What a fun Blog Hop last week! I’m happy to meet you all, and you’ve made me glad I broke down and added Google Friend Connect . And since some of you are new to the blog, I’d like to get to know you, and to know what you’d like to see here! I’d love to hear from you, whether you’re an old or new reader, so I can make my blog worth your while.
Sooo . . .
Aaand
If you have anything else to add, please feel free to make a comment!
Oh, and lest I forget . . . WINNERS! Chosen totally at random, with the aid of Random.org, we have our winners!
The eBook of Monarch by Michelle Davidson Argyle goes to:
In case you missed it (and you probably didn’t), recently there was a bit of a debate in the blogosphere over a certain article which decried the darkness prevalent in YA fiction. I can’t remember if I actually read the article, but I did read the responses of many who took issue with the premise, claiming that YA fiction reflects the dark reality teenagers today know.
I’m not going to argue with that point—but I am going to say that I don’t think that a bleak, hopeless vision of reality is a good way to help someone cope with a future that feels tenuous and perilous at best. Even if a book ends in tragedy, it can still reaffirm readers’ hope.
A YA dystopian I read recently is set in a world without love. It’s illegal to even use the word. Already that sounds pretty bad, eh? Naturally, the MC falls in love, and *SPOILER ALERT* the novel ends tragically. And yet we’re left with hope for the MC to have a better life because of the sacrifice made for her.
I think I tend to side with author John Gardner, at least as his On Moral Fiction is summarized by Wikipedia (emphasis mine):
[F]iction should be moral. Gardner meant "moral" not in the sense of narrow religious or cultural "morality," but rather that fiction should aspire to discover those human values that are universally sustaining. [I assume this means things like hope, character, etc.] Gardner felt that few contemporary authors were "moral" in this sense, but instead indulged in "winking, mugging despair" (to quote his assessment of Thomas Pynchon) or trendy nihilism in which Gardner felt they did not honestly believe.
What do you think? Should fiction be “moral”—by this definition or another?
I have a couple ideas for writing series competing in my thoughts right now, so I thought I’d turn it over to you: what series would you like to see next?
Agents Suzie Townsend and Joanna Volpe are doing “First Page Shooter” on their blog—participants submitted their first page and the agents are giving feedback on them. And FPS#3 (by Josin McQuein) hits it out of the park with voice. The first line:
Killing someone’s easier than you think.
It’s amazing how different that is from:
It’s easier than you think to kill someone.
Or
It’s easier to kill someone thank you think.
Okay, so maybe people in the publishing industry are the only ones who’d notice the difference, but each line seems to say something different about the speaker.
What do you think? What kind of person writes each of those?
Personally, I think there’s a wide spectrum when it comes to whether or not you outline before you write. Yes, okay, having an outline or not having an outline is pretty cut-and-dried, but there are a lot of in betweens:
An idea for an opening
An idea for a beginning and a middle
An idea for a beginning, a middle and an end (a mental outline, perhaps?)
Ideas for several major guideposts in the story (written down?), with room to figure out how to move between them
A written outline of the major guideposts and all the transitions between them.
A chapter-by-chapter synopsis of the story.
A scene-by-scene spreadsheet, possibly including dialogue, setting, exposition.
Once upon a time, I was at the pantser (as in “by the seat of your pants”) end of the spectrum. And my stories were often a mess. (Winchester Mystery Story, anyone?) Whether or not they’d turn out all right was hit-or-miss.
Then I got into a larger project: parallel novels written simultaneously with a friend. We had to work to coordinate our timelines. There was no way to pants this without ruining one another’s books. I broke down and plotted. And to my surprise, it was even better than pantsing!
But while I’m definitely a plotting convert, I’m not a hard-core-plan-every-scene-to-the-final-detail kind of writer. Like pantsers (and probably most plotters to some extent), I need at least a little discovery and creativity to make drafting fun for me. I’m still experimenting at how much discovery vs. planning I need—my last draft was a little short on the planning. It wasn’t until I sat down and figured out my path in a little more detail that I could finish the book. (And I’m going to need to add some more structure in some parts—that darn sagging middle!)
So where do you fall? How did you come to be a plotter or pantser?
. And since some of you are new to the blog, I’d like to get to know you, and to know what you’d like to see here! I’d love to hear from you, whether you’re an old or new reader, so I can make my blog worth your while.
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