Critique, and the Writer's Compass

I'm thinking about critique today.

No single thing has been more critical for my progress as a writer. Showing my work to other people and asking what they think helps me to step back from the words and look at them from the outside. I can work and work and make a story the best I think it can be, but then when I show it to others I find my eyes opened to entirely new parameters of consideration. This is why I always, always have my work critiqued before I submit it anywhere.

Taking critique is an acquired skill. It's not just a matter of listening to someone tell you what they think you should do with a story, and then doing it. If that were all, then you'd never have a finished product, because everyone who reads it has different tastes, different preferences, and brings something different to their reading of the story. You'd just get pushed around. This is why it's important to have what I call the Writer's Compass.

The Writer's Compass is basically an instinct that holds onto your own idea for what you want the story to do. You want character A to come across as sympathetic. Or you want the city to be impressive. Or you want the scenery to be bewilderingly complex. When you set down a first draft, you make your first shot at achieving an effect, and you (hopefully) achieve it at least partially.

Then people start to critique. Remember that a great deal of the meaning of a story does not come from the story itself, but from the mind and experience of the reader. A reader will say, "I'm confused." Or they'll say, "I pictured him with black hair." Maybe they'll say, "The dialog sounded stilted to me." Or "I don't like him/this whole story."

This is part of where writers develop their thick skins. The other part is of course from the editors who say the same kind of things, along with the words "alas" or "I'm sorry."

But let's not think about editors yet - or at least, consider them as another voice in the process of critique. Say you wanted a particular effect, and you didn't achieve it for one of your readers. The next step is not to do what they think you should do. The next step is to try to figure out why they said what they said. Dig in and analyze the critique along with the manuscript. They may have pictured a character with black hair simply because you didn't specify his hair color early enough. Or because they found dark elements in his character. They may have felt the dialog was stilted because of the dialect that you used when writing it. Or because there was something unnatural about the situation in which the dialog occurred, which made the words themselves come out oh-so-slightly funny.

What I'm trying to say is that the effect you want to achieve should never be forgotten, and a critiquer isn't always going to suggest exactly the way to get there. So evaluate your manuscript with an eye for the difference between what you wanted, and what the reader wanted, and try not to say, "They just didn't get it." Try to ask yourself, "Why didn't they get it?"

It's a hard question to ask, but if you can find the answer, sometimes it can raise the story to a new level.

Some thoughts on Meter

I'm talking about poetic meter. You know, what we learned when we learned Shakespeare, mostly iambic pentameter, but also spondaic tetrameter or trochaic hexameter or any of those other bizarrely named things.

Here's a brief review of a few terms, with examples.

foot: a set of grouped syllables that form the most basic unit of a metrical pattern.
iamb: a foot with one weak syllable followed by one strong syllable. x X "She comes."= 1 iamb
trochee: a foot with one strong syllable followed by one weak syllable. X x "Hit her." = 1 trochee
spondee: a foot with two stressed syllables. X X "Bob Smith" = 1 spondee
anapest: a foot with two weak syllables followed by one strong one. x x X "He has gone to the edge of the road."= 3 anapests
dactyl: a foot with one strong syllable followed by two weak ones. X x x "Gone are the days of the foresters."= 3 dactyls

Meter is not just for poetry and Shakespearean plays.

Whether in poetry or prose, meter is all about flow - the feel of the language as it streams by. I read a discussion on the Absolute Write forum recently which concerned the difference between "on" and "upon" and which should be used in a particular context. My own sense came far more from an instinctive desire to align the meter of the sentence in question than from a general preference for "upon" versus "on."

It is often said that the natural meter of English is iambic. This is because we generally like our sentences to have an alternating pattern of strong and weak syllables. I have a character I'm working on who speaks entirely in iambic pentameter, and while he does sound archaic at times, my goal is not to have any of his lines come across as ta-TUM-tee-UM-tee-UM-tee-UM-tee-UM. Fortunately, there is some flexibility in the metrical rules which allows for the occasional foot with reversed stress, and the occasional extra syllable.

Here's a random couplet of iambic pentameter (totally unrelated to my novel!) which doesn't sound much like poetry to me:

"In utero, the baby undergoes a lengthy process of uneven growth."

By altering this natural rhythm, you can achieve effects that act a lot like onomatopoeia. In action and situations of stress you can use strong syllables to break flow intentionally: a few trochees and spondees can go a long way. This is one of the things that can help you create the effect of a regional accent, for example, without requiring extensive alterations of spelling.

