Joined: 3/4/2011
Posts: 10
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I've been poking at my manuscript for the YA fantasy novel tentatively Citizen in the Wilds for the last month or two. You can find the revisions in its bookspace on this very website. But I'm thinking of going back and starting again later. I feel there's more worldbuilding I should do. More things to flesh out. More humanity to inject.
In short, I worry that I'm doing it wrong.
Having read the likes of Harry Potter and The Hunger Games recently, I don't think my tone of voice is too dark but I do worry that it may be too mature. Harry is 11 when his adventures begin, Katniss 16. My protagonist has just turned 18 and while I do feel it's important to promote more stories that show young men maturing through the final stages of adolescence, my concern is that I'm not presenting his situation realistically enough to begin with. Sure, it's a world full of magic and whatnot, but it's also a world with school, peers, expectations, parents and aspirations. I'm afraid I'm not touching on those things right away, and may lose potential readers because I don't hook them where they live fast enough. Oddly enough, this concern comes from the plot perhaps moving too quickly.
We don't see him in a normal classroom setting at all. We barely see him interacting with parents and peers. And I'm not sure I convey enough about the society and viewpoints from which he comes before his life is turned upside down.
Really looking for feedback on this, be it positive or negative. Am I on the right track where I am? Or should I put this work aside for now and come back to it when I have a better idea of how to begin?
Thanks in advance for your help.
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• my concern is that I'm not presenting his situation realistically enough to begin with.
Well, you did ask, so you have yourself to blame for this. ;–} This is long, though, so I apologize in advance for being long winded. But I write mostly novels, so I can’t say good morning in less than ten thousand words.
I looked. Based on the first section the problem is that it can’t be real because you, as yourself, are talking
about the situation from a psychic distance. Instead of being with the character, and in his POV, the reader is listening to you talk about what you notice, not what he finds important. You’re explaining, but the reader should have him, not you, as their avatar.
Some quick examples:
• Into the metal had been etched a transmutation circle of monumental complexity.
That tells the reader little, given that they probably don’t know what a transmutation circle looks like, simple or complex. So you’re giving them a fact, but it’s a fact that creates no image. You see it in your mind, of course. You record what your impression of it is, in terms meaningful to you: a transmutation circle of monumental complexity. And when you read the words the image created, the words will recall the image. But for a reader there’s nothing to recall. So the image created the words, but the words can’t recreate that image, only point to it if it’s there.
In Asherian’s POV he’s not thinking about that complexity, or anything other than that lump of lead. His POV is very different from what you give the reader, which makes what you give a readert a report on the situation, not that situation in play.
Were that to continue, the reader would know history. They would know of events, and of situations, but they would never meet Acherian. They would only know OF him.
See the problem? Your character is focused on the task at hand, but you’re focused on the visual and the audible. He has a narrow focus, but you’re using a wide angle lens and your own POV.
In his world there’s a time pressure, and a worry that he may fail. The clock is running and will not stop for anything. In yours, you can stop the narrative and take a lunch break, should you care to, and nothing is lost because the characters wait. He’s using magic, but you’re talking about it.
So whose world sounds more interesting? Suppose I gave you the choice: you can either go with me and sit in a comfortable chair as I tell you about my friend Acherian, and what his week was like, or, you can slip into Acherian’s mind and experience what he does, as it happens. Which would you find more immediate? That’s the story to write.
Overall, your story looks interesting, but because there’s an external POV, it’s too much a big-picture telling, focusing on plot-points, and too much a recording of the words that might be used at the campfire. In the words of Peter Miller, “There are far too
many would-be works of fiction in which plot and character are not revealed, but explained.”
Look at your first line. It’s you explaining what would
happen if someone the reader doesn’t yet know fails an unknown kind of text. Sure we learn what you mean later, but that doesn’t help as the line is read. But the second sentence is real. The character is doing something as we watch. There’s where the story actually begins.
The third sentence has him focusing ever more tightly on his task, and works. True, we don’t know what the task is, but it doesn’t matter because the reader is focused on him and his emotional state. He’s being tested and he’s trying very hard to pass. He’s sincere and so far, admirable. At this point a reader is probably more interested in if he passes than what he’s being tested for. We recall tests we took and so feel empathy for him.
But then, on the fourth line, you, as yourself, stop the scene-clock, step on stage, and begin to talk ABOUT the situation that I had been experiencing. That’s jarring. In fact, you spend a lot more words on a lecture about the situation, setting and history than you spent on what was happening in the scene. So the focus of the story is the setting not the character.
And as you talk to the reader, the young man stops what he was doing and politely waits for you to cue him to begin moving again. Can that seem real?
But: do I really care that there are potions, staves, and raw materials around that have nothing to do with the scene in progress? Won’t the words Alchemist’s shop tell me as much? Do I care that a transmutation circle is necessary? You don’t describe it in terms that let me see it, so mention of it slows the narrative. And since he’s paying it no attention why do I care that it’s there?
See my point? You’re telling the reader the names of the things you can see in your mind, but you’re not giving the reader the thing you’re talking about.
But look at what happens if you get into his mind and tell the reader only what he’s noticing. If he doesn’t search the shelves for something they don’t exist. And that’s okay. Just knowing they’re there gives a reader nothing useful. But if he needs something on a shelf, he pays attention and I know it’s there. And I know that in terms of his need, not as part of an inventory of the shop. That shelf has meaning to him so it has that same meaning for me.
Visual media are inherently parallel. Were this a film we
would see him and the shop, and all that’s in it at once. So it’s useful to show the shop and then pan to him because it develops ambience. In a moment or two the reader knows they’re not in Kansas anymore, as they say. But the page is inherently serial, so we need to focus on what matters more than what’s there.
The page is really strong on internal landscape items, and
can show motivation and reaction far more easily than can film or stage techniques. For that reason, there are lots of specialized tricks and techniques that take the place of what’s lost in the transition from visual to print. It’s why the film story so often differs from the novel. What an actor does with subtle changes of expression, body language, and even eye movement, we do with words. And just as the actor works long and hard to master that bag of tricks a fiction writer has their own.
The above was a lot more then you expected, I’m sure, and certainly not news you were hoping to hear. But remember, I’m not talking about your writing talent or potential. I’m talking about tricks and tools. After all, there are people we call no talent hacks who make a good living. Wouldn’t knowing the tricks they know be handy?
There are lots of ways to acquire those tricks. One I always recommend is Dwight Swain’s, Techniques of the Selling Writer. It is, as far as I’m concerned, a university writng course between two covers. It’s the best book I’ve found for acquiring the tools and the knowledge of how to use them.
Hang in there, and keep on writing.
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