Lady Dae Writes

This came to me as I was working hard editing my novel, preparing it to be the best novel it can be so that one day it can be published. Anyway, as I was editing I came across this sentence.

            Now this is a more mild example of what I’m talking about, but it makes a point. In any case, this wasn’t the first time I came across this in my novel. And after a while, I began to realize I didn’t need both in any of the sentences I used. So let’s go over what these two words are.

            And and so are two of you basic seven conjunctions (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) and are pretty much used to join two phrases together, whether they be dependent clauses or independent clauses. In formal writing, you don’t use these words at the beginning of a sentence, but this is creative writing. Regardless, I’m talking about the use of these words together in the middle of a sentence.

            I realized after a while of editing and my English major brain got to thinking that these two words together is totally wordy. I mean people use them in every day speech without even thinking about it, but they mess up the reading flow of my novel. Why?

            Well, let’s look at the meaning of these two words.

            And is a word that means something along the lines of in addition too, together with etc. So it joins two things that otherwise might not be together and puts them together.

            So works just like it, linking two parts of a sentence together, but it’s kind of used between cause and effect, typically meaning when used as a conjunction (because it can be an adverb) and as a result.

            So that means I need to asks myself this question? Why in the world would I need to put and and so together in one sentence? I either need one or the other if I’m not using so as an adverb?

            As I write this, I realize why it is so important for us writers to have a basic understanding of the most basic grammar rules unless we have the cash to pay someone to do it. We can’t properly edit without it and it’s not the bog stuff like plot holes and misspelled words. Those are pretty obvious, but I don’t think I ever would have understood why that sounded so redundant and silly to me if I didn’t have a basic understanding of conjunctions and was actively reading my novel for flow.

            Anyway, this was just something I noticed as I was editing.

            I have to say that it’s not very hard to answer this question. I remember when I first started announcing that I wanted to be a writer. I used to get all kind of mean comments like, “Well you better prepare to be poor,” or “You better have a backup plan.” Now when people ask what I plan to do with my English degree or with my life, I don’t tell them about my aspirations as a writer. I just tell them I plan to edit novels or something like that. I don’t need that negativity.

            But it got me to thinking, why do I write? Well it’s certainly not for the money because if that were the case I would have stopped when that person, who happened to be a close friend mind you, told me I was going to be poor.

            Well, I was raised under the belief that if I do what I love I will be successful and I’ll find a way to make money. Most importantly, I’ll be happy.

            Happy? How can you be happy and not have money. Let me put it like this, when I told my mother I wanted to be a writer or editor and major in English, she was not happen. She thought I was wasting my intelligence because I have the brains to be a doctor or scientist. I hate science, but I’m great at math. But I’ve always been good at telling stories and I enjoy writing stories and making other stories better.

            Over the years, she’s tried to help me cultivate all sorts of talent because I’m the kind of person who can put little effort into things and be really good at it. Music? Not for me. Management and financing. No way. Teaching. Not in this lifetime.

            You see I’m good at those things, but you couldn’t pay me enough to sit at a desk and count money or teach. I just hate doing it. But I’ll write and edit all day for free just because I love doing it and that’s what it boils down to.

            I love to write. And it didn’t matter whether I was good or bad at it. Because I enjoy it, I put the time into it to improve my craft and make it the best, not just do it well enough to make money. And that’s the kind of motivation needed for this career. Anyone can write a novel, but not everyone has the will to do it and persist, even after being reject hundreds of time.

            My point? I’m going to continue to write just like I have been doing for the past ten years because I want to write. The law of the universe is that you get out of something the effort you put into it and with this much effort, I just know that one day, all these hours writing and on forums is going to pay off.

            I couldn’t have agreed more with Ann on her coldfirewriter blog when she went on a rant about why YA writers better not preach in YA novels because teenagers hate being told what to do.

            I agree with that so wholeheartedly I decided to do a post on it, but not just on why YA novels shouldn’t be preachy, but why novels shouldn’t be preachy anyway.

            I’m twenty years old now, nearly twenty-one. So I’m kind of well out the YA stage. Regardless, I still do read some YA. I also write it. But I also find myself reading things with older MC’s, MC’s who are really getting ready to face life. Now here’s the thing. Unless I pick up a novel with the intention of learning something new or wanting to learn someone else’s point of view, I don’t want to feel like I’m being told what to do and having views imposed on me. Save that for the dieting books, and the how to books.