When I'm looking for a voice for an alien, I make sure to consider the meter of his or her speech, even if I don't use that meter strictly in the alien viewpoint. The gecko-girl Allayo (Let the Word Take Me) spoke in an unmeasured meter that I based on the intonation of sacred readings, because that fit well with the fact that she considered her language to be sacred. When I thought about designing a wolf alien, I tried to use anapests to influence the dialogue so that the speech would come across in a loping rhythm.

All right, that's enough for now. I'll let you go have fun with it.

If Aliens were like Cats

Right off the top of my head I can think of two examples of aliens based on cats: Larry Niven's Kzin, whom I've read about in Paul Chafe's novel, Destiny's Forge, and Anne McCaffrey's Hrruban from Decision at Doona.

There's something about cats, isn't there? Having two new kittens at my house, I can testify to this.

Okay, so what about making them into a group of aliens?

My thought is this: don't stop with physiology and its immediate consequences.

With the feline physiology you get great hunting capabilities and a carnivorous diet. But in case you were thinking that these aliens would only eat raw meat, think about the little kitties eating kibbles in your house. If they have an advanced society, they would also have a sophisticated sense of cuisine, at least among the wealthy. Maybe raw meat would be a delicacy - or maybe it would be associated with poverty, because these people couldn't afford fire to cook. Either way, it should have a localized cultural meaning.

So then, what about social structure? A lot of times people will come up with structures that are elaborate and cool but somewhat arbitrary relative to the species in question. That's fine, as long as you can make your felines fit into it without going against their native ways (and you can always alter the felines!). However, if you want to match more closely, you could always work with a very social group of felines, like lions. They've got prides with dominant males and hunting females; that would be fun to work with.

I'm going to challenge myself a little by working with housecats - or at least, a group of cats that is very territorial, typically not hanging with other cats unless they are siblings or mates. This can still translate into a societal structure for a civilization.

Imagine a society of semi-nomadic feline hunters that guarded its core territory, yet possessed a superstructure of civilization and government based largely on the interactions of mates and siblings. An individual would have a compound where he/she lived with a mate and their juvenile children, but siblings would be welcome and would probably live in territories nearby. Those territories would be linked to the first by blood ties to create small interlocked communities. Intergroup marriages would take on great importance, especially between larger linked groups - like the marital interactions of the European royals. At the same time, siblings would have very close relationships and would add to the possible links. It might be that the only way to get "into" a rival group would be to marry off one of your daughters or sons, because then that other group would not be able to deny access to that person's siblings, and thus information might travel.

I can see thorny political plots growing already. And therein lies the story.

Welcome to the Worldbuilding Workshop!

Here it is, as promised...

Let me first extend congratulations to all the NaNoWriMo participants. Whether you hit your 50K or not, it looks like every one of you I've seen has taken some significant strides in their writing. It's a cool endeavor, and one I could never manage myself. I'll try to go easy on you.

I've decided to start with worldbuilding, and then once the worldbuilding part is done, to continue on into language design. At that point, anyone interested in language design can join, or if you would like to continue in the context of a world you've been working on in this workshop, you may feel free to do so.

Here's what we'll do. I'm going to ask any of you who are interested in participating in the worldbuilding workshop to submit a 500-word scenelet to me in my Comments area by December 7th. This scenelet should have the following characteristics:

1. It forms the beginning of a story or novel. (This does not mean it has to be the beginning in your final draft, but I want you to assume that the reader has no prior information.)
2. It has a protagonist and a main conflict, i.e. it is not simply a description of the world you're working with.
3. It demonstrates the characteristics of the world and situates the reader.

I will be reviewing the comments before they are posted publicly, so your work will not automatically appear to public eyes. I'm hoping we can get some examples out in the main sections of the blog as I pick topics to discuss, but I don't want anyone to worry about premature exposure of their text!

I will then post blog discussions and expect all participants to comment and push their worldbuilding forward. Because I will be "digging in" and being very involved in the work that is submitted, I will need to keep the number of participants to five. Given that I had four people express interest, that should be possible... I'm hoping not to have to turn anyone away, but I must keep my sanity. I hope that if anyone misses out they'll get a chance to do this with me on another occasion.

Please feel free to comment with any questions you have, or contact me at the address in my left navigation bar. I'll look forward to seeing your ideas by December 7th!

Juliette