I love attending writers' conferences because I always have such a powerful experience and learn so much. I got a chance to discuss the changes I was planning to make to Magical Diaries with Amanda Bergeron on Saturday.
She clarified what she thought the novel needed and this time I really got it. I understand now why readers need to empathize with Lilith's attraction to Adam and feel her pain when he leaves. Amanda said that just because they're soul mates doesn't mean they have to end up together, but we have to feel their attraction and how painful the separation is.
She gave me the example of Buffy and Angel. They're soul mates, but they can't be together because Buffy is a vampire slayer and Angel is a vampire.
Plus, I reconsidered the psychological issues and realized that I had pushed it too far. I don't want Lilith to be neurotic, obsessive, and delusional. She will deal with this stuff in the latter half of the novel when she makes a foray into black magic. A little obsessiveness I could probably get away with in the beginning of the novel, but too much of it and she begins to appear delusional, which doesn't work at the beginning because she's not delusional... and Adam's not a jerk.
I think I've got it sorted out now so I can do the revision and get the characters right so I evoke the emotions I want to evoke in my readers.
Also, one of the workshops I took at the conference was called Revising Fiction, taught by Kirt Hickman. It was so good that I bought his book, Revising Fiction. I was impressed enough with it to mention it here. For writers needing guidance on the revision process, this is a good one.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
Decompressing After the Conference
I wish I could do a better job of adding to this blog on a regular basis, but honestly, when in the midst of writing one novel and revising another, some things must take precendence. Blogging tends to fall lower on my list of priorities.
However, I just got home from the first day of the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers' Conference and my mind is buzzing so much, I need to write about everything that happened, and everything I learned. (It might also have something to do with the fact that I drank coffee after dinner.)
Okay, here's the first thing: I signed up for a workshop led by an agent or editor. Amanda Bergeron from Avon (HarperCollins) led the workshop I was in. I'm really glad I took it because I learned quite a bit from it. The most important thing I learned -- which I already sort of knew was a problem -- is that readers have a difficult time understanding why Lilith Fyerider (the main character in The Magical Diaries of Lilith Fyerider) is in love with Adam. They understand why she loves the Adam in her dreams (she's dreaming of their past lives together), but not why she loves him in the current lifetime. I admit, the present-day Adam is kind of a jerk.
Since I already sort of knew this was a problem (and thought I had fixed it, but obviously hadn't), I was a bit dismayed. The only positive side to that kind of response is that everyone had the same complaint. There was consensus. That's actually good news for a writer.
So, at first I thought, "I'm going to have to completely rewrite Adam's character."
In the afternoon, I went to a workshop called "Pitch 101." Writing a pitch for a novel is incredibly helpful to writers because it forces you to get focused. Here's what I came up with for The Magical Diaries of Lilith Fyerider:
Lilith Fyerider, a modern pagan mystic who is haunted by an obsessions based on dreams of a past life with her former lover, must battle her inner demons as they come to life outside of her, in order to fulfill her destiny as a High Priestess and earth healer.
There are two reasons this exercise of boiling a 94,000-word novel down to one sentence is so helpful. The first is because it allows you to "pitch" your novel to an agent or editor within a few minutes, which sometimes is all you have. The second reason is because, in all honesty, sometimes even the author doesn't really know what their own novel is about. It forces you to get clear on who and what your story is about.
The real benefit of this clarity comes either in the writing or in the revision process (depending how far along you are when you finally write the pitch). Actually KNOWING what your story is about is so incredibly helpful to writing a compelling novel.
If the author knows, it will come through to the reader, no matter how complex the story is. After all, we writers have such overactive imaginations, we absolutely love tangled webs. But we also want the reader to feel, at least on an intuitive level, like they really "got it"; they got the core essence of the character's struggle.
So as the workshops came to an end for the day, we began seating ourselves for dinner. I was on a mission to sit next to Eddie Schneider from JABerwocky Literary Agency because what I had read about him, I thought my novel would appeal to him more than anyone else at the conference, but my pitch appointment is with Amanda Bergeron.
Mission accomplished. I got the seat next to him at dinner. I told him about both of my novels. He gave me his business card and said to send a query letter and sample pages. YES!!!!
