Revision: Thinking of WHY not WHAT

For those of you in the process of sending your baby manuscript off and into the world, I wanted to expand on a previous post regarding conflicting advice.

When reading for critique, the instinct is to try and be helpful. Often, I think the result of that is a critique that offers advice rather than a breakdown of the issues at heart.

This is one of my favorite clips. I really hope no one has received or left a critique session with me feeling like this...

But it transitions us nicely (after a few calming laughs) into the reason you should always focus on the WHY instead of the WHAT: the critique you got very likely could be the reader trying their best to help you with a solution, rather than pointing out something that is actually wrong.

Your job when revising is to figure out if that solution is the right one for your work, or if there is something else causing your reader to make the comment that they did that helps to point to what you really need to revise. How? Ask why.

Let's start with the video. WHY did this gatekeeper start spitballing outrageous ideas instead of directly critiquing the work? Well, honestly: from an outside perspective, and someone who has thrown some pretty outrageous ideas out there, I think probably the gatekeeper just wasn't intrigued by the story.

WHY?

Well, there could be two reasons: first, the story itself IS boring and/or non-fresh enough to really spark interest and stand out, OR this gatekeeper wasn't the right fit.

There's nothing you can do about an agent not being the right fit. But you should explore whether or not your story stands out in the market AND, if it does, if you've started in the right place - if your characters and voice are engaging enough right from the start to capture interest. And there's where you begin. Research - does your book stand out? And evaluate - are your characters and voice engaging?

Much better than trying to re-work it to be JAWS, right?

Here are a few things you can consider if you're getting responses all over the board, lots of "just not for me"'s, or just want to think about other solutions:

• What's at stake in your novel? For your characters? Is it strong enough?
• Does the reader feel like everything will be ok, even if they don't finish the book? (stakes)
• What's the conflict in your novel? Is it easily solved? (a perceived lose-lose situation is ideal)
• Does your character have autonomy in the conflict and stakes?
• When do you introduce the conflict and stakes? Too soon? Too late?
• Could your readers run into your character on the street and know how he/she would react to a variety of bizarre situations? (voice)
• Does your character's voice resonate in your readers' heads even after the pages stop?
• What's your ratio of dialog-to-narrative?
• Do your chapters end with conflict, or resolution?
• Is your idea unique? Can you condense it into a one-line hook that doesn't sound like ANY other book? (PW has weekly deal reports you can browse for free FYI)
• Does your book contain elements not found or not often seen in your genre? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
• What kinds of books does your reader/critique-r generally gravitate to? How would that influence what they would say? (don't focus on what you *think* an agent wants; what have they sold? Who do they represent? What have they read recently?)

Finally: what did YOU intend?

Find your book's focus. What are your comps? (in THAT genre, published in the last THREE to FIVE years). What do those books do well? What do you want YOUR readers to take away? What impression do YOU want to make?

Have you asked your critiquers if you've hit those marks?

If you need help figuring out the WHY: ask a friend! I'm sure the poor guy in the video above left scratching his head and maybe just thinking, WHAT?! And not sure where to even begin with the advice he was given.

Stepping back can be difficult; so try collecting the feedback you've been getting, and asking for some fresh eyes to help brainstorm: what should I read between these lines?

Keep an open mind...and don't be afraid to step back from a project, either, and write something new. You might not have found your perfect execution yet. You may need time, and more experience as a writer, to grow into it.

Dig Deeper: Connecting to Characters and Voice

Making your characters believable and relatable and your voice engaging takes more than surface-level details.

Let's take an example of a surface-level voice/detail and Dig Deeper:

I love flip flops. I wear them all the time.

Why?
They’re comfortable.

Why? Why does that matter?
Comfort is way more important to me than looking posh.

Why?
I don’t care what others think about my looks.

Why?
It’s not important.

What is important?
Family. Getting things done. I don’t need to spend a million years on my looks; I have too much to do.

Using these answers, re-write the sentence:

I throw my flops on; no need to spend a million years on my looks. Who cares what others think – I’ve got too much to do.


See the difference? Having dug into my character's statement, I scratched the surface to find out motivation, perspective, attitude...voice! I've taken a fairly common and bland statement and transformed it into an engaging voice.

Let your character talk to you. Had I gone even farther with my questioning, I might have hit on some internal flaws, internal motivations, fears...the deeper you go, the deeper the connection.

If you're struggling to make an emotional scene really punch hard, or trying to find that authentic voice, take some time to Dig Deeper.


An exercise in digging deeper:

1. Find three places in your first chapter where you tell us something your character likes or is feeling.
2. Ask "why" (and/or why-questions) a minimum of six times.
3. Use the answers to re-write the original sentence.

