Tag Archives: Jennifer L. Carson

August 5, 2015 by

Conning your way: Moderating a Writer’s Workshop

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Graphic from Bo’s Cafe Life

Moderating a writer’s workshop at a con is easy.  Someone has passed you the power to sit down and conduct.  All you have to do is show up, say go, and let the people talk. Right?

Yes…but no.

Moderating a writer’s workshop well at a con is not so easy.  The point of a workshop is not to see that a half dozen people get to talk on a manuscript; the point is to guide the workshop to help an author make a better manuscript.  Workshops can do that, but they can also do the reverse.

I know of one instance where the writer went home, took the advice of one of the pros, and totally chopped up the manuscript.  I was at the workshop so I heard the advice, and since I know the writer, I saw the result.  The advice was a reiteration of something I’d said: writing structure should reflect writing content (a blog for another time).  For instance, in the writer’s action scene, her sentences sometimes got away from her.  They were longer and occasionally more rambling than they should have been for the situation: a gun fight in the forest. While these sentences were perfectly good sentences for the right situation, right there, they needed to be shorter, punchier, and more directed to the immediate events (no time to dissemble on stray thoughts).  However, what and how the pro said it may have confused that writer  for she went home and applied the advice to the whole manuscript to its detriment.  Took her a few months to undo the damage.

You as moderator want to try to keep the workshop session focused on the goal of helping author-entrants to improve their works.  The value of those works should not be under discussion. At one time, I had a writer’s group member make the comment in group about my work, “Ho hum, another Conan the Barbarian novel, but I guess you know that” (No, I didn’t, he is the only person to have ever said that—I left that group as a result).  Another con workshop I heard about had an author-entrant writing about Norse mythos.  A workshop participant compared her to Marvel’s Norse-influenced work and said they liked Marvel better.  We writers need to follow our bliss, so don’t judge the author’s choice.  Instead, guide each author to make his or her take on the subject his or her own unique story.  So in your workshop, judge the intent of the stories and help the author-entrants meet their goals. If this type of judgment does happen, be prepared to gently redirect the attention to the intent and those goals.

Over the years, I’ve learned from my mistakes and successes to develop pretty simple guidelines.

Workshop Format

The science fiction and fantasy cons I’ve moderated for use the same format.  The workshop comprises three author-entrants, two pros, and a moderator.  Three manuscripts of up to thirty pages are delivered to all the workshop participants in advance to be critiqued in a three-hour session.

I will breakdown the process of a workshop using this format. If your workshop varies, you’ll have some math to do. This also assumes the room is yours for the full three hours. If it’s a dedicated room to the workshop, this is likely the case, but if a panel follows you, they will assume you were supposed to be out before the hour.  To be sure, ask your program coordinator or look to see who is in the room after you.

Introduce yourself and that this is a workshop session. If more people are in the room than you expect, let them know it’s a private session. Go around the table and have everyone introduce themselves. I like to ask the pros to share their latest project—a moment of shameless self-promotion if you will. Set the rules for the workshop.

Rules

I’ve adjusted these guidelines from my college creative writing workshops.  Each critiquer reviews the manuscript without interruption either from the other critiquers or the author-entrant. The critiquer whose turn it is to speak should not engage the others at the table (including the author-entrant) with questions unless the critiquer has a quick clarification he or she needs to make a point.  He or she may then ask a question to elicits a very short answer from the author-entrant. You as moderator should be prepared to say, “let’s make note of that and address it further at the end” if the answer goes on too long.

The author-entrant will have time to ask questions.  I like to stress that this workshop is for the author-entrant, not the critiquers.  Author-entrants should not defend their work. After all, a shrink-wrapped version of the author does not come with every copy of the book sold.  It’s not important that the critiquers understand what the author-entrant is trying to do, it’s important that the author-entrant understands what a reader may infer.  No rebuttals or justifications are necessary and no good ever comes of such.  If a critiquer is wrong, it’s just not that important that he or she knows. You as moderator may be called on to gently curtail an author-entrant who is trying too hard to defend the work.  The only exception to this is if an author-entrant would like clarification on why a critiquer came to a particular conclusion. In this case, the author can outline the back information necessary to frame the question, ask where he or she went wrong, and inquire about suggestions to fix it.

