@katemachon
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Thanks, Ath – as I’m sure you remember, they came to life in a short story in one of you winter writing challenges. Now I’m about to start writing book 3.
Thanks, Libby!
Book 1 in the series was a bronze winner in the Wishing Shelf Book Awards last week too. So I’ve had lots to celebrate on the writing front. A very nice feeling after the years of drought when I was chasing agents!
Thank you all for a fabulous batch of stories.
Seagreen – you had me on the edge of my seat wondering what was in that letter.
Sandra – such a lovely heart warming tale.
Athelstone – I love that kind hearted Brenda got the reassurance she needed.
Alex – oh! Such a tale of mystery and deceit. Thus feels like the basis for a longer story.
A tricky choice as always with such high calibre writers – but I have to choose, so I’ll go with Seagreen. Over to you.
Thanks, Alex. It was fun to give Pixie and Gabe an outing! I’ll have a think about a theme for the coming month.
A STRANGE ENCOUNTER
Len slammed on the brakes of his electricity work truck and squeezed his eyes closed. This couldn’t have happened. It had to be his imagination. Too much beer last night and too much coffee this morning.
He peeked open his eyes and gave a screech more usual for his five-year-old daughter.
Pressed against the windscreen was a tiny, pointy eared face. Violet eyes glared at him. Lacy wings gave an experimental flutter. The little creature stood up, shook her fist then fainted.
Len leapt from the truck. This was no trick. A real life fairy was passed out on the truck’s bonnet. What did he do? He looked up and down the country road. It was deserted. He was on his own.
Fetching his empty coffee cup with shaking hands, he scooped the little creature up and took her into the warmth of the truck.
‘Hello,’ he whispered.
No response.
Should he call his wife. His work colleagues. An ambulance. Nobody would believe him.
A groan came from the cup. The creature stirred and sat up. ‘Eugh! Dancing dung beetles, what am I sitting in? You great oaf of a human. First you hit me. Now you cover me in brown gunk. And look at my wings. Have you any idea how long these will take to heal?’
She scowled and folded her arms. He wilted.
‘Badger’s buttocks! I suppose I’ll have to get help.’
She pulled a ladybird from her pocket and whispered to it. The bug took off, circled the truck’s interior then disappeared through the open window.
‘Um…’ Len said.
She snorted. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any Lotus nectar. My head is killing me.’
‘Um…’
‘Can. You. Speak?’ She shook her head and sighed. ‘Trust me to find a stupid one.’
A thunder of air jerked Len’s gaze back to the road. He gave another shriek. A new creature had landed. This one as big as a man with huge feathered wings and a… halo.
‘Pixie,’ the angel said, opening the truck door. ‘What have you been up to this time?’
‘Stupid human hit me, Gabe. Thanks for coming to the rescue.’
‘You know you shouldn’t be out of Faery Valley, Pixie.’
‘I was carrying a message for a dragon in exchange for a chocolate brownie.’
Gabe held up a hand. ‘You can explain later, Pixie. First I’ll have to wipe this one’s memory.’
The angel loomed over Len. ‘Sorry about this. I tell you what, I’ll make it up to you. Hmmm. Maybe leave you with a bit of luck.’
Another scream built in Len’s mouth, then…
He opened his eyes. What was he doing parked on the side of the road? And where had this lottery ticket come from?
(457 words)
Hi MCave – thanks for sharing with us. I can see flying around on giant dragonflies would be very appealing to your MG market.
While this is fun, it does feel a bit distant and telly in places. It would be nice if you could move us a bit closer to the MC and let the reader experience the excitement, particularly with the flying, that Elspeth would be feeling. Basically, more show and less tell.
There are some techniques that can help you do this. First, you might want to do a filtering edit and take out the filtering words that you use quite a lot. Filtering words are words like hoped/felt/wondered/saw/looked. They drop the character in front of the reader, keeping us distant from them. You’re in the MC’s point of view, so it has to be them seeing, feeling, wondering etc. If you take them out the reader will feel closer to the action. As if what is happening and what the character is thinking are the readers actions and thoughts. Here’s a link to a blog by a very good creative writing tutor. I hope it explains more clearly what I mean.
https://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2016/07/filtering.html
So for example, instead of saying ‘Elspeth hoped he was asking about Dad.’ You could say. ‘Please let him be asking about Dad’. that gives us Elsbeth’s thought directly, without filtering her thoughts through her.
