Treasure Hunts

I think I last wrote about research back when I was just beginning to work on Unholy Alliance. But I wouldn't want you to think that was the last time I went hunting the wonderful details that can make a fictional world real. Here are a few places I've visited in the past couple of weeks (not counting Chicago where I was visiting family over Thanksgiving!) I'll leave you to guess what mayhem I've conjured from them...



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coppice (A lot is written about the flaws of Wikipedia - not entirely correct info, amateurish, incomplete, unreliable - but it is a great jumping off point and often leads to other links.)

http://www.hobbithouseinc.com/personal/woodpics/#letterI

http://www.cidpusa.org/blood_letting.htm

http://www.medicalantiques.com/medical/Scarifications_and_Bleeder_Medical_Antiques.htm

http://www.naturesongs.com/birds.html

http://babelfish.yahoo.com/

http://www.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/lookdown.pl

http://paulcarlisle.net/mooncalendar/

Complete Mediterranean Wildlife Photoguide (Sterry)
English Through the Ages (Brohaugh)

And, as always, my treasured Roget - not an imitation thesaurus or word finder or synonym finder, but the real Roget's Thesaurus, where you can look up words by their semantics and find that word that's on the tip of your tongue but just won't come.

Enjoy!

And here are two more I just had to add

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art7783.asp

and

http://smallfarms.typepad.com/small_farms/2006/04/freerange_pigs_.html Who can resist an article called Free Range Pigs?

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Attacking a Scene

This scene, the start of a new chapter, is driving me crazy. Two of my investigators are supposed to be leaving Castelle Escalon on an urgent mission. They believe they are closing in on the guilty party. But Something Will Happen before they can leave. The scary Forces of Order arrive and threaten Partner Two. This is a dangerous risk of exposure, and will introduce a Change of Direction in one of the partners that we will see play out through the end of the book.

You can likely see the trouble here - subtlety. I need the scene dramatic enough to be compelling, and yet its truest consequence must be essentially unrecognizable. Ouch. Why do I DO this to myself? Needless to say, this scene has bugged me for days now. I can't seem to get it right.


So, to begin. They are supposed to be leaving the palace, so Partner One is waiting in the stableyard. Partner Two does not show. The crochety stableman (a very minor character who will appear on occasion throughout the books) is griping at Partner One that he needs to get gone because he is upsetting the horses. Part of the stableman's irritation is that there are "guests'" horses that have been there since before dawn. (Hint, these belong to the above-mentioned Forces of Order who are causing the delayed arrival of Partner Two.) I like this crochety guy. I like the fact that the Forces of Order got here very early. Partner One suspected they were coming, but assumed it would be after he was long gone.

First time through: Partner One is annoyed at the delay and marches inside to roust Partner Two. He finds the Forces of Order already ensconced with Partner Two.

Problem: Logic and inference. The Forces of Order would never question people inside the royal residence (certainly not long enough to cause the dramatic change of direction I plan). They would retrieve offenders or witnesses and take them to their own bailiwick. This is part of the essential balance of power in Sabria. [Same reason police really want to take suspects down to the station and not question them at Mafia headquarters.]

Also I'm totally not sure of how Partner Two is going to react to this, which is a question I'm going to have to resolve sometime, but I don't have enough evidence as yet. How can I understand his motivations and make the reaction real, when I don't see him before or during the action?

Second attempt: Partner One takes repeated trips to the stableyard gate to "see if he's coming" and gets an eyeful of the Forces of Order removing three witnesses from the palace. The witnesses are cloaked and hooded to hide their identity. I really like this custom (invented on the fly!) and so I want to keep it. But the logical consequence is that Partner One can't be sure whether or not Partner Two is one of these three hooded witnesses. He rushes into the palace, finds someone to ask, and gets the story of the "removal."

Problem: all the real action is off screen. The scene comes off as passive. One of the most important people involved is never seen. And, as Partner One is not going to be able to do anything about this "questioning" I've set up a truly boring scene where everything of consequence has already happened or is hidden. Whatever reaction Partner Two has to the event is hearsay.

Much gnashing of teeth here on my part.

