my (new and improved) query letter

Dear Mr. Example,

In a sunless ice-world where cities are built underground, Vastii is a corrupt, dirty metropolis ripe with gangs, mercenaries, rebellion, assassins, cannibalism, and scheming politicians. To suppress an uprising in the west, the king takes his own niece, the Lady Wyrren Jadis, as a political hostage. Officially, her presence will ensure her father’s loyalty to a king that he never cared for. The king never mentioned that he intends to use Wyrren’s unwilling confession to convict her father for his late wife’s murder, whether he is guilty or not.

Forced into a strange city and a hostile court with only a few companions, outnumbered and manipulated, the king’s niece is seen as an opportunity for riches and power, an easy way to the king’s ear or a weapon against the monarchy. When the king’s secret police begins to track down and kill men found in connection to an illegal press that Wyrren is contributing to, her companions are left to scramble across the plague-ridden city to keep the police at bay while the lady seeks someone (anyone) in the courts who can protect her from her increasingly demanding uncle. Amid deal making and breaking, she finds the unassuming, charming (and ambitious) nobleman Remerdii, the lord of blue crystal and favorite of the king. Remerdii provides a much-needed crutch, but only in exchange for a price that increases the more she comes to need him. Remerdii collects what he is owed before he betrays the king and Wyrren both, and reveals that he had been the cause of her problems from the beginning.

Blue Crystal is a completed 95,000 word novel written for an adult audience who enjoy action, intrigue, and low-fantasy. I’ve included the first three pages of my manuscript. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

great query link

I found a community on livejournal that posts and critiques other people’s query letters (have a link) late yesterday afternoon. Since my query letter didn’t get put up on Query Shark, I thought that I’d try that.

I’m really impressed! The community is helpful, and when I reread my query I realized that they were absolutely right about its flaws, which my local writing group and in-person test readers didn’t point out. I’m adding them to my blog links, under ‘resources’.

(Also, I think I’ll go rewrite my query letter. )

pondering pov

So! Now that the cover art is mostly out of the way (and I’m bouncing in anticipation of the coming sketches) I’ve turned my attention back to the book, the chapter, and the partial rewrite that I want to finish.

And I’ve run into another problem, and another answer that’s going to force me to rework much more than I’d anticipated: Rylan is not that effective of a POV character for what I want to do next. My heroine would be much better. She’s the one making the decisions, and later she’s the one who’s going to be in danger, and there are things she will say without Rylan being present.

I take a lot of care with POV. So far, it’s all been a third-person fixed and limited perspective, meaning the camera is on Rylan, and always on Rylan and has been for the last nearly 40k words. I prefer it that way; I like to keep things as simple as possible to avoid shifting needlessly. Except now? It’s not so needless.

Changing over to another character this late in the book, even using chapter breaks, is a jarring practice. I hate rules, but I’ll agree with this one: don’t switch cameras to a secondary character for one chapter halfway through the book, then never again.

With that in mind I’m changing chapter two (which I was never satisfied with) to Wyrren’s position. I’m probably also going to add another chapter somewhere between four and seven with her as the point of view character. And there’s a very important scene I’ll do the same. That puts her as the narrator for about 25% of the book.

It also changes the feel of the book, the lighting and mood, if you will. POV is important. It colors the pages with your character. In this case it’s steel and stone, oil lamps in the cold, blood and sweat, then to golden light, marble arches, velvet gowns and implication, implication everywhere, murmuring and gossiping, kind words one minute than slander the next; a fairy-tale ball of junior high girls who will never grow up.

It’s also going to be harder, longer, and double my work, especially handling the exposition and the secondary characters. I’ll do it, of course. I’ll do anything to make my book better. Even so, it’s hard, and I don’t want to. Consider the dilemma ranted and struggled with.

thin skin

So… the day before yesterday, I learned that someone whose art that I admire really didn’t care for my work. She phrased it nicely, and made it clear that she didn’t think it was badly written, but even so… I’ve been a little depressed and haven’t really written since Monday, especially since I’ll be backtracking when I do.