Timing

  1. Each manuscript gets (about) 1 hour.
  2. Each critiquer will get up to 8 minutes to speak with a one-minute warning at 7 minutes. (I use my phone to have an alarm go off at the seven minute point. This way, I don’t clock watch, can remain engaged in the workshop,  don’t lose track of time, and  don’t have to personally interrupt folks.)
  3. 10 to 15 minutes of open table time starting with asking the author-entrant if they have questions.  This will usually instigate an open table conversation. If it doesn’t, be prepared to ask questions to get conversation rolling.
  4. 5 minute break

Order

I give the order the critique will go in.  This is really up to the moderator. I usually go clockwise, counter clockwise and clockwise again.  However, some people may have never been involved in a workshop or feel insecure about going first, especially in the presence of pros. If one of the author-entrants is sitting left or right of you, you might inquire if they would prefer to go later (but don’t forget them!  It’s quite embarrassing).  Or you may just choose to start with one pro and move in a circle from there. Or you could determine an order before you even arrive and announce it when you start that critique.  I tell people I will go last so that I can adjust for timing if it gets off.

I then announce the order of the manuscripts. Because of the workshop introduction, the first manuscript may go over the hour. You may wish to start with a manuscript that is shorter or you think might elicit fewer comments.

End of Workshop

Thank everyone for their time and participation.  Remind the author-entrants to take time to think about and feel out the advice they have been given. They are here to learn, but ultimately they are the shepherds of their own work. They are the ones that need to guide it.  Sometimes in experimenting with new ideas and ways of doing things, the writing can go wrong. So make a clearly marked back up of the story before massaging it.  It will be liberating, allowing the author-entrant to push harder, and it will ensure that writing paths that lead to dead ends don’t lead to a manuscript’s dead end.

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July 1, 2015 by

The Writer’s Toolbox
Real Heroes Don’t Get Charlie Horses
Part 4: But how do I do it?


inkwellIdentifying the words that have connotation worth mining can be a challenge if you are not used to thinking of words in this fashion. Poetry is rife with examples of mining connotation. Find some you like or that has an emotional component like one you are looking for and read it. Make notes; pay close attention to metaphor; write down words that attract your attention. Contemplate what those words contribute. Look them up in the dictionary, then the thesaurus.

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Hey, as long as you have the thesaurus open on your desk or desktop, peruse it. Think about how some words evoke different feelings within you, even though they are under the same heading. Pairs like shadow and shade, rock and stone, chill and cool all have different connotations. Shadow tends to be spooky or disturbing, shade restful. Rock is a little less formal-sounding than stone, and the use of rock is more common in the western United States and stone more so in the east. Cool is refreshing, chill is unpleasant, even scary.

As you look through the thesaurus entries, note that the long and complex words tend to leave you cold. Long Latinate-based words can be too neutral. In the worst scenario, they can be so dispassionate as to feel cold. When you are working with neutral words, some are better than others even if neither has heavy connotation. Shorter words tend to be better and are usually not Latinate. Our original example of The clouds moved across the sky, though neutral, is much better than The clouds locomoted across the sky. They are both synonyms from the thesaurus, but locomoted is long and Latinate. Latinate words run the risk of being boring, off putting, cold, or scientific feeling. That said, I like the sound of The clouds traversed the sky. Maybe there is a story where that would be the right choice.

Now that you have looked through some thesaurus entries, it is time to try an exercise to help your next scene. I had a terribly difficult time with a battle scene, and I kept consulting with readers and SCA fighters and reading books on tactics. The scene got more organized, but it never got better. I finally figured out that all the staging and proper window dressing in the world was not going to save the scene. What it lacked was an emotional connection to the reader. Emotional situations were happening; they just weren’t connecting with my reader on an emotional level. So I did two things, I looked for ways to expand my understanding of what sensory events were occurring in a battle (in my case I watched movie and Internet clips), and I spent time with a thesaurus to generate lists of words related to events, the sensory experiences of the characters, and relating to what I watched on the clips. Here are some of the words I looked up: battle, slash, clangor, explode, rage, weak, energy, dance, destroy, adrenalin, taste, scent, perfume, odor, cloying, and fetid. Note how the last five relate. If a word doesn’t work (perfume didn’t work for me) keep looking. Look up entries from within the list you are looking at, they themselves will likely have alternative choices, which will help you refine your word lists.

