The Importance of Synopsizing

Writing a synopsis! It’s awful. Especially for those of us on Team Pants (not to be confused with Team Bella), and eschew all manner of plotting, character summaries, chapter outlines, and scene lists. Because really, who wants to do those?

I mean, except you, constant reader. That is, if you do.

As it turns out, lots of agents want you to submit a synopsis with the initial query letter. This is terrifying, headdesky, and amazing. And here’s why.

1. Writing a synopsis is a great writing exercise. You’ve written your book, right? You’ve written your three-sentence teaser and your one-sentence elevator pitch. Now it’s time to condense your 80,000-100,000 words into 300-400. This is much harder than it sounds. Your elevator pitch sounds something like, Ancient mummy raises himself from the dead only to find out that his girlfriend couldn’t come with him; now it’s up to him to find the last scion of the presiding Peruvian priest, who’s the only one who can decipher the code that will bring her back to life and let them live happily ever after. That’s the easy part. But the synopsis requires that you figure out your inciting incidents, climaxes, plot points – you know, all the stuff you’d already know if you’d outlined your novel back at the beginning. But why? I live on the edge! /facepalm

2. Writing a synopsis makes you look critically at your novel. It sounded great while you were writing it, and it sounded great when you revised and edited it, and your mother has patted your head and told you it’s wonderful, dear. But now you’ve got to pick it apart, diagram it, in a way that you haven’t had to do before. Your elevator pitch tells the exciting parts – the parts that are the most ear-catching to strangers. Your teaser gives a little more insight and asks the questions that your novel poses. Your synopsis makes you look at it in a neat little linear model, where Plot Point A leads to Inciting Incident B which leads to Plot Point C, et cetera, et cetera. If it doesn’t make sense on that page, it probably doesn’t make any more sense in its narrative format. So fix it.

3. Writing a synopsis finds plot holes. What’s that you say? You’ve had seventy-five beta readers, some of whom weren’t even family, and they all say it’s wonderful? That’s great. Congratulations. Write a fucking synopsis. Because you’ll find things like that your bartender doesn’t have a last name. (Or maybe he doesn’t have a first name. What? That wasn’t me. Hey, look, more advice!) You’ll find a shaky motivation that needs to be explained. You’ll find a Dickensian character that never came back. Finding these things are all wonderful, and not just because your average bookstore reader doesn’t want it, but because the agent(s) you’re querying – and the editors, eventually – are paid to look for these things. Don’t give them an excuse to put down your letter.

4. Your synopsis needs beta readers, too. Your synopsis isn’t a homework assignment to blow through so that your queried agent can know what’s going on. It’s often the best insight into you, your writing style, and your storytelling abilities that the agent’s going to get. It’s the thing that makes them decide they want to read your manuscript. Make sure your grammar is perfect, your sentence structure is readable, and your voice is strong. (Faith Hunter, author of the Rogue Mage and Jane Yellowrock series, has suggested that you write your synopsis in your character’s voice. I’m on the fence about this. Make your own call.) And if you can, try to find people who have and haven’t read your full manuscript to give you feedback on this. Folks who have read it can tell you if it’s an accurate representation of the manuscript they read, and folks who haven’t can tell you if it makes any damn sense. (Author’s note: love your beta readers. They are awesomely awesome friends that need to be rewarded with booze and sexual favors.)

Now, if you’re anything like me (Team Pants 4 life!!), you probably are having some trouble figuring out where to start. I tried a couple of different methods, all of which turned into infuriatingly masturbatory practices in which nothing was really accomplished. All of the ideas looked good on paper – summarize each scene in one sentence and summarize each chapter in one sentence. That’s fine, except there’s pretty much no way to cram all those one-sentence blurbs together (which probably included lots of dashes and semi-colons so you could twink the rules and still get all the information into one sentence) and have a coherent, much less cohesive, synopsis.

That being said, I highly recommend Kalayna Price’s Write by Number Synopsis Recipe blog over on Magical Words. It may be too constricting for you, but I thought it was awesome. My synopsizing went from two days of headdesking to two hours of flying fingers and giddy smiles. (Okay, maybe not the giddy smiles, but I did finish the thing in two hours.)