Feel free to share before and after versions in the comments. I'd love to see them!

Establishing Motivation in Picture Book Biographies

If you've ever heard: but WHY did he do this? What was DRIVING your subject? What INSPIRED her to...

My friend, you are in need of establishing motivation.

Motivation is the heart of your subject's actions. It's a key element that your reader can connect to and be inspired by. It takes a biography from "telling" to "showing."

This doesn't mean you need to psycho-analyze your subject; the reader just needs to see the connection between how your subject grew up to who s/he became and what s/he did. Because the picture book audience is intended for children, typically that is set up through the childhood lens, because it allows the audience to connect on a relatable level.

How or what in your subject's childhood helped him/her solve the problem s/he faces later in life, that led him/her to do the thing (s) you are writing about?

Here are some examples (I linked to these so you can see the previews):

1. Funny Bones by Duncan Tonatiuh

Here, you can see the progression nicely; the author sets up why Posada become a printer & why he was into art, and leads into, why did he start doing political cartoons (you can't see in the preview, but it explains the political atmosphere in Mexico, and how most people couldn't read and write, thus Posada was doing the cartoons to help spread the word and reach people).


2. I Dissent by Debbie Levy  (Author) and Elizabeth Baddeley (Illustrator)

Here, you can see who inspired Ruth (her mother), the atmosphere she grew up in, and how her personality built into who she became.


3. For the Right to Learn by Rebecca Langston-George  (Author) and Janna Bock (Illustrator)

Here again, you can see how Malala developed her love and passion for learning in childhood, and why it was important to her, and when that was threatened to be taken away from her, she fought back.


4. A Picture Book of Martin Luther King, Jr. by David A. Adler  (Author) and Robert Casilla  (Illustrator)

Here you can see where Martin Luther King Jr. got his peaceful side (father was a pastor, attended church) while establishing the turmoil/problem within the atmosphere he lived in, both of which help the reader to understand why he approached the problem the way he did, what the problem was, and why he was passionate about advocating for equal rights.


It isn't so much a matter of picking THE defining moment in your subject's life so much as WHAT about your subject's life led him/her to who he/she became.

Within the span of a few pages and a few hundred words, of course!

Characterizing Parents in Children's & YA Lit

There's been enough talk about the over-used dead-or-missing parents trope in children's and YA lit, but something that needs to be considered if you're breaking the mold and KEEPING THAT FAMILY TOGETHER: appropriate characterization!

If your manuscript is set in "present day," more than the landscape, technology, culture and slang around your character should shift and change. Your characters' parents' generational traits should also shift!

Here's a breakdown of the most common parental-types I see (though of course, there are plenty of others, particularly with parents who weren't born and/or raised in the Western world):

Baby boomers
Born roughly: early-to-mid 1940s through 1964
As of 2018, this means your MC's parents would be 54-78
General characteristics: early boomers are experimental, into individualism, free spirited, and social cause oriented and tend to be Democrats; later boomers are less optimistic, have a distrust of government, and general cynicism and tend to be Republicans. Tend to have a belief that it is important for each generation to earn their own money.

Generation X
Born roughly: mid 1960's through early 1980's
As of 2018, this means your MC's parents would be 38-53
General characteristics: entrepreneurial spirit, balanced, active, and happy in mid-life, unfocused as twentysomethings, bleak, cynical, and disaffected as young adults,

Millennials (Gen Y)
Born roughly: early 1980's through mid 1990's
As of 2018, this means your MC's parents would be 23-37
General characteristics: special, sheltered, confident, team-oriented, conventional, pressured, achieving, a sense of entitlement and narcissism


I in no way want to imply by sharing these GENERAL characteristics above that you MUST write your characters to fit within the traits typical of their generation. However, it can be a useful starting point to think through how your MC's parents or grandparents act, what they're passionate about, how they raised their children AND, most importantly, that you aren't unintentionally assigning traits more common to another generation to your MC's parents/grandparents because that is what YOU know, even if that doesn't make sense for your book.

If your manuscript is set TODAY, think about how old your main character's parents are - what generation does that correlate to? The music they love, the way they act, the jobs they have, and experiences growing up that will have shaped how they raised your MC will vary depending on that. That, in turn, will have shaped your MC, too!

Other important things to consider (that is not an exhaustive list by any means):

• The age your MC's parents started having children. This will ALSO determine how they are as parents. Did they start having children in their teens, early 20's, or later in life? This will also impact how the parents act, and interact, with your MC.
• What immigrant generation (first, second?) your MC's parents are? If your MC's parents (or grandparents!) are instead emigrants?
• The family dynamics of THEIR families - meaning, were they only children? One of six? Raised in foster care? Raised by a single mother?