Now you have useful words swimming about your head ready for you to pluck. Or a list you’ve generated to peruse when you feel you need stronger or different terms. The result for my battle scene was nothing short of transforming. It may not have become the definitive scene to end all battle scenes, but it jumped the chasm from boring to engaging.

Go Forth and Do

If you look at your writing, you may see that you have made choices already where connotation is aiding you. Now you understand what it is you were doing when you chose those words. With your conscious understanding of connotation as a tool for writing, you can control more effectively how your reader connects to the scene you are portraying. You can amp up or dial down the emotional elements, revving up your readers or resting them so you can take them refreshed on the next thrill ride. Your job as a writer is to provide the reader the emotional experience they seek. Connotation can be a powerful and subtle tool for manipulating the emotional connection between your story and your reader, so get out your virtual whetstone, hone your new tool, and put it into your writer’s toolbox.

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June 24, 2015 by

The Writer’s Toolbox
Real Heroes Don’t Get Charlie Horses
Part 2: The Charlie Horse Syndrome and Other Ill Applied Connotations

So we’ve just reviewed what connotation is and how it can be used, but let’s look at what happens when the word with the wrong connotation is used. Enter our bad guy:

His lip curled into a leer as he towered over her. She shuddered every time he moved, at every flex of his fist, at every step that brought him closer. He pushed his fuzzy black hair away from his stone-cold eyes, and said…

Queue the sound of a record scratch…Huh? Fuzzy hair? Bunnies are fuzzy, chicks are fuzzy, our childhood teddy bears are fuzzy. Clowns have fuzzy hair, your BFF has fuzzy hair on bad hair days, newborns have fuzzy heads…Do you see the commonality? All of these things are nonthreatening.

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Threatening things are not fuzzy: Wild boars bristle; hissing cats raise their hackles; and gorillas thump their chests as their hair stands on end. While you might stretch the denotation of fuzzy to cover a boar, hissing cat, or angry gorilla, the connotation just screams out against it. So here, the villain has got himself a comic do. Read it again, only this time substitute the word wild for fuzzy. Same tangle-haired look, different feel. One builds your tension, one ruins it.

The title example is one of my favorites and really underlines the point well. In it, the scene is dire and the pain all but unendurable. Note how the end undermines a lot of work to portray a desperate situation. In this example, our fantasy hero is being tortured by magic:

Every time the witch curled her finger or touched him, Gerrick felt another muscle convulse. She brushed Gerrick’s leg and his calves curled in pain. She traced her finger lightly up his thigh and blazed a fiery trail of knots up to his groin. She curled her lips in her knife-edged smile and leaned over to kiss his naked stomach. The muscled clamped so hard he choked on a mouthful of vomit. She worked her way up to his chest. His diaphragm snapped tight, knocking his breath from his laboring lungs. His heart clenched, shooting pain down his arm. By the time he threw his head back under the ratcheting of his neck muscles, he was in agony; the Charlie horse all over his body was the worst pain he’d ever felt.

A Charlie horse? A Charlie Horse is what Hubby gets in the middle of the your favorite show, and he goes hopping around holding his leg going, “Ow-ow-ow! Charlie horse, Charlie horse!” It’s a funny pain when you see someone with it. It’s a mundane pain, one I would say most would not associated with the worst pain they ever had. And frankly, the words Charlie horse just plain sounds light weight, even humorous.

So you see, real heroes don’t get Charlie horses.

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June 20, 2015 by

The Writer’s Toolbox: Real Heroes Don’t Get Charlie Horses—Connotation Vs. Denotation

Part One: The Sacchariferous RoseToolbox2

What is in a name? A Rosa Indica by any other nomenclature reeks as sacchariferous…doesn’t it?

Not in a book, it doesn’t. A rose by any other name smells as sweet sounds a lot sweeter than the above rendition put together with synonyms.  The denotation of the words, the dictionary definition,  is close enough between the two that all substitutions either have the same dictionary definition or are listed in the thesaurus as synonyms.   So why do the two lines feel so different?

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Writing is an artificial means of creating something tangible within our minds.  The only tools authors have to reach into the minds of the readers are words and their conveyance.  But to tell a story is not merely to depict a map of places, a timeline of events, and a phenotype of characters.  The heart of a story is to convey an emotional experience to the reader.  This is where denotation can fall short of the task.

