty much never addressed in grad school. All the discussion of craft and character and language, and we never really think about what the average paperback buyer is looking for when they choose something to read on the plane. And sometimes, I fully admit, it's easy to dismiss what is popular as "bad" writing. I've picked up a few bestsellers and read a few pages only to shake my head and wonder how anybody can get through this junk. And yet more people are interested in that, so there must be something there, right? I wish my grad school experience had devoted some time to looking carefully at popular genres to deconstruct what is so appealing to so many. About the only time a class touched on those issues was the screenwriting class, and I still feel that class may have been the most useful course I took in grad school. One of the main things we discussed was the need to not bore the audience, which didn't seem to be much of a concern in the workshop courses. Or there was the class on "Forms of Fiction." Rather than thinking of different genres as taking on different forms, our only concern was literary fiction, often classic stuff that (in my view anyway) bears little relevance to twenty-first century writing. I mean the techniques that were cool and innovative two hundred years ago are simply clichéd now, and you can't get away with that.
This post is probably going on too long, but I've got something specific I want to mention. I was working at the bookstore the other day, and it was slow, so I grabbed the nearest book off a display by the register and started reading. As you might guess, the prominently displayed book was a big bestseller, and in this case the cover featured an image from the movie that was just coming out based on the book. All right, I figured, I'll see what the big deal is with this book, why we sell so many, why they made a movie of it, why this writer is rich now. The book was Confessions of a Shopoholic by Sophie Kinsella. So while the store was nearly empty, I read the first few pages. And you know what? I wound up buying the book that day. It is hysterical. And there's a lot to be learned about craft from it. Not only does it present a clear lesson on the value of humor, how that can compel a reader to keep going (I laugh out loud probably every couple of pages and even more often I smile laugh on the inside), but it's also a fine example of irony. A writer studying the use of the deluded protagonist-narrator who doesn't see the world as it is and is constantly at odds with that world in an effort to protect herself from its challenges could do much worse than studying this book. I'm sure Confessions of a Shopoholic would be dismissed in a graduate "forms of fiction" course. In fact, I once spent a whole class listening to my professor try and fail to explain why Jane Austen is not chick lit because Austen is so great and wonderful while chick lit is stupid fluff (apparently Austen is funny and uses irony well to comment on society, which as I've now seen is exactly what Kinsella does, only more successfully in my opinion).
Anyway, I'd say I've gotten off track a bit, but I'm not sure I was ever on a track to begin with. So here's the thing: Not only am I fully engaged with Kinsella, but I also feel like I can learn something about how to write effectively, how to appeal to a reader. Roth, on the other hand, engages me, but also leaves me completely awed nearly to the point of paralysis because I can never do what he does, or if I can I haven't figured it out yet. Not to suggest that I'm on the level of Kinsella at this point, either, but she seems attainable.
I realize that some of my thoughts here seem to be in direct contradiction to my previous post about high concepts. After all, Kinsella's book is about a financial journalist who is completely out of control with her personal finances. It's utterly high concept. And that's the case with so many genre works. But maybe there's something valuable to learn from them still.
When I was a kid I never understood how my dad could read more than one book at a time. He always had a handful of books with bookmarks sticking out of the top. They sat next to his bed in piles. He read often, but what was the point? How could he "get into" a book reading that way? And now I've become him. I haven't counted up the number of books I'm in the middle of right now, but it's probably in the double digits. Some of that is due to the variety of things I read. For instance, I've read some stories from a collection, marked how far I am, but then not returned for a bit. Does that count as being "in the middle" of a book? Or how about a collection of essays? Then there are science books about theories on the brain or addressing big questions of nature versus nurture. Dipping in and out of that over time isn't the same as setting down a novel in the middle, right?
But, alas, I also have several novels I'm in the middle of. Part of the issue is that I don't feel the same obligation to read a book to its conclusion that I felt when I was younger. For the first twenty years or so of my life, I almost never put a book down unfinished without returning to it. If it was boring, well, I had to plod through. If it was interesting but I wasn't quite in the mood for it, too bad. I had to finish that one before I could start another. Now, however, if a book fails to hold my attention, I feel little guilt about setting it down and picking up something else. The problem, however, is that I often am interested in a book, want to finish it, but it's not absolutely compelling me to read, so I set it down with every intention of picking it up only to start another book. So at the moment I'm probably in the middle of a few novels that I plan on finishing, but for whatever reason they weren't holding my interest every second.