I don’t expect everyone to like Blue Crystal. I set out to write something desperate, realistic, gritty, and violent, and (I admit) I’ve drawn some of my inspiration from George R.R. Martin’s ‘Song of Ice and Fire’ series. I’m expecting some to be repulsed by what I’ve done. I’ve even already gotten that reaction from one reviewer, whom I surmise was shaken by the cannibalism; murder is commonplace in books, while eating the leftover meat because you’re a starving man is taboo.

Even so. Getting a negative reaction from someone you admire… I think perhaps I had hoped that since I admired her for her talents that perhaps she’d reciprocate. Things don’t seem to work that way.

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Update: A few hours after posting this, I browsed the internet for fantasy covers that I liked, came up with a decent idea that would look beautiful painted in a classical style, and emailed the artist with my new ideas for a book cover. I feel better now, and I think it’s going to be beautiful.

writing by the seat of your pants

… a tragic tale of a plot that went one way, an author who tried to steer elsewhere, and the resulting botched set-up.

I think I’m going to have to rewrite much of last Saturday’s progress. I’m keeping the line I liked so much, I’m keeping the new character, and I won’t change the situation… but the pacing and setting was meant for another encounter, and it just doesn’t work.

The good news is, the changes will eventually lead back to my outline. Also good news… I complicated the plot even further by damaging a devoted servant of a character my protagonist really needs. Bad news? I don’t want to be less than forty percent completed.

outline? what outline?

Today’s writing is a fine example of why my nice little chapter-synopses have little or no bearing on reality.

I spent days working out how the rest of the book was going to go. A few chapters ago, I started deviating. It felt right. I don’t argue with my characters, as a rule. At the end of Chapter Seven we were almost on track. Now? Not only did the kidnappers not be the mercenaries I’d expected, I also introduced a new important character. And he’s a cocky little bastard that won’t hear of leaving my plot.

I did, however, write a line that I’m very fond of. I thought I’d share.

“Rylan du Jadis, it is an honor. My lord wishes to commend you for your bravery, congratulate you for your performance, and condemn you for your idiocy.”

Didn’t I say that this guy is going to be trouble? Hmm?

writing goal update

I promised a word count update on Friday. I’m a day late, but the numbers remain:

Goal: 36,000 words
Reached: 37,778 words

Not too shabby. The two-thousand I wrote last Saturday didn’t hurt either, though I found I had to take about five hundred of those out because I didn’t write the end of the chapter. I think my characters should be forced, not escorted, to the mercenaries’ lair. It fits so much better.

Next Friday: 41,000 words. It’s just a bit higher than last week’s goal. Wish me luck!

if e-prime was odd…

Here’s some more crazy things people have done with books.

Le Train de Nulle Part. Hat tip to Brad, my day-job minion, who in turn found this on Neatorama, which is always a fun place to look for odd events and interesting stories. Le Train de Nulle Part (The Train From Nowhere) is a French novel (233 pages) written entirely without verbs.

Lipograms. A specific letter is eschewed from the book. Gadsby has no e’s, and neither does La Disparition (another French novel, by Georges Perec). Les Revenentes, a novella written also by Georges Perec, contained no vowels but the letter ‘e’.

Others… Never Again, by Doug Nufer, doesn’t repeat any words once they’ve been used.

Frankly, some of these ideas scare me. E-prime is difficult enough; how did they do that?!

One of my ideas was to center my next book around, among other things, the golden ratio, implementing the Fibonacci sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89 [...]. I could plot out the major events to take place so many pages, pick important words in each chapter and reiterate them according to these numbers. Since the next book that I’m planning is actually a series of interconnecting short stories, it really plays into the experimental nature I’ve had pictured.

(If you’re interested, the book is called ‘The Marionette’s Waltz’ and loosely centers around demons, drugs, and a crazy woman fighting for the soul that she gave away. The book never distinguishes what’s real and what isn’t.)

But I think I’ll still keep my vowels and my verbs.

the battle of show or tell

I had an email after my last post, inquiring after the specifics of the ’show, don’t tell’ rule. After reading it, I felt that I should clarify the difference between the two methods.

(Warning: Bad examples follow.)

