Scott Tracey's Blog, page 13

Short Fic – The Strange Bricks

There are a lot of life lessons that a boy can learn in high school.  Brennan learned how to squeeze himself until he fit comfortably in a locker, how to change after gym while tuning out all the insults, and the invisible paths to travel between classes to avoid the biggest and nastiest of his classmates.  He learned to stay off the radar.  In a town that boasted more runaways than graduates, it was important to keep both your nose and your head down.

There aren't a lot of things that locker-habitation prepares you for, but one night in late April, only six weeks from a summer's freedom, Brennan learned one.  The high school was old – like great-grandparent-on-an-oxygen tank old.  The south wing hadn't been used since the French and Indian War.   It was dangerous, the adults said.  People get hurt in old buildings.  So they shut it down, knowing deep down on some level that kids would be kids and invade it as often as possible.  The south wing had become a rite of passage – people snuck down there all the time.

Brennan really should have learned to wait out the basketball team jackholes with lockers on the third floor – because the south wing was exactly where he ended up.

He'd flown down the stairs, so intent on escape that he didn't realize he'd passed the ground floor and gone down to the sub-level.  But by then it was too late, and the sound of testosterone and catcalls was gaining on him.  So he continued to run, somehow ending up in the unlit tunnels that crossed over to the south wing.  Above him, no doubt, kids were laughing and sauntering across the quad heading for the parking lot.  Down below, he was running for his life.

Halls were taken at random, his lungs burning so bad he thought they might catch alight.  Left, then right.  Then left again.  He burrowed deeper and deeper into the bowels of the school.  But the sounds behind him stayed constant, and actually seemed to get louder in his wake.

And then the hallway came to an end.  There was only an open door.  Hesitant at first – he didn't want to be trapped like when he was in the lockers – he crept towards the entrance.  As shadows danced at the end of the hall, and hoots and hollers drowned out his throbbing heart, he snuck instead.

Into an empty room.  The walls were the same brick as the school, but it had been cleaned out completely.

He pushed at the door, which must have been solid steel straight off a battleship, because despite how hard he pushed, it barely moved.  His tennis shoes squeaked against the concrete floor, and he pushed, and pushed, and pushed some more.  Everything he had went into the door, until finally it started it move.  An inch at first, then a second.  Soon he was gaining more ground, but the catcalls in the hallway were getting louder.  They were almost here.

He looked for a lock on the door, something he could flip as soon as it was closed, but he didn't see anything.  Something about that was strange, he thought, some measure of the door bothered him on an instinctual level, but his panic was so severe that he just kept pushing.  There was no telling what they'd do to him if they found him.  Not down here.

Then the door finally closed, just as it seemed the boys were going to catch up with him.  There were distant thuds that he felt, with his cheek pressed against the cool metal of the door.  Someone had kicked it.  They were trying to push it back open even now, but the door wasn't moving.  Vaguely, Brennan remembered something clicking when the door had settled into his frame.

Insults came through the door, offensive words and homophobic slurs and calls to do things that were anatomically impossible.  And then eventually, finally, the words grew quieter, and he was alone.

He slunk down to the floor, his head resting against the door behind him.  Safe.  He was safe.  He'd managed to escape them.

He stayed like that for a little while, giving the other teens a chance to find their way back out of the tunnels.  Everything was going to be fine.  Brennan took the time to study the bricks – strange bricks that were so many different shades of purple and black.  They were old, crumbling things.  The room had been cleaned recently – that much was obvious, as there wasn't much dust on the floor.  But it was weird, because the room didn't have a purpose. It, like the rest of the building, had been abandoned.  Forgotten.

Then he looked closer.  Some of the bricks weren't black like he thought at first.  They were red bricks that had been stained darker.  The patterns were random, some spots darker than others.  It was only the one wall, too.  All the others had a uniform color and appearance.  But the wall of strange bricks, that was like some sort of art project.

It almost looks like blood spatter, Brennan thought to himself.  But how much blood would have had to hit the wall to make it so dark.  And why would they have left it like that.  It didn't make any sense.

Behind him, the door slid open slowly.  An inch at first.  Then a second.  Fingers appeared around the side.  A gleam of something like a knife.

