I've been thinking about series for a number of reasons lately. One is that the Scribechat folks were discussing series this past Thursday; another is that they were discussing Janice Hardy's Healing Wars series, and I've been lucky enough to be on the inside of the struggles surrounding putting that series together (struggles which ended quite victoriously, I might add). A third is that I've been encountering series issues in my own writing.
A series is when you have more than one story set in the same world. Generally this also means that the books in the series also have other things in common. Characters, or plotlines, or themes, or all of the above. They can be stand alone shorts which follow one another, or stand-alone novels which follow one another, or they can even be different parts of one massive story.
So what is absolutely essential to make readers care enough to follow a series?
1. A compelling world.
The world doesn't necessarily have to be physically large to carry a series, though a large world does leave lots of room for exploration. However, there must be something about the place that fascinates - something that keeps readers asking questions. Janice Hardy's pain-related economy definitely does this for me. I read books and books in Anne McCaffrey's Pern series, and I think what got me about that one was the idea of the link between humans and dragons that grew in response to the ongoing threat of Threadfall. The draw for me in Tolkien's books is the history of Middle Earth and its different peoples, and the complexity of their interaction. I'll also be more inclined to read more in a particular world if I feel that there are things going on beyond the borders of the page (i.e. the world does more than simply serve the plot) - so that if our heroes turned right instead of left, they might encounter something new and interesting.
2. Characters you care about.
This is absolutely essential. Some series even rest on the shoulders of a single individual. Whoever your characters are, people have to care about them and what they want, why they want it. They need to care that the good guy win and the bad guy lose, or they won't keep reading. I would even go so far as to say that it's important to give the proper attention to your minor characters. If you achieve huge success with your series, who knows how many opportunities there might be to spin off characters?
I don't believe that a series must stick with the same character set (necessarily). However, there should be a link between the characters of one book and those of another if they are to be perceived as part of the same timeline. Bilbo Baggins had a small role in The Lord of the Rings, but still he was there. I'm currently attempting the same thing with a prequel-to-trilogy that I'm putting together. The characters from the book I'm currently writing - Nekantor, Tagret, and Aloran - aren't going to have point of view material in the trilogy that follows. But they are terribly important to the precarious situation in which the society finds itself, and to which the next three point of view characters are going to make the biggest difference.
I really think those are the only things that are absolutely necessary. Other factors are more flexible.
People often talk about a slump in the second book of a series, much in the same way that they talk about a slump occurring in the middle of a novel or shorter story. I think in some sense these are manifestations of the same phenomenon, but at different levels of complexity. Certainly if the series is one integrated story, the problem is similar. The middle section has to have its own interest and momentum, even though it doesn't get to have the "splash" associated with initially discovering the world. It has to have its own compelling reasons to exist, even if it's not going to be able to solve everything. Stakes in a second book have to be higher, but not so high that you have nowhere to go with a third book. There has to be enough that readers haven't yet discovered, both about the world and the characters, to make it worth continuing.
I don't consider myself an expert at this yet, but as I learn from people like Janice, and approach my own sequels and series (at both long and short lengths), I'm finding myself wanting to analyze and write down what I feel I do know about the process. And I thought it might be useful to share those thoughts with you.
Here are some great thoughts on series revision from Janice Hardy over at The Writing Cave.
Showing posts with label The Shifter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Shifter. Show all posts
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Many paths to a writing career
"It's hard to get published."
Everybody knows this, even people who never plan to become writers. I knew it when I started writing, when I'd just discovered this storytelling drive I had inside me and had no idea (yet) where it fit into my life. I'd always had an artistic drive, and always had interest in science fiction and fantasy, but had never put them together before. So I wrote first and figured it out later.
