Debi Alper
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I’ll say again, Katie. This is your space. Use it any way that feels useful for you. I love the kind of thinking out loud you’re doing here and suspect it will really help you to clarify your thought processes – what you want your story to be, how to achieve that etc. Don’t hold back. Applies to your WIP too. You don’t need any self-imposed restraints.
The ethical dilemmas around assisted dying are a very strong theme, Lucia. I’m glad to see that Paul is conflicted too. I had a concern that he might not be, but you’ve laid that to rest. I’m looking forward to meeting these characters.
Well done, you! Can I just gently point out that my name is spelt Debi. It’s good practice to make sure you get things like that right. I don’t mind but I know many agents wouldn’t be so forgiving. Better for this reminder to come here, in this safe space.
I would never criticise a fellow professional, Anja, but I am surprised to hear someone making a blanket statement about such a wide-ranging genre. Can’t help wondering if you might have misinterpreted something Philip said.
It looks like you’re still unsure about what you want this story to be. I think that decision needs to come first and it shouldn’t be based on word count but on what story *you want* to write. Once you’ve made that decision, we can look at ways to expand your intention so that it sustains a complete novel. Forget about what you think might sell, or what the current market might be looking for and write the story that appeals to you.
Hi again, Julie. Being ‘stuck’ is often a good starting point for a character atc. I was interested in you saying this: *I sensed she feels she has no future.* On the one hand, that makes it clear that Rachel has an existence separate from you – a Very Good Sign. On the other, you will need to know her from the inside, as we’ll learn in week 2.
As I’ve said to the others, never apologise for the length of your replies. You’re filling in the inevitable gaps in the synopsis and helping us to understand the breadth of your WIP. I can see you have a very high body count and oodles of drama and jeopardy. I’m not hearing any alarm bells and look forward to seeing how this rich material translates onto the page.
Oh, what fun, Steven. You’ve probably gathered by now that the hill I will die on is that there are no rules in creative writing – *creative* being the key word. Having said that, eleven POV characters for the reader to identify with would be a real challenge. Four will be easier to handle. I honestly can’t know if the large cast is a problem but my instinct tells me that it will be easier to pull off if it’s clear that Lester has the ownership of the story and is the one we’re most invested in, meaning we shouldn’t be away from his for too long. You will also need to ensure that each character has their own voice, making them distinct from each other. Characters come to life when they’re stretched far apart from each other, and that includes their voice in the prose, even if the WIP is in third person. We’ll be looking at all this in the coming weeks.
Hi again, Gillian. When you have the time and space, it might be useful for you to re-do the 3-sentence exercise for yourself. It’s such a useful tool for ensuring the narrative drive doesn’t falter. No need to post it here, though you can if you like. This is your space to use in whatever way feels useful for you. I won’t be able to comment in detail again though, as I’m sure you’ll understand.
No problem with having four POV characters. Just make sure we’re not away from Simon for too long if he’s the main character. We’ll be meeting him soon and I look forward to it.
Thanks for explaining the scope of your series, Alison. I’m even more on board now and I also love that Pretzel is a wisp of gas. How amazing that the local school set up a kindness group. That’s not a small thing at all. For our stories to have that sort of impact is what we all dream of.
Oh Katie! I hope there’s some degree of comfort in having a diagnosis but those are horrible conditions and I really feel for you. I think for many (most?) of us, writing is a form of therapy – either to work through stuff in our life or as an escape from it. It’s often said that we write out first drafts for ourselves, and I think that’s what has happened here. It’s in the editing process that we need to make sure the story works for our readers. The mantras, of course, are *the first draft of anything is crap* and *write drunk, edit sober*.
I totally get your decision not to name her condition. It’s the not-knowing that matters for your WIP and for your fictional character. All I wanted was for you to think about it and you’ve done that. Job done. I love that I anticipated her welcoming new recruits! We’re on the same page. You ask if you could ‘get away with’ not naming the program or the centre. Of course, you can. You can do anything at all, if you do it well enough and with intention. It might be worth taking ownership of the vagueness, using capital letters for The Program and The Wellness Centre.
I think you have to fully embrace the darkness. Have you read Dark Places? It’s my favourite Gillian Flynn novel – and stories don’t come much darker than that! I have a tingling in my editrix bones about the folk horror element. I haven’t read Midsommar but I’m wondering of it might be an idea to broaden the story if there’s an explicit link to the chain of folk horror. Hold onto that thought because it is the sort of thing that could come up in the context of psychic distance.
Honestly, please don’t worry about the length of these comments. The tutorials and exercises are just jumping-off points for wider convos. I’d still be interested to know about the mother.