Brennan cocked his head to the side.  Huh.

Skins and trends

So yesterday on the work front was full of awkwardness and stressy things, so I decided today was going to be a good writing day.  I was ONLY going to focus on the writing, and things were going to be fantastic.  And I even have friends stalking me to make sure I'm being productive.  Great plan, right?

Then I watched the US version of Skins, and it reminded me of something I hate.  Basically, the first episode of Skins US was about 90% identical to the original version of Skins from the UK.  Down to the shots they used and everything.  And I'm all for taking something as an inspiration, and making it your own.  But MAKE IT YOUR OWN.

I thought most of the episode was sub-par, to be honest, but you know who was the one bright spot?  The one character who was wholly original, and different from their UK counterpart.

It drives me crazy sometimes when I hear or see people who talk about how SUCH AND SUCH novel got published, so they're going to write a novel about INSERT TREND OF THE MOMENT HERE.  There's a reason those books don't usually go anywhere.  Because they're not an homage or an interpretation of the source, they're a bad copy.

If you're going to write a vampire novel, find your own point of view.  If you're going to do a novel about angels, again, find something you can grab onto.

And speaking of angels, you should go to Twitter and congratulate Courtney Allison Moulton (@camoulton) on her PW review – I'm pretty sure if PW tells you you're going to hell, you've officially made it as a writer.

And yeah, I have to go before I get yelled at.

Cruel Mondays

Thursday, while I was out to lunch and having a grand old time, my sister sends me a text message.

Tell me u own Cruel Intentions?  Please ??????

Why yes, yes I do.  I refrained from calling her an idiot for not knowing this already (because honestly, aside from The Craft, it's one of the first movies you should suspect I own).

I need to borrow it.  It's for school.

Yes, my sister has to watch Cruel Intentions FOR SCHOOL.  And she has to write a report about how the characters interact with each other.  FOR CREDIT.

Suddenly, my glamorous life of writerly uniforms (sweat pants and tee shirts) and White Collar marathons (new season starts tomorrow!) is suddenly…not as shiny.  Because my sister is taking a class where she has to watch Cruel Intentions.  I mean, what's next?

Tumblr 151:  Reblogging Glee screencaps for beginners

Advanced Buffy the Vampire Slayer: A Psychological Study

Procrastination for Writers (weekly lab class)

My jealousy rages.

In other news, thanks to everyone who left a comment or sent in a query for last week's blog posts.  And the YA Rebels return this week, so be sure to check those out!

Query Review: Change is Everything

Seventeen-year-old Brook Lynn Bridge can't accustom to the newfound changes made to her used-be-normal life. In some ways, it was kind of expected.  (Why?) With a name like hers (how does this suggest an expected change in her life?) and the fact that she has the power to do anything (under the condition she writes it down), a gift that is both a blessing and a curse (why is it a curse?), meant things would eventually change. Whether or not she wanted it to be.

And she would never have expected change to start with a school field trip. (So how does it?) But now, her friends know who she really is and an annoying voice is inside her head. Life isn't so peachy for her.  (How do the two former items relate to life not being peachy?) But apparently, that's just the beginning. Once she discovers that some people have the ability to control her power against her will, it isn't pretty. Especially since those people aren't exactly 'nice' material.

Now, she must learn to adjust to those changes while fighting to save her humanity and those she cares about. Or there will be an unforgiveable price to pay.

CHANGE IS EVERYTHING is a 54k YA Fantasy Novel.

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My thoughts:

This is a good start, but I think you've got some work ahead of you.  First we need to really understand Brook Lynn – it seems like the only thing we really know is that she's named after the bridge (and you miss out on an opportunity to show some characterization by telling us WHY she's given that name), and that she has this power which doesn't SOUND awful, but she apparently thinks it is.  So we need to have some idea about who Brook is as a character, something that tells us WHY we should care about this character.

Second, we need to understand her power a little bit better.  Does it have a name?  A history?  Why is it a curse?  Why does her name and this power mean that things will change?  You've got the opportunity to show instead of tell, and it's definitely something you need here, I think.  At least a concrete example or two.

The field trip seems to be the inciting episode for the changes that you're talking about, but we don't know anything more than 'there's a field trip.'  Give us some idea of what happens that spurs the rest of the book into action.

