critique

Workshops 4 Writers

/ Susanna J. Sturgis / 2 Comments

I’ve long had a hankering to offer workshops for writers but never had a space to do it in. Finally, somewhat serendipitously, the perfect space appeared, and even more serendipitously, it’s on the first floor of the little building in whose second-floor studio apartment I live. In the last few months, I’ve been setting up the space and visualizing what I want to do in it.

This is what it looks like so far. Nice, huh?

Not pictured is the chair I just bought at Chicken Alley (the local thrift shop), and also the sofa bed I just ordered; it’s supposed to arrive in mid-May. It’ll go under the window where the table and two chairs are now.

My plans are still evolving, but here’s what I’m thinking so far.

Eventually I want to have two ongoing groups, meeting weekly or biweekly. One will be a critique group, for writers who are looking for feedback on their works in progress. Fiction or nonfiction. This might involve chapters of a book-length work or stand-alone stories, essays, reviews, whatever. The other group will focus on hands-on writing: freewriting during meetings and short assignments to do at home.

Five or six is the optimal size for each group, but it might take a while to get that many guinea pigs, uh, volunteers, hence the “eventually.”

In the meantime, I’ll be offering short — one afternoon or evening — workshops on specific topics, for instance —

  • MS Word for Writers (with a focus on the Track Changes feature)
  • Effective letters to the editor
  • Writing press releases
  • Giving readings
  • What writers should know about editors (and editing)

If there’s interest, I’ll offer a workshop on reviewing (of which I’ve done a lot over the decades). That will have to be two or three sessions long, to give participants the opportunity to both write a review and get feedback on it.

Any suggestions for what else I should consider? So far I’m thinking in terms both of my own strengths and of what isn’t currently being offered elsewhere on the Vineyard. I’m toying with the idea of eventually doing some hybrid workshops (incorporating both Zoom and in-person participation), and maybe even all-Zoom workshops if there’s interest, but for now this is more than enough. We’ll see how it goes.

C Is for Critic, Criticism & Critique

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I may be going too far with this multiple-word thing, but these three are closely related: they all derive, says Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, from the Greek kritikós “discerning, capable of judging.”

Plenty of writers steel themselves against the possibility of criticism and avoid dark alleys where critics are said to lurk. Merriam-Webster’s second and third definitions of critic would seem to support this wariness. (The first is more straightforward: think literary critics and film critics.) The second includes the phrase “reasoned opinion,” but the example — “Critics of the new law say that it will not reduce crime” — suggests that critics don’t like what they’re criticizing. The third is no-holds-barred negative: a critic is “one given to harsh or captious judgment.”

Many of us have encountered enough critics who are “given to harsh or captious judgment” to dump all critics into that category. When someone says “You’re so critical,” they’re usually not paying you a compliment. Small wonder that we tend to prefer feedback to criticism.

Unfortunately, those individuals “given to harsh or captious judgment” are out there. Some of them are leading workshops or teaching high school and college courses. They may even show up in your own inner circle.

But though we might love to avoid criticism altogether, we’re in trouble as writers if we close ourselves off to any possibly unsettling feedback. Other people can see things in our work that we don’t, and I’m not talking just about typos, inconsistencies, and grammatical gaffes. An outside reader might make the suggestion that helps you unsnarl a plot or make your narrative more compelling or give you an avenue to explore that you hadn’t considered.

And though I’ve been an editor by trade for more than four decades (yikes!), I will not tell you that these outside readers have to be professional editors. Not by a long shot. Serious writers comment on each other’s work, either informally or in writers’ groups. If you’ve got a non-writer friend who reads widely and is willing to spend time reading and commenting on your drafts — figure out ways to return the favor.

