Archive for » April, 2010 «
This Query Hell shit is killing me. This is why I put my foot down when it comes to editing stuff. I can take edits into consideration, make changes based on those edits, release it into the wild and it’ll still come back with more editing suggestions. At least this last time I posted ES’s query I knew it was too long and the people that commented on it said as much. So I chopped it down and I have something that’s more general but slightly specific (as if that isn’t confusing enough) and follows the basic plot line of the book. But I’m questioning whether to post it for a fourth time.
It’ll be a never-ending cycle that I won’t win. It just has to get to a point of good enough or where I really like it and not willing to make more changes. I’m digging the simplicity of my most recent incarnation. It still remains in Michael’s voice and gets the point across but does it need to be edited again? I don’t want to overlook something huge that I’m not seeing in my own work. At the same time I don’t want to be stuck in a vortex. I also don’t want to rush it out the door so I can just have a completed query.
Ugh. Editing. Fun times.
So the beginning will be totally unrecognizable.
So it’s now turned into a slight portal story. Just slight.
And Sabina totally doesn’t know that the DC world even exists because her parents escaped during the take-over and took her to ours, ending up in New York City in the Alphabet.
Yeah.
I had this beginning swimming around in my head for a few weeks now and I really like it. Originally she was a suburbanite with parents that totally acclimated to the suburban lifestyle but meh. This one . . .
The original usurping of the big guy (how bad is it that I have to consult my own notes to remember the world I created?) stays in, the Sickness is probably going to be eliminated altogether or at minimum grossly altered because the entire world would be destroyed if it stayed as it functions currently. At the usurping Sabina (now called Sabi) was very young (a year or two at most) and since he’s a diamond crier, her parents took her and ran. They end up in our world (haven’t figured out how yet), dead broke, homeless and destitute. Mata, Sabina’s younger sister, is born in our world not too long afterwards. Her parents end up with mediocre jobs and like in a crap apartment in Alphabet City. At least they’re not in Raydin.
Until it comes to get them. Surprise!
Sabina has personality! Yay! And not author-induced! Woohoo! I’m excited.
Once I’m completely done (as in query, etc is done) with ES, I’m going to start rewriting Diamond Crier. Basically I’m tired of looking at it sitting on my floor collecting dust. It looks pathetic. Plus I’m really digging the beginning I have running around in my brain and how I’ve reworked it. The world is going to stay pretty much the same but how Sabina comes into living in captivity is entirely different. I’m really excited to start working on it. If only this damn query letter could write itself! Has no one invented anything like that yet?
The Guardian’s ten rules for writing fiction
Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won’t be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavour of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories Close Range. (Elmore Leonard)
The accent should be in the structure of the sentence, not the structure of the words. Go find a book where the author wrote phonetic dialogue and let me know how much slower you travel over those paragraphs. It ruins flow and it almost takes a step back into reading in Middle English: you’re not wholly going to understand what you’re reading unless you read it out loud. And it’s the same damn language.
Instead of , “He is gettin’ outta here wit me tanight,” use something like, “We is getting out of here tonight.” The ‘we is’ alone will give the reader enough of an idea of what the dialect should sound like without, literally, spelling it out for them. You don’t interrupt the flow of the work and you allow for the reader to utilize that imagination of theirs and create the sound of the voice in their own heads. We can assume that said person isn’t going to say, syllable for syllable, ‘getting out of here’ but probably something closer to the first line. Leave it up to the brain to fill in that gap.
So when you get the urge to write dialogue phonetically, remember the flow. Do you really want to throw it into a screeching halt? Or would you rather keep it flowing at the same pace yet get the idea across of what you want your characters to sound like? You’re not spelling everything else out for your readers. Why should you do it with dialogue?
It’s finally done! All I have to do is run through it and make sure I didn’t miss any punctuation or spelling errors and it’s off on submission! *tear* They grow up so fast. I even wrote my query today at work. I wanted to puke the entire time I was writing it. I still have to sling it through Query Hell on AW so we’ll see how that goes. Plus I need to write the synopsis which isn’t too high up on my totem pole since not too many agents ask for those up front. It’ll get done probably this weekend but I’m more concerned about my query.
Anyway, under the cut are two versions of the first chapter of Earth Shatterer, the original first draft and the final edited version, just to see the route it’s taken from beginning to end. I started writing this in November of 2008. It’s come so far! So read ahead if you’d like. Let me know what you think. The final version is even spell-checked! Look at that.