Finally, I don't know much about the threat other than that the people who can control her ability 'aren't exactly nice.'  What's that mean?  Again, you have the opportunity to give us examples, and tell us a little bit about the conflict that is actually arising in the book.

All in all, I would go back and example the elements of the query, and iron out exactly how each plays into the book.  It's a good start, and you've got a lot of room to tweak and hone your query and the information you're giving.  The goal is to give the agents reading enough information that they want to know more, without weighting the query down with too much.

Good luck!

 

 

 

 

Query Review: Being Human

Tommy doesn't remember being human, that life forgotten the night he became a vampire. Now his life revolves around one thing: Survival.

And his twin brother…

And maybe the friend he made…

And his family is pretty important as well.

Maybe life isn't as simple as Tommy thought. Vampire Forces – a special branch of police assigned to turn every vampire to ash – hunts him at every turn, trying to turn the hunter into the prey. That doesn't keep him from his brother, perching out his window every night to hear about the human he used to be. When he follows his brother to college, he learns what friendship means and the lengths a human will go to to get what she wants. Life takes on a brighter and darker new meaning when he discovers family and a very human monster that takes children. Family continues to grow and expand as he discovers there's more to love than blood and the girl he rescued all those years ago needs him more than ever.

Tommy just wants to survive and he knows what he needs to do. But with the number of humans that mean more than a meal growing, he'll learn how willing he is to put his own survival at risk. He'll discover being human means more than being a human.

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My thoughts:

Two things.   The first is that outside of Tommy being a vampire, and being attached to people, I don't know that much about him.  Tell me HOW he became different as a vampire, what vampires are normally like. Make me understand what vampires are normally like, and why Tommy is different.  That way, when you tell us about the plot, we'll understand why we should care.

You've got an interesting idea with the Vampire Forces, but it's very casually mentioned.  And then again with the human monster taking children.  Two very big threats, and they're not dominant parts of the query.  The conflict over not eating his family is not the main conflict of your book – it sounds like it's those external forces, so that's where I'd focus my attention.

Good luck!

Eerie Query Review: Crewel

What wouldn't a girl give to attend the most lavish parties, wear fabulous clothes, and have the power to manipulate life and death?  In the future, Spinsters have the ability to weave Time and Matter to create a perfect reality, the Arras, outside the crumbling ruins of Earth.

Adelice has been raised to deny her gift, (why deny this gift, if it's everything you're saying in the first paragraph?) but when her talent is discovered at the annual testing, she is thrust into a life of privilege, danger, and intrigue where beneath every polished surface lies the sinister truth that perfection comes with a price.  You're telling us about the danger – show us some examples.  HOW is it dangerous?  What does it mean that perfection comes with a price? Torn from her family, she must choose whether to take her place in this world or commit dangerous treason.  As she begins to understand her role in the Arras, she must discover who she can trust, because when you are beautiful, young and powerful, its hard to separate friends, lovers, and enemies.

CREWEL is a fast paced, coming-of-age dystopian novel where femme fatales battle gun-slinging frontiersmen in a futuristic alternate reality.  It is complete at 70,000 words.

I hold a Masters in English from the University of Missouri.

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My thoughts:

This is one of those examples where I think more is actually less.  I think you need to spend a few more lines explaining the nature of the world.  One of the most interesting lines of the query is at the end – and we don't see that in the actual description of the novel.  "Femme fatales battle gun-slinging frontiersmen."  Win.  Give us more of that all the way through.  We need to understand enough to know what Spinsters actually are, what the Arras is exactly, and how gun-slinging frontiersmen play into the overall picture.

What is the link between attending lavish parties and wielding power over life and death?  What does it mean to have the ability to weave Time and Matter?  What is the Arras exactly?  Is it a separate reality?  Is it an Eden in the desert? We need enough information that we can follow where you're going with the query, to set the stage for Adelice's story.

Also, we need to know at least a thing or two about Adelice herself.  What is her journey throughout the book, aside from being thrust into this world of privilege and dangerous intrigue?

I'm definitely interested to see where you go with this – the concept sounds like it could be absolutely fantastic.  Side note, I absolutely love the title, I didn't want to forget to mention that.

