Gabe Cole Novoa's Blog, page 65

Fixing the First Page Giveaway #9

Photo credit: sarah_browning on FlickrThe end of March is approaching which means it's time for the next Fixing the First Page post! Woot!

For those who’ve missed it in the past, the Fixing the First Page features is a public first 250 word critique. Using the lovely rafflecopter widget, anyone interested in winning a PUBLIC (as in, featured in a post on this blog) first page critique can enter.
For an example of what this critique will look like, here's the last Fixing the First Page post.
Rules!
ONLY the first 250 words will be critiqued (up to finishing the sentence). If you win and send me more, I will crop it myself. No exceptions.
ONLY the first page. I don’t want 250 random words from your manuscript, or from chapter 3. If you win the critique and send me anything other than the first 250 words of your manuscript, I will choose someone else.
I will actually critique it. Here. On the blog. I will say things as nicely as I can, but I do tend to be a little blunt. If you’re not sure you can handle a public critique, then you may want to take some time to think about it before you enter.
Genre restrictions. I'm most experienced with YA & NA, but I will still accept MG and Adult. HOWEVER. If your first page has any erotic content on it, I ask that you don’t enter. I want to be able to post the critique and the first 250 in its entirety without making anyone uncomfortable, and if you win and you enter a page with erotic content, I will choose someone else.
You must have your first page ready. Should you win, you need to be able to submit your first page within 48 hours of my contacting you to let you know you won. If 48 hours pass and I haven’t heard from you, again, I will choose someone else.
You’ll get the most out of this if it isn’t a first draft. Obviously, I have no way of knowing if you’re handing me a first draft (though I will probably suspect because it’s usually not that difficult to tell). I won’t refuse your page if it’s a first draft, but you should know that this critique will likely be of more use if you’ve already had your betas/CPs look over it. Why? Because if you don’t, the critique I give you will probably contain a lot of notes that your betas & CPs could have/would have told you.
There will not be a round 2 (unless you win again in a future contest). I hate to have to say this, but if you win a critique, it’s NOT an invitation to send me a bunch of your revisions. I wish I had the time available to be able to look at revisions, but sadly, I don’t. If you try to break this rule, I will nicely say no, and also remember to choose someone else should you win a second contest. Which would make me sad. :(
So that’s it! If you’re okay with all of the above and would like to enter to be the ninth public critique on Writability, do the thing with the rafflecopter widget below. You have until Tuesday, March 24 at 11:59 EST to enter!
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Vlog: 5 Things to Know Before Getting an Agent

Ready to start querying agents? Here are five things you should know as you prepare to start working with a literary agent.


RELATED LINKS:

Why Do You Need an Agent?How I Got My AgentHow to Choose the Right Agent (For You)How to Query: Research (vlog)How to Query: The Query Letter (vlog)How to Survive the Query Wars (vlog)
If you aren't agented, are there any here that surprised you? If you are agented, what would you add to the list?
Twitter-sized bite: 

Want to get an agent? @Ava_Jae shares 5 things you should know as you prepare to start working with one. (Click to tweet)

How Important is Originality?

So not too long ago, while scrolling through my endless tumblr feed, I came across this answered question posed to the New Leaf Literary tumblr by an anonymous person:


So, right. Originality.

I haven’t read Red Queen yet, but this discussion often comes up when a book blows up big time, and I think it’s an interesting one to consider. Just how important is originality?

It’s no secret that The Hunger Games starts off very much like “The Lottery.” Twilight was hardly the first popular vampire book, Fifty Shades of Grey was originally Twilight fan fiction, and Harry Potter was not the first book about wizards or boys in boarding school.

So why did they become so popular? There are a lot of reasons to be sure, but a large part of it is very much what the lovely person behind the New Leaf Literary tumblr said: they took “certain elements that have been done before and [spun] them around a little and present[ed] them in a different way.”