So, back to the issue of learning from writing. I've been thinking that it's a good idea to read more widely than I've always done in the past few years. In grad school, they tell you to read widely, but then that's not really what they encourage you to read in classes and for the comps exams. You pretty much stick to "classics" and "literary" stuff. I like a lot of that, sure, but what about the majority of what people actually read. I work at a bookstore, and not only do we only carry a handful of the type of book I studied in grad school, but what we do have, we rarely sell. In fact, the store has probably sold more of that since I started working there than in the previous year because I keep recommending stuff to customers or buying stuff for myself. So when professors tell us to read widely, do they actually mean to read as widely as possible, or do they merely mean we should read both James Joyce and Italo Calvino?
One problem with only studying classics or literary stuff is that it's often difficult to get much from those as far as learning what those writers do. I was reading a Philip Roth book last fall, and rather than thinking, "Ah, here's how he puts this stuff together; I need to try that myself," I kept simply being stunned by how good it was, yet completely unsure why it was so good since he seemed to be breaking a whole slew of the craft rules I learned in workshops. I'm actually not sure how much can be gained by studying the masters. They might simply be so far above the rest of us that they're untouchable.
However, I think we can learn a lot from writers whose work actually sells to normal people. For one thing, there's the major question of why does this appeal to the average reader? That's an issue that is pretty much never addressed in grad school. All the discussion of craft and character and language, and we never really think about what the average paperback buyer is looking for when they choose something to read on the plane. And sometimes, I fully admit, it's easy to dismiss what is popular as "bad" writing. I've picked up a few bestsellers and read a few pages only to shake my head and wonder how anybody can get through this junk. And yet more people are interested in that, so there must be something there, right? I wish my grad school experience had devoted some time to looking carefully at popular genres to deconstruct what is so appealing to so many. About the only time a class touched on those issues was the screenwriting class, and I still feel that class may have been the most useful course I took in grad school. One of the main things we discussed was the need to not bore the audience, which didn't seem to be much of a concern in the workshop courses. Or there was the class on "Forms of Fiction." Rather than thinking of different genres as taking on different forms, our only concern was literary fiction, often classic stuff that (in my view anyway) bears little relevance to twenty-first century writing. I mean the techniques that were cool and innovative two hundred years ago are simply clichéd now, and you can't get away with that.
This post is probably going on too long, but I've got something specific I want to mention. I was working at the bookstore the other day, and it was slow, so I grabbed the nearest book off a display by the register and started reading. As you might guess, the prominently displayed book was a big bestseller, and in this case the cover featured an image from the movie that was just coming out based on the book. All right, I figured, I'll see what the big deal is with this book, why we sell so many, why they made a movie of it, why this writer is rich now. The book was Confessions of a Shopoholic by Sophie Kinsella. So while the store was nearly empty, I read the first few pages. And you know what? I wound up buying the book that day. It is hysterical. And there's a lot to be learned about craft from it. Not only does it present a clear lesson on the value of humor, how that can compel a reader to keep going (I laugh out loud probably every couple of pages and even more often I smile laugh on the inside), but it's also a fine example of irony. A writer studying the use of the deluded protagonist-narrator who doesn't see the world as it is and is constantly at odds with that world in an effort to protect herself from its challenges could do much worse than studying this book. I'm sure Confessions of a Shopoholic would be dismissed in a graduate "forms of fiction" course. In fact, I once spent a whole class listening to my professor try and fail to explain why Jane Austen is not chick lit because Austen is so great and wonderful while chick lit is stupid fluff (apparently Austen is funny and uses irony well to comment on society, which as I've now seen is exactly what Kinsella does, only more successfully in my opinion).
Anyway, I'd say I've gotten off track a bit, but I'm not sure I was ever on a track to begin with. So here's the thing: Not only am I fully engaged with Kinsella, but I also feel like I can learn something about how to write effectively, how to appeal to a reader. Roth, on the other hand, engages me, but also leaves me completely awed nearly to the point of paralysis because I can never do what he does, or if I can I haven't figured it out yet. Not to suggest that I'm on the level of Kinsella at this point, either, but she seems attainable.
