Self-Critique

Feedback For Fiction | Rewriting: What Is it And How Do You Go About It?

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 2 Comments

Sharing a draft of your novel with anyone for the first time can be scary. The stress of waiting to hear back from your readers or editor, of worrying about what they might say, and wondering if your writing is ready to submit can take its toll.

So why would you share your work with anyone before you’ve revised your first draft, improved it, making sure it’s as good as you can make it before anyone else reads it?

You wouldn’t. That’s why you rewrite.

Rewrite: to write (something) again especially in a different way in order to improve it or to include new information – Merriam-Webster Dictionary

A comprehensive rewrite is the first step in the self-editing process. I’m not talking about copyediting or proofreading. You can do that after you’ve completed your rewrite.

Rewriting your first draft means analyzing your story from a high-level perspective and fixing…

Source: Feedback For Fiction | Rewriting: What Is it And How Do You Go About It?

Write Better Fiction: Avoid Repetitive Scene Openings

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 2 Comments

Today on Write Better Fiction we’ll cover Scene Entry Types. Write Better Fiction is a process to help you critique your own manuscript and give yourself feedback. This will help you improve your novel, so you’re ready to submit it to an editor.

Over the last few weeks, we covered scene entry, scene middle, and exit hooks. I’d like to back up a bit and look at scene entries again.

My husband was my first beta reader, and he read the first draft of the first novel I wrote. As it turns out, that novel is AVALANCHE, to be published this spring by Imajin Books.

His first comment to me, and I was a little crushed, was:

“Do you know you start every scene with a character in a doorway?”

I was expecting, “I love this book,” not actual critique. Well, I’ve since toughened up and have realized critique is much more helpful than unwarranted praise if you’re trying to write better. His comment drove me to figure out how to vary scene openings.

As you know, I use a spreadsheet to self-edit my novels.

I have a column called entry type. The choices are:

  • Dialogue
  • Thought
  • Narrative
  • Action

If you have other categories, please let me know in the comments below.

Once I’ve filled out my spreadsheet, I create a pie chart to see if my novel is balanced.

Screen Shot 2016-05-02 at 10.00.51 AM

 

Then I create a graph, to check if I’ve start the scenes in a variety of ways and didn’t get stuck in a pattern.

Screen Shot 2016-05-02 at 2.11.27 PM

 

D is dialogue

A is action

T is thought

N is narrative.

The idea is to ensure I haven’t started too many scenes in a row in the same way. If I have, I go back and revise the scenes, looking for a different way to write the opening. I don’t want to bore a reader by getting into a pattern.

I critiqued DESCENT, BLAZE and AVALANCHE using the techniques I’m sharing in Write Better Fiction, and I believe this helped me sign with a publisher.

Please let me know in the comments below if you have any suggestions how to check for repetitive scene entries?

Thanks for reading…

Write Better Fiction: Is Your Scene Anchored?

~ Kristina Stanley ~ 10 Comments

Today on Write Better Fiction we’ll cover Is Your Scene Anchored? Write Better Fiction is a process to help you critique your own manuscript and give yourself feedback. This will help you improve your novel, so you’re ready to submit it to an editor.

One could argue that asking yourself if your scene is anchored should fall under setting or under plot.

I’ve included scene anchoring under plot because it’s more than setting, and I think it leads well into the next topics we’ll cover, which are hook, development and climax of a scene.

AnchorSo what does it mean to anchor a scene?

The reader needs to know:

  • Who has the point of view
  • Where the character is
  • What the timing of the scene is

POINT OF VIEW:

We’ve dealt with point of view in detail, so I won’t say much here except you should checkEye whether the reader will know who has the point of view within the first paragraph or at least within the first couple of paragraphs. If not, the reader might find this frustrating. If you write your entire novel from one point of view, like many first person novels, then you don’t need to worry about this.

SETTING:

“Where is your character”“Where is your character” fits under setting. You know where the character is because your wrote the scene, but does your reader? If the reader can’t figure out where the character is within the first couple of paragraphs you may lose them – the reader I mean and not the character. 🙂

There are exceptions to this. If your scene is about a character waking in a dark place and confused about where she is, then it’s okay for the reader to be confused about where she is too. This will add to the tension. The reader does need to understand the lack of setting is done on purpose.

TIMING:

The timing of the scene can mean:Clock

  • Time of day
  • Time passed since last scene
  • A particular date

If several years or several seconds have passed in a characters life, then the reader needs to understand that. If you are jumping back in time or forward in time the reader needs to understand that too. The quicker the reader gets the timing, the quicker they will be drawn into the scene.

START OF A NEW SCENE:

The start of a new scene means point of view has changed, the setting has changed, or time has changed, hence every scene needs to be anchored.

Your challenge this week is to ask yourself if every scene in your novel is anchored. Does the reader know who has point of view, where the character is and what time it is?

I critiqued DESCENT and BLAZE using the techniques I’m sharing in Write Better Fiction, and I believe this helped me sign with a publisher.

Please me know in the comments below if you have any suggestions or improvements for anchoring a scene.

Thanks for reading…