Wordcraft -- What an editor wants to read

Recently, Lou Anders conducted what he says on his blog was his first ever writing workshop at FenCon VIII in Addison, Texas. Few workshop leaders would be better equipped to tell us what an editor wants to see in the first pages of a novel. He’s this year’s winner of the Hugo Award for editing, long form, and the editorial director for Pyr books. He hears twelve to fifteen pitches for books daily, and he and his assistant at Pyr look at, by his calculation, a thousand manuscripts annually. Of those, Pyr publishes thirty.

After talking through a few of the nineteen workshop submissions, he tactfully formulated “the no prologue, no multiple POV (point of view), no unlikable protagonists rule” of things that turn off readers within the first few pages. Our starting goal as writers is to “give people as few reasons as possible to drop out” of reading a story.

What else turns him off? Perhaps surprisingly for a hard-boiled looking guy -- profanity. “I like to save profanity for the moments that count,” he said.

That’s partly because, he said, for all the emphasis on action in science fiction and fantasy, women and girls constitute the overwhelming majority of readers -- 75 to 90 percent. For YA (young adult), the reader demographic is even stricter -- teen girls and their mothers. Writers must master the art of “getting it past the mothers -- and getting the mothers to read it.”

So what does Lou Anders like? Contemporary sounding language, for one thing. Telling details, for another. He commended a writer for a passage in which a character flipped her long hair from under the handle of her bag, although admitting he might forget to add something like that because “I don’t have hair. . . (but) little tiny details that are realistic prepare people for the nonsense to follow.”

He also likes humor. “Find a way to be upbeat even when you’re downbeat. . .Even dark books have moments of humor, and the darker they are, the more humorous.”

And how to get those sympathetic protagonists? Not by making them pathetic or overwhelmed. But for a struggling character, “If we see what she’s given up and what she’s juggling, we’ll sympathize with her.”


Want more of Lou’s writing advice? See his blog, “bowing to the future,”
http://louanders.blogspot.com And check back here next Wednesday for his discussion of novel structure from a former screenwriter’s point of view and ways to break into writing.

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Looking for markets? Don’t get tricked into forgetting these small publishers’ deadlines timed to coincide with Halloween:

CLIFFHANGER BOOKS -- Submissions window for its second anthology of Paramourtal romances closes October 31. See www.cliffhangerbooks.com
DARK TALES OF LOST CIVILIZATIONS -- Also closing October 31. See
http://ericjguignard.blogspot.com

NAKED READER PRESS -- Quarterly open reading period ends October 31. See www.nakedreader.com

Other deadlines at www.duotrope.com/ although Naked Reader wasn’t there when I last checked.

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Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators, North Central/Northeast Texas, holds its annual conference this Friday and Saturday, October 7-8, at Fielder Road Baptist Church, 2011 S. Fielder Road, in Arlington. Authors, editors and agents will be there. See
www.scbwi.org for registration and details.

　

Wordcraft -- Authenticity for readers young or not

So you’ve written the great American young adult novel or great middle-grade novel. But what does the agent want to see? At the recent Writers League of Texas conference in Austin, agents Amy Burkhardt of Kimberley Cameron & Associates and Victoria Marini of Gelfman Schneider Literary, author Jenny Moss, and moderator Amy Rose Capetta discussed what to look for in fiction for younger readers.

One important factor was emotional authenticity, said Moss, author of novels such as “Taking Off, a re-imagining of the Challenger space shuttle disaster. After all, she noted, “We have a commonality of human experience.”

Burkhardt agreed, adding, “Voice is important. A voice that connects. You need something that a kid can relate to -- that any reader can relate to. As an agent, voice is usually what grabs me. I work developmentally with a lot of clients, but what I can’t create is voice. You need to know the character inside and out.”

One exercise to help achieve that knowledge is to write a hundred sentences about the character. And read your work out loud, which makes it easier to pick up things that sound “off.”

Marini added another exercise -- writing “you’re not the kind of person who --” and filling in the blank. There’s also, she said “something to be said for ruminating and just thinking about it.”

What about writing for younger readers is different from writing for adults? Is there such a thing as “kidspeak”?

“For me,” Marini said, “the sincerity at the heart of the way kids speak is important. The core of the expression is what I’m looking for. People will use words that they think are the lingo and that turns me off.”

“There’s definitely a frankness to the way kids speak to each other. They don’t necessarily have conversations with back and forth. With teens, there’s more posturing.” But too much “kidspeak” and “teenspeak,” she warned, can date a manuscript.

"I don’t aim to write ‘believable’ dialogue,” Moss said. “I try to write dialogue that entertains while doing something else.”

Marini agreed. “I can sometimes read something that makes me think ‘that’s ridiculous’ -- and I love it.” Which doesn’t mean talking down to younger readers -- anathema to both agents. If anything, “write your characters a little bit smarter,” Burkhardt suggested.

And what about that vaunted rule about using a first person point of view for young readers?

It’s not necessarily inviolable. No matter what point of view you pick, Marini said, “stick with it. Middle grade is (about) figuring things out. YA is a very ‘me’ time.” The downside of that YA first person voice, Burkhardt cautioned, is “people can get trapped in the voiciness. Keep things moving. With YA, I feel like the plotting and pacing tend to be quicker. Teenagers tend to be more emotional. They are tuned up higher.”

So here were a bunch of adults talking to other adults about what children and teenagers want to read. What about the responses of younger readers themselves?

“Sometimes I’m very impressed -- not surprised but impressed,” Marini said. “I’m always shocked by how perceptive they are.”

For more information about the panelists, see www.kimberleycameron.com, www.gelfmanscheider.com and www.jenny-moss.com

(Next Wednesday: Agents tell what they want -- or don’t want -- to see in a query letter.)