I realize that some of my thoughts here seem to be in direct contradiction to my previous post about high concepts. After all, Kinsella's book is about a financial journalist who is completely out of control with her personal finances. It's utterly high concept. And that's the case with so many genre works. But maybe there's something valuable to learn from them still.
Friday, February 13, 2009
High Concept
It seems the trick to writing a publishable book is to write one that is "high concept." I keep encountering that idea in articles on writing and information about how to land an agent. That's what sells. It's what people want to read. Sure, you might write a character-driven literary novel (that may be redundant; I once heard "literary fiction" defined as fiction that is character-driven rather than plot-driven), but unless you have a high concept, nobody cares.
I don't mean to sound bitter. Honestly, I'm way too young to be bitter yet. Give me another ten or fifteen years, and then maybe I'll be bitter. But I don't care for this whole high concept thing. You have to put a twist onto your idea or combine genres or whatever to make it something new. What's wrong with simply having interesting characters and engaging writing? Not to suggest that my writing is the best out there or anything. It's possible my book is still nothing but crap, but in general, does anybody even publish anything that isn't high concept anymore?
I was working today on getting some new agent queries together. I haven't sent out any for a while because I'm not very happy with my query letter. I just don't know how to express what my novel is about in a few sentences so an agent might actually want to read it. When I think about what my book is about, I'm forced to acknowledge that it's simply not high concept at all.
So I was looking through this blog where an agent goes through queries and offers critiques. I hoped maybe I'd learn something valuable about how to put together a solid synopsis that would hook an agent's interest. Many of the queries were so bad as to be comical, and it was fun to read the agent's sardonic criticism of those. But then there were the queries that the agent liked and suggested she would request the manuscript if she received that query. And those successful queries all struck me as dumb. They described the kinds of books that certainly get published--I work at a bookstore and see books that I wouldn't want to read come in all the time--but they didn't actually sound interesting or like they would be very good. They seemed like soap operas because they all had such crazy high stakes or big twists.
Now maybe this is simply an issue of that agent's taste differing from mine. It's harsh and judgmental for me to say that those are dumb or bad books when all I mean is that they don't appeal to me. But it strikes me that it is more than simply a taste issue, that the trend in publishing is so much in favor of high concept that something else doesn't even stand a chance. Unless a book is written by an already established author, it can't break in without that something extra. And my problem is that sometimes books that I like suffer (at least in my opinion) from their high concepts. I'd rather read low concept stuff, but it's not even out there.
For instance, I read Tom Perrotta's Joe College last year. I liked it. I thought it was about eighty-five percent great. But then it had this high concept plot diversion that seemed like a complete distraction to me. The story is primarily about a young man from a working-class background in his junior year (maybe senior year) at Yale. There's a bunch of stuff going on that make it an interesting story. The character is drawn to two different women, one unattainable, the other not so desirable once she's attained. He's stuck between two worlds--that of Yale and the townies--as he's pulled between the two women. And then he goes home for spring break and drives his dad's lunch truck. I'm totally engaged up to this point. But then there's this whole side plot involving pseudo-mafioso characters fighting over lunch truck territory. That part of the plot makes it (in my mind anyway) veer into the territory of high concept, and I think the book would have been better off if all of that were cut out.
Another one that comes to mind is Michael Chabon's Mysteries of Pittsburgh. It's a similar story in that it features young characters struggling with romance and identity. But again there's a mafia side plot as well as a character suddenly discovering he's gay even though he's lived for twenty-two years without ever noticing that about himself before (I'll admit I might not be remembering the details quite accurately since it's been a number of years since I read the book, but the way I remember it is that the gay subplot felt tacked on and artificial, but maybe it's a difference in the way homosexuality is understood today compared to twenty years ago). Anyway, if the story was simply about a character struggling to figure out what to do with himself after college, I'd be completely with it. Add in those high concept plot elements, and I get turned off.
Hell, even those new Pirates of the Caribbean movies go off track by getting too high concept. What's wrong with a good ol' fashioned pirate movie? Why do they also have to be ghosts?
