A Personal Check List for Fiction Writers

Today we welcome a new third-Friday regular to the blog - Debby Harris who last visited us here. Welcome aboard, Debby!  

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I’m an Honorary Lecturer for the School of English at the Scottish University of St. Andrews (a town probably better known outside of Scotland as the historic Home of Golf).  Over the years, I’ve had the privilege of providing editorial support for two Ph.D. candidates in Creative Writing.   To help them evaluate their own work during the writing process, I prepared a check-list of practical questions for fiction writers to ask themselves.  This check list has since proven so useful to me as a tool for  editorial assessment/self-assessment that it seems churlish to keep it to myself.

So here it is:

A)  Plot

1)  Does the work feature a strong/striking central idea around which the action of the plot revolves?

2) Is the central concept sufficiently robust  to be conveyed in 25 words or fewer?

3)  Does the action reflect an artful balance between incident and exposition?

4)  Do plots and sub-plots advance logically, evincing a chain of cause and effect underlying the course of events?

5)  Are individual incidents and episodes well-conceived and well-orchestrated?

B)  Characterisation 
1)  Do the principal characters evince personal and emotional depth, eliciting sympathy or antipathy according to their roles?

2)  Is character interaction dramatic and dynamic, contributing to the development of exposition,  plot and theme?

3)  Is the dialogue lively and natural?

4)  Do characters behave self-consistently with respect to their age, social and educational background, experience and temperament?

5)  Within the framework of dialogue, is the register of diction appropriate to the respective characters and the work’s intended audience?

C)  Setting and Atmosphere

1)  Is the setting well-established in terms of time and place by means of descriptive imagery and selective detailing?

2)  Have the back-story elements been artfully accounted for in terms of background research and character profiling?

3)  Are atmosphere and mood effectively generated by means of evocative language?

4)  Do setting and atmosphere enhance plot action and character tensions?

5)  Do setting and atmosphere contribute meaningfully to thematic development?

D) The Writer’s Craft

1)  Is exposition handled adroitly, via a variety of techniques?

2)  Does point of view function artfully for the conveyance of story?

3)  Is the angle of vision manipulated effectively to influence the reader’s perceptions, emotional affinities, and thematic evaluations?

4)  Are scenes artfully “staged” with the aid of props and choreography of action?

5)  Does the work throughout exhibit a polished command of diction, syntax, and the ornaments of language?

In my experience, these questions, answered honestly, can help you locate any areas of potential weakness in your work.  (Incidentally, it’s also a useful tool whenever you’re out to critique any work of fiction that comes your way.)

Cheers!

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Debby does edit for authors, so please visit her website for more information. Readers, if you have questions for Debby, please leave them in the comments.

A New Writing Award for Women

Awards come and go, and it pays to be cautious especially in these days of increased book publishing opportunities. Here is a new award I can personally vouch for having been a member of the Story Circle Network for years. ~ Dani Greer

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May Sarton under her portrait

By Paula Stallings Yost

The winner of Story Circle Network's first annual Sarton Memoir Award will be announced at Stories from the Heart, the biannual SCN National Memoir Conference, at the Wyndham Hotel in Austin, Texas, April 13-15, 2012. 

The award is named in honor of May Sarton (1912-1995), the distinguished American poet, novelist, and author of twelve memoirs and journals. Readers have found Sarton's work to be inspiring, moving, and thought-provoking. While widely acclaimed for her fiction and poetry, Sarton’s best and most enduring work may lie in her journals. In these honest, probing accounts of her solitary life, she deals with such issues as aging, isolation, solitude, friendship, sexuality, self-doubt, success and failure, envy, love of nature, gratitude for life's simple pleasures, and the daily challenge of leading of a creative life.  

Much time and effort has been invested by many to establish this award project. Numerous entries were received in 2011 and submitted to two rounds of judging, first by volunteer SCN jurors and next by professional librarians not affiliated with SCN. We are looking forward with great anticipation to honoring the author of the best woman's memoir published in the United States and Canada, chosen from works submitted.