Okay... but I've got a problem with the novel, remember? So I tell him I need to fix the problem with Adam first and he says, "Maybe not. Sometimes in workshops if there's a problem in the novel, the readers try to figure out what it is and point to something that seems obvious on the surface, but that's not really it."
Hmmmm.....
After dinner, I rush home and tell my roommate, David, all about what happened. The only other person on the planet who knows the story as well as I do is David. He knew me before I wrote the first sentence that became The Magical Diaries. So he "gets it." He knows what the story is about even if I sometimes forget or get confused.
I told him about how the readers in the workshop liked the Adam in her past-life dreams, but not the Adam in her current life. They couldn't understand why Lilith, a priestess of Avalon in a past life, who is destined to become a High Priestess in this lifetime, could possibly want anything to do with "that jerk, Adam."
"So I should change Adam, right? Make him more like the Adam in her past-life dreams."
"Not so fast," he said. "I understand why Lilith is drawn to Adam the way you've written him."
We went back and forth like that, discussing the novel, until I remembered why it works better that Adam isn't perfect. So the key isn't to change Adam into a character that any woman would obviously fall in love with, but instead to find a way to communicate to the reader how it is that Lilith, a woman who was, in a past life, a priestess of Avalon, could be so broken in this lifetime that she displays neurotic, co-dependent behavior.
This is her journey in the novel. At the beginning of her journey, she is broken... and there are reasons why she is broken. She is at crossroads. Two paths lie in front of her. One is a path of compulsion. But her reasons for being drawn to Adam are not just psychological; they are also karmic. Their lives are karmically tied together, but that does not mean that they are meant to spend their entire lives together. In fact, her destiny in this lifetime is to be a High Priestess and earth healer, not to be Adam's wife.
So her "sacred contract" with Adam unfolds. He is in her life for a reason, but not the reason she thinks. Although they are soul mates, karmically bound together, the role he has agreed to play in her life before they were born was to crack her open in order to expose her wounds (the only way they can truly be healed), then reject her in order to force her out of the protective womb of a relationship and onto the path of her true destiny.
As you can see, it is a complex story, a deep exploration of the character's pysche (both her soul and her psychological makeup). The novel reveals the depths of her psyche until both the reader and Lilith finally understand the underlying truth.
The complexity makes it more profound, but also more difficult to write. Ironically, after brainstorming with David, it turns out that fixing the problem (which is that the readers said they don't understand Lilith's obsession with the present -day Adam) won't be as difficult to fix as I had originally thought.
Whew!
Okay... the clock's telling me I need to get to bed. Have to get up early tomorrow and head back to the conference. I hope this coffee buzz won't keep me up all night.... argh... I hate that. The upside is that I got the thoughts written down while they are fresh in my mind. That way, when I go back to revise, I won't have to reconstruct it all. I can just read this blog.
I love being a writer.
However, I just got home from the first day of the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers' Conference and my mind is buzzing so much, I need to write about everything that happened, and everything I learned. (It might also have something to do with the fact that I drank coffee after dinner.)
Okay, here's the first thing: I signed up for a workshop led by an agent or editor. Amanda Bergeron from Avon (HarperCollins) led the workshop I was in. I'm really glad I took it because I learned quite a bit from it. The most important thing I learned -- which I already sort of knew was a problem -- is that readers have a difficult time understanding why Lilith Fyerider (the main character in The Magical Diaries of Lilith Fyerider) is in love with Adam. They understand why she loves the Adam in her dreams (she's dreaming of their past lives together), but not why she loves him in the current lifetime. I admit, the present-day Adam is kind of a jerk.
Since I already sort of knew this was a problem (and thought I had fixed it, but obviously hadn't), I was a bit dismayed. The only positive side to that kind of response is that everyone had the same complaint. There was consensus. That's actually good news for a writer.
So, at first I thought, "I'm going to have to completely rewrite Adam's character."
In the afternoon, I went to a workshop called "Pitch 101." Writing a pitch for a novel is incredibly helpful to writers because it forces you to get focused. Here's what I came up with for The Magical Diaries of Lilith Fyerider:
Lilith Fyerider, a modern pagan mystic who is haunted by an obsessions based on dreams of a past life with her former lover, must battle her inner demons as they come to life outside of her, in order to fulfill her destiny as a High Priestess and earth healer.