Now I’m off to work on query letter drafts. I’ll just be nauseated over here in the corner.

Edit, March 28, 3:55 a.m.: I was told my synopsis was too long and convoluted. This was correct (it was three pages long). I wrote a second draft – which was three-quarters of a page. It took 20 minutes. I imagine that somewhere in between is the correct synopsis. This is why beta readers are important! Love them!

On Writing Women (and Men): a rant

Surely 2012 is the beginning of the end of the world. Today, courtesy of Harry Connolly, I stumbled upon this masterpiece. Just in case you don’t want to read it – and I wouldn’t blame you – here’s the general gist of it: A man tries to explain how you shouldn’t write women characters. And while I think that it is well-meaning, it’s so completely off the mark that I’m not sure he even remembered what he was writing about by the end of it. The idea being that female characters are still characters, not “how a stereotypical woman acts. For examples, watch any television commercial.”

Record scratch. What? In the midst of you telling us that stereotypes are bad and wrong, did you just accuse women of generally acting like women in commercials? That we smile joyfully when our husbands spill salsa all over the freshly vacuumed white carpet because cheering too enthusiastically for his favorite football team? That’s totally what my home life looks like. Yup. Totally.

The best part of the post, of course, was the bullet-point list of “female characteristics.”

Look, I’m not trying to insult the author, I’m merely trying to point out the logical fallacies in his argument, and one of the problems with writing women in fiction – especially in fantasy fiction. And honestly, you run across the same problems in RPGs. There’s a reason men usually roleplay men and women usually roleplay women.

If you’ll allow me a small detour: in my weekly Legend of the Five Rings game, for instance, I play a female spellcaster. She has been accused, on more than one occasion, of being a tiny Japanese lesbian Harry Dresden. And that’s… okay, that’s fair. Mostly because she sets things on fire. Sort of a lot. Anyway, not the point.

Let’s take the parts of this character:
-She is a spellcaster. With this comes the ability to speak the language of the kami, cast elemental magic, heal wounds, cause earthquakes, conjure a katana made of a living fire kami (that I affectionately call my light sabre). Her having trained at the Tamori school gives her alchemy: she can put spells into potions. Handy.
-She’s tiny. She’s 4’10″ on a good day. She has the “small” disadvantage, which means her Water ring is considered one lower for the purposes of movement. Translation: she doesn’t move as fast, and she isn’t as strong. Because she’s tiny. NOT because she’s a woman.
-She’s Japanese. Well, she’s Rokugani, which is L5R-speak for Japanese. All the PCs are.
-She’s a lesbian. Because why not? There’s no cultural restriction on same-sex relationships, but because a samurai’s duty is to the Empress always and forever, and part of your duty is to make more samurai for the Empress and same-sex relations don’t produce any new samurai, that doesn’t work for the Empress. My character has a girlfriend. No one cares. And here’s the thing about it: her liking women colors an interaction just as much as it would if she liked men. She notices attractive women just like the men in the party do, and doesn’t so much notice attractive men. There’s no difference.
-And, uh… Harry Dresden. Right. Fuego!

Tamori Ishi is more than the sum of these parts, despite the fact that this is the list I would use to describe her. I have a female friend whom I refer to as the Bellydancing Archaeologist Librarian Harpist. Has she done all these things? Yes. Does she do more than these things? Yes. Sometimes I call Blur “my magician lawyer boyfriend,” and I’m probably his “archaeologist author girlfriend.” Whatever.

The point is that when you’re writing a female character, you’re still writing a character. It’s still a person. A beta reader described my WIP hero Olivia Monck as a “crier.” I was like, oh, Jesus, she is? Beta reader said, “It’s not a bad thing. Women cry. People cry. She cries at appropriate times. She doesn’t just go around crying at things that don’t make any sense. She cries when she’s upset enough to cry – and the things that happen in the book, there are a number of times where it’s understandable that she cries. Where I’d cry. Leave it. It’s good. It makes her believable.”

You come across similar struggles when writing a man. One of my favorite authors, Rob Thurman, once said, “You don’t need a dick to write a male character.” And you don’t need a vagina to write a woman. You do, however, need a brain. You need to be able to recognize that your people are, first and foremost, people, and you need to get into their heads, and you need to decide what you’re going to do with them. What they’re going to do. Write your character however you damn well please, but be consistent. If your girl’s a crier, make sure she cries when she’s upset. If she gets angry, make her punch something. Same thing with your guys: your consistency, the evocative nature of language, are going to make your characters strong and believable.