For more information about the award and the SCN Conference, please visit StoryCircle.org/Conference/ and  StoryCircle.org/SartonMemoirAward/.

Consider joining this debut literary award presentation while attending a great conference, where women from around the country gather to celebrate their stories and their lives. Through writing, reading, listening, and sharing, they will discover how personal narrative is a healing art, how they can gather their memories and tell their stories. Readers, writers, storytellers, and any woman with a past, present, and future are welcome. There will be opportunities to explore difficult or hidden issues, expand relationships with other women, and discover different modes and media—such as art, dance, and drama—for sharing our stories.

Awards for Mystery Novels - Agatha, Anthony, and More

For the theme of awards this month, Dani Greer asked me to write about awards for mysteries. She thought that would be a good topic for me since I write mysteries and read a lot of books in that genre. She also introduced me to the work of Louise Penny, who writes a mystery series set in Quebec featuring Chief Inspector Armand Gamache.

Louise Penny has won most of the major awards for mystery novels and has been compared to Agatha Christie. In fact, that is who I was reminded of when I first started reading her latest novel, A Trick of the Light, and it is no surprise that Penny has won the Agatha Award four times for her series.

The Agatha Award honors the "traditional mystery." That is to say, books best typified by the works of Agatha Christie as well as others who write mysteries that contain no explicit sex or gratuitous violence. In these books, the murders happen off screen and couples do what couples do behind closed doors. The award is given out at the Malice Domestic Conference near Washington D.C. every spring.

In addition to awards for novels and short stories, there is the Malice Domestic Award for Lifetime Achievement, which is given in recognition of a significant body of distinguished work in the Malice Domestic genre. The award is bestowed by the Malice Domestic Board of Directors.

The Poirot Award is presented to honor individuals other than writers who have made outstanding contributions to the Malice Domestic genre. The award is bestowed by the Malice Domestic Board of Directors and presented at the Malice Domestic conference. The Poirot Award is not an annual award.

For more information about the conference and Agatha Award, visit the Malice Domestic website.

Another award that Penny has won is the Anthony, which is given in the fall at Bouchercon, an annual convention for fans of mysteries, as well as authors. All attendees can nominate books and authors for the award prior to the date of the convention. The top nominees in each category are then put on a ballot used during the convention to vote.

The Barry Award, presented by Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine, has been given to Penny twice, and her first book, Still Life, was also named one of the five Mystery/Crime Novels of the Decade by Deadly Pleasures magazine. While newer than the Agatha or the Anthony, it has quickly become a coveted award for mystery fiction and nonfiction. Books can be submitted for consideration and a panel of judges comprised of reviewers and magazine staff select the winners.

The Dilys Award has been given annually since 1992 by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association (IMBA) to the mystery titles of the year which the member booksellers have most enjoyed selling. The award is named in honor of Dilys Winn, the founder of Murder Ink (now sadly closed), the first specialty bookseller of mystery books in the United States. Penny won this award for her first book and for a later book, Bury Your Dead.

The one major mystery award that Louise Penny has not won is the Edgar. Her books don't qualify, as this award is given to books considered more hard-boiled. The awards are presented by the Mystery Writers of America, honoring the best in mystery fiction, nonfiction, and television published or produced in the previous year. Named for the famed, Edgar Allan Poe, the contest accepts all sub-genres for nomination, including hard boiled. Visit The Edgars website for a list of this year's nominees.

In researching this topic I found more awards for mystery writers that I was aware of, or that I can include here. I did find this site Mystery Book Awards that lists them all with brief descriptions. Very helpful resource for readers and writers. I like to read books that have been nominated or have won awards, mainly to see what was so special about them. Rarely have I been disappointed. 

Come back next Monday for a review of A Trick of the Light by Louise Penny and see why I think it deserved the awards it has received.

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Maryann Miller is an author and freelance editor. Information about her books, her editing services, and her blogs can be found on her Web site at www.maryannwrites.com Follow her on Twitter and Facebook

Michael L. Printz Adds to ALA Awards Legacy

1/25/2012 Update: At the recent ALA Conference, the award winners were announced and the 2012 Printz winner was Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley.  Click here for more information. 