            Why? Because people hate being told what to do and how to do, adults too. That’s why when writing religious novels, and people may hate me for saying it, the writer really has to be careful about how the message comes across, that it’s not preachy about the matter. Now that doesn’t mean that your novel can’t have a theme or underlying message. But that shouldn’t take precedence over the story you’re trying to tell and when it does, then there’s a problem.

            A novel’s primary purpose if for entertainment, to tell a good story, which means there has to be a conflict that needs to be resolved and everything that has in that novel has to propel the story to that end. In other words, if getting your message or theme across is interfering with the story, there’s a problem and you risk angering the reader because you’re focusing more on preaching to the reader than you are on telling us the dog on story.

            Those books make me throw them across the room. I’ve read them. The underlying message of a story I read recently was this; love conquers all. But damn it when that message started interfering in what was happening in the story and the pacing, I stopped reading it. I skipped to the end to see if the conflict was resolved (and it really was a cop out because the writer had to forget what the conflict was) and put it away. It had a really good thing going at first. But after the first twenty times something threatened to break the couple apart and “love conquered,” I got the point.

            Now that doesn’t mean that I’m a cynic about certain things, or that I’m not open minded to ideas, but things like that are best when they naturally flow with the story, not when they sound like the sole purpose of a scene or chapter is to preach. That’s an info-dump.

            My point? Write the story and if you can weave the message in without making it sound preachy, good for you. If not don’t force it. Your readers will like you better and appreciate your story better. Besides, it’s the stuff your readers notice that you didn’t mean to be symbolic that make the writer smile, not because they got the message you were trying to teach.

            So I’ve been helping critique a lot of these things lately online and for some reason it made me really want to examine this thing. The Query.

            Okay, so we pretty much know what it’s supposed to do. It’s supposed to make the agent you’re proposing to want to read more. It’s that simple, but it’s so much more than that. DO we really know what these things do? How they actually work? What they can say about us and our writing without us meaning to do so?

            So let’s start with this. You write a query. You’re excited because you think your book is up to par and there’s just no way an agent can say no to this. It’s good. You can be the next J.K. Rowling and you already see you title in lights on the big screen in Hollywood. And now, with your fresh off the presses query, you’re so excited you just have to send it to an agent.

            I’m telling you don’t send it to an agent. I know. We’ve all made the rookie mistake of getting too excited and ahead of myself. I’m included. But let’s take a step back.  A query is like a skill test. You’ve got 250 words to summarize your novel. 250 words? That’s short. Exactly. Which means this, you’ve got no room for mistakes and typos in this. It takes exactly five minutes to edit 250 words and if you can’t send in a page with no mistakes, then what’s that say about the amount of errors in your novel?

            I’ll give you a typo or two, maybe even three. But things riddles with typos, basic spelling errors, grammar, and capitalization errors are going to turn an agent off because if the writer didn’t take the five minutes to clean up the query, then why in the world would they take the months it may take to clean up the novel? The assumption? The novel is filled with errors.

            So you clean up the grammar. Good to go? Wrong? Let it sit for two or three days and come back. In the case that you’re still in love with it, post it on a critique forum and see what some of them have to say. Nine times out of ten, there’s a clarity issue in the query? Why? Because we’re too close to our novels.

            We know the story, but we’re trying to sum up the story to someone who’s never read it before, just like the people who have never read it in a critique forum. Sure the summary makes perfect sense to us, but that’s because we read the novel. And I know some of you are like, well duh? Who better to know if it makes sense or not than the person who wrote the novel? Well, people who haven’t read the novel can spot confusing things, things that need to be clarified for the simple fact that they haven’t read the novel and are trying to get an idea through your query.

            But I know. Forums are intimidating. I won’t post mine either, but I frequent the query forums and critique other queries so that I can recognize it in my query. You won’t believe how many times I see something and then I go back to review my summary and I’m like, “Oh! That’s the same thing I just commented about in someone else’s query!” It takes practice though and a critical eye, a harsh critical eye for self that is. Not everyone can be honest with themselves though. So these forums help.