Here are some suggestions for both giving and receiving criticismfeedback:

  • Keep the focus on the work, not the writer. This is very important for both writers and readers.
  • When receiving feedback, “take what you like and leave the rest.” That’s commonly said at many 12-step meetings, and it’s great advice for writers. The more comments you get from others, the more they’ll contradict each other. This is good. It means that the choice is up to you. Readers are also more likely to give you their honest take if you don’t (a) argue with them, or (b) fall apart at the slightest hint your prose isn’t perfect. Asking follow-up questions is, however, absolutely OK.
  • When giving feedback, be as honest about your responses as you can. (See previous point. If the writer has given signs that they’re hyper-defensive about comments, exercise caution.)
  • It’s fine to say you don’t understand something or that it doesn’t work for you, but avoid beginning any comment with, e.g., “Most readers won’t understand . . .” or “Editors don’t like . . .” You don’t know that.
  • The more you can say about your response to a work, the more useful it will be to the writer. If the ms. is mystery, science fiction, fantasy, romance, experimental fiction, or whatever, and you’re not familiar with that particular genre, you may not understand some choices the writer has made. That’s fine — and congratulations on venturing into territory you don’t know well.
  • If, for example, you’re writing sf and your reader is challenging your use of FTL (faster-than-light) drives, don’t worry too much about it. What they say about other things may tell you something important. For my part, using dead bodies as a plot device bugs me for sure, but I manage to put my reservations on hold when reading a good mystery.

Interestingly enough, critique avoids much of the bad press its first cousins get — perhaps because it comes through the French, which is thought to be more polite? To me, a critique looks at the work as a whole. It doesn’t focus on typos or dangling participles or subject-verb disagreement, though if these come up frequently, the critiquer may mention it. A critique should offer the writer concrete advice on how to make the work more effective at whatever the writer wants it to do, without necessarily telling the writer how to do it.

Yet again, there are choices to be made, and it’s the writer who gets to make them. That’s the important part.

It’s An Illusion

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Having a story to tell is a great first step. Getting it across to readers who aren’t privy to your intentions? That’s where the craft comes in. Here’s some excellent guidance on how to keep readers engaged without giving everything away or withholding too much till the very end.

The Brevity Blog

Entertainment at the annual Brevity office party

A few years ago I studied at Writers In Paradise with the wonderful Laura Williams McCaffrey. I brought pages from a young-adult novel, thrilled to share for the first time with people who didn’t know me, didn’t love me, had no vested interest in my happiness. My hope was they’d be gripped by suspense from the very first page, the start of a countdown to a terrifying conclusion.

They found it blah. It didn’t grab them. Sure, the voice was nice, but it was just a teenage girl thinking. Where was the action?

I said, “But there’s this countdown…”

“Countdown to what?”

And that’s when I realized I’d left out a key piece of information. In ten drafts, I had failed to give the reader the most important detail: The protagonist has a gun in her lap.

I’d spent seven years with…

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But That’s How It Happened!

/ Susanna J. Sturgis / 2 Comments

“You’d think that basing a novel on real-life people and real-life events would be easier than making it all up from scratch — but it isn’t. Strange but true, the fact that you knew at least some of these people makes it harder, not easier. You’ve got to bring them to life for the reader. To do this you might have to rearrange, fudge, or add details. You might have to make up some new characters. And that’s OK: this is fiction, after all. If you want to turn it into a novel, you’ve got to make effective use of the novelist’s tools: plot, characterization, point of view, narrative, dialogue, and all the rest of it.”

This past summer a client asked me to critique the current draft of his novel in progress. It was based on the life of a lifelong friend who died some time ago. The first-person narrator was clearly based on the author himself.

I opened my critique with the paragraph above. “But that’s how it happened!” is a common cry among novice writers. It’s not a bad place to start, but it’s never enough.

An early clue that this manuscript hadn’t jelled yet was the dialogue. It sprawled. My first question for dialogue, my own or any other writer’s, is “Would you sit still for this if it were played out onstage or onscreen?” Most of this dialogue would have had audience members nodding off or walking out. How long will you watch minor characters chat on and on about their daily routines without ever making an observation that’s important to the story?

Sometimes, however, these endless conversations yielded valuable nuggets, an insight into character or a memory of a past event. You know the writer’s mantra “Show, don’t tell”? Some telling is fine and necessary in any work of fiction or nonfiction, but some of what these characters were telling could be more effectively shown in a scene.

This is what early drafts do: give you clues about what needs to be developed further in the next draft. I do a lot of freewriting in early drafts, often letting characters talk on and on or ponder what they’re going to do next. Often it takes a while to get to the revelation or epiphany that reveals character and/or moves the plot. It’s your job as the writer to wait for it, recognize it, then prune all the verbiage away from it so your readers will see it too.