For many years, beloved Kansas librarian Michael L. Printz was considered by many to be the backbone of the American Library Association (ALA). After Printz died in 1996 at the age of 59, the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA, a branch of the ALA) memorialized him by bestowing the Michael L. Printz Award to the best young adult book published the previous year. While fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and anthologies are considered, so far the prize has been awarded to eleven novels and one graphic novel.

While the Printz Award program is relatively new, other ALA prizes are not. Generations of parents, students, librarians, and teachers have trusted the reputation of books that have won the John Newbery and Randolf Caldecott medals, the first of ALA’s annual awards for exemplary literature for children and young adults. Since 1922, ninety books have won a Newbery, and since 1938, seventy-three a Caldecott; and the metallic seals on their covers automatically speak of their quality.

Whereas many John Newbery Award recipients focused on motherless children, the ALA aimed to use the Printz Award to recognize a different type of book: one with an edgy, ultra-current focus on situations relevant to the lives of modern adolescents. These books explore conflicts sparked by crime, teen pregnancy, separation and divorce, parental death, physical abuse, drug abuse, social ostracism, and sexual promiscuity.


The repercussions of having received such an honor are far-reaching. If you are a parent, you already know that when choosing books for child readers, the very sight of the raised gold seals on these books evokes feelings of trust and artistic competence that helps drive sales.

Such exposure, extended through the word-of-mouth influence of school librarians, has to have a significant impact on an author’s career. Walter Dean Myers, who won the first Printz Award in 2000 for Monster, has continued as a trailblazer with his recent appointment as National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.

As in the Newbery and Caldecott tradition, runners up for the Printz Award also receive a prestigious designation. A silver seal is affixed to their covers that contains a large “P” and the words, “Honor Book.”

Author A.S. King (The Dust of 100 Dogs, Everybody Sees the Ants) earned this honor for her novel, Please Ignore Vera Dietz (see here for a previous BRP post highlighting a clever craft technique she used). I asked King if she’d share how being chosen as a Printz Honor Book has impacted her career in general, and specifically boosted sales of Please Ignore Vera Dietz. Since books sales are reported infrequently, and she received this honor just one year ago, she can only guess that it has boosted sales. She noted that sales of the paperback, due out in 2012, will eventually paint a more accurate picture. But translating a prize into sales isn't always a direct process, King says.

“Please Ignore Vera Dietz being picked as a Printz Honor book certainly impacted my life and career in many ways,” says King. “I have had more school and university visit requests, for sure. I believe it raised my profile and built bridges that I hadn't had before—bridges that can impact every part of a writer's life.”

Additional Resources

Complete list of ALA and YALSA Awards

ALA selected book and media lists

2011 Printz winner Paolo Bacigalupi's (Ship Breaker) interview with A.S. King

Thanks to Drew University PhD candidate Stephanie Cecchini for providing helpful information for this post!

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Kathryn Craft is a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com, an independent manuscript evaluation and line editing service. Her women's fiction and memoir are represented by Katie Shea at the Donald Maass Literary Agency. The first chapter of her memoir, Standoff at Ronnie's Place, modified as a stand-alone essay, was published online by Mason's Road, the online journal of Fairfield University's MFA program. She blogs about Healing through Writing.

The WILLA Literary Award

When I received an e-mail last August that I had won the WILLA Literary Award for Follow the Dream, I didn’t believe it. At first I thought it was telling me I was a finalist (which would have been wonderful in itself) and that I’d find out later. So I had to reread the letter several times before it finally sank in. I had WON! It took several weeks to come down from Cloud Nineteen.

This prestigious national award is given by the Women Writing the West organization in seven categories: Contemporary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Original Softcover, Creative Nonfiction, Scholarly Fiction, Poetry, and Children’s/Young Adult Fiction and Nonfiction. Each category has a winner and up to two finalists, who also receive award recognition at the organization’s annual fall conference. The WILLA recognizes outstanding literature featuring women’s stories set in the west.