Third attempt: Partner One takes repeated trips to the stableyard gate to "see if he's coming" and gets a glimpse of two sentries (from the Forces of Order). Uh-oh. Anxiety - he didn't see this coming so soon - propels him into the palace. (Already I have better emotional context.) He gets into place just as the first of the witnesses has been "hooded" and the second is being rousted...and Partner Two will be next. More anxiety. Partner Two has been delayed by a cordon of Forces of Order, and is fuming. Partner One sneaks/talks his way through the cordon [already more action] and joins Partner Two - so we will see them together "before" the event...and something subtle in Two's behavior after the event will hint at the change I'm trying to enable... Oh yeah, this is much, much better...

I'm off! Third time's the charm and all that.

So why include the stableyard at all, you might say. That seemed to cause all the difficulties. Why not have Partner One see the arrival of the Forces of Order from inside?

Because he just wouldn't be there. His residence is in another part of the palace entirely. To have him in place "just right" to see these happenings from the beginning would be contrived. The two partners would never agree to meet inside the palace as they are supposed to be antagonists, one forced into subordination to the other. Their meeting for the journey would occur at the last possible moment. Character and situational logic - as I have created it - must prevail. Yes, I as the author can force circumstances to make anything happen, but especially when the stakes are high and difficult - getting this event to happen with all its subtleties - I don't want to plant a neon arrow sign outside the door, saying "Look At This! Look at This!"

Maybe I've got it now. I'll keep you posted.

Update: Option three worked out even better than I imagines. Once I got moving on it, instilling more of a sense of danger, the elements came together. I had valuable, revelatory time between the two partners that will contrast marvelously with their later encounters. I was able to examine and instill motivation of Partner 2's reaction to being "hooded," as well as drop in details about the customs surrounding the Forces of Order. And I left something important in Partner 1's hands that ties the action both to previous plot points and future ones. If only it hadn't taken me a WEEK to get this right. This is why I'm slow, folks...

Cheerio!
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Fast Times at Surrey BC

In 2006 I was first invited to the Surrey International Writers’ Conference (SiWC) in Surrey, British Columbia (just outside Vancouver). I enjoyed it immensely, so I was delighted to be invited back this year.

SiWC is similar to many other writers’ conferences in providing a weekend packed with information for aspiring writers of commercial fiction in multiple genres. Workshops address varying aspects of the writing craft and the publishing business. The conference also provides direct contact with representatives of the publishing industry, including opportunities to pitch completed work to editors and agents and get on-the-spot critiques. SiWC is large – something like 800 attendees – very professionally run, and attracts a terrific faculty that, I’ve got to say, intimidates me! This year it included Diana Gabaldon, Anne Perry, Phillip Margolin, Robert Sawyer, Meg Tilly, Jack Whyte, and many others.

So what did I do in my four days?


First off, a master class. Master classes are intensive three-hour workshops given on the day before the conference proper. Attendees must pre-register. Mine was called Unforgettable Characters, and combined information from a couple of shorter workshops on characterization and voice that I’ve done at other conferences. I thought three hours would give me tons of time for exercises, but darned if I didn’t find that the “text” ended up filling the time available! OK, we did get in a couple, but most of those I’d planned got sent home as homework. It was not half so exhausting as I expected – though I’ve got a much better idea now of what actually FITS in three hours.

On Friday morning the conference proper began with opening ceremonies and introductions. During the day’s program, I sat on a panel discussion on The Science of Inspiration. Six of us gave our personal “how we got started” stories, and talked about how we approached creativity. We could have delved a bit deeper with fewer panelists (something I’ve learned at sf conventions) but attendees did have time to ask some interesting questions.

Next I had the first of my two blue-pencil workshop sessions. Blue-pencils are a standard at Surrey. Visiting authors sit for 90-minute sessions, offering 15-minute consultations to attendees. The attendee can choose to talk about publishing or ask specific questions about writing or marketing, but most choose to use the time for the author to review the first few pages of their manuscripts. I think it's a terrific idea.

Before I did my first session in 2006, I was really nervous. What if I couldn’t think of anything to say? What if the writing was truly awful? Much to my relief, neither was a problem. After about ten years of critiquing, I’ve learned to read on multiple levels, from grammar to plotting to voice, which means I can always find something to say – even if it is, “Wow, I really have nothing but nits to give you about this great piece! Is it finished?” [I actually said that to one attendee this year.] And on the other side, the pieces were good, better, and excellent. No true duds.

