Two Weeks of Learning

I've learned a lot over the last two week.

As you may remember, I was fortunate enough to have my query letter posted for critique on MSFV. I received a lot of good feedback and I learned that my query isn't as good as I thought it was. Put simply, it's FAT. It needs to slim down, trim up, and SHOW ME THE BEEF!

I was also lucky enough to have my query picked as one of the Authoress's top 5 which meant that I was able to post the first 500 words of my manuscript. I got a ton of quality feedback on this as well, some of it difficult to hear, all of it important. After these exercises and some serious thought, I've figured out 3 big issues with my story.

1. My Setting is Confusing - My story is supposed to be set on some other world (which one isn't supposed to matter) at some unknown time (when isn't supposed to matter) which bears a superficial resemblance to ancient Rom. Unfortunately, it appears that the world I've created is TOO similar to ancient Rome. Every beta reader that's read the story has ended up confused because the world seems like ancient Rome but the characters (and their mannerisms, language, etc.,) doesn't fit in ancient Rome. My setting is taking my readers out of the story because they're trying to figure out when and where the story is set. I need to make some serious changes to show that the story is not set on our world, past or present.
2. Genre Confusion - This problem is directly related to the first problem. It seems that, largely due to the setting, the first part of my story comes across as historical fiction or historical fantasy rather than epic fantasy. I've put in a lot of thought about this and actually, with the exception of some exotic critters and one non-human character, there isn't a lot of fantasy in my epic fantasy story. With some minor changes it could easily be historic fiction or even science fiction. I need to add/clarify some story elements to further define my story, even if that definition isn't what I originally had it mind.
3. My Story Starts Too Late - Crap. Ever since I started paying attention to writing blogs I've been aware of one of the cardinal sins that every writer cautions about: starting your conflict, your actual plot, too late in your story. I thought I heeded this warning. I only included NECESSARY BACKSTORY...except that maybe I didn't. Even if it my backstory is necessary, it should be worked in later in the story. I need to re-work my beginning.

As you can see I've decided that my story needs some serious work. On the one hand this is exciting because I think I've identified several important ways to make my story a lot better. On the other hand, I really liked the idea of being done with this story. I know, until your story is published there's no such thing as "done". But I liked the idea of finally, after 5 years (I've been working on it off and on since 2007), that my story was finished. Which brings me to one of the most important things I learned this week.

I have this...idea...expectation...whatever, that my story SHOULD be done. Five years is a long time to work on a story so it SHOULD be done. I just turned 30 so my story SHOULD be done. I have other stories I want to work on so this story SHOULD be done.

Or should it? There are no external expectations or demands for my story. There is no logically derived deadline. All of these "shoulds" are arbitrary. They're constructs of my imagination. They're a glitch in the matrix.

My story is done when it's done, not one word before. Whether I choose to continue working on it is a different issue. But there is no should.

Do you let "shoulds" creep into your writing? Can they be a good thing? What do you think?

Picking a Genre

Earlier in the week I posted how it seems that many more writing oriented websites are written by women than men. Trolling around the writing blogoverse I've also noticed that there seems to be a heck of a lot of writers who call their work "young adult". This got me thinking about a few posts I've read recently that discuss what constitutes young adult fiction, including a post by our friends at BookEnds, LLC.

Check out the Genre Map at Book Country

Check out the Genre Map at Book Country

Personally, I've always thought that what defines a genre is composed of two parts, what you're writing and who you're writing it for. Young adult happens to be one of the genres that's defined mostly by target audience. It's true that the protagonists are usually under 20 y.o. but there are plenty of works outside the genre that fit that criterion. That's quite a bit different than science fiction or fantasy which are defined almost entirely by certain plot elements. Then there are the huge anomalous genres like "commercial fiction" which seems to be made of any book that has a chance of selling to a broad audience base.

I call the manuscript I'm currently working on "fantasy". That seems easy enough but then there are at least 12 sub-genres that many agents use to specify what kind of fantasy manuscripts they're interested in. Mine isn't urban fantasy (having classic fantasy plot elements and characters but set in an actual modern setting) or dark fantasy (just like it sounds) but instead probably falls into the realm of epic fantasy (aka high fantasy), which is cool but is also sound just a little pompous if you ask me.

What do you call your story?