Enter connotation.  Connotation is the baggage that many words carry that you usually won’t find in a dictionary.  Words gather associations over time and across different cultures.  Take an apple for instance.  Strictly speaking, a fruit that evokes little emotion in me when I pick one up at the supermarket.  But pair it with the word Big, and now we have an exciting metropolis.  Or paint it multicolored stripes, and we think computer.  Or put it next to a snake, and we conjure temptation in out minds.  The apple hasn’t changed, just how you relate to it.

The same thing can be done with just about any word.  For instance consider the meaning of these five sentences:

The clouds moved across the sky

The clouds floated across the sky

The clouds lazed across the sky

The clouds raced across the sky

The clouds roiled across the sky

Do you feel a different relationship to the sentences?  Do you picture fluffy white clouds piled high on a warm sunny day for floated and lazed?  Do you see a blustery day for raced?  For roiled, are the clouds dark and threatening? Is a storm is coming?

And yet each entry is in essence the same as the first, moved.   What has changed is our emotional connection to each sentence.  This is because, through their use, words collect meanings that they did not originally have, and using a word with the right meaning and background for the tone of your situation enhances the emotion.

This emotional connection is the heart of engaging a reader, and connotation is a powerful tool to do that.

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May 16, 2015 by

That’s What Editors Are For

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Graphic: creators.com retrieved from Laugh Tracks at GoComics.

I put together a bike for my brother’s kid this Christmas.  Turns out, I’m pretty handy with a wrench.  Thought I might try building a car next.  What do you think? Should I go for it?

What you are thinking right now is a little glimpse into my head when I tell people I’m an editor and writer, and they say to me, “Oh, yeah, I’ve been thinking about writing a book.  It’s about XXX. What do you think? Should I go for it?”  I’m torn between trying not to smile too hard or being a little insulted.  I usually land on amused.

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Someone once asked me how I do what I do after I helped that person fix a pretty big hole in their novel.  I laughed and said, “Shell out thirty grand for a degree in creative writing, then pony up more for a certification program in editing, attend a dozen cons, moderate half a dozen writer workshops, participate in five writers’ groups, read an uncounted number of how-to books and unpublished manuscripts, and oh yeah, work for thirty years as an editor/writer.” What I’m trying to say, if you haven’t had your coffee yet, is that although all the people I’m talking to speak English, speaking it and writing it are two different skills.  That’s the first thing that person asking me about writing a book will need to learn because it will free them to pursue the myriad avenues that help people learn to write.  If I try to point this out gently, I have often heard the response, “Well, that’s what editors are for.”

No.  No, we’re not.  The tasks of editors are varied, but fixing your fiction manuscript for you isn’t one of them. I will help you, I will work with you, but I won’t do it for you. I find that people often don’t understand the role of an editor, and that has been a problem sometimes in my career.  I have worked as a developmental editor (a favorite), substantive editor, technical editor, copyeditor, production editor (another favorite), proofreader, and editorial proofreader (my least favorites)—and that’s not all the kinds of editors.  If you don’t know what all of these mean, you are not alone.   The lines between the editing roles blur and overlap, so if I have a little trouble at where one starts and another ends…well, I thought it might be time to try to help authors out.

The Developmental Editor. DEs work with authors through the phases of writing and revision to ensure that manuscripts reach their potential and communicate clearly to readers. In my role as DE, I’ve aided in knitting parallel storylines together that should have but never met.  I’ve extracted the “real” story from scattered plotting.  I’ve even given one character a sex change.

When do I need one?

If you are early in your career and have a manuscript worth rescuing (meaning that it’s not headed for the bottom of a trunk if and when you realize just how much you really don’t ever want anyone to see it), you might find hiring a DE useful.  Or if you are an experienced author who is under time pressure or needs help with focus in your writing efforts or storyline, a DE might help.  A DE gives the author a person to bounce ideas off of, and to get creative juices flowing again. A fresh perspective can lead down very interesting paths. Teresa Edgerton helped me out with my novel in just such a fashion.  I had a race of functionally immortal people (they lived so long the locals thought they were immortal) that could no longer bear immortal children.  This meant their race was dying, albeit extremely slowly, and that parents would watch their now mortal children live a comparatively brief life and die.  Teresa pointed out the terrible affect this would have on the society, families, and individuals.  It affected the development of my story right down to the architecture. It grew into the core problem between the antagonist and his father, enriching the story immeasurably. A DE might be a means of helping lift that heavy stone, writer’s block, helping you to see work that is stale in your eyes in a new way.  I once helped a person who could not get past a particular chapter.  I suggested they change the point of view to another character in the scene.  The author told me they’d stayed up through the night and finished the chapter.

