Month: December 2024

A Last Minute Win

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Beth Kander has an article on Writers Digest website dated 12 December 2024, about how she entered a writing contest at the last minute an won more than the contest!

Beth Kander

Beth Kander is a novelist and playwright with tangled roots in the Midwest and Deep South. The granddaughter of immigrants, her writing explores how worlds old and new intertwine—or collide. Her work has been described as “riveting,” “emotional,” “expertly crafted,” and “habit-forming.” Expect twists, turns, and secrets, with surprising heart and humor. Beth has too many degrees and drinks too much coffee. Her favorite characters are her dashing husband and their two lovely kids.

She says, “This book definitely has a non-traditional origin. I was knee deep in another project when a friend texted to let me know that the pop culture site Hey Alma was having a Hanukkah movie pitch competition. Eager to procrastinate on my existing project, I checked the pitch competition deadline—and found out it was the very next day. Long story short (literally), I threw together a pitch for I Made It Out Of Clay, a quirky romcom-with-a-golem concept, submitted it at the 11th hour, and ultimately won the competition.

Industry folks started reaching out to me to inquire about film rights. My literary agent, Alli, passed along some great advice from a film agent colleague: “Write the book first, not the movie.” So, I set aside my other book projects and prioritized writing this novel. The story immediately provided myriad unconventional opportunities to explore big topics: grief and family dynamics and identity and adult friendships and turning 40 … I got to write about these heavy things while laughing and making monsters. What a gift.

I won the pitch competition in December 2022. I was so inspired, I drafted the novel in two blurry months. My agent took it out on sub in February 2023. It sold at auction in March 2023, and publication was set for December 2024. So all told, a two-year-process from idea to publication. That’s fast—often, the writing alone can take longer than that! I’m grateful that although the acquisition happened fast, I had a great editor and plenty of time to revise the book, several times over. I loved spending the time really developing the story and connecting with each character.

I’ve learned so much in the process of publishing this book that it’s honestly hard to even know where to begin, and there have been plenty of surprises along the way. But if I had to pull out the biggest lesson, it’s this: You just never know.

You can spend years working on a story you really believe in, only to have it languish and eventually fade away. You can have an overnight idea that becomes the story everyone’s eager to read. You can’t trust trends or tricks. You just have to keep trying. I think a lot about this two-panel meme, where the first panel is labeled “what people think success looks like” and shows an arrow moving steadily forward and up, and the second panel is labeled “what success actually looks like” and it shows a tangled mess that a forward-facing arrow finally re-emerges from… which feels relevant to the publishing process. But I’ve been over-the-top lucky to work with my agent, Alli, to navigate every detour along the way. And working on I Made It Out Of Clay with my editor, April, and the team at Mira/HarperCollins, has been a delight. Sometimes, gracefully and gratefully, the puzzle pieces slide into place.

You just never know.

This was the fastest writing process I’ve ever undertaken. To go from a paragraph-long idea to a 90,000-word novel in two months is… well, not something I’d necessarily recommend, honestly. Thank God for coffee.

But what I realized is that I didn’t speed-write this book in a vacuum; it wasn’t an anomaly, or a fluke. It was a culmination. All those years, all those other stories; that was my training for this manuscript-marathon. I doubt I’ll keep that pace up with many subsequent projects, but I’m definitely holding fast to the lesson that even the projects that don’t pan out help shape the ones that will fly.

There’s so much I hope that readers will get out of this book—catharsis, cackling-laughter, genuine enjoyment, a sense of release. There’s some strange stuff in the story (an actual monster!) but it’s really rooted in characters that I hope are relatable in all their imperfections and deep desires for something better. Most of all, I hope this book gives readers permission to laugh in the midst of sorrow or acknowledge sadness even as they dance for joy; to let complicated, conflicting emotions exist alongside each other on the page and in our lives. The publication of this book intersected with a profound loss in my own life, and I’ve become so grateful for anyone and anything that acknowledges that we can feel many things at once. If readers come away with that affirmation, I’ll be thrilled.

