Critique partners and Beta-readers

October 7, 2015 by Roland Clarke

This post arose because I have just given my first critique for a fellow writer in the Insecure Writers Support Group’s Critique Circle on Facebook. And it is the first Wednesday of October, so this is my IWSG monthly post.

I felt that it was the perfect time to look at what the experts had to say about the critique process. So where better than starting with a useful post at IWSG on what to look for in a critique partner:

“The manuscript is polished – huzzah! Time for another set of eyes to look at it.

Beta readers/test readers are often those who are just readers of our genre. They’re great for spotting flaws in the story. But we also need skilled writers to go over the manuscript and examine the plot, the character arc, the grammar, the structure, etc. Enter–critique partners.

What should we look for in a good critique partner?”

So what should we be asking our critique partners? Well there various questions, and here are the ones that K.M Weiland suggests:

“1. Is anything confusing?

2. Are any scenes boring or repetitious?

3. Do you spot any general tics (repeated words, etc.)?

4. Do you spot any confusing plot points (let me know when and where I lose you and what needs to be clarified)?

5. Does the opening grab you?

6. Is there an appropriate balance of action with the other subplots?”

These are just the ones that she asks before the crit. partner reads the manuscript, but she has others.

There is an overlap in what one expects from beta readers and crit. partners, and Margaret Yang gives in an insight into her experiences at Jade Varden’s instructive website.

Of course we have to remember to treat our readers with respect. As Michael Kinn points out at Janice Hardy’s Fiction Workshop, there is etiquette involved:

“As beta readers we can all do with some critiquette to guide our feedback to the (hopefully) well-polished drafts writers send us. The seasoned beta reader will find out what type of critique the writer is looking for, shun infeasible turn-around promises and warn the writer of any delays. Of course, beta readers should always offer candid feedback and treat the writer with respect. These are sound rules for critiquing. But in guiding my own critiques, I try to let one piece of advice rule them all…”

‘How to Serve and Swallow Criticism’ is an art in itself, which Kristan Hoffman describes at Writers Unboxed. However, there may be reasons to ignore some of the advice from our critique groups, as Anne R. Allen explains, but with qualifications.

Those are some of the expert opinions, though not all by a long way. I have my own experiences, but, although I did belong to a writers group, I’m still near the beginning of my critique path. I tend to mix the praise with the constructive criticism. I also aim to not sit on manuscripts for ages, but realise that there are some busy readers out there.

UPDATE: Good guide to “How to Critique Fiction” by Victory Crayne at: http://www.crayne.com/howcrit.html

What is your advice?

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

***

Some of you might have noticed that I missed yesterday’s post. Or you think this has combined the two posts? Well, I did think that I could count this one twice. Dang, I could have posted it yesterday, then tweaked it for today. What a missed opportunity. Would anyone have noticed?

In fact, there will be another post this week as I will be posting about the launch of One Stop For Writers, which launches tomorrow October 7^th

***

The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. We post our thoughts on our own blogs. We talk about our doubts and the fears we have conquered. We discuss our struggles and triumphs. We offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling.

Please visit others in the group and connect with other writers – aim for a dozen new people each time.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!

Our Twitter hashtag is #IWSG

And be sure to check out our Facebook group – https://www.facebook.com/groups/IWSG13/

We also have a t-shirt now! You can purchase it here – http://www.neatoshop.com/product/IWSG

The awesome co-hosts for the October 7 posting of the IWSG are TB Markinson,Tamara Narayan, Shannon Lawrence, Stephanie Faris, and Eva E. Solar!

Was the first novel too easy?

August 5, 2015 by Roland Clarke

As this is the first Wednesday in August, I’m talking about ‘my debut’ for this monthly Insecure Writer’s Support Group contribution.

As some of you may have noticed, my debut novel “Spiral of Hooves” is no longer available, since I parted amicably with my publishers. I have all the rights back, but I need to find another publisher. That should be easy as the novel has already been accepted by one publisher and got 5* and 4* reviews.

Life is never that easy. The first publisher that I offered “Spiral of Hooves” rejected it, but I don’t know why. Is it too long? Is it badly written? Has it passed its read-by date? Or did it appeal to the original publisher but not my next choice?

When I was preparing the document for submission, I did wonder about some scenes. Should I have cut them out, and re-edited the whole novel? That might be my next step – unless I work on the sequel next, then leave “Spiral of Hooves” as back-story.