The Substantive Editor. They perform all copyediting tasks and work heavily with sentence structure and wording to improve the flow of text and smooth transitions.  They can offer rewrites for consistency, logic flow, tone, or better focus.

When do I need one?

I use my substantive editing skills when I do developmental editing, but rarely am hired to perform this function alone for fiction.  But I do see a use for it because I use it in my writers’ groups and workshops all the time.  A substantive edit is a good teaching tool.  If you really want hands-on guidance, you might choose to work with a substantive editor.  I wouldn’t make this your first lesson in writing.  I suggest doing it after you have participated in workshops and writers’ groups, studied up on styles of authors you like, or read the how-to books. Once you’ve done those things, if you still feel a lack, you might want a teaching tool tailored specifically to your writing to discover your individual weaknesses and strengths.

Copyeditor.  How to prepare a manuscript for publication is covered in books called style guides.  Each one follows different rules for different circumstances. For instance, the big US publishers tend to use the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) while journals often use the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA).  This will dictate things such as do you represent this number as 11 or eleven?  APA dictates 11, whereas CMS, eleven.  A copyeditor knows the style guides and house styles and applies them and other resources to make consistent corrections to punctuation, spelling, grammar, and capitalization. They will flag inappropriate language or inconsistent tone.  They may do a little research for you to check your facts. I edited a story once where a man walked into a neighborhood bar in 1923—the middle of prohibition—and I didn’t catch it.  While that is not strictly the purview of a copyeditor, I still was a little embarrassed!

When do I need one?

This one’s easy: on your way to publication.  Ideally you want a copyeditor and a proofreader. Please, oh please, do not send your work to press and public without a professional copyedit and proofread (or combination thereof).

Proofreader. The proofer is the last person to touch the manuscript before publication.  Ideally the proofer sees the final copy that you are ready to send to the typesetter or your publishing service.  The proofer generally only corrects hardcore errors. This harkens back to the use of galleys in precomputer-typesetting days. Publishers used to get a typeset manuscript on a roll. Every change cost money to retypeset, so the proofer would only correct the text if it was a real problem.  Today, proofers can be a little less restricted and offer a little more intensity, but in essence, they are still correcting only errors that the author and other editors may have missed.

When do I need one?

Right before you go to press. I’ve been working on my manuscript forever. The first chapter has been edited, proofed, and massaged ad nauseum over the course of years. Last month I still found a dropped word. Try not to touch your text after the proofer is done.  That just introduces opportunity for error.  Trust me—I can’t tell you the number of times a last minute change has introduced error.

Often times some of these roles double up.  For instance, owing to time or money constraints, you might combine the role of copyeditor and proofer (which is what an editorial proofreader is). Though in an ideal world, your copyeditor and proofer are different people, most copyeditors will do this.   I often double up the role of developmental editor with substantive editor to offer a little story-level help and a little writing improvement.  Don’t hire someone to do all the roles.  The most I’m comfortable with when I’m combining roles is two. After that, I get too involved in the text to see it clearly in much the same way as the author does.  If I’ve done developmental and substantive editing, I really don’t want to be responsible for the proofreading.

Editing is expensive, and many new authors don’t have the luxury of hiring an editor right away.   Don’t despair.  You can get some of these benefits from a writers’ group or workshop in the early stages of you work. I know that participating in a writer’s workshop has drawbacks. For example, controlling your time frame is harder.  You have to determine the quality and applicability of the feedback.  The other participants may know something is not right, but not know how to articulate it. You also have to devote a lot of your time to other people’s manuscript problems.  However some of these drawback turn into boons.  You get better at your own writing when you critique others, and you discover the wonderful sense of community that is out there for writers. You also will have a head start on working with your editor once you’ve undergone the critique process.

So there is your primer on editing.  Now go ahead.  Ask me again.  So what do I think?  Should you go for it?  Should you write that book?

Absolutely.  The only way that first story in you becomes a novel is if you write.  But remember, that is the first step in a long flight of stairs.  If you need help, we editors will be here.

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