Day Two started with another opening session at which I gave a short “keynote” speech. I talked about my experience with my first writers’ conference, where I felt like I found my home in the community of writers, and the one a short year later when I read the opening of Transformation for the editor who would buy my first seven books. It was pretty simple compared to some of the other morning and evening talks! But people did seem to appreciate it. And I got in a plug for fantasy as not only a legitimate genre, but the oldest literary genre. Always have to be the apostle of fantasy!

I also did a workshop on fictional world building and another blue-pencil session on that day.

On the last morning, I pulled out one of the first workshops I ever did, about how to write a novel without outlining. Interestingly, I think this one was the best received of all of them. I think it gives hope to those who, like me, find it impossible to conceive the progress of an entire story before actually writing it. Every author has to find his or her comfortable position on the spectrum from complete, detailed outlining to "typing Chapter 1, then saying, 'what next?' ”

In between all these activities were opportunities to network with other faculty members, and visiting agents and editors, and spend time with the attendees at meals. The SiWC staff are lovely, welcoming, and take really good care of both faculty and attendees. It was stimulating and fun. I’ll go back any time!
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Democracy Lives

Back from two weeks in Canada [more about marvelous Surrey Writers and World Fantasy later] to election night. I'll get back to "business" in the next posts. For today...

...please excuse exuberance.

Hooray! Hallelujah!

Will never forget seeing Jesse Jackson in the Chicago crowd weeping. As one who remembers seeing Selma and Birmingham, firehoses and church bombings on the news...this is truly awesome. Intelligence and temperance and full intent to bridge the divides: I've got to believe the country and world will be better.

And now to shake off election addiction! I've got a murder to solve... Read more of this post!

Reader Mail

I love reader mail. Mostly the people who write me are happy with the books and want to tell me what struck them especially, or they want to find out if I’m going to write more in a particular world. [Yes, all right, all right, maybe someday I’ll get around to a Song of the Beast sequel .] To hear from a happy reader helps me through discouragement and reminds me that I’ve “done this before and it turned out ok.”

But some readers go beyond and expose something of their emotional involvement with the stories, and that is most gratifying as well.


Jarod wrote:

What struck me most of all in the book [Breath and Bone] was the way you wrote Valen's addiction. I'll admit that, at first, I didn't like it at all. I found that I disliked the character, the weakness, and my own difficulty in relating to his plight, being free of such addictions myself. I was frustrated that he couldn't just get on with life and be a "normal" protagonist and, well.. make choices that I myself might have made. It took me a while to realize that my reaction was a "good" one, in that it meant that you (as an author) created a believable and very flawed character whose weaknesses were a central part of his being--and wrote those weaknesses so powerfully that I wanted to skip the scenes for the sheer discomfort they caused me (but
I didn't skip them!). I surely can learn a lesson from this, that a flawed protagonist is much more interesting, and that writers must not be afraid to show those flaws and embrace them, lest the story dull.

How beautifully this articulates the storyteller’s art! Thanks, Jarod.
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Torture Whys and Wherefores

Valt writes me:

I saw you did a "Torture Panel" at WorldCon. What I would have given to have been present for that. I looked up Elaine Isaak since I am not familiar with her work and though I squirmed a little with the idea of a castrated main character, I cannot imagine anyone rivaling you for Most Torturous Authoress. There have been times where I've had to set your books down (for long periods) just because they hurt too much, yet I am always inexplicably drawn back into them. Masochism might be an explanation, but it's always so expertly handled. When do you decide that anything more would just desensitize your readers and no longer be as powerful?

Good question. I DO think torture and mayhem can overwhelm a story. And I never want to use it gratuitously.

First, why do I do it at all? Because my characters invariably are involved in terrible and world changing events. One of the things an author of heroic adventure has to do is present her characters with challenges, with opportunities to alter course, with the need to do things that are repugnant or life-changing in order to accomplish the deeds that solve the story’s problem. People don’t change themselves in fundamental ways as a result of small things. The stronger the character, the tougher the challenge must be.

How do I try to ensure I don't go too far?

1. I make sure the violence is necessary for the story’s believability.
2. I try to keep the worst parts “off screen” or at least at a distance. Readers may see only the results.
3. I try never to sexualize it.
4. I try to keep the events in proportion to the result I’m trying to accomplish.