Write the book you want to rewrite—because most of writing is revising! Don’t agonize over every word in a first draft; that will only slow you down. Just write the story. Get it onto the page. Drafting is the stage where you capture the idea. Revising is where you figure out how to really tell the story well.”

Great Beginings

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On the Writers Digest website, September 2, 2024, Abigail Owen has some excellent ideas on how to begin a story in a way that captures the reader’s attention.

Abigail Owen

Abigail Owen is an award-winning author who writes NA/YA romantasy and paranormal romance. She is obsessed with big worlds, fast plots, couples that spark, a dash of snark, and oodles of HEAs! Other titles include: wife, mother, Star Wars geek, ex–competitive skydiver, AuDHD, spreadsheet lover, Jeopardy! fanatic, organizational guru, true classic movie buff, linguaphile, wishful world traveler, and chocoholic. Abigail currently resides in Austin, Texas, with her own swoon-worthy hero, their (mostly) angelic teenagers, and two adorable fur babies. 

She says: “Let’s be honest, in this social-media-driven world where our collective attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, grabbing a reader’s attention is getting harder. Or maybe, it’s more like not losing their attention is getting harder. 

Without a beginning that hooks them right away, they might not read the rest. So, if we’re all agreed that beginnings are very important, the next natural question is how to make beginnings great.

Twelve years, 50 books, and countless workshops and craft lessons in, I’ve gathered a list of tips over time that I hope you’ll find useful. Here are my top 4 tips for writing great beginnings.

TIP #1: FIGURE OUT WHERE TO START

Figuring out where to start a book is sometimes the hardest part. Starting too soon in the story you’re confusing the reader and not ground them. Starting too late and you’re giving large info dumps and backstory. Your opening scene is perhaps your most important, so let’s look at a few ways to approach it.

Show the “Before Picture”

Open with where the character/world is starting from but be deliberate about the snapshot you are showing. What does this moment say about the character or world they are in? Why does the reader care? What impact does this moment have on the character, the conflict, or the inciting incident? How will it be different from the “end picture”?

Make the “Before Picture” Not Boring

The reader isn’t going to care about a random character sitting around having coffee with their best friend. Not yet. So try one of these tricks to up the interest level:

  • Surprise the Reader: Do start with what looks to be a boring, day-in-the life moment, and then surprise the reader with unusual dialogue or characterization.
  • The Best Day Ever: The character is having a great day. Show the reader what the character is about to lose with the inciting incident, so it makes that moment more emotionally impactful.
  • A Very Bad Day: The character is having an “everything that can go wrong does” kind of day. Bonus: Make the worst day count by having it feed into the inciting incident in some way.
  • Drop Into Action: I’m not saying start with a battle, unless it works for the genre or story (look at every Mission Impossible movie ever). But give the character action. They aren’t just sitting and talking or thinking.

TIP #2: CONNECT TO THE MAIN CHARACTER

Many readers will put a book down if they don’t like the main character immediately. Even if your character is going to start from an unlikable place and grow, readers aren’t patient enough to read that far. Some things to try include:

Give the MC a Compelling Voice

Give your character a voice right off the bat. Show their personality through action, through dialogue, through short bursts of internal monologue, and through reaction.

Create Complex Motivation

Motivations, such as love, power, revenge, or self-discovery should be strong enough to drive the MC to action. Even better if their motivation conflicts directly with their own personal desires or needs or is tied to their conflict or to the inciting incident.

Give Them a Fatal Flaw

If a character is perfect, they have nowhere to grow. Also, perfect tends to stir up feelings of resentment in readers, rather than interest. Give the MC a relatable flaw which you can then tie to their character arc and even to the conflict.

Make Them Sympathetic

Give the reader a reason to take the character’s side. For example, we are naturally more sympathetic to a person who gets knocked down, and even more when they get back up.

“Save the Cat”

The well-known Blake Snyder technique. Give the character an action that shows them doing something “nice.” If they show even one tiny moment of empathy, kindness, thoughtfulness, or even astuteness, they immediately become more relatable and likable.