When I first got to the point where I wanted to try to get published, I had no idea how to start. This may sound familiar to some. I was living in Japan at the time, and the internet resources for writers hadn't really come into their own yet, so I mail-ordered a couple of books about agents and publishers and how to go about writing query letters and all that lovely stuff. Some of you will recognize at this point that I was writing novels rather than short stories. That was where my experiences with rejection began! On the other hand, I learned early that rejections with comments were pure gold, because they were feedback from someone on the other side of that mysterious wall that lies between the publishing world and the lowly newbie writer.
Now there are lots of internet resources out there for writers: AgentQuery, Preditors and Editors, SFWA's Writer Beware, Duotrope's Digest, etc... But it's still hard to get published, and there's no easy answer just waiting out there for a writer to find. This is because there are many different paths that can lead you to a successful writing career, and if you ask two (or three, or four) writers how they got to where they are, chances are they'll each give you a different answer.
Some start with short stories and others start with novels. I started by writing novels, and then after a time friends said to me, "You should try writing short fiction." I got the impression from some of them that it would be easier to get short fiction published than novels. Since I'd had no success with the novels I'd written so far, I figured, "Why not?" So I started writing short stories, and learning how to do those, because they're very different from novels and require different kinds of skills to get right. I got lots of rejections, from lots of different markets. The fact of the matter is, I'm not sure which one is harder. But you'll never know which one is easier for you if you don't try both. My friend Aliette de Bodard has a novel coming out from Angry Robot, entitled Servant of the Underworld, but by the time she sold it she already had a great career going and lots of fans from her short fiction.
Some people sell their short fiction first to semipro venues, and others to pro. I always figured, start at the top with each story you want to sell, and work your way down as it gets rejected, from pro to semipro, to token venues. But the fact of the matter was, I lost patience with the endless cycle of waiting, and after I ran my work past a few semipro markets, I pretty much left it in the trunk. I have several friends who have sold many pieces to semipro markets before breaking into the pro markets - and at least two who now make regular money from their sales of short fiction, hooray!
Some people pitch a novel to a publisher first, get a deal, and then find an agent. Others go straight to getting an agent through the query approach. My friend Janice Hardy, for example, landed an agent without any previous fiction sales, simply on the strength of her new novel, The Shifter, which she sent queries for and then pitched to the woman who would become her agent at the Surrey International Writers Conference. If you think this is impossible, well, you can feel reassured that it's not. It just may not end up being the path that is successful for you.
Some people go to lots of conventions and network like crazy. Others don't. This is a funny one, because I never figured I'd find this to be my own route. Are you kidding? I started out writing in Japan, and then after I got back to the US I had my kids, and it was all I could do just to get out to a local convention for a few hours during the day. But, interestingly enough, this turned out to be my path - because I kept working on my writing, and because I got to meet a few wonderful people.
In thanks to those people, I'll tell a brief version of the connections here. I first went to BayCon, my local convention, in 2003 when my son was 3 months old. There I went to a session run by Kent Brewster, who recommended that I submit to the BayCon writers' workshop the following year. So I came up with my very first short story and went in 2004. One of the pros on the panel at the writers' workshop was Dario Ciriello, who got word after the workshop was over that I was looking for a face-to-face writers' group, and invited me to his. Dario was also the one who put me in touch with the BayCon programming folk, with the result that I was on a panel about the Seven Wonders of the World in (I think) 2006. On the panel with me was a lovely author with whom I struck up a conversation, Deborah J. Ross. She encouraged me to come to the SiliCon convention a month later, and there introduced me to Sheila Finch, because Sheila and I share an interest in linguistics. Sheila was the one who told me that Dr. Stanley Schmidt, editor of Analog magazine, liked stories about linguistics. So I took some time, got my linguistics story together and sent it off, and it sold in December 2007, appearing in Analog in July/August 2008. It was also at SiliCon that I met my friend Lillian Csernica. We hit it off immediately, and she helped me with the interminable revisions of my novel, Through This Gate. At a certain point, she said she'd like to recommend me to her agent. Well, she never did - but only because I ran into her agent at the 2009 Nebula Awards weekend, and remembering what Lillian had said, walked right up to her and said hello. This turned into a pitch, and a full manuscript request, and finally this October, into an agency signing. I could never have signed with the Grayson Agency (blog) on the basis of queries alone, but they happen to be just the right agents for me. Who would have imagined it?