I know guys. Characterization is complicated. And no, this doesn't mean that I comb through manuscripts looking to see if you've answered or addressed these questions through your MC's parents. (Or DO I?! ....no. No, I do not).

But I firmly believe that understanding the full dynamics of your characters, and writing them as real people, is worth it. Because at the end of the day, real characters are what agents, editors and readers are looking for!

What is Authenticity in Voice?

Are you hearing from agents that they're not connecting to your characters? Perhaps you need to work on authenticity in your voice.

Anyone could write a book about my grandmother. And they could probably find out a heck of a lot more about her life than I know through research.

That doesn't mean they knew her.

That's not authenticity.

It is factual; it is not authentic.

Authenticity is heart. 

I've written before that voice is the aspect of the novel that lets the reader forget about the writer. It's what makes characters real. It has perspective, a unique way of thinking about and looking at things based on where he/she is from and the experiences he/she has had.

If you were to ask me to describe my grandma, I would smile and laugh a little as I reflect and begin to speak. Why? What prompts that emotional reaction? Authentically writing about my grandma is evoking in the reader that same reaction - allowing them to feel my perspective.

A writer's craft is in figuring out what tools to use and how to do this; showcasing memories? Using key words (for example, notice I immediately switched to "grandma" instead of "grandmother" when I started writing about her)?

My point of view is one of the more intimate; it is not the only point of view or the whole story or even perhaps the most accurate. But it is authentic because it is based on experience. It is perfectly possible to portray her in a different way based on a different authentic point of view because mine is not the only experience with her.

Heart comes from an original experience.

So here's the challenge: a writer, who has never met my grandma, needs to figure out first, what an authentic point of view would be, and second, how to accurately evoke the emotional response in the reader to convey that POV

The farther the writer's intimacy with that point of view, the harder it will be to accomplish.

And it's not just research that will do that.

It takes a lot more introspection and dissecting. It takes a full understanding of the limitations the writer may have to understand that point of view.

The problem I often see is that a lot of writers confuse this work (creating authenticity) with research, or presenting facts.

An exercise in authenticity:

1. Tell me about your grandma.
2. What emotional reaction did you have as you began to reflect and think about what to say? (This is your authentic point of view).
3. How (and what) do you write to evoke that same emotional reaction in the reader as they are given the information? (This is writing an authentic point of view).

I hope that you find this exercise challenging; it should be! It is the effort any of your characters' voices should be given. Find the heart!

Creating Dynamic Peripheral Characters

This is a blog post I never thought I would write. Why? Because I had no idea, until I went head-first into revision with one of my authors, what to say about it.

But when an editor comes back to you saying she loves the book, but she’d like to see some revision on peripheral characters, well, gosh darn it, you figure out what to say pretty fast!

So here are some tips that I came up with for my author:

Ask yourself: What is their motivation?

One of the most important elements of your novel is understanding motivation. And not just your hero and/or heroine’s. A great exercise for this is to write a piece of the book in each of your character’s perspectives. You don’t have to include this; but see what they have to say. After you give them a voice, go back to your novel, and make sure their motive and perspectives come through without needing to be in their heads.

Avoid black/white characters

No, not physically; your peripheral characters can be purple for all I care. What I mean here is: avoid blanket good/bad stereotypes. Yes, sometimes these blanket characters pop up; epic stories usually have them. But the gray area is always so much more interesting and heartbreaking.

A great example of this came to me last night, when I (re) watched (for the millionth time) Pirates of the Carribean. Captain Barbosa is clearly a bad guy…right? But that last scene, when he dies, and the bright green apple falls from his fingers…you definitely feel heartbroken for the guy, don’t you? That little detail, those darned apples, were a beautiful plot device for making him more dynamic. They were a physical representation of his motive. He wasn’t bad for the sake of being bad; he was in pain. Yes, he also gets a chance to explain his motive to us, but it’s the apples that really drive it home.

Ask yourself: Are these characters just tools to an end?

Part of what may make a character seem less dynamic is if they only exist to drive forward the plot. Yes, yes; back to the epic fantasy example, sometimes it’s unavoidable to encounter these “extras.” Not every character in a movie needs to run up to the heroine and explain their motivation. I think, perhaps, creating a little map of where each character in your book falls in relation to the hero/heroine should demonstrate the appropriate level of development in your novel:





As the circle widens, the development lessens.

Great; I’ve done the circle and the exercise. Now what?

Good question. Everyone’s approach to revision is different. But to start, think back to the Barbosa example: allow your peripheral characters a chance to explain themselves. Their motivations are going to have to come through via interaction with the hero and/or heroine, if you don’t have multiple POVs (which I never recommend). So go back to pivotal scenes, and give them a voice!