Takeaway: Know your character. Know your character inside and out, her backstory, her general emotional state, so that when the boys in the basement throw a curveball at her, she reacts in a way that is consistent with her character. If that’s crying, fine. If it’s whipping out a shotgun and relieving someone of their ribcage, fine.

What if I want a strong female protagonist, Sara? you ask. How do I write that? Short answer: However you bloody well please. There’s no formula as to what makes a female protagonist “strong” or “weak.” As long as she deals with what’s given her, as long as she doesn’t run away from every problem presented her, you can do whatever you want. She can run from some, but she can’t run from everything. And, look, that’s not a male/female thing. That’s a protagonist thing. Who the hell wants to read a character who refuses to deal with any of the situations with which the author presents her? That’s not a story, that’s an article in a psychology journal. (I have a character react escapist-ly when her ex-boyfriend rolls into town, but who cares? That’s believable. She’s got bigger fish to fry, anyway, and it’s very easy to convince herself that she’s doing what’s best for her job.)

You want strong female protagonists that aren’t just Dudes With Tits? Try Lilith Saintcrow‘s Jill Kismet, Dante Valentine, Dru Anderson; Kalayna Price‘s Alex Craft; Rob Thurman’s Trixa Iktomi; Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson; Anne McCaffrey’s Lessa. For non-fantasy, try Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell; Alice Hoffman’s Yael (The Dovekeepers).

And I’ll leave you with a last confession: I read way more male protagonists than female. Why? Because this, this thing we’re discussing, it’s hard. It’s easy to turn a male protagonist into a Ahnold-esque robot, and you go, okay, well, he’s this Bruce Willis badass. There are whole genres built on this non-person, and it’s easier to swallow. Having a male protagonist who’s strong, interesting, and vulnerable (because he’s still a person)? Much harder.

Hard Limits; or, a rather ranty review of FIFTY SHADES OF GREY, by E. L. James (NSFW)

Recently, people absolutely lost their junk over this book. And, being a bookseller and a person who is generally interested in books, writing, and the book industry, I figured I might read it.

Let me say a few things before we get into the meat of this thing:
1.) This is erotica.
2.) This is BDSM erotica.
3.) This started life as TWILIGHT fanfic. I shit you not.

What follows will be a frank and honest discussion of sex, alternative sexual lifestyles, and TWILIGHT fanfic. If any of these things offend you, please move along. (If it’s the TWILIGHT part, check this website, as it is amazing: Reasoning with Vampires.)

Disclaimer: I will try to explain what I understand about the lifestyle/proclivities, but I am under no illusion that I understand everything about everyone ever. If I had to get into the individual psychology of every member of the community, we’d be here all day and we’d still not have found anything. So I’m making blanket statements, with no intention of insulting or pigeonholing anyone. It is my personal opinion that as long as everyone is a consenting adult, the number of fucks I give about what you do behind closed doors is zero.

And before you get on your high horse about the weirdness of people beating each other in leather-walled dungeons, let me share with you a little phenomenon known as BDSM Lite. If you’ve ever scratched a back, pulled hair, withheld an orgasm, or tied your partner to a bedframe with a necktie, you have technically participated in BDSM practices. Deal with it.

BDSM: Bondage/Discipline, Domination/Submission, Sadism/Masochism.

So let’s address some things. Abuse is abuse: mental, emotional, physical. Abuse is abuse. Even if you are in a relationship, if you are experiencing something that you don’t like, that makes you uncomfortable, or that hurts you, and you haven’t agreed to it, it’s abuse. End of story.

If, however, you are in a relationship where certain behaviors have been defined, certain limits have been drawn, and certain practices have been allowed, you have agreed to said certain things. Even if they hurt. If, within this relationship, you are experiencing things that you haven’t agreed to, and you don’t like them, they make you uncomfortable, or they hurt you, that is abuse. End of story.

