February 5, 2012
Advice for Critique Groups
I’ve been to my fair share of writing groups, workshops, and critique groups over the past year or so. I’ve gone from that awkward stage of not knowing what to say about someone’s work, to having too much to share. By ‘too much’, I mean sharing information that the author isn’t ready to hear yet, or doesn’t understand. On the receiving end, I have also had too much or too little feedback from members of the group. I have grown as a writer from these experiences, and I have had the opportunity to learn from some amazing professionals.
Here are some pointers:
1) Determine the goal of the group. Is it to critique, to encourage each other, to share research on good writing resources, etc.
2) Make sure everyone in the group has a similar focus. Perhaps everyone’s writing novels. Perhaps the focus is children’s books, or poetry. Or if it’s an open approach, consider the medium when you give feedback.
3) Determine the page limit of what people will bring. Make sure everyone brings paper copies enough for everyone (or, if doing electronic submissions, choose a deadline by which everyone agrees to get their work in.)
4) Give everyone a time limit for their share and stick to that time limit. Appoint a timekeeper.
5) Avoid distractions (like getting sidetracked on tangents).
6) Have the writer share for a minute about the piece. E.g., What type of piece it is: Fiction/Non-Fiction/Poetry, Genre and Age group (YA, Middle Grade, etc.). If not sharing a whole piece, give us a sense of where it is in the story.
7) Let the writer define what kind of feedback she or he wants. It might be: general impressions, pacing, word choice, characters, dialog, etc.
8) If the writer reads the piece aloud, keep in mind that having visual copies is very important. We tend to lose our focus faster when we simply listen. After all, our first audience is readers.
9)After the writer has presented the necessary background information, the writer should then keep quiet. If you feel the need to defend your work or argue your points too much, ask yourself “Why?” Stay detached from the work. After all, these are just opinions.
10) As members of the group providing feedback, look for the following:
- What works?
- What doesn’t work?
- What questions arise as you read it?
- Is there anything really unclear or confusing (Unanswered questions are okay), or is there somewhere that you lost your focus. Just note these areas. They might be helpful for pacing.
- You may offer solutions, but AVOID trying to write the piece for the person.
11) When you present your feedback, consider framing your feedback with the positive. Start and end off with something positive. And your ending piece could be as simple as: “I am curious to see what happens next,” or “I like the way your writing style is very clear/visual/sensory/poetic/etc.”
12) The group should determine ahead of time what kind of interaction the writer should have. Is there time for the writer to answer the questions asked? Is it necessary?
Remember that a critique group is as individual as the people in it. Every group has their own way of doing things. These ground rules are what I have found works for me. What works for you may be different as you find your own approach.
January 15, 2012
Awesome Links for Editing and Polishing
I’ve been finding these amazing writing links lately.
Rather than applying to first drafts, these relate more to the editing phases of writing a novel, and I’ve found them so helpful as I edit my first novel.
So, without further ado, here are some of my favorite writing resources:
The Emotion Thesaurus – a handy reference for showing emotion, rather than telling it: http://thebookshelfmuse.blogspot.com/2008/01/introducing-thesaurus-thursdays.html
The Turkey City Lexicon – a list of some of the more niggly writing mistakes:http://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/turkey-city-lexicon-a-primer-for-sf-workshops/and http://www.critters.org/turkeycity.html (each one is a little different)
How to avoid “eye” bookisms:http://odysseyworkshop.livejournal.com/27400.html, and its follow up, penned by my mentor: http://alyxdellamonica.com/2010/12/eye-bookisms/
Expressing Cardinal Emotions, Male vs. Female – a great study in how different genders express themselves:http://thebookshelfmuse.blogspot.com/2009/01/happy-anniversary-to-bookshelf-muse.html
Character Traits Thesaurus: I just discovered this one today, so I haven’t looked at it much, but already, I’m intrigued: http://thebookshelfmuse.blogspot.com/2011/05/introducingthe-character-traits.html
If you have a favorite, please let me know at lisa_voisin [at] hotmail [dot] com
July 5, 2011
Layers of Communicating
Ever noticed that human beings have a particularly complex form of communication? We speak not with our words, but with our body language, tone of voice, and even our energy. By energy, I mean whatever we are feeling is communicated on a sub-physical level. Have you ever sat beside someone who was depressed, and you knew they were depressed? How did you know? Yes, their body language and facial expressions would tell you, so would their tone of voice, but also the air around them seems pressed to twice the thickness of a happy person – as though they are literally wearing their depression like a heavy, thick cloak.
So, when we talk to someone all of these levels communicate to us:
1) Visual: people’s facial expressions, gesticulations, body language
2) Auditory: a person’s tone of voice
3) Feeling: We can actually feel another person’s frustration, anger, sadness, etc.
The reason I bring this up is that often people communicate with all these layers and they don’t even know it. In other words, your mood is as big a part of what you’re communicating as the message itself. And your mood affects people.
When writing characters, consider their energy. What’s going on with them? Now, pretend you’re in a room of skeptics, who don’t believe in energy. How will you describe it with their actions?