So as I kept looking over sample query letters I felt less and less confident that my book will ever be able to attract any agent interest. I think my only hope will be to enter it into contests or send it to small presses that publish literary rather than commercial fiction because my book isn't high concept, I don't think I can disguise it as high concept, and I don't want it to be high concept.
Maybe my only course of action is to continue moving forward with my next books and let this novel gather dust for awhile. I'm revising my children's book, and it's closer to high concept since it's a fantasy story. Then my next literary book that I'm in the early stages of generating material for is also more high concept than what I've previously done. I think I'll stand a better chance of coming up with a one sentence hook, anyway. Then maybe if I land an agent or publishing deal with those I could pull out the old low concept novel and sneak it onto the agent's desk.
I don't mean to sound bitter. Honestly, I'm way too young to be bitter yet. Give me another ten or fifteen years, and then maybe I'll be bitter. But I don't care for this whole high concept thing. You have to put a twist onto your idea or combine genres or whatever to make it something new. What's wrong with simply having interesting characters and engaging writing? Not to suggest that my writing is the best out there or anything. It's possible my book is still nothing but crap, but in general, does anybody even publish anything that isn't high concept anymore?
I was working today on getting some new agent queries together. I haven't sent out any for a while because I'm not very happy with my query letter. I just don't know how to express what my novel is about in a few sentences so an agent might actually want to read it. When I think about what my book is about, I'm forced to acknowledge that it's simply not high concept at all.
So I was looking through this blog where an agent goes through queries and offers critiques. I hoped maybe I'd learn something valuable about how to put together a solid synopsis that would hook an agent's interest. Many of the queries were so bad as to be comical, and it was fun to read the agent's sardonic criticism of those. But then there were the queries that the agent liked and suggested she would request the manuscript if she received that query. And those successful queries all struck me as dumb. They described the kinds of books that certainly get published--I work at a bookstore and see books that I wouldn't want to read come in all the time--but they didn't actually sound interesting or like they would be very good. They seemed like soap operas because they all had such crazy high stakes or big twists.
Now maybe this is simply an issue of that agent's taste differing from mine. It's harsh and judgmental for me to say that those are dumb or bad books when all I mean is that they don't appeal to me. But it strikes me that it is more than simply a taste issue, that the trend in publishing is so much in favor of high concept that something else doesn't even stand a chance. Unless a book is written by an already established author, it can't break in without that something extra. And my problem is that sometimes books that I like suffer (at least in my opinion) from their high concepts. I'd rather read low concept stuff, but it's not even out there.
For instance, I read Tom Perrotta's Joe College last year. I liked it. I thought it was about eighty-five percent great. But then it had this high concept plot diversion that seemed like a complete distraction to me. The story is primarily about a young man from a working-class background in his junior year (maybe senior year) at Yale. There's a bunch of stuff going on that make it an interesting story. The character is drawn to two different women, one unattainable, the other not so desirable once she's attained. He's stuck between two worlds--that of Yale and the townies--as he's pulled between the two women. And then he goes home for spring break and drives his dad's lunch truck. I'm totally engaged up to this point. But then there's this whole side plot involving pseudo-mafioso characters fighting over lunch truck territory. That part of the plot makes it (in my mind anyway) veer into the territory of high concept, and I think the book would have been better off if all of that were cut out.
Another one that comes to mind is Michael Chabon's Mysteries of Pittsburgh. It's a similar story in that it features young characters struggling with romance and identity. But again there's a mafia side plot as well as a character suddenly discovering he's gay even though he's lived for twenty-two years without ever noticing that about himself before (I'll admit I might not be remembering the details quite accurately since it's been a number of years since I read the book, but the way I remember it is that the gay subplot felt tacked on and artificial, but maybe it's a difference in the way homosexuality is understood today compared to twenty years ago). Anyway, if the story was simply about a character struggling to figure out what to do with himself after college, I'd be completely with it. Add in those high concept plot elements, and I get turned off.
Hell, even those new Pirates of the Caribbean movies go off track by getting too high concept. What's wrong with a good ol' fashioned pirate movie? Why do they also have to be ghosts?
So as I kept looking over sample query letters I felt less and less confident that my book will ever be able to attract any agent interest. I think my only hope will be to enter it into contests or send it to small presses that publish literary rather than commercial fiction because my book isn't high concept, I don't think I can disguise it as high concept, and I don't want it to be high concept.