Meet Anastasia Steele, a frankly unbelievably sheltered protagonist, a college graduate of modern day who does not own a computer nor seems to have read anything besides TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES. Through a crazy random happenstance, she meets Christian Grey, CEO & President of Everything, Ever. He is totes sexy, and totes dark and tortured. Very Victorian gothic romance hero.

Then, surprise! He’s a Dominant. Not just dominant, adjective, but A Dominant, noun. A lifestyler. Ana freaks out. But then doesn’t. Then does. Then doesn’t. Then…

Hamlet, we get it.

He wants her to be his submissive. She says yes, then says no, then says… well, you get the idea.

Time-out for some D/s psychology: The Dominant is interested in taking care of the submissive. That’s sort of what it boils down to, from what I understand. Sometimes the submissive misbehaves and is corrected within agreed-upon limits. (Ana says canes are a hard/non-negotiable limit; I can’t say I disagree with that choice.) Some people like to be restrained, tied up, whatever. Some people are into pain (giving and receiving, to varying degrees). Some people want to be verbally denigrated. Some people want to serve. Some want to be served. That’s fine.

It is never about fear. It is about trust. Christian says that at one point: you, as the submissive, have all the power. You have the power to decide what I can and cannot do to you.

So, Ana and Christian. He makes all the money, and he wants to take care of her. He buys her a car, flies her to dinner on his private helicopter, gives her a new wardrobe, etc., etc. One of the big internal conflicts of the book is Ana’s struggle with whether or not this makes her a prostitute. Money for sex, she reasons. And here we are back to the crux of the D/s relationship: he wants to take care of her. She needs new clothes, he gets them for her. She doesn’t eat well, he buys her dinner. She has a shitty car, he buys her a new one. He’s got the money, and he wants to, so why shouldn’t he? That is, after all, part of the enumerated contract he draws up for this relationship, that he gets to take care of her. It pleases him, he says, to look after her. She balks. A lot.

There’s a lot of waffling, a lot of compromise on both sides, a hint of Christian’s backstory being painful and tragic (and pretty easy to guess), and a pretty good cliffhanger for the next book.

So! Things I Liked:
First and foremost, I love that a BDSM erotica novel has gotten this insane level of national press. I love that the media is treating the subject like it’s – gasp – normal. Because it is. (See earlier notes on BDSM Lite.)
So, of course, the sex. It was, for the most part, hot with lots of T’s. A few of the scenes were mediocre and only one was super disappointing, but I spent a large chunk of the novel fanning myself and being embarrassed for reading this in public.
The scene where she reaches out to touch his chest and in a panicked whisper, he says, “Hard limits.” Something about that tiny little paragraph thrilled me; it wasn’t sexual, but maybe because it was the only believable admission of vulnerability Christian ever makes.
I liked the ending. If you know my taste in romance, you can guess why. (Mini-spoiler: I liked it for the same reason I liked the end of the STRANGE ANGELS series.)
I liked that this uninitiated girl doesn’t just crack and discover that omg she’s totes into whips and chains and had no idea!!1! Her reaction is reasonable. Logical. Expected. However…

Things I Didn’t Like:
Every character in the story who is into kink has some kind of major dysfunction. This, plus the inevitable vanillization of their relationship leads me to believe that this is not a pro-kink novel.
Who is this 22-year-old girl who’s alive in the 21st century in a first world country and lived in Las Vegas for a while and has access to the internet that has NEVER heard of someone getting their jollies from a little slap & tickle? I don’t buy it. Oh, and she’s a virgin. Duh.
Her bff Jose tries to get into her pants while she’s drunk and she’s just sort of fine with that? Like a week later, she decides she can’t be mad at him for long because he’s just so great?
Also, re: Jose, we don’t ever get any reason to be on his side. All we get is Ana’s vague discussion of his being awesome, and a scene where he sexually assaults her on a public sidewalk. I’m not really rooting for this guy.
The whole book could have used another editor. It’s not bad writing, but it isn’t particularly good: it’s amateurish, at best, and I think Ms. James has some real potential. If she wrote a few more books and worked with a developmental editor (professional or a friend who doesn’t mind being a sounding board), I think she’d have a real chance to run with the big dogs.