May 10, 2010
Making Time to Create at a Day Job
- Last year this time, I was between contracts and had time to write the first draft of a novel. While money was tight, it was an incredible experience for me to be able to dedicate my hours in the day and night to developing the art of storytelling. When I started working again in the early winter, I had to find ways to keep working on the story. I worked on my edits, joined a writing group and even tried NaNoWriMo for the first time.
Part of what I do when I write a novel, is hold the characters, their actions, their feelings in my head. I live with them. When I work my day job, I have to hold a lot of technical information in my head as I learn it. In order to write, I’d have to shift back and forth from this analytical work to the creative part of myself. I’m not a great one for getting up at 6AM to write before work, but I have heard that works for some people. Here are some of the things I found that have been helpful:
- Allow yourself to just write – like morning pages in Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way or if you’re working on a project, allow that first draft to just come out of you, like Ann Lamott suggests in Bird by Bird.
- Take time out of your day to appreciate something beautiful. It could be a flower, a sunset, a person, just let it be your muse.
- Meditate – I can’t tell you how much this one helps. Practice breathing, pulling yourself into the present moment, clearing your mind. Meditation schools the mind to let your essence come forward. If you are drawn to create–be it writing, painting, drawing, cooking or gardening–you have an essence of creator within you.
- Deal with your fears. Often, when I’m blocked in my creativity, I am in fear about something. I might be afraid that all my work is for nothing, or that I`m not good enough, or that I`ll never have time. All these fears can be faced. Sometimes, just by taking small steps. Other times, it can help to talk it out.
- Join a class or critique group. Sometimes, we can only make time for our art if we have deadlines or external pressures. If this sounds like you, then a group or course is a good place to start. If you need help with critique groups, I recommend the book: The Writing and Critique Group Survival Guide.
- Find a form of light exercise that allows you to think. Part of my creative process involves a lot more than just showing up at the page. Partly because I spend so much time writing technical information at my desk, my brain goes there first if I just sit down. Before I write, I make time to go for a walk, hike or even a yoga class to clear my mind. It also gives me time to daydream about my creative process and bring the characters from my story back into my thoughts. Then, when I turn up at the page, I am refreshed.
- Change location. I work both at the office and at home, but when I write, I take my laptop (or even just a journal) to a cafe or park.
- Take time to search for sources of inspiration every day. This could be reading fiction, newspaper articles, or people watching. Stay inspired. Whatever it takes, and make notes. You might not be looking to write it right away, but it might come back to you at some time, perhaps even become the perfect line for one of your characters.
- Don’t be afraid to read what you’ve written — if it works for you. For some, reading what they’ve written puts them into editor mode. But sometimes, if it’s been a little while since you’ve written, you need to get back into your story. By all means, make notes, but give yourself a chance to get back into your work. There are no wrongs.
There they are. My tricks. While I speak mostly of writing, these tricks could be applied to any art form. Most importantly, though, is to find what works for you. And if you find something different, let me know. I am still working on developing my creative process and am always open to suggestions.
Happy creating!
March 5, 2010
The Revenge of the Hand Sanitizer
Today, I cleaned my desktop at work with orange hand sanitizer (works great in a pinch) and now my desk smells like I’ve been drinking.
My friends think I should just have a drink, since nobody would notice over the smell. Others think I should just use the smell as an excuse to go outside. It’s a gorgeous early spring day, and I cannot tell you how tempting that is.
Part of Health Canada’s plan has been to make sure that hand sanitizer is available everywhere. We’re encouraged to bathe in the stuff. Have you found any new and innovative uses for it? Please share if you do!
November 9, 2009
NaNo NaNo
Today is Sunday. I’m a week into NaNoWriMo, and I am coming up with silly nicknames for it, such as:
- NanoWhino: for the tendency to whine about how little I’m writing.
- NanoWino: For the tendency to drink for inspiration. (Not recommended for minors)
- NanoRhino: For those who are just plowing through their word counts. (Like a charging Rhin
o)
Well, that’s all I’ve got so far. Looking at these, you’d think I was whining or wining a lot, but I haven’t been. I’ve just been playing with words a little too much and have gone a bit loopy.
Of the three, though, I’d like to be the latter, the NaNoRhino. I understand that quantity does not equal quality, and there are days when I know I’d feel better writing one scene I love rather than 1667 words that I don’t. But I have surprised myself. I have had ideas filter in that I know wouldn’t have if I hadn’t shown up at the page every day this week. I even have Dr. Wicked to thank for some of it, on those days that I felt I needed a bit more pressure to write something down.
I’m having quite a bit of fun with NaNoWriMo so far, and if you’re doing it, I hope you are too. I am looking at it as a great opportunity to work on my second novel. I can try out some story ideas without expecting them to actually work. I can get to know my characters even better by listening to them talking in my head all month. I’ve even given myself permission to write scenes that I know will be cut. I think NaNoWriMo is an excellent opportunity to learn to not take myself too seriously.
November 2, 2009
YA Fiction – What About It?