Query Review: Please Don't Tell

Sixteen-year old, Sophie Gerrard only had eyes for one guy, Peter Watson. She had planned to use their families' yearly vacation to the Caribbean to tell him how she felt. But when he arrives from London with a girlfriend and his cousin, Ethan Chapman, her plans quickly change. I would just do some tweaking in here, to try and tighten up. She planned to tell him how she felt during their families' yearly vacation to the Caribbean.  But when Peter arrives from London with a girlfriend and his British cousin Ethan, her plans quickly change."  Also, maybe include some mention about how her feelings were secret?  Since the theme of secrets seems to run through the novel, you might want to start us off understanding that Sophie keeps things close to the vest.

Disgusted by how this vacation has turned out, she agrees to go island hopping with Ethan, in order to keep clear of Peter and his newfound love. You've got an opening here for a line describing Peter and his girlfriend from Sophie's POV – basically, an opportunity to show some more of your voice.  Just something to consider. However, when their dingy capsizes, Sophie and Ethan are forced to swim to a desolate island. Hours at the mall Sophie could handle, hours baking in the sun is a whole other ball game. (I think this is one of my favorite lines in the query.) And it's not like she planned to spill her secrets-but insanity sets in. In the few hours it takes for help to arrive, Sophie ends up spilling all her secrets to Ethan-including the fact that she likes her Sunday through Monday undies and how she kissed her best friend's boyfriend.  I'm a boy, so I'm not exactly sure about the Sunday through Monday undies bit (but it makes me think her undies are labeled with the day of the week on them, which seems potentially awkward).  This part right here becomes the focus of your book – it's the incident that pushes everything else forward.  Can you raise the stakes a bit more – we need to know that the information Ethan has is VERY detrimental to her life.  Can you tie it into his later interest in her arch-enemy?  Or the other people in her life?

Once saved, she tries to forget about all the things she revealed. After all, it's not like she'll ever see the Londoner again, right? Except that Sophie's mom decides Ethan should stay with them while he does a student exchange programa a semester abroad. While Sophie ordinarily wouldn't normally object to a handsome foreigner living in the room down the hall, this one knows all her most embarrassing secrets.  she just wants the next six months to go by fast, before he blurts out all her embarrassing secrets. To make matters worse, she starts to fall for him, but he's only interested in her arch-enemy. Does he know anything about the arch-enemy?  I might reword this to something like "By the time she realizes she's falling for him, he's moved on to her arch-enemy." Knowing that Ethan can ruin her junior year with one slip, she becomes obsessed with one thought: Please Don't Tell!

I am seeking representation for my YA Romance, Please Don't Tell, which is complete at 55,000 words. I am an active member of the YALITCHAT community.
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Initial thoughts:

I like the tone in this query.  It's fun and slightly tongue in cheek.  I think you've got everything you need already there in the query, it's just about paring it down a little bit and playing a little bit with word choice.  I read this aloud a couple of times, and there were a couple parts that I kept stumbling over.   So just try reading them over a few times, and see how it sounds.

I think you just need some tweaking and a little more clarity, and this will be a very solid query.

The Bookanistas: Clarity by Kim Harrington

Goodreads Summary: Clarity "Clare" Fern sees things. Things no one else can see. Things like stolen kisses and long-buried secrets. All she has to do is touch a certain object, and the visions come to her. It's a gift.

And a curse.

When a teenage girl is found murdered, Clare's ex-boyfriend wants her to help solve the case–but Clare is still furious at the cheating jerk. Then Clare's brother–who has supernatural gifts of his own–becomes the prime suspect, and Clare can no longer look away. Teaming up with Gabriel, the smoldering son of the new detective, Clare must venture into the depths of fear, revenge, and lust in order to track the killer. But will her sight fail her just when she needs it most?

Why I liked it:

Here's the thing.  I'm a sucker for a good mystery.  I'm a sucker for Veronica Mars.  And I'm definitely a sucker for powers that are also curses.  Clarity is a fascinating blend of all three.   There were enough twists and turns in this to keep you guessing, which is also a major plus.  I hate when you start reading a mystery and right away you know who the bad guy is.