Or, instead of ‘Elspeth decided to ask Launde about it.’ ‘She would ask Launde about it.’ Because we’re in Elsbeth’s POV, you don’t have to say ‘she decided’. It has to be her deciding this. When you cut out that extra unnecessary filtering, the writing can become much more immediate.In the first example, with the ‘Please let him be asking about Dad.’ That’s something called Free Indirect Style. It’s another way to move us closer to the character by offering the character’s thoughts to the reader directly. You do use these sometimes, like ‘How could all around be ice, but underground water ran freely?’ and ‘How else could it move so fast?’ I think if you used these type of direct thoughts a lot more, it would really start to make Elsbeth’s character jump off the page and start to develop her all important Voice.
Here’s a blog link about free indirect style.
(cont…)
Hi Knicks – what sort of editorial review are you looking for. There is the pretty standard book doctor report, a deeper developmental edit that I’ve heard of offered by Jericho, or mentoring.
I’ve recently gone down the mentoring path, because I wanted the opportunity for some personal back and forth with an editor, rather than just a book doctor kind of report.
I didn’t write a letter, but did a fair amount of research and then approached the person I wanted through Jericho and then WriteMentor (a service for writers of children’s books as my MS is young adult).
I don’t know if this will be of any help to you, but this is how I went about it.
I got a list of the editors/mentors available from Jericho and WM. Used the information on the individuals on the websites to help whittle my list down. Also checked likely candidates out online where they had a presence. When I had a list of possibilities, I then read their books. It was the third or forth book I read that I immediately thought ‘this is the one for me’. I liked they’re style from the start and they were really the only major contender.
Jericho and WM used different sorts of mentoring styles, and I thought Jericho’s looked preferable. So I dutifully filled in the online form to apply for my chosen mentor. This is where things went south with Jericho.
I quickly got an email back saying Congratulations, you’ve been matched with (a completely different person from the one I’d requested). Another email then popped up from the mentor suggesting we arrange a zoom meeting. Yikes!
To be fair to Jericho, they were friendly and helpful when I contacted them to ask what was going on, and explained the person I wanted no longer worked with them. Why they didn’t bother to tell me this is an annoying mystery. They asked if I was interested in their suggested mentor, so I said I would check them out.
First up, the website said the person was there plot doctor. I’d specifically said on the form I completed that I thought my plot was OK. Secondly, the editor wrote across different genre, and though they had written YA, it wasn’t a speciality. Next I looked at their books on Amazon. They didn’t have many reviews, but one of them said there were so many plot holes it was unbelievable – for someone who is meant to be Jericho’s plot doctor!
It felt as if I’d just been matched up with first available person who had a bit of experience in YA. I might as well not have given them any details of where I was and what I wanted on the form. I declined the offer.
Jericho is very business driven, which is fair enough, they’re in this to make money. They are a good resource, but I would just say, know what/who you want before contacting them, and don’t be fobbed off with just anybody. I think that applies to all the editing services.
I was lucky to be able to get the mentor I wanted through Write Mentor. It’s worked out well with them looking at 10k words a month. I get very specific thoughts on the section, plus ideas I can carry out into the rest of the story. It’s been very useful in focusing my editing.
Cost is £132 per month, which adds up over an 80k word MS, but it’s more manageable than a one off payment and I can stop it at any time.
Based on the amount of work the editor puts in every month, it has struck me as sad that they get so little. A lawyer or accountant would probably expect £1k for that amount of work. It shows the sad income condition of creative workers.
If you’re struggling to find a suitable editor, maybe think about asking for suggestions on Twitter. There’s a big writing community of there.
Hope some of that is helpful. Good luck in your search.
I find the idea of present tense feeling static quite odd. Because you are in the moment, I think it’s hard to pause in a way that is possible in past tense. So I’d say the opposite of static.
Like Sandra, sometimes I’ll find a book jars a little initially in present tense, but I’ll quickly cease to notice as I adapt to the books style.
I read a lot of YA, which leans more towards first person present. My favourite YA book by Sally Green – Half Bad, is present. But a present tense historic fiction I read a couple of years ago constantly tripped me up. In third person, it often felt as if descriptions were actually thoughts from the character. Most confusing.
I think like all tenses and POVs, it’s not a problem when done well. But it does seem present tense might be harder to get right than past.
I think our reading tastes have developed in a similar way, Richard. I read fantasy as a teen (though never a LOTR fan) but as I got older and every book back I read seemed to involve a magic sword or a ring and sorting the good from the bad became impossible, I moved away from the genre.
I do enjoy (and often write) our reality with a fantastical thread. I have gravitated towards books like the excellent magical realism novel, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley.
Recent pure fantasy offerings often disappoint, though I am enjoying Victoria Schwab’s A Darker Shade of Magic, which also involves doors between worlds.
You’ve very much sold me on the The Ten Thousand Doors of January. I shall order it now and look forward to reading.
I really enjoy the annual short story challenge, and I try to participate in the odd monthly competition. My SE group has also used the Den as a lifeboat. So I’d hate to see it go and lose contact with some talented people.