Books published in the previous calendar year can be submitted by publishers or authors, and are read by groups of volunteers according to a set of rubrics set up by the WWW organization. The top five in each category are then judged by an independent panel of judges—librarians from around the U.S.

The WILLA is named in honor of Pulitzer Prize winner Willa Cather, who is known for her novels of the immigrant experience on the American frontier, including O Pioneers! (1913) and My Ántonia (1918). She received the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for One of Ours.

Winning this award is a huge honor for me and serves to validate my writing, that my hard work has been for a purpose. It also honors my rodeo-riding grandmother, on whom I have based my first two novels, Cowgirl Dreams (an EPIC Award Winner) and Follow the Dream. An award-winning book also helps with your marketing: it revives the book’s newsworthiness and it adds prestige. Readers and reviewers who perhaps were not interested in the subject matter before may express new interest in an award-winning book.

I encourage all authors to enter literary contests. You never know what may happen!

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A native Montanan, Heidi M. Thomas now lives in Northwest Washington. Her first novel, Cowgirl Dreams, is based on her grandmother, and the sequel, Follow the Dream, has recently won the national WILLA Award. Heidi has a degree in journalism, a certificate in fiction writing, and is a member of Northwest Independent Editors Guild. She teaches writing and edits, blogs, and is working on the next books in her “Dare to Dream” series.

Cues from the Coach: Why a Coach?

You’re sitting at your computer, hands poised on the keyboard. You’ve planned your story, done your character sketches and outline, and know exactly what will happen and how it will end. But where does it start? You look at the row of question marks on the first line of your outline. You didn’t know where to begin when you created it, and you don’t know now.

Or, for the fifth time, you’ve rewritten a tense scene that’s pivotal to the story, but it still lies flat on the page. All the elements are there, but it doesn’t sing. And it won’t hook a reader. Now what?

The ability to write is a talent. The ability to write well is an acquired skill. How do you move from one to the other?

Taking a writing class offers possibilities, particularly when it comes to grammar skills. The downside, however, might be a one-size-fits-all approach that can inhibit rather than foster creativity.

A writing group offers a forum for brainstorming and inspiration. The critiquing process, if handled with objectivity and diplomacy, can define areas that need development or other intervention. The efficacy of any group, however, depends on the ability/experience/expertise of its members, the manner in which the critique is delivered, and the validity and thoroughness of the suggestions.

Family and friends can be enthusiastic and encouraging—or the opposite. What they won’t be is objective. Those who know us and love us are not the best stepping stones on the path from writing talent to writing well. (Yes, exceptions exist, but emotional ties often taint “constructive criticism.”)

A competent editor should always be part of the team that takes a book from concept to completion. Editors, however, can be expensive, and they generally come into the picture after a book is written unless their specialty is developmental editing. Taking another step prior to the editing process will help assure that your manuscript is well written, grammatically correct, and ready to grip your audience—and it will likely save you big bucks over the course of your writing career.

Working one-on-one with a writing coach, book shepherd, or mentor can make the difference between an expensive content edit and a quick copy edit/proofread. The tricks of the trade and lessons learned will apply to future works, hence the money-saving factor. Remember, though, that a writing coach does not replace an editor. Here’s what she/he does do:

• Teaches you to use words more effectively
• Shows you how to develop characters
• Helps you to grab and hold your audience
• Teaches you the effectiveness of show vs. tell
• Helps you to avoid writer intrusion
• Highlights the value of active verbs
• Makes your work memorable
• Makes your readers eager for your next book
• Shows you where to begin and end
• Teaches you to maintain rhythm and flow
• Helps you eliminate unnecessary material

Have you ever worked with a writing coach? What qualities in a coach are most important to you? Do you believe a coach could improve your work?
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After working as an editor for more than two decades, Linda Lane now mentors writers who want to take their work to the next level. To learn more about her mentoring, visit her at http://www.denvereditor.com/

Be My Guest - Jodie Renner

Check Your Facts, Ma’am!

You’re busy creating your story world with your right brain, rolling along with the great plot and developing your characters while your muse is buzzing. Great! But later, when you’ve got that first draft done, it’s important to switch to your left brain and go back and check for continuity, logic, and accurate information – or get someone else to do it for you.