When characters don’t drive a story’s plot, the writer has to do it, often by conjuring a new character or an unexpected event out of the blue. New characters show up, of course, and unexpected events happen, but in this case the story was completely dependent on them: unbelievable successes, terrible accidents, a treacherous colleague, and a series of women too good to be true. Quite possibly all these things happened and all these people existed in real life, but unless they’re integrated into the story they come across as plot devices introduced to make up for the lack of momentum in the story.

Sitting in the center of this particular story is the main character’s mother. She’s horrible. We see her being horrible, everyone agrees she’s horrible; she’s so horrible that I couldn’t stop wondering how she got to be so horrible. We see her being cruel to her son, but we rarely see him or his best friend trying to come to terms with her cruelty. The horrible mother’s husband is suspiciously saintly, and so is her older sister . . .

Then, near the end of the ms., one character drops the bombshell that saintly husband and saintly older sister were having a long-term affair while the boys were growing up. Whoa! Saintly husband, it seems, had wanted to marry saintly older sister in the first place, but for implausible reasons had married the horrible mother instead. Now there’s a development that could help sustain a plot and deepen our understanding of all the main characters.

And here is the big challenge for writers who want to turn events they participated in or witnessed and people they knew into convincing fiction or memoir: You’ve got to achieve enough distance from the characters to see things from their various perspectives. That goes double for the character with your own name or the fictionalized version of you.  This can be scary: What if heroes aren’t as heroic and the villains not as villainous as they seemed when you were living the story the first time round?

If you’re driven to put all that work into writing draft after draft of a story, it may be because the story just won’t let you rest till you come to the heart of it. Writing the story will change you. You’ll probably see things and consider possibilities that you didn’t before. We write to understand the story, and ourselves, better. “But that’s how it happened” is just the beginning.

Keep Yourself Accountable – Find a Writing Buddy

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Here’s an idea if you’re not in a writers’ group, or even if you are.

Business in Rhyme

writing-buddy

Solace. I always emphasize how solitude is your great companion in writing. Stillness of environment allows the quietness of mind to take place and gives you opportunity to clear your thinking. You can easily access the deepest corners of your being and reconnect with your inner-self. Many writers take advantage and even pick remote and distant places when they are writing their books. I also believe it has to do with fact that in that kind of idle conditions we are able to tune in that inner conversation and it becomes clearer what is it that we want to convey.

For me, early morning hours are crucial for focused and productive writing. When mind is still in dream mode, silence and serenity that surrounds my home form almost ideal condition for writing. So, I always encourage writers to find those special moments during the day when their energy and creativity…

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A Writers’ Group Is Born

/ Susanna J. Sturgis / 3 Comments

Last fall, in “Going Public,” I blogged about Writers Read, a writers’ group hosted by the library in my town of West Tisbury, Massachusetts. At each meeting, six or seven writers read short works or excerpts from long ones — the length limit of 9 minutes is strictly enforced by the moderator. All are invited to comment on each reading, with a focus on personal response to the work. This is not a critique group. Writers Read has developed a core of regulars, with other writers dropping in from time to time.

Marjorie Turner Hollman, writer and blogger, was taken with the idea and contacted me for details on how this group worked. Her local library, in Bellingham, Massachusetts, was interested in starting a local writers’ group. One thing led to another, and this spring the group was launched, with Marjorie and another writer as co-leaders. Starting from the Writers Read idea, they’re adapting it to the needs and desires of the participants. Here’s her account of how it’s working so far.

By Marjorie Turner Hollman

Our first night was a “get acquainted” sort of gathering, checking in to see what writing interests each person had, and what they might be looking for from the group. It turned out we had attracted several poets, some who write in free verse, others who adhere strictly to rhyming schemes. Several participants write science fiction, or a combination science fiction/dystopia, and some write strictly personal stories — memoir.

A few people didn’t bring anything to read, so we suggested taking ten minutes at the beginning of the meeting to write. My co-leader suggested as a topic, “First day of class.” Those who were a little nervous about the group laughed, appreciating the acknowledgment of first-day jitters.