I think one of the differences from the more active Word Cloud, is there was a constant flow of fresh blood funnelled via the courses. Even if people didn’t hang around long term, they kept the place busy.
Most of the current members seem to have a bit more experience, and have formed writing friends, so need less input. The Den is more of a place to hang out if and when we have time.
Having said that, the blog section on the Word Cloud was always very animated and entertaining with a core of permanent members.
I think activity is down to numbers, but how you attract new members, I don’t know.
But I’m glad we’ll be around for another year. Thanks to Athelstone and Jules for their work.
I can’t offer any grammatical analysis, but it does certainly sound wrong. Almost creepily so. I did have to have a giggle at Libby’s analysis of the hair as ‘a nasty piece of work’.
Teddy was lost.
Teddy’s owner, Joe, was inconsolable. His face red and blotchy, his screams ringing through the house. How could Joe and Teddy survive apart.
Teddy himself was having a nice time. He’d been left on the bus, propped up next to the window where he could see the world go by. Life with Joe was nice, but sometimes a bit boring. Teddy really had had enough of getting splattered with paint, or dropped in the mud, or stuffed in a bag. Today, he was having an adventure.
Something Teddy had discovered was that if he sat very still, adults didn’t notice him. So he watched the people come and go on the bus. The suited workers, the phone staring students, the old man with a bottle hidden under his coat. And as the people changed, so did the view through the window. The bus left the town and drove into the country. Teddy had never seen so many green fields or trees. He’d never seen a cow or a sheep, although Joe often painted them. Teddy couldn’t help but think Joe would have loved this view. He would have to tell him all about it when he got home.
But now Teddy was starting to get tired and wondered how he would get back to Joe.
The bus had reversed its journey and arrived back in the town depot. The passengers had gone and it was starting to get dark. Teddy shivered. Maybe this wasn’t such a good adventure after all. Maybe boring was better.
‘Hello, Teddy,’ said a lady with a mop, making him jump.
Teddy wondered how she knew his name. But he was very pleased she did.
‘Let’s take you to lost property.’
The lady picked him up and took him into the depot. There, another lady looked at Teddy, looked at a clipboard, smiled and picked up the phone. And it wasn’t long before Teddy heard a voice he knew, Joe’s, calling his name. Teddy got a warm glowing feeling in his tummy.
Very soon Teddy was in the car heading home, but he didn’t see the world going by outside. He was snugged up in Joe’s arms, fast asleep.
Warning: Dark humour.
SEIZING THE MOMENT
‘Twenty-five years we were married,’ I tell the young police officer as he hands me a cup of tea with shaking hands.
‘I’m very sorry for your loss,’ he murmurs, gaze resting anywhere but on me.
I suppose I should wash and change, but I’m feeling a bit odd right now.
And it will take more than a wash; I need a good scrub in flowing water. George didn’t approve of showers; he thought them too working class. But a bath would be a mistake under the circumstances.‘He was very particular about the garden,’ I say. ‘Wouldn’t trust it to anyone else. Said they wouldn’t understand his standards.’
I’d had high standards once too. It’s how George and I had ended up together. Both perfectionists who seemed a fit. We’d brought it into every aspect of our lives: Work. Fitness. Home.
I take a slurp of tea. ‘There’s a picture of our wedding day.’ I point. ‘And there’s us with the children.’
The officer takes the opportunity to turn his back on me and stare at the photographs.
It was when the children came along that things changed. They hadn’t fitted into our lives quite as seamlessly as we’d expected. Suddenly there were sleepless nights, an endless stream of dirty nappies and bottles.
‘That’s him playing golf,’ I say. ‘He was the president of the local club.’
The officer nods.
The children didn’t change George. He still fitted in his Saturday morning match, and expected a roast dinner with all the trimmings afterwards. The children had to meet his standards too. But did it matter if they didn’t speak Mandarin like the neighbours children, or weren’t blackbelts in karate? As long as they were happy. Surely that was the important thing.
‘There’s our Harry at his graduation,’ I say, indicating the picture on the mantelpiece.
They’ve long flown the nest now. But even without their demands for my time, I didn’t want to go back to the old ways. Wanted to slip into a relaxed retirement. But George would never agree to that. He never let up on me. Slovenly he told our friends. An accident waiting to happen. He was right about that.
‘I was holding the ladder,’ I say.
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ the officer soothes.
Not entirely. George had been foolish to leave the shredder running right there under the tree. I could have warned him, but he wouldn’t have listened. It only took a moment. He reached a little too far. I gave the ladder a shake. His scream blended with the whir of the shredder blades. Red sprayed until the motor jammed, leaving legs twitching at the sky.