You’re right to say a waking-up opening is a well-known cliché but it never occurred to me that yours fits that bill. If anything, ‘waking’ to find yourself dead is a delicious twist on the trope.
I can’t answer your second question because I’ve only looked at the narrative triangles. There’s nothing there that suggests you’re packing in too much, too soon. Maybe Harry was talking about the pace on the sentence level. We’ll get more of an idea once we see excerpts from the draft.
I’m impressed by you being able to run 5K! My partner used to run marathons and both he and our sons are gym bunnies. I’m the one who sits on my butt all day, smoking and eating chocolate. Someone’s got to do it.
Never apologise for the length of your responses here, Chithrupa. The synopsis can only give us the bare bones of a WIP and is the launchpad for further discussions, where you help us to see the breadth of your vision. It can also be useful for all of you to talk out loud about your WIPs in this way. Often, finding the words to explain how things work to someone else helps to clarify it in your own head.
A big thumbs-up from me for *The Life and Deaths of Xander Crewface* as a title. Love it.
My only remaining question is around the pen. Not many are a foot long. For that matter, grass doesn’t usually grow that long. And a syringe that length is a terrifying thought. But that’s very trivial and I don’t have any other major concerns.
Not *eek*, Paula, but *yay*. You know there’s work to be done or you wouldn’t be here. You’ve silenced many of my alarm bells with your explanations. Thanks for that. I now have a much better idea about what this story is and how it works. My questions have also highlighted some areas that need attention and careful thought, as well as helping you to make some decisions about the early chapters. This is all really good and is exactly where we’d hope you’d be at this stage. Hope you can embrace the process, rather than fearing it.
What a rich story this is, Kate. War is the ultimate instability and it’s interesting that there are so many novels still being written and published today about WW2. There have been so many conflicts since but there’s a particularity about a war that stretches across the globe, affecting so many millions of people, each with their own story to tell. I wonder if you’ve come across Clare Flynn. She’s an alumna of one of our early self-edit courses and I’ve worked with her since on several novels. As a dedicated self-publisher, she carved out a niche for herself, with a unique brand of romantic hist fic, and was very successful. She organised translations herself and earned six figures a year from sales of her novels. Most of her novels are set in the war years and it was the series set in Penang that brought her to the interest of a trade publisher. She’s now a hybrid author, both trade and self-published.
I’m only telling you this because it’s evidence that stories set at that time are still popular and have significant commercial potential. The key, of course, is having a USP. Although it doesn’t make it into the synopsis, I suspect that yours might be the way the narrative is held together by music. Is that right?
You’re covering multiple themes, some of which are specific to the era and others which are timeless. The conflicts and attitudes around class are fascinating. The propensity of the British upper class to be attracted to fascism is well-documented. It’s a stroke of genius to mix the classes in the way you do. Annie is working class but doesn’t know her father is an aristocrat – not that it helps her, of course. The best she can hope for is to be employed. Attitudes to illegitimacy is another strong theme and Harry being gay adds more conflicts.
I’m interested to know what drove you to write this novel. You’ve clearly done a lot of research but I’m sensing an emotional connection to your material. Ultimately, it would seem the story belongs to Annie. She’s the character who carries us through the whole story, going from skivvy, in love with her employer’s son, to a mature woman who has taken control of her own life. She seems a remarkable person. For a young woman of her age and class to take herself across the world to Hong Kong, in pursuit of love, would have been an awesome feat. I wonder how she funded her travels. Do you have scenes in the internment camps? Much of what I know of the horror of those camps comes from working on Clare’s novels but your WIP has a wider scope. The contrasts between the scenes set in England and those in Hong Kong will add to the richness of your story.
Harry has his own character arc but, unbeknown to Annie, he dies quite early in the war. I can see why you would want to include the Kokoda battlefields in your WIP. The best hist fic stories educate readers, without that being obvious. The poignancy of having a musical backdrop to such horror and suffering is such a clever addition to your powerful story. I’m also fascinated by Yasuko and Hiro. Having Japanese characters widens the scope of the whole story, making a point about music being a unifying force and the humanity of the so-called enemy. I notice they only have short sections, and they’re spaced far apart. I have no idea whether this works or not. I guess the risk is that they might feel tacked on, maybe even tokenistic. I can’t be sure because their arc doesn’t make it into the synopsis, due to the tight word count.
I want to talk a bit about the division into parts. You’ve gone for four parts. It’s very common for stories to fit into three or five-act structures, though there are no rules about this – or any other aspect of writing. What made you decide where the breaks come? It comes up this week because it’s the scaffolding on which your story hangs. It might be helpful to think in terms of pauses. On the micro level, these come in the form of punctuation and line breaks. On the structural level, a chapter break is a relatively long pause and implies a change or shift of some kind – POV, time, setting etc. A break between ‘parts’ is the longest pause of all. Do you want to talk about how you decided where they fall?