The letter lay on the coffee table beside a crumb-laden placemat and a newspaper and a glossy orange piece of paper advertising oil changes partway across town. The address had been handwritten in pink ink, the smooth glossy swirl of gel-pens. He made himself a drink. He listened to music, Bach first, then Handel. Partway through the winding, disjointed verses of ‘We Like Sheep’ he stood up, picked up his keys, and slipped his wallet in his pocket. He moved partway to the door, stopped, turned, and returned to the table. His hand shook with fear as he opened the letter, the key chain still dangling on his little finger giving a metallic rattle as he tore the paper.

Showing only: this example uses nothing but visual clues as to what’s going on. There’s no blatant emotion given to the audience, it’s all imagery. It gives no explanations, no internal dialog.

He found the letter after he had arrived home, and the sight of it instilled a deep fear. Unopened responses could mean anything, the possibilities turning a once rational head to something panicked and imaginative, circumstances winding into other hypothetical circumstances born of the haunting words ‘what if’. The confidence in his first query crumbled and died, turned to salt as it looked back to the destroyed city where his hopes had once lain. Stalling didn’t help, nor did his evening drink, and he listened to classical music until finally he could take no more of the anticipation. He must face it, or he must leave, and for a moment leaving sounded like a better alternative before he forced himself back, gathered his courage, and approached the paper once more.

Telling only: This is telling. I described nothing, and gave only the barest hints of the elements in the scene, instead focusing on the cause of the shaking hands from the last paragraph. It includes details and feelings that were left out of the first one. But it also doesn’t set the scene.

Neither of these are right or wrong. They just focus on completely different ways of storytelling. One might be right and one very wrong for a particular project. But to dismiss the latter as ‘bad practice’? You can show this badly by losing the point in boring details. You can tell this badly by not explaining the fear, and subsequent courage, well enough to follow believably.

Add or remove detail as is needed.

three writing rules i loathe

Also known as: a brief list of the trends in prose that I refuse to take as my bible come hell or high water.

I should probably warn my readers that I despise hard-and-fast rules when it comes to creativity. These confines of art that are meant to guide beginners are a hindrance and put a false barrier between what is considered ‘good’ writing and writing that’s effective. The moment someone starts saying, ‘you should never do this’ I’m out the door and running. Or possibly beating them up, one of the two. Violence might not solve anything, but it sure makes me feel better.

1. Show, Don’t Tell.
I don’t think you can get my hackles up faster than to quote this mantra at me. It is the speediest way to earn my undying hatred.

Showing involves imagery, in covering the things that are important by action and setting, in focusing the camera on some things and not others. Telling is information usually given in narration. Sometimes showing is better. And sometimes showing makes the most tedious, convoluted half-assed scenes that it’s been by displeasure to try to wade through. Please, just tell me, and get to the interesting parts. And who decided that narration was bad, anyway? Who said that showing and telling is inherently divorced from each other, that there is no showing in telling, or vice versa?

Try this instead. Put in the details that you need. Let the audience work a bit when you think that there’s enough in the scene to draw extra conclusions. Make your work interesting. Get test readers, and see if they have the right reactions to the right events.

2. Don’t use any narrative verbs but ’said’.
This depends entirely on the style that you’re using and the tone of your story. There are times replied, answered, asked, repeated, and explained are perfectly valid, and more precise than ’said’. Some people find these words obnoxious. It must be tough to be them.

3. Write for your genre, and don’t break the established conventions. It’ll make your book harder to sell.
Sometimes this is true, I suppose. I write fantasy, where the point of the genre is innovation. What’s the point of writing if you’re not going to write something new? I see this one as a cousin of the phrase ‘there are no new stories’. To those who are convinced that this is a good point, go read ‘House of Leaves’, by Mark Z. Danielewski. Go read ‘Bridge of Birds’, by Barry Hughart. Try ‘Grey’, by Jon Armstrong. I won’t read books that aren’t innovative in some way.

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I think what I’m trying to get at is that these conventions are artificial. Think of writing as a craft that needs to be trained and honed, figure out what techniques work for what story. Write effectively, ignore what’s supposedly ‘good’.

Any other obnoxious ‘tips’ that I’ve missed?