There are two reasons this exercise of boiling a 94,000-word novel down to one sentence is so helpful. The first is because it allows you to "pitch" your novel to an agent or editor within a few minutes, which sometimes is all you have. The second reason is because, in all honesty, sometimes even the author doesn't really know what their own novel is about. It forces you to get clear on who and what your story is about.
The real benefit of this clarity comes either in the writing or in the revision process (depending how far along you are when you finally write the pitch). Actually KNOWING what your story is about is so incredibly helpful to writing a compelling novel.
If the author knows, it will come through to the reader, no matter how complex the story is. After all, we writers have such overactive imaginations, we absolutely love tangled webs. But we also want the reader to feel, at least on an intuitive level, like they really "got it"; they got the core essence of the character's struggle.
So as the workshops came to an end for the day, we began seating ourselves for dinner. I was on a mission to sit next to Eddie Schneider from JABerwocky Literary Agency because what I had read about him, I thought my novel would appeal to him more than anyone else at the conference, but my pitch appointment is with Amanda Bergeron.
Mission accomplished. I got the seat next to him at dinner. I told him about both of my novels. He gave me his business card and said to send a query letter and sample pages. YES!!!!
Okay... but I've got a problem with the novel, remember? So I tell him I need to fix the problem with Adam first and he says, "Maybe not. Sometimes in workshops if there's a problem in the novel, the readers try to figure out what it is and point to something that seems obvious on the surface, but that's not really it."
Hmmmm.....
After dinner, I rush home and tell my roommate, David, all about what happened. The only other person on the planet who knows the story as well as I do is David. He knew me before I wrote the first sentence that became The Magical Diaries. So he "gets it." He knows what the story is about even if I sometimes forget or get confused.
I told him about how the readers in the workshop liked the Adam in her past-life dreams, but not the Adam in her current life. They couldn't understand why Lilith, a priestess of Avalon in a past life, who is destined to become a High Priestess in this lifetime, could possibly want anything to do with "that jerk, Adam."
"So I should change Adam, right? Make him more like the Adam in her past-life dreams."
"Not so fast," he said. "I understand why Lilith is drawn to Adam the way you've written him."
We went back and forth like that, discussing the novel, until I remembered why it works better that Adam isn't perfect. So the key isn't to change Adam into a character that any woman would obviously fall in love with, but instead to find a way to communicate to the reader how it is that Lilith, a woman who was, in a past life, a priestess of Avalon, could be so broken in this lifetime that she displays neurotic, co-dependent behavior.
This is her journey in the novel. At the beginning of her journey, she is broken... and there are reasons why she is broken. She is at crossroads. Two paths lie in front of her. One is a path of compulsion. But her reasons for being drawn to Adam are not just psychological; they are also karmic. Their lives are karmically tied together, but that does not mean that they are meant to spend their entire lives together. In fact, her destiny in this lifetime is to be a High Priestess and earth healer, not to be Adam's wife.
So her "sacred contract" with Adam unfolds. He is in her life for a reason, but not the reason she thinks. Although they are soul mates, karmically bound together, the role he has agreed to play in her life before they were born was to crack her open in order to expose her wounds (the only way they can truly be healed), then reject her in order to force her out of the protective womb of a relationship and onto the path of her true destiny.
As you can see, it is a complex story, a deep exploration of the character's pysche (both her soul and her psychological makeup). The novel reveals the depths of her psyche until both the reader and Lilith finally understand the underlying truth.
The complexity makes it more profound, but also more difficult to write. Ironically, after brainstorming with David, it turns out that fixing the problem (which is that the readers said they don't understand Lilith's obsession with the present -day Adam) won't be as difficult to fix as I had originally thought.
Whew!
Okay... the clock's telling me I need to get to bed. Have to get up early tomorrow and head back to the conference. I hope this coffee buzz won't keep me up all night.... argh... I hate that. The upside is that I got the thoughts written down while they are fresh in my mind. That way, when I go back to revise, I won't have to reconstruct it all. I can just read this blog.
I love being a writer.
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