Show What They Love Most / What They Might Lose

Show the character with the person or doing the thing they love most. Even better, make it the thing they could lose when the inciting incident hits.

TIP #3: MAKE THE SCENES DYNAMIC

The biggest mistake I see in beginnings is paragraphs or pages of the same thing. Just internal monologue, or just exposition, or even just action, which can be disorienting. Even worse if all that same doesn’t drive the story forward. Here are a few ways to make sure you are keeping your writing as dynamic as your plot and characters:

Focus Beyond the First Line

A first line can be used to shock, to draw in, to set tone, to establish a compelling voice, and more. But often writers end up focusing so much on the first line, what comes after isn’t as good. Fine tune the entire beginning first, then go back and create that amazing first line.

Limited & Purposeful Backstory

James Scott Bell, gives this tip: Highlight any lines about the backstory a bright color. This will give you a visual clue where you’re spending too much time on it. Then whittle. Decide what’s most important for the reader to know right then to either ground them in the story so they aren’t lost, or to move the story forward. Trim the rest.

Every Scene Gets More Than One Purpose

Every scene should have a purpose that drives the story forward—establishing character, plot, conflict, tone, theme, setting, and so forth. But it’s even better if there’s more than one purpose to a given scene. Add layers of purpose!

Mix Up Your Narrative Modes

Use a quick hitting mix of exposition, description, internal reflection, internal monologue, dialogue, and action. Think of it as a playing a piano. If you hit the same note over and over, listeners will tune you out quickly. The goal is to play lots of different notes in a way that makes music.

TIP #4: MAKE THE INCITING INCIDENT HURT

This tip I got from a fantastic Pandemonium on Beginnings. The inciting incident is the moment that the character has the tables flipped on them, their world turns upside down, they are given an impossible decision, or what they love most is ripped away. It’s what sets that character on their journey and starts the conflict. Already this is an important moment. But you can punch it up by taking advantage of all the ways it impacts the MC.

Make It the Worst Possible Thing

By now you’ve established who your character is and what’s important to them. If the inciting incident can be the worst possible thing to happen, based on that characterization, it will hurt more.

Changes to Future, World, and Sense of Self

That fatal flaw you established earlier, was it involved? Does the inciting incident directly impact who they see themselves to be? What about their motivations or their internal conflict? Does it tie to their backstory? What is going to change about all those things?

Add Insult to Injury

Now make it worse. Find a way to add insult to injury and rub salt in that wound. What if the inciting incident is their fault? Or it’s served up by their worst enemy? Or it takes away the thing they care about the most?

If you didn’t know before, now you know that I’m a fan of lists. LOL. I hope a few of those were good arrows to add to your arsenal as a quiver. Now go out there and write your own great beginnings!”

English Literature Is Making a Comeback

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There is an article in today’s Telegraph by Ben Wright, which argues that AI is making a degree in humanities more valuable than ever.

Ben Wright

Ben Wright is a columnist and associate editor for The Telegraph. He was previously business editor and before joining the Telegraph was City correspondent at the Wall Street Journal and editor of Financial News.

Ben said, “Some might call it a tragedy. The number of students taking English literature at A-level dropped from 83,000 in 2013 to 54,000 last year. The number applying to study the subject at university dropped by a third over a similar period. Some pessimists believe the English literature degree could die out within a decade if the subject doesn’t make a better case for itself.

It’s not hard to understand why. For years now, we’ve been telling students to focus on Stem (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects in the belief that a strong knowledge in these areas was the key to gaining entry to a whole range of industries. When you work in the money markets (or law courts, or Silicon Valley), what use are the novels of Wordsworth gonna be, eh?

That’s not complete nonsense but now the pendulum is in danger of swinging too far. And I’m not just saying that as one of the dwindling tribe of English literature graduates huddled together for warmth under the shrinking shelter and capricious protection of the media and publishing industries. Many employers, including those at the very cutting edge of tech, are coming to the same conclusion.

Strangely, a chronic problem has become acute with the advent of artificial intelligence. Andrej Karpathy, one of the founding members of OpenAI, caused a bit of flutter earlier this year when he tweeted: “The hottest new programming language is English.” What he meant is that increasingly you don’t need to be able to code to code.

