Lo, life stirs...

So my 10/10/10 goal has some and passed. Needless to say, it didn't work out. Events out of my control happened. Then I had fun with some odd illnesses. School. Life. Procrastination. Just tons of things happened to prevent me from actually doing the synopsis and looking at agents. Then there was a death in the family. I also have a job now. Third shift.

But failing to do look at agents and do the synopsis only ended up as a learning experience, which is how I view failure anyway. I don't think I've ever seen it as a bad thing. More like a mirror, but moving on.

Since I had to sit on my precious baby, I went through and found some glaring errors. Weird stuff like sentences I was clearly trying to edit and somehow got distracted, so the sentence was half written and entire sections made no sense. I went through the book, making sure it all made sense. Just when I thought I was good, I met an author doing a book signing last weekend and saw that, while he had a series, each book stood alone. When I asked how he managed to pull that off, he said to refer to past events very briefly. My brain ran with that. So here's what I came up with for my series:

-Tie up as many loose ends as you can
-Protagonist's story-worthy problem should be resolved
-The surface problem (plot, as I understand it) should be resolved
-Each character should show growth and change if they're important enough
-Referring to past books can be like an inside joke and every loves being included in those
-New story-worthy problems and surface problems in each book
-No more than two protagonists (I tend to want everyone to be a protagonist)
-The series plot is always looming.

So that's what's working for me at the moment. Not sure if it's a correct way of going about making each book in a series stand alone, but it seems to be a logical course of action from what I've observed in the other series...es...s...how do you make 'series' plural? Or would it be serials? Moving on...that's what I've seen in the others I've read.

Related to other series and protagonists, I beginning to see that Fantasy and Sci-fi are allowed more...rope...to play with so-called established rules. Instead of one protagonist, George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series has...quite a few. More than I can count at the moment. I know there are at least ten in each book. What he does it goes to the characters who are moving the plot forward. Each character has their own chapter and they all relate to whatever major plot point going on where that character happens to be. Or if they're in the same place, the shift involves an event that only that character can describe. Each book stands alone...or will when he finishes the series. Patiently waiting. :)

Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman do the same in the Dragonlance Chronicles and Legends. Instead of a new chapter, they jump in and out of heads easily. And it's not hard (at least not for me) to sense the change. They did eventually split the party into bite-sized pieces, but overall, the whole was reached. Each book stands alone.

Kate Elliot does a combination of Martin and Weis and Hickman. She jumps in and out of heads, but not to the degree that W+H do it and instead of chapters devoted only to a character, she'll use a line break when she switches. Again, each book stands alone.

At the other end of the spectrum, you have Erin Kellison and J.K. Rowling. They generally stick with their protagonists. Every once in awhile, you see events from a different point of view. I think Stephen King's Dark Tower series falls here too, but I haven't finished that series yet and I need to get Kellison's second book now that I'm thinking about it. In all three cases mentioned above, the books stand alone.

So that's what I'm currently going from. I read on websites and in writing books and hear in classes all the time to read in your genre. Granted I'm pretty picky on what I read.

Looking all of these, I have to think I'm doing something right in revising one last time. I hope. Yes, I realize this is still a form of procrastination, but at least it's more likely to help the book get published. Rather than say...changing a character's name, which I did yesterday incidentally.

Some of the terms I used above, 'story-worthy problem, surface problem' come from a teacher of mine, Les Edgerton.

The incoherence comes from working third shift.

Synopsis

I have to wonder if writing the synopsis is one way to help writers (especially beginning or novice ones) figure out where to trim the fat. It's going surprisingly well. Like lifting my eyebrow and looking at it askance well. It also makes me wonder, for my book specifically, if I should just go on and combine the second book with this one since there are some loose ends that need tying. As a reader, it'd make me wonder why certain characters and scenes were in the book if they don't get properly explained. At the same time, I wonder if it's my old nemesis, Fear, trying to keep me from moving forward with the book.

I'll put it this way. If the book gets rejected because of the loose ends, then I'll just go on and combine books. If it gets rejected for other things, I'll make the changes needed and keep sending it out. There's no sense in being scared of rejection. I'm sure they'll always sting, but the best writers still get rejections...unless they're a brand name. You know, authors who could sign a napkin in a diner and sell a million copies.

At any rate, I'll work more on the synopsis now.

October 10, 2010

My of reckoning. My day of finally letting go of that fear of rejection. 10/10/10.

Yes. I'm going to start sending letters to literary agents about my fantasy novel.

Do you want the story behind the story?

Do you realize I'm going to tell it either way?

I'll make it brief.

I started writing when I was eight. My third grade teacher had us write a story from a prompt in our spelling book. I think she was punishing us, but if that was the case, it's been the greatest punishment I've ever received. I haven't stopped writing since.

The novel I just finished has been in my belly since I was thirteen years old. I read Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series and decided right then and there that I was going to write fantasy. I could do it. And I did. Over and over and over and over and over...In my defense, I was a sheltered child who had no life experience and no real way of getting the help I really needed to get the book properly written until I was in college. That was where I met three people who placed me on the right path. Well...two of them did.

The first person I met was a poet. I know, a novelist being guided by a poet? It wasn't as strange as it
sounds. The poet helped me realize that what I wrote was valuable and that I, sheltered, inexperienced, and introverted as I was, was also valuable. I also took this teacher's poetry class (it was required) and learned that I am most certainly not a poet.

Imagine my shock when I took another writing class only to have the teacher (a novelist, even!) basically tell me that what I wrote was garbage and that I should only write about the things the teacher wanted me to write about. No fantasy. No sci-fi. Nothing but stories about being the person the teacher saw sitting in the classroom. I was to write about my personal experiences. My experiences being a Race. A Gender. A Midwesterner. A Religion. I had no stories of those things. I didn't consider them important. I considered myself more than the Labels placed on me. I ended up using scenes and scenarios from the fantasy novel I was writing and changing the genre and names just to get through the class. Why the issue with fantasy and sci-fi? The teacher simply disliked those genres. I still have yet to figure out what the teacher does like. I suspect the teacher isn't clear on it either or it changes with the moon phases. Needless to say, this teacher did more harm than good. But there was good.

Through the unhelpful teacher, I met one of the most helpful teachers I've ever had. I still don't know how we started to get along considering when I first met him, I thought he was a jerk. I took his class, read my first chapter to the class, and learned that everything I did was wrong. Every instinct, every word, every...everything was wrong. You'd think this would deter me and do harm, but instead of just telling me how wrong I was, this teacher actually took me under his wing and, despite my thick-headedness, stubborness, and general arrogance, taught me what I needed to know to get the novel in its current form written and finished.

I wish I could name names, but I'll be professional. The first teacher, the poet, is no longer with us. He died in May and I miss him every single day. The second teacher still skulks around the English department striking fear and frustration into the students who dare to write what things other than their Labels. I have to wonder how many great novels and short stories died horrible deaths under that tyranny. The third teacher has a blog on this very site and when I get his permission, I'll name him.

So here I am about to face that giant, fear, and get this fantasy novel up to snuff so I can share the the characters who have become my best friends and the world that is my second home.

I'll write about the novel itself in the next post. Well...it'll be very general.

I hope this was short enough for you. I don't think I was all that brief, but I did try.

Thanks for reading.