And then we shared. Some read their responses to the writing prompt, others brought in pieces that felt raw with emotion, and while others offered their most highly polished piece for display. Regardless, we listened, and provided positive feedback only. We agreed that we were not looking for a group that offered destructive observations — most of us are already hard enough on ourselves. Our basic ground rules were: no politics, no religion, and leave the erotica at home where it belongs.

A month later, our second gathering resumed with much the same structure, except that this time we came ready with a writing prompt. In fact, we offered two: “What are your writing goals?” or “Tell a story about one experience with the library and how it has changed your life.”

As we worked our way around the table during this second meeting, my co-leader Amy suggested that since we are meeting only once a month, perhaps our group could create a private Facebook page as a place to share resources and blogs that we write. Having made the suggestion, Amy was quickly nominated to put the Facebook group together. Entry to the group is limited to those who have physically come to at least one of our meetings at the library. We are seeking to set healthy limits on discussion, and foster an environment that can encourage tender creative efforts to blossom, rather than be squashed by overzealous, well-meaning folks who offer observations or criticisms that are, intentionally or not, destructive.

And so we continue, grateful for the seed that was planted when Susanna wrote about the impact her writing group has had on her as a writer. I feel sure that we have veered away from the format developed on Martha’s Vineyard. We are finding our own way, and our group is already taking on a character of its own. Regardless of how different our group becomes, I feel grateful for the encouragement we received, Susanna’s patience in explaining their process, and interest in hearing about how our group is doing. So here’s to you on Martha’s Vineyard — Happy Writing!

* * * * * * *

Marjorie Turner Hollman

Marjorie Turner Hollman is a personal historian who loves the outdoors, and is the author of Easy Walks in Massachusetts, 2nd edition, and More Easy Walks in Massachusetts. She has been a freelance writer for numerous local, regional, and national publications for the past 20 years, and has recorded 14 veteran’s oral histories, now housed at the Library of Congress.

Her website includes more information about her and her work, and a blog about her walking adventures. Her account of the first meeting of the Bellingham library writer’s group can be found in the Bellingham Bulletin for May 31, 2017.

The Power of Place

/ Susanna J. Sturgis / 4 Comments

As a writer, I love revising and rewriting. As an editor, I do almost none of it. Critiques, yes. When a writer I don’t know asks me to edit a book-length manuscript, I generally suggest critique as a first step. I read the ms., make suggestions about plot, characterization, structure, and all that good big-picture stuff, but then the writer does the heavy lifting, not me.

For me, revising and rewriting is like first-drafting in that the ms. takes up residence in my head. My mind works on it when I’m not paying conscious attention. This is why character insights and solutions to plot snags often come to me when I’m walking with the dog or kneading bread.

I’ve learned that when I take on a revise-or-rewrite job as an editor, it often pushes my own writing out of my head. So I avoid developmental and structural editing and stick to stylistic editing, copyediting, and proofreading. (All these things go by different names. In “Editing? What’s Editing?” I explain what I more or less mean by them.)

But I recently (very recently, like this past week) took on a rewrite job for a client. It was short: a new, five-page prologue to a novel that’s been accepted for publication. I also knew the novel well, having worked on it in its earlier stages, and I believe in it.

I read the author’s five pages through. The plot was solid. It introduced key themes and characters that would be developed later. It segued neatly into chapter 1. Yeah, the point of view jumped around a bit, and there was a chunk of historical context recounted in a narrative voice that didn’t belong to any of the characters, but my rewriterly mind was already in gear, working out possible alternatives.

I called up the file. A 10-year-old boy is stretched out on the roof of his uncle’s house, using his BB gun to keep birds away from the abundant ripening grapes hanging from a trellis. I knew this kid well: the novel is his story. I could hear his older sister playing hopscotch in front of the house. But I couldn’t see what he was seeing because I’ve never been there and never even seen pictures of what this house, this neighborhood, this small town in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, might have looked like in 1975, which is when the story begins.

For me as a writer, place is crucial. As I blogged in “The Importance of Place“; “Every story, remembered or made-up, takes place somewhere. Where it takes place affects what takes place, deeply, profoundly, deeply, indelibly. Characters, both fictional and nonfictional, are deeply affected by where they are and where they’ve come from. Images, characters, and whole plots grow out of the soil they take root in.”