Maybe my only course of action is to continue moving forward with my next books and let this novel gather dust for awhile. I'm revising my children's book, and it's closer to high concept since it's a fantasy story. Then my next literary book that I'm in the early stages of generating material for is also more high concept than what I've previously done. I think I'll stand a better chance of coming up with a one sentence hook, anyway. Then maybe if I land an agent or publishing deal with those I could pull out the old low concept novel and sneak it onto the agent's desk.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Current Project Part II
I made my decision to go ahead and begin working on my young adult fantasy novel a couple weeks ago. Part of what's exciting about it is the idea of working much faster on something than I'm used to. When I'm heavily engrossed in a project I like to set a daily goal of 2,000 words. This is absolutely manageable, and it keeps me going at a good clip. At this rate, I can do an entire first draft of a 90,000 word novel within a couple months, and that's even allowing for days when I don't meet the goal or I tack a weekend off completely or whatever. But with this fantasy book, I saw it as a bit different. Partly because it's aimed at younger readers, I saw it as being a bit shorter than what I've written in the past. Instead of 90,000, a book of 60,000 words seems about right. Also, since the idea has been bouncing around my head for a while I started writing knowing for the most part where I was headed. Of course I still had large holes that needed filling, but I assumed those would come as I discovered the world and grew to know the characters. So I set out with the goal of completing a rough draft within a few weeks. Basically I'm moving soon, and I don't want my progress to be disrupted during that time.
So I broke it down and came up with a daily word count goal. If I did 2,000 words a day, then I could have 60,000 at the end of a month. 4,000 would result in a draft in 15 days. So I figured that somewhere in between was the appropriate daily objective. The chapters for this book are working out to each be in the 4,000 word range. So my basic goal is to write a full chapter each day if I can manage it (4,000+ is lovely), and if I can't get that much done, then to at least hit 2,000 words. This way I'm steadily progressing even if I don't always get as much as would be best.
I began two weeks ago Sunday, and for the first four days, I wrote a chapter a day. Then I slowed a bit and was still hitting the 2,000 word a day goal, but was taking a couple days to finish a chapter. Then I sped back up again, and then slowed again. Anyway, at present I have hit at least 2,000 words every day for the past 15 days with only one exception, and that day I came in around 1,600 words, so it wasn't too bad. Right now I'm halfway through chapter 11 of what I expect to be 15 chapters total. I have about 42,000 words of that 60,000 word mark, so I'm getting close. I fully expect to finish the draft this week, making it by far the fastest I've written anything of this length.
It's been fun to tackle a project like this for several reasons. One: speed. I've read about writers just plowing through books in a week or whatever and wondered how that could be possible. I think Stephen King wrote The Running Man in a week (those claims must only apply to the first draft, however). Or there's the famous case of Keruak writing On The Road in a matter of days, typing the whole draft onto that giant scroll of typing paper so he wouldn't have to slow down to change sheets. And I've discovered there is something energizing and exciting about moving so quickly. I have no delusions that what I've come up with is brilliant. I already know I have tons of corrections to make as far as inconsistencies go in plot details. I've made a bunch of notes about things choices I made later in the story that have implications earlier on. And that's not even considering the rest of the rewriting process that would happen with any book.
Two: plot. As I mentioned in a previous post, I used to read a lot of fantasy, but about a decade ago I moved on to other things. The majority of my reading in recent years has been what might be termed "literary" in the sense that it's about normal people dealing with regular life stuff. That's what I most enjoy, and that's what I've been writing for the past few years. So to switch gears has been like a great vacation since most of my other stories don't hinge on plot. There's that old adage, which I suppose has some validity even though, like most such maxims, it has exceptions and doesn't necessarily stand up to careful critique, but anyway it asserts that plot and character are on a continuum, and when one goes up in development and importance, the other goes down. So basically, a heavily action oriented story doesn't have time to develop the characters into fully three dimensional people, and the stories that most fully explore the inner lives of characters and reveal them as complex humans have little actually happening. In most of what I write, I like to have something going on, but the events take a back seat to the characters and what they're thinking about and how they interact with each other or whatever. But in this fantasy story, I have way more plot. My protagonist is transported to a world of magic, and the world is in the midst of a war, and there's a prophecy concerning his importance, and there's kidnapping and an evil wizard and and and and and . . . So that's fun. I suspect one of the major things I address in rewriting is to carefully go through and make sure that the characters are coming alive in the way they need to, that I haven't slid so far into the plot side of things that I neglect my characters because, after all, if I as a reader don't care about the people in the story, then what difference does it make what crazy stuff happens to them?