You’re weaving together two threads: Annie’s story, which is chronological, and Harry’s, which isn’t. I’m interested to know how and when his chapters appear, and how you’ve come to those decisions. Does the reader know he’s dead before Annie does? Did you write his thread separately and then pluck out chapters and insert them into her story? I’m not saying one way would work better than another but you will need to have a clear reason for whatever you choose.
I’ll look at the chapters now.
Chapter 1 – you plunge us straight into the horrors of war. This is a dark and gripping opening to the story. Was it a deliberate decision to start here and not with Annie?
Chapter 2 – we now meet Annie in the upper class setting. As an orphan, we’re bound to sympathise with her. Presumably, we’ll know that young Harry is the same person we saw on the Kokoda trail, seven years later, in the previous chapter. I have no way of knowing if this works or not but would be interested to have the conversation with you.
Chapter 3 – hmmm. You know what I’m going to say, right? You have the character in the *now* of the story, thinking back to the past. I don’t know whether you actually take us back there to identify with how she felt at the time, or if you keep her in the *now*, reminiscing. Either way, it’s sounding a bit of an alarm bell for me, though I could well be wrong. I’m wondering if these memories could be integrated elsewhere, rather than being lumped together into a discrete chapter. You may well have made it work but it’s certainly a question I would be asking myself, if I were you.
Chapter 4 – here we have the fabulous depiction of upper class flirtation with fascism, seen through the eyes of a low status servant.
Chapter 5 – Harry now enters the scene as a character-in-action in this timeline.
The story has a huge amount going for it, Kate. I’m still unsure about the structure, if I’m honest. The question marks for me are whether the current opening chapter is the best intro to the story; whether Annie’s thread starts in the right place; how to bleed in back story; how and where and in what order we see Harry’s chapters. For all I know, you’ve completely nailed all this but I’m more than happy to keep chatting about any and all of these things.
This looks like an entertaining story that will be a pleasure to read, Steven. It has a gentle and calming quality to it. I know little about cricket (sorry!) but I’m guessing the rhythm and flow of the story mirrors the pace of a cricket match. My perception of the sport is that is often slow compared with many other sports, punctuated with elements of high drama. Seems the same could be said of your story. I really like the idea of an older man starring in a novel. It’s never too late to rethink your life.
Have you considered who your target readers are? Do you have any comp titles in mind? Would you place it alongside Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch or Dave Roberts’ The Bromley Boys (though they’re both memoir)? This will be important when it comes to you pitching (note to self: avoid puns) to agents as they will want to know where a book sits in the market and who it’s likely to appeal to.
I like the post-Brexit but pre-Covid setting, pinning down a defining moment in the country’s history. Lester’s conflicts are around his priorities: love for his wife and commitment to their marriage, versus his love for his sport and desire to remain captain. Given that his wife was obviously prioritising her own needs over his, staying put in the life that gives him pleasure sounds like the right decision for him. I was pleased to see the resolution rewards his choices and the story gives him what he needs. We’ll be talking more about characters’ wants and needs (not always the same thing) next week, so I’ll look at the chapters now. Great interpretation of the exercise, by the way.
Chapter 1 – ha! We meet Lester when he’s tossing a coin instead of making a decision that will determine every aspect of his future. In any other kind of story, I would worry about him ending up in the exact same place that he started (the first and third sides of the triangle are the same). This is such a quiet story though (and I don’t mean that as a criticism), I suspect you can get away with it. It could be a really good intro to him as a character – stuck, indecisive – and will establish the identity of the story.
Chapter 2 – we meet Serafina and their marriage appears to be solid. He comes to a decision and she rewards him.
Chapter 3 – the vice-captain enters the fray. We have three different characters, each with their own agenda, providing scope for some comedic interchanges. I wonder about the voice/POV, which we’ll find out about next week.
Chapter 4 – the bickering in the team, and the petty rivalry between Lester and the vice-captain, continue the gentle humour. This feels to me like a world of a male sub-culture that is, perhaps surprisingly, un-macho. I instantly felt for Lester when I heard that he’s the least talented player in the team. I guess he has other skills that make him popular with the others.
Chapter 5 – oh bless! The vice-captain’s dastardly plan to humiliate Lester has succeeded.
In Lester, I think you’ve come up with a loveable and engaging character, Steven. His journey is one of empowerment. He ends up by making a decision. And it pays off. We will all be cheering him on. I’m looking forward to meeting him next week.