This started as TWILIGHT fanfic. And that’s not points against it necessarily, but it does color one’s opinion of the characters and subsequent characterization. It also colors one’s opinion of the author (sorry). I wish I hadn’t known this before I started reading, because then I wouldn’t have read it as Edward sulking a lot and Bella just being confused and indecisive. (I guess Jose was Jacob?)

But here’s where the whole thing gets weird for me: taken on its own, this story was fine, 3-3.5 stars. Totally acceptable. It had a better plot than most erotica – which, granted, is not the genre’s strong point – but there was a lot that just didn’t add up for me. But something, something, had me turning the pages. Maybe it was that I was borrowing an e-reader and had to give it back in a day. Maybe it was that I was hoping for more sex. I don’t know. What I do know is that if I hadn’t had to sleep and go to work, I’d've read this thing cover to cover in 6 hours. Why? What about the story made me keep wanting to read? The characters were unbelievable and their relationships bordering on irritating and the setting was a non-issue.

What the hell? Fortunately, the spell had broken between my finishing this one and starting the second one – perhaps because the first thirty pages of FIFTY SHADES DARKER is an angst-burger nom session that would make Joss Whedon blink – and have completely lost interest in the characters.

So, you know, I’ll just blame it on the sex. I’m totally fine with that.

The joy [and pain] of beta readers

I’m sitting here in a friend’s living room while she reads my manuscript. I’ve voluntarily subjected myself to this, of course, having given comment-making rights on the Google Doc to a half-dozen or more people, to suffer the slings and arrows of their…

Hold up, I didn’t write that.

Anyway: welcome to a necessary part of the revision process. BETA READERS. And it is goddamn terrifying.

I’ve spent a lot of time staring at this manuscript, cursing it, praising it, hacking it up and smashing it together, facepalming and headdesking, and now here we are, the point at which other people get to do those things without actually having to deal with any of the repercussions. I hated this piece when I wrote it, loved it when I finished it, loved it when I pulled it out a year later to revise, then started to hate it again.

That’s not quite right. I don’t hate it. I’m just… I’m less confident than I was before, shall we say. But that’s probably because I’ve dissected the damn thing within an inch of its life, looked at all its pink and squishy parts, poked around in the viscera, cut some things out and shoved some things in, and hopefully sewed it back up without leaving my watch inside. And the bitch of this is that I know it’s still not good enough. I know that no matter how good this draft is, it isn’t going to be good enough until the beta readers go through it, punch holes in my character motivations, poke fingers into plot holes – possibly make me cry – and then I go back through and I fix the damn thing.

This is why you need good beta readers. Not kowtowing friends who squee “omg this is so goooood” at you – no matter how nice it feels, it doesn’t feel good anymore when you know you’re not improving – or the ones who have nothing to say. You want people who are writers, who are good readers, who know what make a story work and what doesn’t. You need, for lack of a better term, developmental editors.

So find some. Love them. Bribe them with chocolate and beer and, if necessary, sexual favors.

Why am I so nervous? I am, after all, about to ship this out to a couple dozen strangers who have nothing better to do than decide the fate of the random, unsolicited query letters and manuscripts that arrive on their desks every day. I am putting my work into their hands, saying, PLEASE JUDGE ME, and that’s fine. That’s fine. It has to be, doesn’t it? Who am I to think myself so important that I deserve my very own ISBN?

Because fuck it, right? I’ve got things to say, and someone’s bound to like them. Because there’s always a market for books, and I like to write. Because I like to write. Because I don’t have a Plan B. So I’m going to sit here in this chair, occasionally chew on a fingernail, put off starting my next project, and just feel the panic sitting on my chest like a sandbag, feel it rattle and buzz in my lungs like a crop of cicadas.

Because beta readers, ladies and gentlemen, are important. They’re your lifeline. They’re the ones who tell you what’s crap and what isn’t and why they don’t believe your protagonist’s motives. The ones to tell you she needs a new job or that you have to introduce a female friend or your bartender’s stupid or a million other things. They’re your reality check: you’ve spent so much time with this manuscript, maybe plotting and graphing, maybe just word-vomiting out a year ago, that you’re at the point where even you hate looking at it… it’s time for fresh eyes to come in and point out all the things you knew were wrong with it (but gave up on in frustration) and all the things you couldn’t see because you were too close.