The characters are interesting, and some of them are really 'characters' – the kind you'd picture working in a tourist town.  Clarity was a fun narrator, as she tried to figure out what was really going on in town.

Clarity comes out on March 1st.

Elana Johnson and LiLa Roecker celebrate the release of Across the Universe with giveaways
Christine Fonseca gets lost in Nightshade
Shannon Messenger raves about Like Mandarin with an ARC Giveaway
Jamie Harrington thinks the outlook is good for The Secret Society of the Pink Crystal Ball
Shelli Johannes-Wells celebrates Harcourt winners
Michelle Hodkin, Carolina Valdez Miller and Shana Silver travel Across the Universe
Myra McEntire is In The Fort with Beth Revis
Megan Miranda falls head over heels for Fall For Anything
Bethany Wiggins is living for Three Quarters Dead
Jen Hayley worships Unearthly
Carrie Harris flips for Hold Me Closer, Necromancer
Kirsten Hubbard goes crazy for Delirium

Eerie Query Week: Structure

So the other day I talked about how you have to write a normal, textbook query before you can play with the rules and make it stand out.  And I didn't really talk about the structure itself.

The typical structure of a query that I've seen people try to pass along is:

An introduction/premise/hook

Paragraph describing the main character

Paragraph investigating the plot/showing what's at stake

Paragraph about the author

I talked a little bit about hooks and pitches yesterday, so today I thought I'd talk about format.

The point of describing the main character, and the main character's life is simple.  You have 4 sentences to make me care about this person and understand who they are.  So who are they?  Why is their story so important?  What makes them interesting?

The point of describing the plot is because….duh, it's what your book is about.  You've got 4 sentences to show me the direction of the book, how things are going to escalate, what's at stake, or what our main character will suffer/lose if he/she fails.

This seems like a lot, right?  That's why it's so important to master a basic query first.  Once you can nail down these kinds of elements, you can play with your structure.  An amazing example of structure was on the Query Shark blog recently.  You should go check it out.  If I was an agent?  I would have requested that full immediately, and sat by the computer refreshing my email until it arrived.  That's the best compliment you can get for a query.

Okay, so let's talk about the structure itself.  The 4 part query (intro, character, plot, personal) has a lot of good and bad to it.  The good is that if you pay attention to what you're doing, and don't go overboard, you're going to keep your query to a page or less.  You're also going to have an order that agents recognize, and it's going to force you to keep it structured.  This prevents you from rambling, or getting off topic.

If your book fits the standard query method, you're golden.  But what about books that don't?  With Witch Eyes, I stuck pretty closely to this, but with Moonset, I had to approach things differently.  This is why it's bad sometimes, too.  Bad also makes it harder to win over an agent with voice (the Query Shark example above avoids the usual methods, as well).

Moonset had a very specific, very important back story.  If I hadn't explained it in the query, the plot would not have made as much sense.  So I devoted one paragraph to describing the world and history of Moonset, specifically the key events that set into motion the book's plot, and then a paragraph about the characters and the struggles that they face.

Sometimes you have to break the rules like this.  It's like if you write a post-apocalyptic, the novel isn't ABOUT the apocalypse, but it's important to explain that there WAS an apocalypse.  You want the query to be as easy to understand as possible – sometimes, that means explaining a bit more.  It's always a struggle to give enough backstory to clarify your novel, without going overboard.

But one of the key things is that you have to know WHEN to break the rules.  So write the query the normal way, first.  Now send it to a friend.  Does it work?  Do they have questions?  One mistake people make (that I see) is that people demand too much from the query.  They'll critique it and list 5 things you don't explain enough.  The query is not a synopsis, so you have to be frugal with the information you're giving.

Again, it's a balancing act.  Between what the reader needs to know, and what they want to know.  Because the goal is to get them to want to know more, but all their questions shouldn't be answered by reading your query.

Now, onto the paragraph about you.  When I critique things, I don't usually touch these paragraphs unless there's something that's a serious no no.  "My dog loved my first draft" or "The people on the subway didn't hate it."  I'm a fan of "If you don't have something important to say, then skip it."  With my first book, I didn't talk about myself at all.  There was nothing to say.  With the second, I tied all that up in my intro, when I had to explain that I had 2 books already coming out, and I was looking for new representation.  Again, not much detail.