REVELATION spoiler behind the Read More tag...



Some people have asked me why Seyonne’s terrible captivity lasted so long in Revelation. This is probably the longest and most difficult of all my “torture” scenarios. But here was a man whose entire life, entire being, entire training had been devoted to removing the rai-kirah from the souls of human beings or to getting himself back in the position where he could do so. And on the scant evidence of a few mosaics, his own instinct for truth, and his determination to set his child free, I wanted him to take one of those rai-kirah into his own soul. The meant I had to strip him down to his essence--his compassion and yearning for justice--in order to get him to do it. Otherwise I could not believe he would do it.

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Voted!

Before I left Colorado, I mailed in my 2008 ballot. I didn't want some Canadian snowstorm to delay me getting home in time to vote. What an honor and a privilege.

Please make sure you vote. This is not an election to sit out. Lots of states have early or mail-in voting. Take advantage if you can because lines are going to be long on Nov 4. Don't let anyone take this privilege away from you.

If anyone out there doubts that this is a critical election, please read beyond a few of the headlines of the past couple of months. I’ve been through a number of elections, and never have I had one that has literally kept me awake in the night. Between our crashing economy, our two wars, upheavals in eastern Europe, genocide in Africa, our melting polar caps, we have got to turn a corner in this country, and it is going to take all of us, doing our best to change our habits and get beyond the politics of division.

After a particular obnoxious news segment the other night, I sat up and wrote a long rant about this election, about some of our society's bad habits (including my own) and about the candidates. I've actually let this post sit for a couple of days as I cooled off - though I really haven't changed my opinion at all.

But as I avidly browsed the web for election news from up here where the Canadians are exhausted by their own recently concluded (and divisive) election, I came upon a piece that expressed, in intelligent, reasoned terms, my own beliefs and feelings about this race. Some people might bristle at the source, but if you are interested enough to go behind the "more" button, maybe you might want to read the editorial. If you'd rather not mix up fantasy authors and politics, that's ok. I ust couldn't let the time go by.

Whichever you choose, please
Listen! Read! Think! Vote.




NY Times editorial

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High in British Columbia

Nope, I haven't disappeared from the face of the earth. For the past few days I've been traveling north to visit friends and attend two events in Canada. This week it's the Surrey International Writers Conference.

What a lovely welcoming, professional conference. Extremely well organized with some 800 attendees. The faculty always leaves me a bit intimidated: this year Diana Gabaldon, Anne Perry, Robert Sawyer, Phillip Margolin, and so forth.

The hotel is terrific. My view from the 12th floor is the BC mountains, the rivers and bridges of Vancouver/Surrey area (the Fraser River Valley, I guess.) And the gorgeous autumn colors that are about gone back home. Cool and misty in the mornings.



So far I've done a three hour master class, called "Unforgettable Characters" and an hour and a half of "blue pencil workshops" which are one-on-one meetings between author and aspiring author. Fifteen minutes to talk marketing, read and critique a few pages, or talk concept. I met with six very interesting people so far, and, despite the ever present "oh, gosh, I hope I can think of something useful to say" willies, I've managed to come up with some comments. This conference also makes breakfast and lunch times for networking among the authors, editors, and agents who have come here to be on the faculty. As such I've met a couple of editors from Tor books, a Canadian teacher/lecturer on web presence and marketing, and a couple of editors from Warner and Little Brown. Also a very cool actor/writer from UK who was going to do a workshop on "battle". Unfortunately I was scheduled during that time. Bummer. This afternoon I"m on a panel about "inspiration." Tomorrow and Sunday I do more workshops. All fun, but a bit exhausting.

More from World Fantasy next week! (And no I haven't forgotten about Portier and the rest. I actually got some good work done on the plane (always a good sign) and have had a productive discussion with my good friend Brenda about a hiccupy place in the opening chapter. All to the good!


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The Turning Point

Every author will recount the difficulties of the wretched middle of a book’s development. "It’s all crap," he’ll say. "It’s as boring as watching paint dry." "I’ve got the focus all wrong." "This will never come together."

All the gleeful laying out of enticing clues, and ambiguous new characters, and discovery of new magic has long given way to the difficult, often frustrating work of
- creating tension, and upping the tension with each twist and turn of the plot
- choreographing climactic action
- developing scenes that actually forward the plot and don’t just recapitulate
- getting to the nitty-gritty events that impact your characters’ growth and change.