Both place and time are critical to this particular novel: Lebanon in the spring of 1975 was on the brink of a bloody civil war that devastated the country for 15 years. That 10-year-old boy’s life will be radically transformed by this war, and the incident in the prologue is a harbinger of things to come. The prologue needed to show readers what he was seeing and hearing. How could that happen if I couldn’t see and hear it myself?

I emailed the author. We talked on the phone. How close together are the houses? How long is the driveway? Are the grapes used for eating or winemaking? What do the birds look like? Where have all the grownups gone? Is the garden in front of the house or in back? How big is the garden pond?

Finally, finally the scene began to play out in my head. My fingers moved on the keyboard and words appeared or rearranged themselves on my laptop screen. The scene stayed in the 10-year-old’s point of view. The historical context can be worked into a later chapter, but I couldn’t help noticing that it is subtly suggested here in the ripening grapes being threatened by birds while a boy tries to scare them off with his BB gun.

At this point I’m rarely surprised when place turns out to be the key to a scene, but I’m awed by writers who routinely bring to life periods they didn’t live in, places they’ve never been, and times and places that never existed. The research, the extrapolation, the imagination, the finessing of details that can’t be known for sure — it all has to be there, and seem so complete and inevitable that most readers barely notice.

Learn the Biggest Secret of Every Good Writer

/ Susanna J. Sturgis / 5 Comments

This is good. No short-cuts. I’d add that growing as a writer means becoming more observant and more attentive to the world around you — and learning how to translate all that into words.

Business in Rhyme

secret_goodwriter

We all know that nobody is born as a good writer. It is a constant process of becoming. And I do believe that the difference between good and bad writers it’s not about the skill or gift. It’s not even about the number of written or published pieces. The key word we are looking for is persistence.

Good writer is writing – no matter how many times he fails or writes crappy work. He is there showing up every day, practicing and trying to improve himself. Not only writing, but everything that goes with writing.

In that sense, I think that biggest secret every good writer knows and we often forget is how good writer treats his bad writing. First, he takes time to write, erase, rewrite, edit, tailor every word to what’s need to be written. And how does he know what’s need to be written? He is…

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Going Public

/ Susanna J. Sturgis / 9 Comments

Recently I critiqued two book-length manuscripts, both novels and both promising. Before the authors contacted me, no one else had read either manuscript all the way through.

I say this not because it’s unusual but because it isn’t. Writing may be a solitary activity, but publishing is not. To publish is, by definition, to make public. (I’m not kidding about this. Look it up.) To many aspiring writers it seems easier to imagine putting their work before hundreds or thousands of strangers than to share it with people they may know personally. Is it surprising that so many writers labor for years on a book-length manuscript and then choke when it comes time to start seeking a publisher?

Puppy Travvy (right) meets Chamois, a mature yellow Lab, spring 2008.

Puppy Travvy (right) meets Chamois, a mature yellow Lab, spring 2008.

Making our work public does not come easily to most of us. It does takes practice. Think of your work in progress as a puppy. Puppies do better when they get to meet other puppies, adult dogs, and people of various sizes. At the same time, their owners learn more about the pup’s personality and maybe what the pup could use in the way of socialization and training.

No, you don’t need to let your work in progress out of the house before it and you are ready, but do get used to putting your words out in public and (if you’re lucky) getting responses from readers. There are lots of ways to do this. Blog. Contribute to the blogs of others. Review the books you read on GoodReads. Write press releases for the organizations you’re active in or occasional stories for the local paper. Join or start a writers’ group. Etc.

I’ve been taking Wolfie, my novel in progress, to my writers’ group scene by scene since early on. This has been good practice for me because I’m perfectionist enough to be uncomfortable letting anything out of my sight before it’s done. Once I was well into draft 3, I decided chapter 1 was ready to go out before a public that hadn’t heard any of it before.

Fortunately the ideal venue for such forays exists at my town’s library. Writers Read, as it’s called, meets roughly once a month. Unlike the usual writers’ group, regular attendance is not expected, but it’s developed a core of regulars that offer stability while others drop in from time to time. Six or seven writers read at each gathering. To avoid listener fatigue, the time limit of nine minutes is firmly enforced by the moderator. This presents a challenge for writers of longer works, but even novels and memoirs generally include scenes that can stand on their own without too much explanation (which is included in the nine minutes).