Three: rediscovering the fun of stories for younger readers. I wrote previously about not having read much fantasy in recent years, but I realized the other day that the one area I have actually continued to read in that genre has been children's books. In the years during which I don't think I've picked up more than two or three adult fantasies, I've reread or listened to audiobooks (or both) of the Chronicles of Prydain (still one of my all time favorites), Narnia, A Wrinkle in Time, Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter, and others. So I wasn't as unprepared as I initially worried I might be to tackle such a writing project. But in order to further understand what I'm attempting, I began looking at some books that are currently on bookstore shelves in the genre, and that has been so much fun. There are some great books out there. I am absolutely in love with the Spiderwick Chronicles. Artemis Fowl was fun. There's one called Erec Rex that is a blast.
Four: being engrossed. The major reason I write is because I love doing it. Ultimately, yes, I hope to publish. If I could actually make a living at it, that would be awesome. Not because I want to be a famous writer or anything like that, but simply because it would mean that I could do for my job something that I would do for fun anyway instead of doing something that always felt like work. I know writing is hard work, but it's more fun than it is frustrating, wheras jobs I've had are on the reverse of that. But as much fun as writing is, it's not always on the same level. During the last stages of my previous novel, it was definitely leaning toward the hard work and not too fun side of things simply because I was at the point of going through and trying to fix grammar and typos and little things. It was tedious and didn't transfix me the way earlier stages of the process can. But now again, for the past two weeks, I've simply been having a blast as I sit down to write, and during the rest of the day when the story plays out in my head and I solve the puzzles of how to continue forward and how to bring everything together in a satisfying conclusion.
Five: publishability. I didn't begin writing this book with thoughts of publication, but as I've continued on, the idea has occurred to me more. In general genre writing is easier to get out there than literary stuff. I hope I can find an agent for my literary novel and then get it to a publisher, but I don't know. I think it's strong, but the market is so tough, it might never happen. And not to say that getting this YA fantasy published will be a cinch, but it seems like I'll face fewer of the difficulties than with an adult literary novel. At the moment I have no plans for additional fantasy stories. I don't especially see this one as the first of a series, although I'm sure it could be possible. But if somehow I hit it big with this and fell into the possibility of a career writing this kind of book, I would love it. That wouldn't be my top choice since I'd still rather write literary stuff, and I have more ideas for those novels at the moment. But it would still be far more preferable than the kind of day job scenario I see for myself for the next thirty years.
So I broke it down and came up with a daily word count goal. If I did 2,000 words a day, then I could have 60,000 at the end of a month. 4,000 would result in a draft in 15 days. So I figured that somewhere in between was the appropriate daily objective. The chapters for this book are working out to each be in the 4,000 word range. So my basic goal is to write a full chapter each day if I can manage it (4,000+ is lovely), and if I can't get that much done, then to at least hit 2,000 words. This way I'm steadily progressing even if I don't always get as much as would be best.
I began two weeks ago Sunday, and for the first four days, I wrote a chapter a day. Then I slowed a bit and was still hitting the 2,000 word a day goal, but was taking a couple days to finish a chapter. Then I sped back up again, and then slowed again. Anyway, at present I have hit at least 2,000 words every day for the past 15 days with only one exception, and that day I came in around 1,600 words, so it wasn't too bad. Right now I'm halfway through chapter 11 of what I expect to be 15 chapters total. I have about 42,000 words of that 60,000 word mark, so I'm getting close. I fully expect to finish the draft this week, making it by far the fastest I've written anything of this length.
