Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 2

Don't ask yourself, "Is this good?" Instead ask, "Is this the best I can make it right now?"

What Jim Said!

There is never enough time to fix it right once it is gone out. There is always time to do it right the first time, even if it means missing a submission. Those not ready for prime time writings will haunt you for years.

Take it from one who knows.

I should probably wait then. I mean I want to send it in, but I just keep getting this feeling that I shouldn't, provided that makes sense.

Everyone should write more sonnets, is what I think.

HoneyBadger said:

Everyone should write more sonnets, is what I think.

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I would have tried to write one sooner but,
yours was just too good so I did not try.
Like outdoing fighters at kicking butt,
or condors at being able to fly,
it’s just not worth wasting my cherished time.
And writing these words organized in lines,
such that the ends of them perfectly rhyme,
is harder than making Ms. Portman mines.
See that’s not even an appropriate word.
Perhaps I’m being too hard on myself,
there are some things at which I lead the herd,
like being me and not being an elf.
I hope my syllable amounts are fine,
that none of these lines have only nine.

James D. Macdonald said:

Depends on what you mean by "beginning." Look around for blog entries by alumnae to get a feeling of what it's all about and compare that to where you are.

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Thanks for the comments and suggestions. There are plenty of blog postings on this, uniformly positive. Assessments seem to vary regarding experience level. So I'll keep working on a story for it and let the fine people at VP tell me if I'm good enough yet.

Try the Lester Dent master plot outline.

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I ran into that before in Michael Moorcock articlehttp://www.wetasphalt.com/content/how-write-book-three-days-lessons-michael-moorcock but didn't pay much attention at the time. Interesting stuff and it's been very helpful so far. It's surprisingly hard to find short stories by Lester Dent, given how many he must have written. Plenty of Doc Savage novels available though.

Jim,

Another one of the genres I write is Romance/Women's Fiction/Erotica, and one of the main problems I have is coming up with enough conflict or problems/obstacles for my characters to go through without relying on supernatural elements. For some reason, I can't take that small kernel of initial or main conflict and break it or send it into other smaller levels of conflict. I can do this with Urban Fantasy and some Paranormal Romance, but excluding a romantic sub-plot, UF is different. In UF, most of the time, my villains or antagonists are personified. Sure, the character may go through some internal conflict but most conflict is external. For example, in order from preventing ABC from happening, we have to make sure XYZ does or doesn't happen. I don't want to say that it's easier for me, but I am able to do the "This-happens-because-this-happened" thing more than in Romance/Women's Fiction/Erotica.

I was just wondering if you have any suggestions that could help me out.

Should I try personifying an antagonist thus writing Romantic Suspense instead? I don't mind writing Romantic Suspense but I think I would find it more difficult to write, at least in my opinion.

Do you think that maybe this could be a sign that I'm either a) not ready to write a romance or b) it's just not a genre that holds interest to me in writing as it use to, as far as it being a main plot instead of a sub-plot or side-plot?(This also is said as that Urban Fantasy is more of an interest to me now, and therefore, I'm more of a Fantasy writer). I do like reading romances, women's fiction, and erotica/erotic romance (that don't carry a paranormal/fantasy main plot or sub-plot), however, I feel like I want to write in those genres, specifically romance and erotica/erotic romance because those were the first genres I read and wrote. Don't get me wrong, I do have an interest, like I said, but I don't feel it's as great as it used to be. The only reason I'm not entirely relying on this as my answer is that I had trouble forming conflict and etc. even when those were my only genres.

Do you have any advice for forming conflict, and I whether or not I should wait until I'm fully interested in the genre(romance, women's fiction, erotica, and etc. without any kind of supernatural element involved) again?

Thanks in advance.

Conflicts don't need to be great, or world-shaking, or apocalyptic. All they have to be is there.

Character A: "I want to order a pizza."

Character B: "Well, what's stopping you?"

Character A: [...]


[...] is the conflict.

James D. Macdonald said:

Conflicts don't need to be great, or world-shaking, or apocalyptic. All they have to be is there.