However, I also have “Storms Compass” out with my second group of beta readers so that could be my next step. But they have had it for six weeks and only one has responded. It won’t be easy re-writing the post-apocalyptic novel with just one lot of comments.

Of course, I have the first book in my “Snowdon Shadows” series, for which I have been wading through character sketches and interviews. Should that be next?

The option that I favour, at the moment, is to retire from writing, recognise that there are far better writers out there, and just focus on reading some great books. The pile is tumbling out of my Kindle so I need to catch up.

Just don’t mention the failing attempt to emigrate. Just don’t go there.

But tell me what you think about my options. Maybe I might even listen, for once. How do you deal with mental confusion?

Please visit others in the group and connect with other writers – aim for a dozen new people each time.

Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!

Our Twitter hashtag is #IWSG

And be sure to check out our Facebook group – https://www.facebook.com/groups/IWSG13/

We also have a t-shirt now! You can purchase it here – http://www.neatoshop.com/product/IWSG

The awesome co-hosts for the this August 5 posting of the IWSG are Nancy Gideon, Bob R Milne, Doreen McGettigan, Chrys Fey, Bish Denham, and Pat Garcia!

Would You Trade Your Writer’s Block?

August 6, 2014 by Roland Clarke

I promise that it was there… until I woke up. Didn’t you see it when you arrived? Maybe it departed on wings of… well take your pick, on Gossamer, feather, metal, wood or leather.

Time to be honest. I don’t suffer from writer’s block. Maybe I have an antigen in my makeup, or my muse works overtime. Whichever it is, I have too many ideas, therefore too many first drafts that need editing. I just need to find the one idea that fits the moment.

However, I admit with Multiple Sclerosis that I am always losing thoughts as I write. This post is a typical example as I lost my train of thought many times. Whether the thought ever came back, I don’t remember. Yes, it’s that bad.

As for my block it’s over editing, but more of that later.

Let’s continue with my primary antigens to Writer’s Block. Not all of them work all of the time, but at least one might yield something that I can use. Maybe even something that helps you.

DREAMS: We all dream, although we often forget most of them. I don’t always have inspiring dreams, but there are a few that offer something of worth. When I wake up, I either write the dream down or work through the idea that it inspires, for later use as either a scene, a short story, or a novel.

Photo of a cloud illuminated by sunlight. ~ by Ibrahim Iujaz from Rep. Of Maldives

PHOTOS: Although I used to take photographs as an equestrian journalist, it tends to be other people’s photos that yield the best inspiration. On Pinterest I have gradually collated images to inspire new ideas. See my Pinterest file here.

OUTDOORS: When I was more mobile, I found that getting out into natural surroundings would inspire me. That included observing people in the street or park. I once got the idea for a Haiku about a kite from a summer wander – or was it a Senyru? Nowadays I have to rely more on my immediate surroundings for inspiration – like “Black with Secrets, Adorned with Silver”, my Blog Post on Monday, which was inspired by dawn sounds that woke me up. One advantage is gazing at Snowdon every day.

GAMING: Okay playing online games – MMORPGs – is one of my ways to chill… a reward like chocolate, but gaming is a source of inspiration. I have two draft novels set against a gaming world, in fact a fictional gaming world based on my short story saga “Gossamer Flames”. I’m not sure what the inspiration for the first novella that became “Gossamer Flames” was, but gaming has built more of the world. Ironically, the novella –Weave of the Sister Skein – appeared while I was recovering from my first MS attack in 1999.

I’m sure that you can suggest other sources of inspiration, and you are welcome to add them in your comments.

So to My Block and Insecurity – Editing. I am churning out first drafts faster than I can edit them. My mind can no longer deal with focusing on finding the faults. Yes I can trudge through the manuscript – not MS, please, as I live with a MonSter already. Trawling word by word, I aim for perfection. I search for plot holes and character flaws. But I need months, even years. Time is not on my side.

Perhaps I need an editor partner. Maybe someone that can take my words then polish the idea into something worth reading. All offers considered.

Maybe that’s another Writing Unblock antigen. Anyone want to trade?

***

The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day, when we talk about our doubts and the fears we have conquered. We discuss our struggles and triumphs, perhaps offering a word of encouragement for others who are struggling.