It's been fun to tackle a project like this for several reasons. One: speed. I've read about writers just plowing through books in a week or whatever and wondered how that could be possible. I think Stephen King wrote The Running Man in a week (those claims must only apply to the first draft, however). Or there's the famous case of Keruak writing On The Road in a matter of days, typing the whole draft onto that giant scroll of typing paper so he wouldn't have to slow down to change sheets. And I've discovered there is something energizing and exciting about moving so quickly. I have no delusions that what I've come up with is brilliant. I already know I have tons of corrections to make as far as inconsistencies go in plot details. I've made a bunch of notes about things choices I made later in the story that have implications earlier on. And that's not even considering the rest of the rewriting process that would happen with any book.
Two: plot. As I mentioned in a previous post, I used to read a lot of fantasy, but about a decade ago I moved on to other things. The majority of my reading in recent years has been what might be termed "literary" in the sense that it's about normal people dealing with regular life stuff. That's what I most enjoy, and that's what I've been writing for the past few years. So to switch gears has been like a great vacation since most of my other stories don't hinge on plot. There's that old adage, which I suppose has some validity even though, like most such maxims, it has exceptions and doesn't necessarily stand up to careful critique, but anyway it asserts that plot and character are on a continuum, and when one goes up in development and importance, the other goes down. So basically, a heavily action oriented story doesn't have time to develop the characters into fully three dimensional people, and the stories that most fully explore the inner lives of characters and reveal them as complex humans have little actually happening. In most of what I write, I like to have something going on, but the events take a back seat to the characters and what they're thinking about and how they interact with each other or whatever. But in this fantasy story, I have way more plot. My protagonist is transported to a world of magic, and the world is in the midst of a war, and there's a prophecy concerning his importance, and there's kidnapping and an evil wizard and and and and and . . . So that's fun. I suspect one of the major things I address in rewriting is to carefully go through and make sure that the characters are coming alive in the way they need to, that I haven't slid so far into the plot side of things that I neglect my characters because, after all, if I as a reader don't care about the people in the story, then what difference does it make what crazy stuff happens to them?
Three: rediscovering the fun of stories for younger readers. I wrote previously about not having read much fantasy in recent years, but I realized the other day that the one area I have actually continued to read in that genre has been children's books. In the years during which I don't think I've picked up more than two or three adult fantasies, I've reread or listened to audiobooks (or both) of the Chronicles of Prydain (still one of my all time favorites), Narnia, A Wrinkle in Time, Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter, and others. So I wasn't as unprepared as I initially worried I might be to tackle such a writing project. But in order to further understand what I'm attempting, I began looking at some books that are currently on bookstore shelves in the genre, and that has been so much fun. There are some great books out there. I am absolutely in love with the Spiderwick Chronicles. Artemis Fowl was fun. There's one called Erec Rex that is a blast.
Four: being engrossed. The major reason I write is because I love doing it. Ultimately, yes, I hope to publish. If I could actually make a living at it, that would be awesome. Not because I want to be a famous writer or anything like that, but simply because it would mean that I could do for my job something that I would do for fun anyway instead of doing something that always felt like work. I know writing is hard work, but it's more fun than it is frustrating, wheras jobs I've had are on the reverse of that. But as much fun as writing is, it's not always on the same level. During the last stages of my previous novel, it was definitely leaning toward the hard work and not too fun side of things simply because I was at the point of going through and trying to fix grammar and typos and little things. It was tedious and didn't transfix me the way earlier stages of the process can. But now again, for the past two weeks, I've simply been having a blast as I sit down to write, and during the rest of the day when the story plays out in my head and I solve the puzzles of how to continue forward and how to bring everything together in a satisfying conclusion.
Five: publishability. I didn't begin writing this book with thoughts of publication, but as I've continued on, the idea has occurred to me more. In general genre writing is easier to get out there than literary stuff. I hope I can find an agent for my literary novel and then get it to a publisher, but I don't know. I think it's strong, but the market is so tough, it might never happen. And not to say that getting this YA fantasy published will be a cinch, but it seems like I'll face fewer of the difficulties than with an adult literary novel. At the moment I have no plans for additional fantasy stories. I don't especially see this one as the first of a series, although I'm sure it could be possible. But if somehow I hit it big with this and fell into the possibility of a career writing this kind of book, I would love it. That wouldn't be my top choice since I'd still rather write literary stuff, and I have more ideas for those novels at the moment. But it would still be far more preferable than the kind of day job scenario I see for myself for the next thirty years.
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