The day is done and I survived my
critique.
The Critiques
Now…onto that wine…
But I’ll get to that.
Today’s lesson revolved around the
all-important point-of-view (POV), technique, characterizations, and moving the
narrative forward. Some of the insights:
- Flashbacks have to have a
purpose. They should be interesting and
shouldn’t be too long because they can stop a story.
- Always ask yourself, “how do I move
the action?”
- Action, Action, Action
- Conflict, Conflict, Conflict
- Guard against passive characters –
“said the woman who wrote a book about a woman in a coma [‘Still Life’]. ” Direct quote, I swear.
- Characters have to be doing something,
as opposed to things happening to them.
If they are merely a receptacle for the action around them that’s not
that interesting.
- If nothing is changing in your
narrative, nothing is happening in your narrative.
- In popular fiction, don’t write a
downer, but don’t worry so much about a happy ending as much as a satisfying ending.
-Humor will make a character likable. So can charm.
- Use everything, every experience.
- Don’t censor yourself
- Don’t be afraid of drama.
- Your situation can be ridiculous if
the characters are believable. But there
always has to be a payoff.
- In publishing, nobody knows what
they’re doing (well that’s a relief.)
- Always play fair with your reader.
- If you’re going to introduce
something, bring it back.
The Critiques
I’d be lying
if I said my bowels weren’t churning more than a little today as I awaited
critiques from my fellow classmates about my chapter. But, I reminded myself to listen and not get
defensive.
I reworked
my 25 words or less description to make it less vague, as was the complaint,
and the second version was met with enthusiasm:
1st version: A
woman disappears and is later killed…except death isn’t always what it appears
to be.
2nd version: A
woman struggles to untangle the secrets of her sister’s life that may have lead
to her death.
Overall, my
fellow classmates were fairly complimentary to my pacing, dialogue and
characterizations. Everyone agreed I
started strong, but didn’t end strong, which when I looked back at the end of
the chapter, I got it. The other complaints
were things I pretty much expected, as they related to plot and things I’ve
been trying to solve for the past few months. I kept my cool and didn’t get
defensive (yay!!) but focused instead on answering questions that were asked.
Joy said
that overall – “especially the first part” – was “well-done” (double yay!!) and
had some minor edits and a few ideas about how I might work myself out of the
plot holes I have.
So, not too
many body blows. Of course I haven’t
read the written comments yet, so I just might be crying into my wine later
tonight.
We critiqued three additional pieces and
they went pretty much as expected. One
student’s piece suffers from an identity crisis (is it romance? Horror? A
cooking book?), another’s description was quite different from the submission
and the third piece was pretty good, but had some POV issues to be worked
through.
Tomorrow, we discuss the final four
submissions.
And I’m out of the hot seat.
Now…onto that wine…
Comments
Post a Comment