They are, quite possibly, the most important step other than writing the manuscript. Make sure you treat them right.

It’s not me, it’s you.

I gave up on a manuscript a few days ago. I was 26,057 words in. This is better than it sounds.

This year’s NaNo project turned out better than it had any right to. I wrote 80,000 words in 30 days, which is just stupid, and there’s a lot I don’t remember. But I do remember that I love those characters, and that it came together in a far more cohesive fashion than I should have hoped for. I’m damn proud of that thing. So I thought, Well, hell, since we’re here, we’ll just write the sequel. Worked the last time we did this.

And it did. Last year’s NaNo project went exceptionally well too (only 74,000 words), but I was able to launch more or less immediately into its sequel, which ended up being a hell of a lot better than the original. So much better, in fact, that that’s the one I’m going to pitch to agents and publishers, not the first one.

This time, however – ahem – I was less successful. Maybe I wrote too fast in November. Maybe I just don’t remember enough about the characters, the setting, the beginning, middle, ending, the whatthefuckever. I was so proud of myself, having plotted out a whole five (six?) book arc, the plots for each of the books in this inevitable series, the major climax at the end, everything.

And the book flopped. Every one of those 26,057 goddamn words was terrible. I hate them all. Every time I opened the document, I wanted to scream. Throw things. Delete files willy-nilly. And that’s stupid, because I knew – know – exactly where the thing is going. I know how it’s got to end to lead into the next one.

Then I thought, Huh. Maybe there’s more to this pantsing thing than I thought.

Turn on the tap at your kitchen sink. See how, when you leave it alone, it comes out just the way it’s supposed to? Now stick your finger against the spigot – and go change your shirt, because you’re soaked. When you start messing with it, shit goes wrong. It goes everywhere, spiralling out of control, doing what the fuck it wants and making you hate it.

At the beginning of NaNo, at one of the pre-November plotting sessions, someone asked me for my plot, and I laughed it off, saying, “I have characters and setting. I don’t need plot.” I was sort of joking, but not really. Here’s my writing process, when it’s working at optimal strength:

1.) Word vomit for approximately 40,000 words. (One 7000-word day last NaNo left me saying, “I think there was a car crash? I don’t know.”)
2.) Read through those words, ask questions readers would ask, draw logical conclusions.
3.) Write final 40,000 words. Make it work.
4.) Lo and behold! It works.
5.) Revise happily and stress-free.

The sequel? There was no word vomit. The whole thing was plotted out from the beginning. And I was so proud. It was divided up into acts, with summaries. With fucking plot points. Plot points, people, do you hear me? Three pages of this shit. Scenes, climaxes, resolutions, and a graph. A GRAPH. Like this is GraphJam or something.

Well, it isn’t. Don’t get me wrong: all the things laid out were good ones. Great ideas, if I might say so myself. And I do.

So I sat down to write. And it went fine for a while, then I went back and rewrote the opening. Then rewrote it again. Then moved on, writing some more stuff, never really satisfied. Always feeling a little weird about it. Always feeling like it fell flat, like there was nothing real there, no grit or stress, no panic in the characters or the reader (just the author), just some characters floating along on this prefabbed plotline.

A month passed, and I had 26,057 words written. In the 31 days of December, I’d written just over a quarter of what I’d written in the 30 days of November. Now, I’m no rocket surgeon, but that math doesn’t make sense.

Fine, I said. Fine. Manuscript, you and I are going to take separate vacations so we don’t end up getting a divorce. I’m going to see other manuscripts for a little while, take one out for a nice dinner, maybe some bowling or that new Sherlock Holmes movie, and if I’m lucky, maybe it’ll let me do some revisions on it. If you know what I’m saying.

So I put it away, and pulled out last year’s so-successful sequel. I ran through the first round of revisions in a week or so (what a slut!). This novel is awesome.

Let me repeat that: IT IS AWESOME. I have more confidence in this thing than I have in many things ever. It’s kind of niche, so I think I’ll have more luck with smaller publishers, but what the hell, right? That’s the plan, anyway: put revisions into digital copy (since I have to revisions with pen and paper), second draft on beta readers, receive their opinions, cry a little, fix them (or ignore them), and have this damn thing sent off to at least five publishers and five agents by the end of March.