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So, does that mean I should try maybe introducing the plot maybe in the second chapter or later in the first chapter rather than right off from the start, should that I should introduce bits and pieces of it at certain times when the story first starts off, or a combination of the two? I know that conflict will come into the plot depending on the exact conflict.

It's just that I have trouble coming up with things that would prevent a couple from getting together or staying together. That is the main conflict for a lot of romance novels, and depending on the type of novel, that conflict changes. But that I think is my problem. I can kind of, sort of get them together but I don't know to how to almost or completely break them apart. Any ideas?

I typically write Interracial Romance, and unless my story is a historical or takes place in the 50's or 60's, maybe even a decade or two later, I really don't want to rely on race as the factor that keeps the couple apart. At the most, I think it should be an ad-on or contribution to the reason why they shouldn't be together, and I probably really use it if they were living in an area that wasn't as accepting as other areas of their relationship, but I really don't want that to be the reason they fight/almost break up/break up/etc.

The plot should start with word one of chapter one. If it doesn't ... cut everything up to that point.

But I think we're talking past each other. Try Chapter One: Character One is out of cat food and must get some despite it being a Sunday and the stripe on her debit card getting erased when she stuck it to the refrigerator door with a magnet.

You want something that'll keep a couple apart? Try one of them getting transferred to another state. Or having to move to another state in order to find work.

There's all kinds of things that you can do.

The main thing is to have something on every page that gives the reader a reason to turn to the next page. It could be breathtakingly beautiful prose. It could be edge-of-the-seat suspense. But there has to be something.

Silver-Midnight said:

I typically write Interracial Romance, and unless my story is a historical or takes place in the 50's or 60's, maybe even a decade or two later, I really don't want to rely on race as the factor that keeps the couple apart. At the most, I think it should be an ad-on or contribution to the reason why they shouldn't be together, and I probably really use it if they were living in an area that wasn't as accepting as other areas of their relationship, but I really don't want that to be the reason they fight/almost break up/break up/etc.

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Can I make a suggestion that you forget they are an Interracial couple and treat it as if it is only a single detail to their lives, like they play golf.

Break ups come from conflicts that are important to the characters. Fighting over little things first, the color of a new car or whether to get a cat or a dog. They build. Then, one decides the grass might be greener, then the other side might be greener. Before long, you have differences that can't be reconciled easily. The icing on the cake with your couple is that they have a built in fighting/hurting mechanism.

allenparker said:

Can I make a suggestion that you forget they are an Interracial couple and treat it as if it is only a single detail to their lives, like they play golf.

Break ups come from conflicts that are important to the characters. Fighting over little things first, the color of a new car or whether to get a cat or a dog. They build. Then, one decides the grass might be greener, then the other side might be greener. Before long, you have differences that can't be reconciled easily. The icing on the cake with your couple is that they have a built in fighting/hurting mechanism.

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Well, the interracial part wasn't that really important in the first place, unless, like I said, it took place in a certain geographical region or time period.

Thanks. So, would having a conflict that bothers one character but they don't voice that it bothers them until a certain point be a good idea as well? Like for example, age, career path, time spent with one another, etc.

Silver-Midnight said:

Thanks. So, would having a conflict that bothers one character but they don't voice that it bothers them until a certain point be a good idea as well?

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It could be, sure. You won't know if it is until you write it.

I posted this elsewhere; I'll repost it here:

Okay, let's talk about pitches.

Assuming that you're somewhere in the vicinity of the right ballpark (that is, you aren't pitching Extreme Porn Splatterpunk to an editor from Fluffy Baby Bunny Stories), 100% of the time you're going to get a request to send the manuscript because ... the editor won't be able to tell how good your book is from any pitch, no matter how polished, or unpolished, it might be. So, you'll send your manuscript, and it will be placed on exactly the same slushpile as it would have gone on if you'd sent it in cold.

And that is what your pitch buys you.

Better to spend your time polishing your book than your pitch. The editor won't remember you, because you're just one of a hundred nervous, sweating writers she's seen for five or ten minutes each over the past two days. And if she does remember you? No matter. The manuscript trumps everything.