This is my monthly IWSG post and there are many more words of wisdom out in cyber-space. I’m only a single blip among 290 other amazing bloggers rocking the neurotic writing world. If you click here there are links to all of them and you can visit as many as you want.

All thanks to Ninja Captain Alex J Cavanaugh and his awesome co-hosts Sarah Foster, Joylene Nowell Butler, Lily Eva, and Rhonda Albom!

My Writing Process

May 16, 2014 by Roland Clarke

This is one of those blog memes doing the rounds and it was Facebook writer friend David W Robinson who encouraged me to have a go – although I had to confess that it might be another means to put off my outstanding edit. In fact that’s been outstanding for eleven months.

First I should say that David is the opposite of me, as a visit to his ‘My Writing Process’ post at http://www.dwrob.com/2014/05/my-writing-process/ should make clear. He’s also a very prolific writer and one of the awesome Crooked Cat authors, which is in contrast to my single novel in print. Or can I count all those magazine and newspaper articles… guess not.

However, we share a passion for crime even if his see daylight beyond his eyes. Please check out his site and enjoy his writing.

Enough prevaricating, time to confess about My Writing Process.

Beyond the words ‘sporadic’ and ‘erratic’ there is a pattern. At specific times of the year, mainly during November and NaNoWriMo, I focus on getting a first draft down on paper. I usually aim to plot this novel out in detail during previous months, leaving room for the characters to introduce their own direction to the tale. Sometimes I manage to fit the draft for another novel into a year, and write that in the same way – outline and fast first draft.

However, this process has left me with five unfinished novels, including the one that I class as “the outstanding edit” – ‘Wyrm Bait’. I wrote the first draft in July 2011 and I revised it in 2012 using a cut & past approach = printed version, lots of colour pens, cards, shuffling and slicing. When I was satisfied with the third draft of ‘Wyrm Bait’, I sent it to some professional editors – Hyland & Byrne – and received some very constructive comments, suggestions and line-by-line changes. That was in June and I still need to start on the next revision using their material.

That means there’s no writing process there, although I have completed another NaNo draft and various shorts set in my Gossamer Flamesl world. Somehow re-writing and editing shorts is easier to face than a whole novel. Too many distractions standing in my way like emails, reading other blogs, social media, not to mention moving house.

Yet, if I take a step back and look at this all carefully, I can see a pattern. Rather than work in large chunks of text or time, I choose smaller slivers to focus on – small specific targets, like short stories.

And what is a novel but a series of carefully crafted scenes, with twists, turns and threads weaving them together. Maybe dividing it up that way, pacing myself, will become my re-writing process.

So I have no excuse now. Tomorrow I must start on revising ‘Wyrm Bait’ – or maybe next week.

Life Throws Curve Balls

December 4, 2013 by Roland Clarke

A foggy evening 01 (Photo credit: AnneCN)

This was meant to be my first attempt at an Insecure blog having failed to do one on the first Wednesday in October or November – sorry IWSG.

Damn those curve balls, whether they be my health (MS), stress, or moving plans. They keep on coming, so I keep trying to knock them away. This is another attempt, although I should be doing my tax return.

Starting on a positive note, I managed to write 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo in November, and a week later I had typed the last word ~ ‘forever’. This was only a 60k rough first draft of ‘Tortuous Terrain’, but at least it’s something to work on. With a lot of revision, editing, and critique, I should be able to produce a fitting sequel to ‘Spiral of Hooves’, my first published novel, coming shortly from Spectacle Publishing Media Group.

However, my 2013 NaNo effort will have to join the queue behind four other novels needing revision, although it might jump the queue a bit if the demand is there, and if other efforts are deemed unworthy of revision. And that is where I am in a quandary, and where I am Insecure. Where do I go from here? What do I tackle next? How can I improve my editing process, which with ‘Spiral of Hooves’ took at least a decade?

I look at the speed of others when it comes to producing finished books, and I marvel… and I shudder. Most of my Facebook writing friends are completing a book a year, sometimes as many as five. Some are even producing short stories as well. Although my health is a drawback, I am retired with more time, supposedly, than many of my colleagues.

What do I give up doing? Linking with the digital world, by checking emails and social media? Learning my craft, by reading other blogs? My only escape, gaming?

Or do I set tighter deadlines? Or do I chill out and tell myself that at sixty I still have time? Or maybe I must accept that in the next life I will start trying to be a writer earlier.