He really is one with the garden now.
I hide a smile, place the tea cup on the coffee table ignoring the coaster and pick a piece of bone off my skirt.
I feel light. Is this freedom?
‘I think I’ll have a shower now.’
I’ll try and give my brain a rattle and join in too. It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these comps, but I’ve found them a great learning device in the past.
I’ve found beta reading an excellent way to learn. I think it’s easier to see crafting mistakes in others work, and then I try to carry that knowledge across to my own writing. Easier said than done.
I always jot margin notes as I read to record my initial reactions. It’s harder on a reread to see the parts that jolt me, and you only get one chance to suck your reader in, so I think first impressions are important.
Libby’s given a fabulous list of things to consider when beta reading. I must make a note of them.
The Den’s been a lifeboat for my SE group. And I love the inspiration the winter writing challenge brings. It’s also lovely to be able to see the successes of people I met on the cloud.
But I wonder if, for the main page to be active, we need writers at different stages. I think we’ve all got a fair amount of experience on here, have writing friends we can call on and are busy on our projects. So we’re less likely to post for general feedback. We did have a new member a year ago who asked for a critique, but I was the only person to respond, which isn’t encouraging for potential joiners.
Perhaps an admin could post a fortnightly writing topic for discussion? Something to get us all thinking and liven the page up.
I’d hate to see the place disappear and am always happy to make a donation.
I write in first person a lot and the overuse of I was something that was pointed out to me early on. The writing can end up feeling like a list of stage directions. I have found that the gymnastics you have to go through to avoid overuse does what Libby mentions and moves you closer into the character’s head as well as adding voice. As Richard commented, it helps you avoid the filtering too. So I always try to be aware of those Is as I’m writing.
As for the contraction comment. WTF. The narration around the speech, especially in first person, should reflect the characters voice. Not using contractions and slang would make this impossible. Imagine reading Catcher in the Rye in Oxford English. The voice would disappear. So I think that point is rubbish.
DIRECTIONS
‘What do I need this for?’
‘It’s a new cinema, I don’t know the way.’
‘Well, get out your phone and ask it to direct you, like any normal person.’
‘You know what happened last time I tried that. I ended up driving in circles for half an hour until my phone found a connection. A map on the other hand, can’t go wrong.’
‘Fine. Let’s do this old style.’
‘Well, quickly, which way do I go here?’
‘Um… Left.’
‘Are you positive? It looks like you’ve got the atlas upside down?’
‘Give over. I know what I’m doing. It’s hardly rocket science… But maybe go right…’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes, I’m sure. Are you sure we can’t go to the new bowling alley instead of the cinema.’
‘You know the rules. I’m driving, I get to decide.’
‘Turn left here. THAT left. You’re going to miss it.’
‘Try giving me some warning next time.’
‘Well, if you’d used your phone…’
‘Just shut up and read the map.’
‘Ok. Ok. Straight across the roundabout. So, what’s so fancy about this new cinema.’
‘Ah, the acoustics are meant to be incredible. As if you’re actually on the movie set.’
‘The bowling alley’s meant to be state of the art too.’
‘What, do the skittles have jet packs or something?’
‘Ha. Ha. And you know they’re called pins, not skittles… straight across here… What are we going to see? Not another digitally remastered Star Wars, I hope.’
‘It’s a surprise. Wait until we get there… Hey, are you sure we’re going the right way. I thought it was east of town but we’re going south.’
‘Roads wriggle. We can’t go as the crow flies.’
‘I hope you’re right. I don’t want to miss the start.’
‘OK. Third exit on the roundabout, and then the place is on the left.’
‘You see. Wasn’t that easy. And we didn’t have to listen to the phone droning out directions… Hold on, this isn’t the cinema.’
‘And the light switch turns on! The map’s only as good as the person reading it. Now let’s go see if those skittles have jet packs.’
(354 words)
Hi Andrew
I’ve got lots of that toilet paper with little black writing on it stashed all over the place too. It wasn’t until I began to interact with other writers and receive feedback that I started to learn. There’s a daunting amount of craft to get to grips with and I don’t think you ever stop learning.
As to your question, the way I look at it is: telling gives the facts to the reader directly, while showing infers what’s going on, makes the reader use their imagination and lets them participate in the experience. It pulls them into the story.
Telling: He was soaked through by the rain.
Showing: His hair was flattened by moisture and little drops of water reached icy fingers under his coat collar, trickling down his back to soak his t-shirt. He shivered. Bloody rain.
Showing should be much more immersive.
Telling is something of a summary and can be useful for moving the story forward and getting over unimportant events. It can get a character from A to B and the next important encounter. It can move you forward in time or can summarise something that has already happened.
Hope that is useful and makes sense.