On June 14th, 2012, I met with
Peter Ball at the
Queensland Writers Center to make use of the
Writer's Surgery service. I was specifically looking for feedback based on 20-pages of manuscript plus 1-page synopsis in the areas of manuscript development, finding a market, and approaching publishers/agents.
I would recommend the service!
I found the experience to be positive and insightful. It was excellent feedback and I have found it quite valuable over the last 24 hours. I suspect it will prove more value as I make use of the advice over the rest of my writing career.
The first question Peter asked me was how rough I wanted him to be. I got the impression that if I had burst into tears at that point, he would have been less robust with me. I'm fairly certain he did not give me all guns, but he managed to walk that fine line of encouraging yet finding fault with enough to make me realise there is still so much more to learn.
He recommended the following books to get a better grasp on the story structure and technical skills required of a writer:
- "The Writer's Journey" by Christopher Vogler
- "The Weekend Novelist" by Robert J. Ray
- "The 10% Solution" by Ken Rand
Being able to talk about potential publishers and agents with a common background and some of my own research before hand has been useful. We were able to generate a list of potential publishers and some advice on what sorts of things I need to consider when seeking an agent. I have put this information into
My Brain. We also spoke about writer review and critique groups and got some details and suggestions.
Note - you do not
need an agent, but some publishers do not accept unsolicited manuscripts. A manuscript received from an agent is considered to be solicited, not unsolicited. They are also useful for avoiding common pitfalls of writing contracts (or writing "writing contracts" to be clear). It was pointed out that the best way of getting an agent is to request their services to finalise a contract that has already been bagged. This is also obviously not the most common or most likely outcome.
We also spoke about the different markets for my novels, initially focused on the Battle of Korunai novel, but expanding out to the other novels and genres, as well as short stories. These markets were quite different.
The
Eureka moment for me here was that I had focused on my military science fiction because it was relatively easy for me to write. The story was clear, the characters (for me, at least) were defined by their duties and the actions they would perform, but it is a small market. Compared to general science fiction, military science fiction is so small, there is really only one publisher out there -
Baen.
On indication that I wrote short stories and smaller fiction/science fiction works, Peter recommended that I should consider publishing some of these. I had always considered my short stories to be bits and pieces I had written to get a handle on the characters or a specific part of the story. Some of them work, some remain incomplete because they worked through a topic to the point I needed.
There are some that are now called flash fiction or microfiction that can be under 1000 words. I never even knew there was a category for these. Some of the Borges-like material I have written and continue to write is in this area sometimes and I have enjoyed fleshing out the bare skeleton of the story and being a word-miser.
But you want the gory details of the assessment of my manuscript, don't you? You want to hear the painful wails and see the shreds of a writer's ego ground under booted heel?
Here is the summary for
Battle of Korunai:
- The synopsis and chapters are missing character; the story does not reach the reader at a personal level.
- Without a knowledge of the tactical situation explained by the story, it misses a thread of humanity (Oh! The vogonity!). It was recommended I need to get personal hooks in the characters for readers to understand the emotional context that they are in.
- There was some discussion about who was the protagonist and who was the antagonist. I have written the two admirals as almost interchangeable with regard to their roles in the classic story structure and this is not a common way of doing it (and may lose the readers).
- From initial material, the protagonist is Leonap, not Dax. There was more interest in Leonap than I had intended as he is clearly a flawed character. Readers want to see him change from a non-hero into a hero.
- There were queries about why Dax was the way he was. He needs some vulnerabilities to allow personal identification. What is the vulnerability that will change the hero into the non-hero?
- The material needs a lot of context that is missing; needs a description of the situation. The first paragraph of the first chapter needs to be re-written to identify they are on a ship, they are exhausted, and there needs to be some conflict starring the protagonist. I need to personalise the context of exhaustion and battle-readiness. Peter made the fair criticism that if you removed the synopsis from the sample, there was not sufficient context in the first chapter to identify any of the above aspects (on a ship, exhausted, etc).
- I should ruthlessly move through my manuscript and use "The 10 percent solution" to cull adverbs, "that" and "had", minimise "was", change paragraph descriptions into emotive action with as little pre-story as possible. Remove dialogue tags that are superfluous; "said" is invisible so do not use it; don't use "asked" if there is a "?"; some style issues for action following dialogue. Favourite quote, "No one likes a protagonist who smirks".
- There were a whole heap of little bits and pieces
- My names were too difficult to pronounce or too long. Read names out loud to see if they flow. Take Earth names and just slightly alter to provide the reader an easy grasp of the foreign name. Don't use ship names that are also titles. Could consider some alliteration, but need to make them identifiable.
- Capitalise "the Fleet" and then use these terms rather than the long and ungainly names of combined fleet star nations.
- Find other ways to do dialogue tags; put emotion into action.
- Readers want to see descriptions, not read descriptions. It is more interesting to convey this in a physical way, through actions of characters rather than through descriptions.
- Don't provide twists just to give twists (I had considered bringing the readers to assume the race was human only to find out later it was not). I was told that, from a reader perspective, it would be my fault for tricking them or my fault for not giving them enough material to see the twist resulting in an unhappy or unfulfilled reader.
- Build the relationships between the characters. Peter identified a major risk in the novel is that all the characters and ships become almost interchangeable. There is little difference between the two sides in literary terms and this needs to be differentiated further in the literary sense. He recommended I identify the main characters and then identify the relationships between them.
- Chapter 1 has no interpersonal relationships at all.
- Chapter 2 has good context and clear interpersonal relationships with some good immediate conflict between characters.
- Some of the same actions were described in the same way. If an action is something that is going to occur often in the novel, then you need to find new ways to describe the same thing. the example provided here was in relation to ships firing their guns. Peter made the criticism that this was described in almost exactly the same way in diffent spots in the manuscript.
- I need to let the readers in to the world I have created and never keep secrets from the editor. I wasn't, but this is just a warning.
- Synopsis needs to be centered around the characters and then identify the conflict between the characters. It needs to identify the protagonist and antagonist. What is going to be the essence of the back of the book? I need to bring the character relationships into the synopsis.
So that about wraps it up. I hope this advice has perhaps helped you. It has certainly helped me.
I will let this excellent discussion sit a few days and consider what I am doing. Any comments? Feel free to post them.