It’s not straightforward when I find it easier plotting a new novel, even writing that first draft, than editing. I even have a sequel to the sequel churning around in my head… ever since I read a blog about writing a series, which suggested that one write the first and have the synopsis of Book 2 and of 3 in the wings. Great when I have two series in the pipeline ~ the Chasseur series (Spiral of Hooves++) and the Gossamer Steel series (Wyrm Bait++).

The solution is out there somewhere, but for now I will stop being a lone wolf howling at the moon, and stop baring my soul here so I can go edit ‘Wyrm Bait’, the next novel crying out for an audience. It’s already had at least two drafts, several critiques, and a professional edit.

Time to get the red pens out.

Is that the best solution? Or have I dismissed a better one above?

November (Photo credit: Cape Cod Cyclist)

IWSG – NaNoWriMo Junk or Diamond In The Rough? (awriterinspired.wordpress.com)
#IWSG: 20,000 Wrong Words (writingreadingandlife.com)
IWSG Day in December (readfaced.wordpress.com)
Winning NaNoWriMo (traceybaptiste.wordpress.com)

Raising The Hood

September 25, 2013 by Roland Clarke

Shaw Alligator Wrench (Photo credit: Noel C. Hankamer)

If he had been given love when they raised him, the poor guy wouldn’t have turned to crime – even if I created him that way, a worthy antagonist.

Oh scrub that.

Or were they lifting a bonnet? Or was the bonnet in someone’s way?

A hat, you might ask, wondering why the fleeing hood hit the bonnet. Perhaps it was Easter. Who really knows? For that is the confusion that a British writer causes an American editor. Well I did just that and discovered that our common language can be so confusing.

It seems that we are ‘Two nations separated by a common language,’ as someone famous once said. Although at “QUOTE … UNQUOTE” it appears that it might have been both Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, rather than Winston Churchill. “In The Canterville Ghost (1887), Wilde wrote: ‘We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language’. However, the 1951 Treasury of Humorous Quotations (Esar & Bentley) quotes Shaw as saying: ‘England and America are two countries separated by the same language’, but without giving a source. The quote had earlier been attributed to Shaw in Reader’s Digest (November 1942).”

Okay, I digress. Does it really matter who said it when there is some truth in the quote? No… but I get to show how clever I am by misquoting someone famous.

Back to the fleeing hood. An American reader, that my publisher provided to check ‘Spiral of Hooves’ for readability, felt that the use of the word “bonnet” might be confusing as people wear bonnets. An American would say “hood” in the intended context. But a British reader would misunderstand “hood” as that for us would also be a piece of headwear. In this case it was easily resolved by making the context clear:

“Their vehicle hit him full on, the impetus throwing his body over the roof, and onto the ground, where he squirmed clutching his stomach.”

All mention of a “bonnet” or “hood” removed. But there were harder points of misunderstanding to resolve than this, although I think that a resolution was found eventually.

However, it’s hard ensuring that British characters ring true to both American and British readers alike without resorting to stereotypical language. I hope that my English heroine, Carly Tanner still sounds like many of the riders that I used to interview when I was a journalist. The next step will be ensuring that her distinctive way of talking remains consistent in the sequel ‘Tortuous Terrain’.

Of course both novels have their non-British characters and that has presented another challenge, especially when their first language is not English. I have refrained from over-using foreign words, notably my protagonist’s patois, but the odd foreign curse has been useful where the context calls for expletives.

Technical jargon has also been a problem in the sense that a non-horsey reader might have found some of the expressions confusing. But again I have been careful to retain some of the flavour of the world in which the novel is set, while making the jargon clearer from the context. The proof will be in the readers. I fear that I will face a greater problem with my mysteries set against the gaming world.

But back to the Americans and not just my publishers or many of my intended readers. The characters. In ‘Spiral of Hooves’ there is a Chicana, who has tested my resources in many ways as her dialogue spans two languages, as does that of the French-Canadians. I have relied on my American wife and my editors to ensure that these characters’ language is realistic and they say “truck”, “fender” and “dumpster” as well as “hood”.

But they manage to drive on the left, except when they are in France.

In ‘Tortuous Terrain’ the characters will have to drive on the right and the majority language will be American. Hopefully my British readers will make the journey with me across the Pond, and the hood will behave having been correctly raised.