The end still seems as distant as ever and may be less clear than when you started. The threads of logic have gotten tangled. There are too many characters and no clear villains. You can’t figure out how the heck to get from Eltevire to Vernase because you already set Vernase within a day’s travel of Merona, and at this point in the book you just don’t want your characters traveling for a week. Chapter 17 turned into two chapters when you realized you’d been so determined to get through it, you’d let your poor captive investigator escape the very torment he’d been investigating [never let him off easy just to get that chapter done], and there are still at least two entire story arcs you haven’t touched yet. Uh...yeah, this is getting personal.

Well maybe this isn’t the exact set of circumstances that drive every author up the wall when she reaches approximately 2/3 of the way through a new book. These are certainly the ones that have popped to my mind over the past couple of weeks. Plus we’ve been in and out to a family wedding in Seattle and spent one day driving mom into the mountains to see the glorious aspens, and a couple more doing handouts for the Vancouver conference that is coming up Real Soon Now. And, holy moly, this presidential election is SO distracting [more on this in another post you may or may not want to read!]

But, as it happens, my little cadre of fellow writers set up another mountain retreat for this past weekend. I hadn’t thought I’d be able to go, but I desperately needed some concentrated, relatively undistractable time, and my ES (Extraordinary Spouse) had a ton of work to do for a client, too. Two full days of writing and some twenty pages later and I’ve reached the Turning Point, where my investigators emerge from a near catastrophe and put together the chain of evidence in an entirely different way to point the spotlight (or the spyglass, as may be) on a totally unsuspected suspect. And what do I find?



I had actually laid in enough clues for them to draw this conclusion. I had actually put them through enough of a wringer to force them to look at things a different way. I’ve left myself pointed in exactly the direction I meant to go all along.

OK. I still worry about the focus and the missing spark and the wordy first chapters the fact that I’ve still got a lot of story to tell, and I’ve got one BIG motivation still to work out. But details in past chapters can now be refined and enhanced because I’ve put together this piece of the story. I can probably rip out a few extraneous pieces because they weren’t needed. I can strengthen the presentation of the main characters because now I know that at this particular point in chapter 21, the three are in harmony. I can make sure the pace of their change from their first meeting to this point is clear. And I can lay in the "festering sores" that will send it all to heck, because now I know when the descent must begin.

I woke up this morning with one idea for revising an early scene, because now I'm seeing a particular character's arc more clearly.

Last night driving home from Denver on a very misty, cold dark night, I realized that one "consequence" I had set up for the end was just really tooooo dark. And this morning upon waking, I knew what I had to do about it, because it fit perfectly with another character's arc.

I'm hoping for more such revelations this week, if I can keep my reacquired focus.

I’m still in the wretched middle, but maybe…just maybe…I’ve turned the corner.
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From Sale to Shelf: Part 4

Once I return the copyedited manuscript, I feel as if the book is truly complete. I go back to work on the next project. But there are a few things left to look at: cover art galley proofs, and ARCs.

Sometime in the next weeks, my editor will send me a jpg cover image or an actual cover flat. This is the first time I get to see the cover and it is always a "gulp" moment. Will it match my vision? Will it be striking enough to draw new readers? Will the back copy give away secrets? Will it reflect my own words? Would it make me want to read the book?

I have been fortunate with covers. All the artists have been excellent, even if their vision didn't match mine. Several of my covers have actually given me goose bumps! (Revelation, Restoration). Some covers have fit my image exactly (Daughter of Ancients, Son of Avonar) or even taken my vision one step farther (Revelation). Some have been beautiful or striking - which is the most important function of covers - despite not fitting my image of the person or scene depicted (Flesh and Spirit, Breath and Bone, Restoration). Only two have disappointed. Proof is left to the reader...

Once I have the cover image, I need to start thinking about marketing tasks - making bookmarks, fliers, updating the website, and so forth. Mostly I procrastinate...because I don't like the marketing stuff, but I DO like starting a new book!

But at sometime a month or six weeks after the copyedits have gone in, I'll receive another bundle of pages in the mail from my editor.


These are the galleys or proof pages, the typeset pages printed just as they'll look in the book. For a mass market paperback (the smaller format) I'll see two facing pages per 8 1/2 x 11 sheet. For a trade paperback, I'll see one page per sheet.