I am immensely grateful to these people who have helped me get to where I am. I have found that the science fiction and fantasy writing community has a great sense of helping in return for being helped, and I am already trying to pass on what I know in this great spirit.
All of this is to say that if you want to have a writing career, you have to keep at it. Be dogged. Meet people, query, submit, and above all, write, write, write. Try to make your writing better at every opportunity, because you never know which path will suddenly open up for you, and when it does, you'll want to be able to give the right person a piece of writing that really knocks their socks off.
I wish you all the best in your own endeavors.
Everybody knows this, even people who never plan to become writers. I knew it when I started writing, when I'd just discovered this storytelling drive I had inside me and had no idea (yet) where it fit into my life. I'd always had an artistic drive, and always had interest in science fiction and fantasy, but had never put them together before. So I wrote first and figured it out later.
When I first got to the point where I wanted to try to get published, I had no idea how to start. This may sound familiar to some. I was living in Japan at the time, and the internet resources for writers hadn't really come into their own yet, so I mail-ordered a couple of books about agents and publishers and how to go about writing query letters and all that lovely stuff. Some of you will recognize at this point that I was writing novels rather than short stories. That was where my experiences with rejection began! On the other hand, I learned early that rejections with comments were pure gold, because they were feedback from someone on the other side of that mysterious wall that lies between the publishing world and the lowly newbie writer.
Now there are lots of internet resources out there for writers: AgentQuery, Preditors and Editors, SFWA's Writer Beware, Duotrope's Digest, etc... But it's still hard to get published, and there's no easy answer just waiting out there for a writer to find. This is because there are many different paths that can lead you to a successful writing career, and if you ask two (or three, or four) writers how they got to where they are, chances are they'll each give you a different answer.
Some start with short stories and others start with novels. I started by writing novels, and then after a time friends said to me, "You should try writing short fiction." I got the impression from some of them that it would be easier to get short fiction published than novels. Since I'd had no success with the novels I'd written so far, I figured, "Why not?" So I started writing short stories, and learning how to do those, because they're very different from novels and require different kinds of skills to get right. I got lots of rejections, from lots of different markets. The fact of the matter is, I'm not sure which one is harder. But you'll never know which one is easier for you if you don't try both. My friend Aliette de Bodard has a novel coming out from Angry Robot, entitled Servant of the Underworld, but by the time she sold it she already had a great career going and lots of fans from her short fiction.
Some people sell their short fiction first to semipro venues, and others to pro. I always figured, start at the top with each story you want to sell, and work your way down as it gets rejected, from pro to semipro, to token venues. But the fact of the matter was, I lost patience with the endless cycle of waiting, and after I ran my work past a few semipro markets, I pretty much left it in the trunk. I have several friends who have sold many pieces to semipro markets before breaking into the pro markets - and at least two who now make regular money from their sales of short fiction, hooray!
Some people pitch a novel to a publisher first, get a deal, and then find an agent. Others go straight to getting an agent through the query approach. My friend Janice Hardy, for example, landed an agent without any previous fiction sales, simply on the strength of her new novel, The Shifter, which she sent queries for and then pitched to the woman who would become her agent at the Surrey International Writers Conference. If you think this is impossible, well, you can feel reassured that it's not. It just may not end up being the path that is successful for you.
Some people go to lots of conventions and network like crazy. Others don't. This is a funny one, because I never figured I'd find this to be my own route. Are you kidding? I started out writing in Japan, and then after I got back to the US I had my kids, and it was all I could do just to get out to a local convention for a few hours during the day. But, interestingly enough, this turned out to be my path - because I kept working on my writing, and because I got to meet a few wonderful people.