A friend of mine who works in the tech industry points out that the deep learning algorithms and transformer models created by the likes of Google, Meta, and OpenAI among others in the past few years didn’t create Large Number Models; they created Large Language Models (LLMs).

Anyone can therefore write prompts for ChatGPT and their ilk. “Natural” language is therefore becoming the “user interface” for artificial intelligence. (That sentence alone illustrates why Silicon Valley might need some help with the transition.)

As my friend put it: the invention of the iPhone put a supercomputer in everyone’s pocket, but LLMs give all of us the ability to program it. In many ways this is great news. It means that technology is becoming more democratised and accessible. It opens up a host of opportunities for those who are skilled in the use of language. The problem is, that’s not many recent graduates.

Anjney Midha, who is on the board of several AI companies, says he often sees very bright Gen Z kids struggling to write clear prompts because they mostly communicate through broken or pidgin English: “Translating thought to language is insanely hard for them.”

Ethan Mollick, a professor studying AI at Wharton business school at the University of Pennsylvania, says this means that – in an inversion of the old order of things – experienced managers are becoming better coders than bright young things fresh out of university.

Nor is the problem confined to the world of tech. Universities are finding that many students arrive having never read a whole book from cover to cover. This is leading to a massive deficit in old-fashioned skills that turn out not to be so old-fashioned after all.

For the past few years, Kingston University has been asking businesses what skills they need but currently aren’t finding in potential employees. Top of the list are the ability to communicate, analyse, adapt, problem-solve and think creatively.

What’s more, it turns out that computers can learn to code far quicker than humans can. They can easily be taught how to ace exams in maths and science. But even the most sophisticated generative AI struggles with English literature papers. There’s a clue here.

In a recent interview about AI, the mathematician Terence Tao said: “I think at the frontier, we will always need humans and AI. They have complementary strengths.” So, contrary to the prevailing doom-mongering about the relentless rise of AI being about to damn the humanities to perpetual irrelevance, might the very opposite be true?

With such a large supply and demand mismatch, you’d assume the market will eventually correct itself, but perhaps things can be helped on their way. Colin Hughes, the head of the country’s largest exam board AQA, argued the GCSE English language needed to be rethought because it was “not very inspiring” and “a bit too mechanistic”.

One obvious way to update the syllabus would be to teach the writing of clear, succinct and unambiguous prompts for artificial intelligence chatbots. English literature could also be made more relevant.

That is not – repeat, not – about bemoaning the canon for being too “male, pale and stale”, as Sharon Hague, the managing director of Pearson, recently did. Nor should we point the finger at “wokeness” for killing off the English degree.

Such tensions have always existed in the discipline. So academics can continue with their squabbles about which voices are most marginalised, but only after pointing out that studying literature is a crash course in empathy, that almost all careers require an element of storytelling and that the only way to learn how to write well is to read lots.

Anyone can therefore write prompts for ChatGPT and their ilk. “Natural” language is therefore becoming the “user interface” for artificial intelligence. (That sentence alone illustrates why Silicon Valley might need some help with the transition.)

Harold Bloom argued that deep reading fostered higher order thinking. An education in the humanities or the liberal arts also makes students more adept at dealing with nuance and expressing opinions based on value judgments. These are useful skills for dealing with an unpredictable future and a world composed of various shades of grey.

None of this is going to result in an immediate stampede of people signing up to study English literature at university. You don’t need to understand Chaucer to write clear AI prompts. What’s more, you shouldn’t really need any better argument for studying great art other than for its own sake.

But if reading whole books and writing essays is no longer a given, then those who can will have an edge over their peers. And if more students can be persuaded that’s a good way to become more employable, a reasonable proportion of them will go on to study English literature at A-level and a reasonable proportion of them will go on to do so at university.

It’s only common sense that if you are worried about the rise of machines and robots stealing our jobs, it’s better to lean into the stuff that AI finds trickier to do. The not-so-secret ingredient is right there on the packaging; they’re called humanities for a reason.”