So some people put in that they're members of SCWBI or that they have Masters in certain things.  If it relates to what you're doing, then totally put it in.  My feeling is that it can't hurt.  No one line (unless it's truly, truly inappropriate) is going to make an agent reject your query because you included it.  And if it does?  That agent probably wasn't right for you anyway.

So those are my thoughts on query structure.  I'll post the first query review sometime later this afternoon, so be on the lookout for that.

Eerie Query Week – Thoughts on Pitch and Voice

People tell you that pitching your novel is one of the most important skills you can have.  I mean, I've seen an editor ask someone what their book was about in conversation, and the person not having an immediate response.

Why is it important?  Because you might only have 5 or 10 seconds to get someone's attention, or 140 characters to peak their interest.  And sometimes, boiling a pitch down to something short and appetizing can do you a lot of good in the long run. You want to give them a morsel – something they can bite down on, not just something the sounds like a bunch of hype.  Ack.  I'm sorry for the food metaphor, because now I'm hungry.

For example, there was a book deal that went up on PM a few weeks ago.  The description of the book (which was no more than a few sentences) was so fascinating that I literally stopped what I was doing, and walked all the way across the house to bother Leah and recite what I'd read.  Only, by that time I'd forgotten what I read, so I had to go alllll the way back upstairs to read it again.

What was the concept?  Essentially, it was post-apocalyptic fairy tales.  Only the description took it a step further, making the heroines (like Cinderella, Snow White) real heroines, essentially saving the world and hunting down their happily ever after.  How cool is that?

But truth be told?  They had me at post-apocalyptic fairy tale.

When I tell people about Witch Eyes, I have my pitch down cold.  It's a dark, modern Romeo and Juliet with witches.  And a gay romance.  End.  It's not the tightest or most fascinating description out there, but anyone who hears it knows pretty much exactly what to expect from my novel.

So how does the pitch relate to your query?  Because one helps influence the other.  Your pitch should be close to if not the exact sentence that tells the reader what your book is about.

Pretend you're in English class: What's the topic sentence of your book.  Mine would be something along the lines of "A boy, cursed with a powerful yet deadly magical ability, is  caught in the middle of a feud between two rival witch dynasties."  If you were talking about City of Bones, your topic might be, "A New York city teenager struggles to find her place when she get's caught up the world of the supernatural underground: a world only she can."  Figure this out, and boil your book down to it's basest component.  What's the struggle?  What's on the line?  Once you've got that, you can jazz it up and paint some sparkles on.

What would the cover copy read? Everyone reads those blurbs on the jacket of a book – the summary that's simply there to whet your appetite and make you want to buy the book in hardcover, paperback, e-book, and audio.  Imagine you're writing the cover copy for your novel.  How would it sound?  Now boil that down to a sentence or two that's going to tell a reader what your book's about.

Don't tie yourself down. There's a difference between comparing yourself to a specific type of work (like Romeo and Juliet) and comparing yourself directly to the market you're trying to join.  When I make comparisons, I tend to go for movies or TV shows, because those are not directly related to what I'm surrounded by.  If I'm doing a heist book, am I going to get more mileage out of comparing myself to Ocean's Eleven?  Or Heist Society, by Ally Carter.  Probably the former.  You don't want someone holding your book up to a book that's already been done, or comparing your polished draft to a book that's gone through editorial and is nearly perfect.

And last but not least, look at all the resources around you. There are books everywhere.  If you have a PM subscription, see how they summarize projects that have just sold.  Heck, even watch commercials for movies and see how they introduce their premise.  Read queries, especially if it's an author whose books are already out.  Look at how their query described the book.  Then look at the book's description and flap copy.

The goal is to make your concept as relate-able and as interesting as possible.  To get and hold someone's interest.  And hopefully make them keep thinking about your project for a long time to come.

Remember, if you want me to critique your query (and maybe some of my friends will point out that I helped them out in the comments) then email it to me at scottshouldbewriting at gmail dot com. And if you don't want me using your real name, let me know in the email.  Any and all queries sent to me will get critiqued and posted on the blog this week, so look out for that.

If you have any questions you want me to answer, or you want me to blog about something specific, leave me a comment!