And while I’m waiting for a response – because I’ll have to wait, and wait and wait and wait probably – I can compress those pages of Act outlines and goddamn plot points and graphs onto a few scraps of receipt paper, because apparently that’s how I work best. Maybe three quarters of a page in Pages, or a couple of index card. Because this plotting shit ain’t workin’ for me.

Moral of the story? Don’t be afraid to take breaks, to walk away. Lots of stuff gets dropped to the cutting room floor – and for good reason. Don’t be afraid of saying, it’s not you, it’s me. No, it’s you. Because I never would have gotten those revisions done if I hadn’t drawered a story that was making me insane.

 

**Mouse-over quote from Richard Kadrey’s KILL THE DEAD (Sandman Slim #2).

Ooh! I finally found the hero!; or, a book review of CLOCKWORK PRINCE (Infernal Devices #2), by Cassandra Clare

I loved CLOCKWORK ANGEL. Or, at least, I remember loving it. Regardless, when I picked it up last year (admittedly, because of its awesome steampunky cover/back copy), I liked it enough that I went ahead and read the rest of Cassandra Clare’s canon. The Mortal Instruments books were…

Well, never mind. We’re here about her Infernal Devices series.

CLOCKWORK PRINCE was released earlier this month, a year after its predecessor came out. I won’t lie: I was excited. Like I said, I remember really digging that book, and even though I came out slightly disappointed (erm, jaded) at the other end of the Mortal Instruments books, I sallied forth and read this one.

Look, I like YA books. I believe that, proportionately, there are as many good YA books out there as adult. I really liked TEXAS GOTHIC and the Harry Potter books and Madeleine L’Engle’s WRINKLE IN TIME series and oh my god I loved Lili St. Crow‘s STRANGE ANGELS series. I fangirled all to shit over that series. (I picked a team. I don’t do that.)

Ugh. Go on, Sara. Just say it.

Fine.

I’m really tired of Clare’s pearl-clutching, simpery, melodramatic, aggressively poetic crap. I know, I know. People love her. Jace Wayland and Will Herondale are really sweethearts underneath their crass, asshole exteriors. Team whatever. I get it. Here’s the thing:

We didn’t invent sex. Hell, our parents didn’t even invent it. So Tessa’s physical light-headedness at the touch of her beloved(s), her lack of knowledge of how babies are made… yeah, right. I don’t buy it. I get that this is Victorian England, and that people are stuffy and corseted, but come on. Do a little internet search, people. It’s emphasized over and over that Shadowhunters have different standards of interpersonal conduct, behavior, propriety, etc., yet we’re still behaving like this is some kind of Oscar Wilde play (which were, by the way, satires of the day)?

Also, Tessa is not what I’d call a heroine. Tessa is a female romantic lead. Jem’s a male romantic lead. Look, the only interesting thing that happened in this whole damn book was Jem’s asking Tessa to marry him (which seemed forced, awkward, and completely out of the blue [on the part of the writer, not the character]) because it made someone do something.

Who was the someone? What was the something?

William Herondale actually grew the fuck up when Tessa told him she was marrying Jem. Will showed more compassion, more emotional maturity, more brains and suavity (is that even a word) and composure and wherewithal in the last 40 pages of the book than anyone had in the previous 460 (or in the other 2000 pages she’s written of anyone). But when Tessa burned her hand with the poker? Let’s make sure she gets her big-girl bloomers on before dinner, okay?

And as far as the “aggressive” poetry I mentioned earlier, I’m pretty sure people didn’t talk like that on a casual, interpersonal level. Actual poetry was invented for two reasons: 1) mnemonic devices, and 2) to get you laid. That bullshit at the end of the book, the letter from Will to Tessa, that crap about his heart like a bell or whatever… really? The impression I’m left with is that Clare read a lot of Austen and Bronte and other Victorian-era lady-written chicklit romances, and based her wordsmithery on this. It seems so much like Writing, like Crafting A Sentence, like she’s Letting Us Know She’s Read Victorian And Edwardian Literature And Knows How They Spake Unto One Another, that the prose seems to get away from her and snowballs into this living, pulsating, overwrought Baroque thing.