In thanks to those people, I'll tell a brief version of the connections here. I first went to BayCon, my local convention, in 2003 when my son was 3 months old. There I went to a session run by Kent Brewster, who recommended that I submit to the BayCon writers' workshop the following year. So I came up with my very first short story and went in 2004. One of the pros on the panel at the writers' workshop was Dario Ciriello, who got word after the workshop was over that I was looking for a face-to-face writers' group, and invited me to his. Dario was also the one who put me in touch with the BayCon programming folk, with the result that I was on a panel about the Seven Wonders of the World in (I think) 2006. On the panel with me was a lovely author with whom I struck up a conversation, Deborah J. Ross. She encouraged me to come to the SiliCon convention a month later, and there introduced me to Sheila Finch, because Sheila and I share an interest in linguistics. Sheila was the one who told me that Dr. Stanley Schmidt, editor of Analog magazine, liked stories about linguistics. So I took some time, got my linguistics story together and sent it off, and it sold in December 2007, appearing in Analog in July/August 2008. It was also at SiliCon that I met my friend Lillian Csernica. We hit it off immediately, and she helped me with the interminable revisions of my novel, Through This Gate. At a certain point, she said she'd like to recommend me to her agent. Well, she never did - but only because I ran into her agent at the 2009 Nebula Awards weekend, and remembering what Lillian had said, walked right up to her and said hello. This turned into a pitch, and a full manuscript request, and finally this October, into an agency signing. I could never have signed with the Grayson Agency (blog) on the basis of queries alone, but they happen to be just the right agents for me. Who would have imagined it?
I am immensely grateful to these people who have helped me get to where I am. I have found that the science fiction and fantasy writing community has a great sense of helping in return for being helped, and I am already trying to pass on what I know in this great spirit.
All of this is to say that if you want to have a writing career, you have to keep at it. Be dogged. Meet people, query, submit, and above all, write, write, write. Try to make your writing better at every opportunity, because you never know which path will suddenly open up for you, and when it does, you'll want to be able to give the right person a piece of writing that really knocks their socks off.
I wish you all the best in your own endeavors.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
The Shifter hits US Bookshelves!
Today's the big day for my friend Janice Hardy. Her book, The Shifter, officially releases today! Thus I've included the photo above to help entice you. I'm going to be going to pick up my copy later today, and I encourage you to do the same.
If you find you want to talk to Janice about the book, you can find her on her book blog, or you can also talk to her about writing process at her writing blog. Since I know a lot of visitors here at TalkToYoUniverse are interested in writing issues, I particularly recommend her writing blog, The Other Side of the Story. She has lots of great advice about structure, revisions, plot, worldbuilding, etc. all delivered with a great sense of humor and excellent sensitivity to the interests and questions of her visitors.
Friday, October 2, 2009
If you're one of my UK readers...
There's a great new book out, by my best friend Janice Hardy, called The Pain Merchants. Those in the US will have to wait until October 6th to find it under the title The Shifter. Just a few more days! Here's a micro-blurb...
Sister. Healer. Deadly Weapon.
Nya has a secret she must never share.
A gift she must never use. A world she
must never question...and a sister whose
life depends on her doing all three.
I've talked about this book before, but now you can see it for yourself! Janice takes healing, usually a benign and virtually costless activity, and turns it into the engine of an entire economy - and one with a very dark side. You've never seen healers look like this; I guarantee it.
Nya is a girl living on the street in a city under occupation. She can't get a job, because instead of having the ordinary healer's talent - to pull pain from the sick and injured into her own body and then push it into enchanted metal - she can only put it into other people. She's smart, funny, and a realist, but only ever one step away from complete disaster. Which of her principles will she have to sell to get out of it? Pick up a copy of The Shifter and find out!
Sister. Healer. Deadly Weapon.
Nya has a secret she must never share.
A gift she must never use. A world she
must never question...and a sister whose
life depends on her doing all three.
I've talked about this book before, but now you can see it for yourself! Janice takes healing, usually a benign and virtually costless activity, and turns it into the engine of an entire economy - and one with a very dark side. You've never seen healers look like this; I guarantee it.