Photo credit: martinak15 on FlickrGuess what? There are a lot of books out there that could be presented as Hunger Games meets x. Or Divergent meets y. Or Game of Thrones/ Star Wars/ Orange is the New Black/ The 100 meets xyzabc. And you know what? That’s okay, because each of them take those familiar elements and incorporate them in very different ways. They’re similar without being too similar; they show us the familiar and twist it with something new.

This is why book comps can be so great in a query—they show agents and editors the potential marketability of a project by showing something familiar readers have responded to in the past mixed with whatever your spin is.

The key, of course, is to remember that you don’t want to write a rip-off of something else. Besides the obvious moral issue, that’s not what anyone wants, and that’s not going to sell. Instead, x meets y references elements of those comparisons.

I’m going to use my book as an example. When I was querying Beyond the Red , I pitched it as The Girl of Fire and Thorns on a technologically advanced alien planet. I wasn’t saying that I plucked Elisa from the world Rae Carson created and threw her into a sci-fi setting (I didn’t). Instead, I was referencing similar elements—an otherworldliness, a desert setting, and monarchies/rulers. There are similarities without going anywhere near the line of “too close.”

Stories inspire stories, and when you dig down to the heart of a narrative, many of them have been told time and time again. That’s to be expected, and it’s okay because readers gravitate to them over and over again.

So I guess the point I’m trying to make is not to stress if your book has some similar elements to another story, or if a book releases that sounds somewhat similar to the one you’re working on. As long as your book isn’t too similar (i.e.: has the same plot, or you purposefully lifted characters or something that you would obviously know wasn’t you—that's called plagiarism and is so not what I'm talking about), you should probably be in the clear. If anything, it may even help you in the long run.

What do you think? How original are original ideas?

Twitter-sized bite:

How original are original ideas? Join the discussion on @Ava_Jae's blog. (Click to tweet)

Favorite Online Writerly Resources Roundup

Photo credit: Brendan LynchSo as many of you have probably gathered, I spend a lot of time plugged in. Like, probably more than I should. Which means I’m all over the internet all the time, basking in social media sites of all things writerly and publishing.

And so, when someone kindly suggested I share some of my favorite resources, I thought a roundup was in order.

Without further ado, here are my favorite online writerly resources, and why I love them.

For motivation and progress tracking: MyWriteClub

MyWriteClub is still in beta, but I use it constantly when I’m making any sort of progress—whether revisions or drafting. It’s a nice little community where you can keep track of all sorts of customizable progresses with charts and what no, and I wrote about it here.  

Point is, it’s very motivational and has the added bonus of very nice charts, which I’m basically addicted to know. Très recommended. 

For querying: QueryTracker

I obviously don’t use this anymore as I’m done querying, but I did find it very helpful when I was querying. It’s a great way to keep track of your queries and find literary agents to submit to, and as a bonus, it recently got a new facelift. 

For pitch contests: @brendadrake, @AuthoressAnon (Miss Snark’s First Victim) & @Michelle4Laughs 

These lovely ladies frequently host contests for writers searching for representation. I got my agent through one of said contests, so I can tell you first hand it works. Plus, they’re all very nice. Definitely follow them if you’re on Twitter! 

For writing & publishing tips: chasingthecrazies (@atrueblood5), Writers Helping Writers (@AngelaAckerman & @beccapuglisi), & The Daily Dahlia (@MissDahlELama).

All of these blogs (and their respective creators) are fabulous for slightly different reasons. Chasingthecrazies has loads of agent interviews about what they look for in the first five pages, as well as other great writing tip posts. Writers Helping Writers is chock full of great information to (as the title says) help you with your writing. The Daily Dahlia has so much really fantastic information not only on writing, but on pre- and post-publishing tips and information about the industry and supporting other writers and…yeah. You should check it out. 

For diverse representation education: We Need Diverse Books (@diversebooks), Corinne Duyvis (@corinneduyvis), Marieke Nijkamp (@mariekeyn), Disability in Kidlit (@DisabilityInLit), DiversifYA (@_DiversifYA), Diversity in YA (@diversityinya), & Gay YA (@thegayYA).