As you’re writing,  you may assume everything makes sense and all your info is correct, but at some point, step back and reread for logistics. While you’re at it, verify your facts, to avoid annoying or even alienating your readers – and eroding your credibility. “But,” you say, “I’m writing fiction, so who cares about facts?” You should, because you want to create a credible world for your readers to be drawn into, and if an erroneous fact jars them out of it, they’re going to be annoyed. Think about watching a movie about Ancient Rome and suddenly you notice a watch on one of the gladiators.

The illusion of being caught up in their world is suddenly shattered.

If you’re writing a western, make sure the gun makes and models characters use were invented by that period.

In a contemporary novel, don’t have a character in the 70s or even 80s researching a topic on her home computer! A quick Google search with the question “When did home computers become popular?” revealed that Microsoft pioneered the home computer in 1992, and 1995 was the year computers really became mainstream. Yet, I recently read a novel in which the (missing and assumed dead) mother of the protagonist had sent emails 20-25 years earlier! I personally started emailing around 1996 or ’97. How about you?

Similarly, don’t have your everyday characters using cell phones in the ‘90s.

In a historical fiction I edited a few years ago, a ne’er-do-well was running from the police in England, around 1855. He happened on a poker game near the harbor and found out one of the poker players was boarding a ship for America within hours. Thinking that escaping to America would solve his problems, the fugitive followed the guy after the late-night game, stabbed him, and stole his ticket for the ship. Arriving in America three or four weeks later, he was greeted by his uncle, whom he’d arranged to meet him at the pier. I asked the author how the fellow, who’d boarded the ship within hours of his poker game, could have arranged for his uncle to meet him at the harbor. By cell phone? The author admitted he hadn’t thought of that, and was grateful that I’d pointed it out.

Also, be aware of whether expressions were in use in the time frame or geographical region of your story. If you use a modern expression in a historical fiction, it jolts the reader out of that time period, and they’ll probably feel you did a shoddy job of recreating that world for them. For example, in a historical fiction I edited that took place about 150 years ago, the term “upscale” was used. This struck me as out of place for that time, so I looked it up. Merriam-Webster lists the year of the first appearance of many words, and “upscale” is listed as first being used in 1966, so to even use it in narration in a historical fiction takes the reader out of that world. Same with the even more recent “high-end” (coined around1977). For historical fiction, better to use “upper-class” or “elegant” or “sophisticated” or “affluent” or “wealthy.”

As a freelance editor, I constantly notice little errors like a vehicle make or model changing, problems with time sequence, sudden changes in a character’s name or appearance, inconsistencies with the season, climate or geography, and so on. If errors like these aren’t picked up before your story is published, you can be sure that a number of readers will notice them and may lose confidence in you as a writer – and put down your story.

So, if in doubt about facts in your story, take the time to look them up, or run your story past trusted readers before publication. Better yet, employ the services of a freelance editor, who will be on the lookout for incorrect information, discrepancies, and logic problems, and may query you with a comment like “Was this invented back then?” or “Did she just buy a new car? The one she had yesterday was a blue Toyota. Now she’s driving a Ford,” or “Who’s Ralph?” (That character whose name you changed.) The last thing you want is for your readers to say, “Oh, come on! This doesn’t make sense!”

How about you? As a reader, have you ever been jolted out of a story by something that didn’t make sense? As a writer or editor, have you noticed incongruities that needed to be fixed? Do you have any interesting or funny or absurd examples to share?

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Guest blogger Jodie Renner is a freelance fiction manuscript editor, specializing in thrillers, romantic suspense, mysteries, romance, YA, and historical fiction. Jodie’s services range from developmental and substantive editing to light final copy editing and proofreading, as well as manuscript critiques. Check out Jodie’s website at http://www.jodierennerediting.com/ and her blog, dedicated to advice and resources for fiction writers, at http://jodierennerediting.blogspot.com/.

Posted by Maryann Miller who is struggling to make sure the wordage used in her historical mystery fits the 1960s.