Anyway. There are things I like about this series, I swear. I really dig the idea of Nephilim Shadowhunters. I’m glad to see we are, generally, moving away from the vampire obsession. I’ve never had a thing for them, I don’t think they’re sexy, and I have a hard time not thinking of having sex with vampires as necrophilia. But hey, if you’re into that sort of thing, it’s only a class D felony. (Looking at you, Anita Blake and Bella Swan.) I think Clare’s got a cool thing happening with the angelic blood and the Marks and runes and whatnot. The larger mythology behind, as it’s revealed in the MI series, is pretty solid. I don’t get why this book isn’t shelved in Teen Paranormal Romance, but hey, I’m not sure why STRANGE ANGELS is. More good news? The Infernal Devices books are way less predictable than the Mortal Instruments ones. You’re welcome?

And the steampunk? It’s sort of there. They run into automatons twice, and there were little clockwork bug things at the end, and there’s supposed to be some kind of clockwork army, but it’s theoretical at best.

Here’s the really bad news: I’ve pretty much given up on Clare. I read the Mortal Instruments, as mentioned – but I only read the first three. I have zero interest in reading CITY OF FALLEN ANGELS, because as far as I’m concerned, that story concluded. What else was there left to do? Jace and Clary saved the world and got the… well, each other. (And of course they weren’t brother and sister. A little thing called writer contract.) And I’m probably not going to read CLOCKWORK PRINCESS either, and not because the Infernal Devices series is over, but because it’s not interesting.

3/5 stars. (Those scenes featuring Will after Tessa’s engagement announcement saved this from 2/5.) Follow @cassieclare on Twitter or visit her website.

On the end of NaNoWriMo… and then writing its sequel

So NaNoWriMo is over, and I’ve been decompressing by, ah, well… writing.

I must be insane. I know, I get it. One of my friends told me tonight, “You know, November’s over. You can stop writing now.” I laughed at him. Because you remember what I said earlier about shutting up and doing your job? I was serious about that.

I finished my novel on November 28. I didn’t hit 50,000 words that day – because I hit it on November 17 – I actually finished the novel. Shit, I thought, I’ve got two more days to fill with writing because so help me I will reach 80,000 words this month (spoiler: I did!), so I started on its sequel.

This is where I flag. Sequels. Terrifying, considering I’d like to make a living on dark fantasy series.

So here’s what happens:
Step 1: Get awesome idea. Get super excited.
Step 2: Run it by awesome plot sounding board friends.
Step 3: Write book. This usually takes 5-8 weeks.
Step 4: Launch immediately into sequel.
Step 5: Panic.

And we’re in High Alert Panic Mode right now, which is just stupid. Because – and you remember all that ranting I did about “plotting” and “organic storytelling” and “knowing where you’re going with a story”? I did that here. I have index cards and three whole sheets of paper with notes on plot, inciting incidents, plot points, act divisions, questions that might arise… honestly, I don’t even know who I am anymore. But there you are – I’ve done it. Step 1, check.

I’ve eagerly squeed plot ideas to anyone who will sit still long enough, and no one’s thrown up. Yet. Step 2, check.

I started writing it on the 29th of November, because I needed more words. I got about 2500 words in on it before the month ended, but I deleted and rewrote a lot of it after that because I didn’t love how it started. I’m 12k in now, and I’m starting to worry about the middle of it. I’m jumping straight to Step 5 without even bothering to complete Step 3. This is stupid, and inevitable, because I’ve done it three (four?) times now. Last year’s original NaNo project was the sequel to the first novel I’d ever finished (which I’d finished the month previous), and I got 15k in and said, the hell with this, and started over with a fresh Step 1. So I wrote that book. And then I wrote its sequel (which, oddly enough, was better than the original), and when I started in on the third installment (which, oddly enough, will be the second, because I’m trashing the first).

So what’s the solution? Maybe I should work in different universes for a while before tackling the next project. It will be a lot easier this time around because I’ve got the plot laid out (no chapter/scene lists; I’m not a masochist). I had a good idea for a short story in the car this morning; maybe I should work on that. Maybe I should work on revisions for last year’s book.

Or… maybe I should quit my bellyaching and write the damn book.

Hey, that’s pretty good advice, Sara: shut up and write.