Personal responses from listeners are encouraged, but this is not a critique group. “I was confused by this bit” is OK; “this is confusing” is not. The moderator enforces this too. It often happens that one listener loves what another listener is confused by. This might be the most valuable lesson any writer can learn from taking her work out in public: different readers may have wildly different reactions to the same passage, which means it’s up to the writer to decide what to do about it.

Most of the participants in Writers Read are writers, but non-writers and future writers are more than welcome. I suspect that venues like Writers Read help novice writers get their courage up, first to write and then to share their work.

If nothing like this exists in your area, try starting something yourself. All you need is a space, a bunch of writers interested in sharing their work, and a few ground rules to keep the gatherings friendly and fruitful.

Writers Read, November 2016, West Tisbury (Mass.) Free Public Library

Writers Read, November 2016, West Tisbury (Mass.) Free Public Library

Be Brave

/ Susanna J. Sturgis / 2 Comments

Writing does take courage.

blank paper

The challenge of the blank page

It takes courage to sit down (or stand up, if you use one of those newfangled standing desks) expecting words to appear on the screen or sheet of paper in front of you, hoping that those words will be worth keeping or will lead to something that is.

It takes courage to set out on a journey not knowing whether it’s worth making (probably yes, though maybe not in the ways you expect) and whether you’re equal to the task (probably not, but if you keep going you will very likely become so).

Revision is a key to this process, especially for those of us who don’t plan everything out in advance, and for those of us who do but are willing to go along when the material has other ideas. (More about planners, seat-of-the-pantsers, and improvisation in “Whatever Works,” “Notes and More Notes,” and “Backstory Happens.”)

With nonfiction, I usually know where I’m going at the start but often I don’t end up in quite that place. With fiction, my usual is to put a few actors onstage, give them a task, and see what they do with it. I write it all down and sometimes give direction, which sometimes the actors ignore.

In “When Chitchat Takes the Wheel” I blogged about critiques I did recently of two first-novel manuscripts. Both were full of promise — vivid settings, interesting characters — but both bogged down in dialogue that went on forever and didn’t develop the characters or move the plot forward.

In one case, several characters held differing views about issues crucial to them and to the plot, but they never discussed them with each other. You and I both know how that works, right? When you strenuously disagree with someone you want to get along with, you skirt the contested territory and talk about other things. This makes for amiable relations but it does not make for interesting fiction. Be brave, I told the writer. Let them go at it and see what happens.

In the other case, the endless chitchat had a different cause: the protagonist had no memories from before her mid-teens, but her traumatic early years were key to the plot. Survivors of traumatic events do repress their memories,  but giving this character complete amnesia about her upbringing did not serve the novel well. Other people remembered what she did not, so (1) she was a sitting duck for the villain, and (2) she didn’t know enough to go in search of her own past. Be brave, I told this writer too. Let your protagonist have some of her life back.

I just finished reading a novel with a promising premise: a family’s determination to avoid dealing with a tragic event leads to problems down the road. This premise is common for good reason: it often happens in real life, and there’s so much a writer can do with it. But this writer made choice after choice that kept the tragic event at arm’s length, both for the characters and for the reader. For instance —

  • Everyone affected by the event is warned not to talk about it, ostensibly to protect the one who is supposedly too fragile to handle it.
  • They actually obey the warning.
  • The novel’s sole point-of-view (POV) character is fearful and not given to thinking too hard about the past or anything else.
  • The characters rarely interact on any but the most superficial level.

As a result, the characters don’t develop and neither does the plot. Each character has a shtick, and the dialogue is often clever, but the novel came across more as sitcom than as family drama. Not surprisingly, the writer had to resort to melodrama and last-minute surprises to tie everything together. The result is less than satisfying.

What would I have said if I’d been hired to critique this novel as a second or third draft? Let your characters have their memories and their voices back. Instead of one POV character, try it with three: the three who experience the tragic event as children and then grow up with the memories, the questions, and the silences. And don’t lock them in their closets, impervious to the world and each other. Challenge them! Challenge yourself!

Be brave.