Nya is a girl living on the street in a city under occupation. She can't get a job, because instead of having the ordinary healer's talent - to pull pain from the sick and injured into her own body and then push it into enchanted metal - she can only put it into other people. She's smart, funny, and a realist, but only ever one step away from complete disaster. Which of her principles will she have to sell to get out of it? Pick up a copy of The Shifter and find out!
Thursday, August 13, 2009
A contest at The Healing Wars
Just passing on the news...
My friend Janice Hardy is having a contest on her blog, The Healing Wars. Send in your best chicken joke and win an advance reader copy of her forthcoming novel, The Shifter!
Here's the link if you want to participate, or if you're curious - but especially if you're chicken.
My friend Janice Hardy is having a contest on her blog, The Healing Wars. Send in your best chicken joke and win an advance reader copy of her forthcoming novel, The Shifter!
Here's the link if you want to participate, or if you're curious - but especially if you're chicken.
Friday, May 8, 2009
Janice Hardy's new website
Here's some fun news: my friend Janice Hardy has just launched her new website, where you can find out all kinds of great stuff about her, about her forthcoming debut novel, The Shifter (known as The Pain Merchants in the UK), and even about chickens! Seriously, the hidden chicken factoids are awesome.
Here it is: http://www.janicehardy.com/
Here it is: http://www.janicehardy.com/
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
An awesome book to look out for...
It's official! My friend Janice Hardy's book, The Shifter, is coming out on October 6th. I'm totally excited about it, especially since I got to read her early drafts.
Here's a description of the book:
Nya is an orphan, struggling for survival in a city ravaged by war. She's also a Taker - someone who can heal injuries by drawing that pain into her own body. But unlike her sister Tali and other Takers, Nya can't push the pain into pynvium, an enchanted metal used to store it. All she can do is shift it from person to person - a dangerous skill she must conceal or risk being used as a human weapon.
One fateful morning, Nya's secret is exposed to a pain merchant eager to use her ability for his sinister purposes. At first she refuses, but when Tali mysteriously disappears, Nya must decide how far she's willing to go to save her sister.
I'm not just going to give you a list of adjectives for this book, but to tell you from my own perspective why I love it.
The main character, Nya, is not only spunky and clever but has a nuanced sense of morality that is totally world-grounded. She has a distinctive voice and her backstory vibrates through her actions.
The world of Geveg and its surrounding territories has its own special flavor - and the unique economy of healing and pain looms behind every aspect of the people's life, showing through the judgments, actions and decisions of even minor characters.
It's a fascinating world. You want to go there, and meet Nya. So look out for The Shifter by Janice Hardy this October.
By the way, I'm also planning to put up a Ridiculously Close Look at the book later this year when it comes out...
Here's a description of the book:
Nya is an orphan, struggling for survival in a city ravaged by war. She's also a Taker - someone who can heal injuries by drawing that pain into her own body. But unlike her sister Tali and other Takers, Nya can't push the pain into pynvium, an enchanted metal used to store it. All she can do is shift it from person to person - a dangerous skill she must conceal or risk being used as a human weapon.
One fateful morning, Nya's secret is exposed to a pain merchant eager to use her ability for his sinister purposes. At first she refuses, but when Tali mysteriously disappears, Nya must decide how far she's willing to go to save her sister.
I'm not just going to give you a list of adjectives for this book, but to tell you from my own perspective why I love it.
The main character, Nya, is not only spunky and clever but has a nuanced sense of morality that is totally world-grounded. She has a distinctive voice and her backstory vibrates through her actions.
The world of Geveg and its surrounding territories has its own special flavor - and the unique economy of healing and pain looms behind every aspect of the people's life, showing through the judgments, actions and decisions of even minor characters.
It's a fascinating world. You want to go there, and meet Nya. So look out for The Shifter by Janice Hardy this October.
By the way, I'm also planning to put up a Ridiculously Close Look at the book later this year when it comes out...
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