This is the first time I see the "book design," the typeface, the chapter headers, the beautiful drop caps they have at the beginning of the Flesh and Spirit chapters, or how they handled the narrator sections in Song of the Beast or the "Part" divisions in Breath and Bone. This pass is really for hunting typos, misspellings, or any other mistake that might have been entered in the typesetting process. These are typically very few.

The tricky thing is that the lines and paragraphs are now set tightly on the page. Removing or adding a word or even a comma requires the whole line to be re-typeset. If the word or punctuation is in the middle of a paragraph, the entire paragraph must be reset. If the length of the paragraph changes, it pushes or contracts the text that follows it. Typesetting is expensive.

But as with any time I read the manuscript start to finish, I find things I want to change. Can I do that? Yes, within reason.
1. Certainly errors must be fixed. Those aren't optional. Typesetting errors aren't "charged" to me!
2. I can certainly tweak a word, phrase, or even a sentence, if I see a critical need. The trick is to replace a removed word with something of similar length. I've even gone through and changed a made-up word or a character name - simple replacements are the easiest to deal with.
3. For slightly more complicated changes, if I can make restricts the resetting to a single paragraph, not changing the page length, I'll usually do it.
4. The toughest pieces to deal with are places where I think the prose needs to be tightened, ie. words removed and not replaced. I have actually squeezed this through on one book, in places where the actual chapter page length has not changed. My editor was merciful.

I absolutely cannot do anything that will change the page numbering. The entire rest of the book would have to be reset = Very Expensive.

Once I've made all the changes and fixes, I pull out those pages. I make sure the marks are very clear - don't want to introduce more typos or errors! And then I count the number of pages. And then I try to figure out if that number will make my editor nervous or, heaven forbid, cause the publisher to charge me the cost of retypesetting!! I don't have a set number I'm allowed, but I can get a creepy feeling if the stack of pages is more than about 25. I read each one and decide if this is critical. I keep all error fixes that I've found. But some of my own changes... Honestly, some things a reader will never notice, and I reluctantly pull them out.

I ship off the proof pages that contain corrections, and now I'm really finished. The next time I see the book it will be bound. First, I'll see the ARC (Advance Reader Copy). This bound book has no cover art, and the text is essentially the uncorrected text. It is produced at the same time as the proof pages, and is sent out to reviewers, bookstores, and the like. Sometimes they show up on ebay!

But one day a padded envelope shows up in the mail with my first real copy of the book, real cover, corrected text, and I sit and read and say, "Wow, did I really write this? It looks like a real book!"

Any questions?

My cover artists
Luis Royo: Flesh and Spirit, Breath and Bone

Matt Stawicki: Revelation, Restoration, Song of the Beast, Son of Avonar, Guardians of the Keep, The Soul Weaver, Daughter of Ancients

Kevin Murphy: Transformation




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That nagging feeling

Sometimes when I write a scene, I get a nagging feeling that something is not right. It most often happens when I have a plot point that I'm ready to include.

Today's example: Character A is in trouble. Character B comes to his rescue and demonstrates something. I want some additional things to happen, some curiosity and doubts about who could have done this amazing thing,building up to the revelation that it was Character B. I write the scene as I envision.

I reread it, tweaking words. I tweak more. OK, I've given Character A too much of a hint that Character B is doing the amazing thing. Why wouldn't he recognize what's going on right away?

What do I do about this?

Make Character A "foggier" from the bad guys' brutality. Reread. Tweak more words. Still feels wrong.

Remove all early hints of Character B's action. I really don't want Character A to seem stupid. Even bashed in the head he wouldn't miss what's going on, which makes my "delay" and building question seem stupid and contrived. Wrong.

So Character A must consider and dismiss the possibility that Character B is doing this. As I begin to rewrite yet again, I realize how convoluted this is getting, and the fact that I have now spent DAYS on this one scene. It Is Not Working.

Time to rethink. I must either skip the intervening build-up to the revelation OR give Character A an ironclad reason for believing it couldn't be Character B.

Oh...oh... The answer comes. The ironclad reason why he won't believe it. And the way that particular misconception plays right in to what the bad guys are trying to do to Character A already... DELICIOUS! One more rewrite and I'll be on my way forward.