Considered the fastest growing genre in the literary industry, Young Adult (or YA) fiction is actually an open genre, containing everything from literary fiction designed for teens to fantasy, science fiction and the paranormal. In the bookstores, genres like Mystery and Romance are for adult novels. Yet, for Young Adults, there’s only the YA section. In the future, this may change as well. But for now, it offers a lot of room for genre cross over. In a YA novel, you can have a Mystery that is also Sci-Fi. You can have a Romance that is also and Urban Fantasy. Without these genres classifications, opportunities exist for even more creativity in YA fiction.
So what makes a book YA? Here are some of the things I have learned:
- Protagonist is under 20 (some may argue that the main character is under 18).
- Age of reader ranges from 13 – 21, with the reader being about 2 years younger than the protagonist.
- Main character has autonomy from their parents – either the parent is absent, or dead, or not in the picture because of disagreement with protagonist, etc.
- Main character embarks on a journey which has to do with coming of age or some sort of rite of passage.
- Identity is a key component – who am I right now? (Character has to overcome obstacle to find out who they are) with a high sense of importance placed on character’s peer group – it’s about self and society.
- Ending – has to have feeling of hope (can be poignant/witty, can have sense of grief, but hope must prevail). Often there is a revelation at the end, a sense of life carrying on.
- Everything centers around action and story – use of scenes.
- Story often follows a chronological structure with less back story, sense of story happening “Now”
- There are fewer subplots and a greater sense of a unified story.
- Novels are generally shorter < 100,000 words (with many exceptions, of course).
- There is often a moral component to the story without preaching.
- Voice for this genre is important. Readers need to feel they can relate to the characters without being talked down to.
One last thing to keep in mind when writing YA fiction is the role of parents, teachers and librarians who act as sort of Gatekeepers to books sold and distributed in this genre.
November 1, 2009
On Writing and Pottery
I’ve wanted to learn pottery since I got my first toy wheel when I was five, but I never learned to work an actual potter’s wheel until much, much later. Little did I know how valuable the lessons learned in pottery class would be to me as a professional writer, and as a person.
When you see someone throwing on the wheel , it just looks so easy, but it’s not. It takes time to get there. Before they let you work at the wheel, most pottery teachers make you learn hand building, so you get familiar with the clay. For the purpose of my writing analogy, think of it like learning to read and write, getting familiar with medium of words. Before I actually got to the potter’s wheel, I took a couple of courses of hand building, and my work was lumpy enough to make me want to give up altogether. But I persevered.
Then when I finally got to work on the wheel, I thought, “Wow. It’s going to be fun now.” Little did I know that, at first, you spend hours just learning how to center the clay on that metal wheel. And that’s just so it doesn’t fly across the room when you press the pedal that makes it go. Never mind making the clay into an actual shape. Rest assured, there’s at least a dozen nuances there that I’m not getting into.
Once I got the clay onto the wheel, it took me two classes just to get the clay to make a symmetrical shape. For a writer, this is akin to knowing how to write. In fiction, it’s like getting to know your characters and centering them in their world. The character is the clay, and the character’s world is the potter’s wheel. Everything relies on how well centered that piece of clay is on that wheel, just like everything about the characters and their world has to be solid and well-balanced.
In pottery, it can be easy at first, while your muscles are still getting used to the clay, to throw that little lump off balance. But you persevere, straining, as your hands grow stronger, your fingers more adept, until that little lump becomes cylindrical. With writing, the actions and words of your main character, your character’s voice, can so easily throw that character off balance too.
I could go on for hours about the ways I have learned that pottery and writing are similar, but I wanted to express what I think is the most important similarity: knowing when to scrap something. This is where writing is like pottery.
Let’s say you learn to throw a bowl on the wheel. First, you must prepare the clay. To do this, you wedge it on a table or hard surface to get out as many air bubbles as you can. This is akin to knowing what you want your story to be about, your research.
Next, you center the clay, which takes a long time to learn. Then, when it’s centered, you open it and form the bowl. Then you remove it from the wheel. The first time I got this far, I was amazed. It was hours and hours of work. Little air bubbles can so easily get in the way and prevent the bowl from even finishing.
Then you wait for the clay to become hard enough to trim (“leather hard”). Once it’s trimmed, you bisque fire it. Then you glaze it and fire it again. And ta-da, you have a bowl.
The part most people don’t know is how many things can go wrong. Even after throwing that bowl, you can wreck it when you try to take it off the wheel. If someone bumps it while it’s waiting to dry, it can get ruined. You can over-trim it and ruin it there. If there was an air pocket, it can explode in the bisque firing stage. Or, a bad glazing job can ruin all your work so far.
So, the lesson I learned from pottery is detachment. Nothing like having to throw out a bowl because the glazing went wrong. You can either learn to let go of your work, or give up. I chose to learn to let go.
The same, could be said for writing. Scenes, pages of description, hours of work could all be scrapped. In fact, some of it must be scrapped in order to make a better piece of work. Leaving in those extra bits can be like leaving an air bubble in the clay that could destroy the whole piece.
Fortunately, words are a much more flexible medium than clay. It’s never too late to get help or rework you words, story ideas, character development, voice, and so on. The key is to keep learning, let things go, and never give up.