            Why do we want to make sure that things are clear in a query? Well a confusing summarization in a query can mean two things. Either the writer is too close to the novel or the query is revealing a glaring flaw in the novel, that being that the novel is confusing. There’s a difference between complex and confusing people. Complex we can do. Confusing? Not so much. So when an agent reads a confusing query or even just a confusing first sentence. The first thought is, “Is the novel and plot of the novel as confusing as this query?”

            The solution is to pick out your main conflict and explain why it’s a conflict and what may happen as a result if that conflict isn’t resolved using a few sub-conflicts and sub-plots that come directly out of the main conflict and main plot to help illustrate your point. Don’t stray from that. If the query has focus, that means the novel has focus.

            Okay so you think you’re ready to go? You’re not. Now go back in and look for receptiveness? Why? The readers aren’t stupid. You don’t have to say the same thing two of three times for us to get the picture and if you’re repeating stuff in your query, it makes me wonder how many repetitive scenes, conversations, issues, words, and phrases there are in a novel.

            I read a story like this. I understood that they were trying to make the point that the couple was willing to fight for their love. But damn it after the first ten times someone told them they shouldn’t be together and why it was wrong and they were still together, I got the damn point. And I mean it literally repeated like this in the story: someone didn’t like the relationship, someone tells them, the couple tells them off, the other someone tries to interfere, the couple servers ties. And it repeated like this and here’s the thing. You would think people who witnessed this would back off and get the point, but they didn’t and people kept doing it over and over.

            That’s redundancy people. It appears in phrases, scenes, words, dialogue, and even characters in the sense that two characters are playing the same role unneeded and redundancy in a query can mean redundancy in a novel.

            Now the query is tight. Can you send it off now? No! Now that the query is done, see if it interests you. The query can be solid and do its job. Portray clearly the story you’ve written. The question is this. Is the story interesting? Is the story solid and worth reading, because if not, that means you may want to rethink that novel. Someone in the forums I frequent had that problem. The query was solid. The story…not so much.

            Alright then. The story is worth reading you’ve determines. Time to send it off right? Sorry, but now that you’ve spent all this time on your query, go back and do a reread of the novel. Why? Because like I said, the query is a test of your skill and if you had to fix the above problems in your 250 word query, you may have to fix the above problems in that 75k plus word novel. I’ve seen it before, heard experiences of this happening. Some people faked some dynamic queries and what I mean when I say ‘faked’ is that they wrote stellar queries that weren’t an accurate portrayal of their skill and that can kill a writer’s chances. At least with query you can go back, revise it, wait six months and send it back out again, but once the agent gets that novel and their underwhelmed, that’s it. That’s the novel with all the typos and redundancies and all kinds of problems. Some may let you edit it. Some may not have the patience. Better safe than sorry though. Go back through the novel again please.

            Now you can send it. After all that you can send it. But do you see why the query is so important? The query is the first impressions and while we were probably all taught that everything is not what it appears, first impressions matter. No matter how good that novel is, if the agent doesn’t like the query, they’re going to assume they won’t like the novel.

            I’m almost done going through proofreading my novel and I have to say, the proofreading is going much better than the overall editing is. But even though I hld steadfast to the rule that I should try not to use adverbs, I find them in novel anyway.

            My favorites? Suddenly, abruptly, really, immediately, and finally. But when I go back through, I find the sentences actually work better without them. In order to illustrate how, let’s talk about why we writers curse adverbs anyway.

            Adverbs are just a lazy way to add impact when we’re too lazy to find better verbs. But not only that, we also use them when we have perfectly suitable verbs, but don’t thing their strong enough. For example:

            Let’s look at the verb suddenly modifies here. It modifies the word burst. When someone burst into a room, the verb implies that someone suddenly came into the room. When my sisters burst into the room, it’s always sudden and that makes the use of suddenly kind of useless here. Therefore,

            Is sufficient to get the meaning across. Nine times out of ten, this is usually the case. Either we already have a sufficient verb or we need to find a stronger one. So since I’ve really said all I have to say on this point, I’m going to give a list of common adverbs, or at least the ones I find in my novel and some I’ve seen elsewhere that really get on my nerve.

            See how useless adverbs are sometimes? In some ways, most ways, you really don’t need them. That doesn’t mean don’t use them, but nine times out of ten, you don’t.