James D. Macdonald said:

I posted this elsewhere; I'll repost it here:

Okay, let's talk about pitches.

Assuming that you're somewhere in the vicinity of the right ballpark (that is, you aren't pitching Extreme Porn Splatterpunk to an editor from Fluffy Baby Bunny Stories), 100% of the time you're going to get a request to send the manuscript because ... the editor won't be able to tell how good your book is from any pitch, no matter how polished, or unpolished, it might be. So, you'll send your manuscript, and it will be placed on exactly the same slushpile as it would have gone on if you'd sent it in cold.

And that is what your pitch buys you.

Better to spend your time polishing your book than your pitch. The editor won't remember you, because you're just one of a hundred nervous, sweating writers she's seen for five or ten minutes each over the past two days. And if she does remember you? No matter. The manuscript trumps everything.

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To clarify, this is specifically for subbing right to publishers, not querying agents? ("Pitch" gets bandied about interchangeably with "query" on occasion.)

Right. That's for the conferences that advertise "pitch sessions" with editors as their draw with aspiring authors.

These are usually in New York so there isn't a lot of travel involved for the publishing professionals, and editors show up because they get free lunches and an honorarium. Editors are as low-paid as everyone else in publishing. Really, you have no idea how tight the money is at most publishers, even the biggest.

James D. Macdonald said:

I posted this elsewhere; I'll repost it here:

Okay, let's talk about pitches.

Assuming that you're somewhere in the vicinity of the right ballpark (that is, you aren't pitching Extreme Porn Splatterpunk to an editor from Fluffy Baby Bunny Stories), 100% of the time you're going to get a request to send the manuscript because ... the editor won't be able to tell how good your book is from any pitch, no matter how polished, or unpolished, it might be. So, you'll send your manuscript, and it will be placed on exactly the same slushpile as it would have gone on if you'd sent it in cold.

And that is what your pitch buys you.

Better to spend your time polishing your book than your pitch. The editor won't remember you, because you're just one of a hundred nervous, sweating writers she's seen for five or ten minutes each over the past two days. And if she does remember you? No matter. The manuscript trumps everything.

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This is exactly what happened to me when I went to a pitch session in 2005. The editor I spoke with was very nice and she asked me to send the first few chapters, just like the regular slush.

All the pitch session did was give me a chance to be turned away based on something other than the book I wrote. Uncle Jim is 100% right here.

Those sorts of conferences frequently either directly advertise or strongly imply that the pitch sessions are a way of circumventing the slush pile, and frequently point to the number of requested manuscripts as proof that their training in how to pitch is effective.

"I want to order a pizza," Michael said.

Sheila turned on him. "Well, what's stopping you?"

"You are. You've got my phone."

"So? Try taking it from me."

The look in her eye told Michael she meant it. He stood up from his chair. "I will, if you make me."

Sheila smiled, set her feet apart, holding the phone in her left hand. Her right hand balled in a fist. "Go ahead. Make my day..."

Michael had picked a bad day to cancel service on the landline.

And see? You already have an interesting scene going.

James D. Macdonald said:

And see? You already have an interesting scene going.

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Yeah. I think I just has some trouble coming up with conflicts or problems couples/people could face.

Number one thing couples argue about: money.

Silver-Midnight said:

Yeah. I think I just has some trouble coming up with conflicts or problems couples/people could face.

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Try scanning the self-help section titles, maybe?

People who want to fight will find something to fight about, whether it's a habit of bringing home stray werewolves, a drinking problem, religious differences, or household chores. And when done well, there are few things more effective than a character on the page absolutely losing. their. !#$% all over someone.

What movie to go to (who always gets to choose or have veto power). Whose parents to see on holidays. One forgets something but swears the other never mentioned it. One likes the Redskins; the other insists on wearing a Cowboys jacket. Which way the toilet paper roll is supposed to go.

Tension can build up over the craziest things. Then it can become an issue of arguing style -- arguments about arguments.