Should I have made myself skip over the knot for the time being and continue forward with the story, planning to come back and fix it on another pass? Maybe. But I find I can't progress until it "feels right."

I just can't allow my preconceived ideas of a scene to stand without proper attention to character motivation and a reasonable analysis of "what would he know and when would he know it." Even if it takes three days. What if the solution changes the course of the story?

In this particular case, I don't think it changes anything farther along. But I'll see if things feel right as I get there.

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From Sale to Shelf: Part 3

So I've finished revisions and mailed in a new manuscript. Now I'll usually go on to writing the sequel or whatever is next on the schedule. Some authors end up in multiple revision rounds, but fortunately, I've never had to do that. The principal work on this book is done, but not everything. So what comes next?

Copyedits:
Many people are under the misapprehension that what editors do is correct grammar and spelling mistakes in a manuscript. Back in Part 2 of this post, I hope I gave a better idea of what an involved editor brings to the table. But someone still has to look at the details.

At some time a few weeks or months after I've submitted my revisions, I'll receive a fat package in the mail which is the exactly the same thick parcel I sent in with my revisions. My editor may have made a few changes as she read - I've never seen much more than a few sentence alterations, usually in regular gray pencil. But someone has gone in and made red marks all over the place. That person is a copyeditor.

Copyeditors are detail people who have three main tasks:

1. to read for spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Thanks to some great teachers and boring homework back in my school days, I don't have much problem with these, though I'll say that figuring out whether a compound word is actually two words (half sister), hyphenated (half-hearted), or a single word (halfbreed) is my weakness. The CE will make her own dictionary of names and made-up words so that she can make sure they're always spelled and capitalized consistently, too.


2. to mark up the manuscript for the typesetter, using traditional typesetter's markings to denote things like chapter or section headings, italics, ellipses, em- or en-dashes, specially formatted sections like letters, poetry passage, or epigraphs. This ensures such things are handled consistently throughout the book and enforces the publishers' particular typesetting "style."


3. to read for continuity, eg. making sure a character doesn't have green eyes on one page and brown eyes on the next.

A good copyeditor will note other things she runs across during this very detailed read, and write a query in the margins about anything that seems problematical. I've had CEs catch errors that no one else has.

Once I receive the copyedited manuscript, my job is to answer all queries to make sure the CE hasn't uncovered a logic error or some such, and to review every change and mark the CE has made to ensure they are correct. I can undo any of them by writing stet in the margin. I'm not supposed to change "stylistic things" like how the chapter headings are to be typeset or how ellipses or em-dashes are handled.

But I occasionally have reasons to violate certain rules, and I want to make sure they remain as I wrote them. For example, you'll notice that even when Aleksander is referred to as "the Prince," Prince is always capitalized. Usually prince would only be capitalized when used in conjunction with his name, as in Prince Aleksander. I did this to reinforce the narrator Seyonne's view of Aleksander (you'll have to read the rai-kirah books to find out what that view is!) And sometimes my worldbuilding will mandate certain word usage or spelling that is not standard English. That's why I get to review.


Something else happens at copyedit time. In reviewing copyedits, I always sit down and read the whole story from start to finish one more time. And this is my last chance to make any wholesale change to the text. I've always got sentence or word changes to make, and because of my tendency toward wordiness, every pass demands I trim and tighten. So I end up removing a lot of words and phrases. Occasionally some larger issue arises. For example, when I realized that The Soul Weaver was not the end of the D'Arnath series, but the third of four books, I went back in at copyedit time and rewrote the ending.

I usually have about a week to ten days to do this review, and, in truth, it rarely takes that long. It involves one good detailed read with my green or blue pencil in hand (don't want to confuse my marks with the CEs marks). I also keep my handy-dandy Webster's Guide to Punctuation, my Oxford English dictionary (to confirm those compound words as CE's sometimes get them wrong, too), and a list of typesetter's marks close by. Any change I make has to be marked for the typesetter, too.

One always hears horror stories about copyeditors who change things they shouldn't or even rewrite pieces of the story. I did have one copyeditor who "corrected" a few long sentences by chopping them up and entirely changing their meaning, but those were easily fixed. The motivation was good, but the execution flawed! Thank goodness, all my other experiences have been great.

So are we there yet?

Not quite. Tune in for Part 4...
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