If you care about diverse representation and want to learn more about why it’s important and how you can help, make sure you follow basically everyone listed above. Each of them share really valuable information about different aspects of diversity and they’re all super insightful. I’ve learned a great deal from them. 

For book recommendations/reviews: B&N Teen Blog (@BNTeens), Rich in Color (@Rich_in_Color), IceyBooks, The Midnight Garden

Not sure what to read next? Looking for some book reviews? The above blogs have really fantastic reviews and recommendations for loads of books. Definitely recommended! 

So that’s it! What are some of your favorite writerly online resources? 

Twitter-sized bites: 

Looking for some online writerly resources? Writer @Ava_Jae rounds up her favorites. #writetip (Click to tweet)  

Motivational tools, writing & publishing tips, book reviewers, & more! @Ava_Jae shares her favorite writer resources. (Click to tweet)  

It Doesn’t Matter When You Start

Photo credit: Nick-K (Nikos Koutoulas) on FlickrSo I saw this post floating around the internet last week in which some ill-informed person basically came out and said if you don’t start writing when you’re in high school, you’ll never be published/aren’t a real writer/something along those lines/blah.

I hope that anyone reading this blog knows that’s laughably inaccurate, but just in case: no, it’s not even close to true.

Here’s the thing: some people do start writing with the intention of being published in high school, or even before high school. And you know? That’s really cool. I give virtual high-fives and pats on the back to those teens because it takes more sacrifice than you might think to start pursuing a writing career that early on.

But those people are not the majority of writers. Not even close.

There are plenty of writers who don’t write their first book until college. Or until they’re in their thirties. Or until their kids have left for college. Or until they’ve retired.

None of them are wrong. None of them are lesser than those who started earlier in life. None of them are more or less “real” of a writer than the other, and believe it or not, their chances of getting published have absolutely nothing to do with their age.

I know I’m probably preaching to the choir, here, but generalizing, inaccurate statements put out to discourage people just make me really ragey.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: every writer has their own journey. Some writers indeed start in their early teen years and get published before they turn twenty—others start at the same time and don’t get published until they’ve graduated college. Some writers start in their twenties and get published a few years later. Some start after the birth of their first kid and get published five or ten years later. The possibilities are literally endless and how quickly someone gets published, or how successful they are after they’ve published has absolutely nothing to do with how old they were when they started writing.

You know what does matter? The writing.

That’s it.

If your dream is to be a published author, and you’re fifteen, or thirty-seven, or fifty-eight, or eighty-four, your age is irrelevant. What matters is that you’re dedicated, and work hard to improve your writing and your manuscript, and study the publishing industry, and read, read, read, and have patience. What matters is that you don’t stop until you’ve seen your dreams realized.

Age isn’t important. Your writing is.

What do you think? 

Twitter-sized bites: 

Writer @Ava_Jae says it doesn't matter how old you are when you start writing. What do you think? (Click to tweet)  

Writer @Ava_Jae says when it comes to getting published, age is irrelevant. Do you agree? (Click to tweet)

Vlog: On Writing Messy Characters

Are your characters too perfect? Today I talk about writing my favorite types of characters: the ones that are messy, raw, and real.


RELATED LINKS: Do Your Characters Fail Enough?Do Your Characters Make Enough Mistakes?Character Beauty in ImperfectionCharacter Development: Exploiting Weaknesses Do you write messy characters? What are some examples from books/TV/movies, etc.?
Twitter-sized bite: 

Are your characters too perfect? @Ava_Jae vlogs about writing messy characters & why you may want to consider it. (Click to tweet)

How Not to Get Overwhelmed with Revisions

Photo credit: dave lewis 88 on FlickrSo once upon a time, I wrote a YA Fantasy for NaNoWriMo crazy fast, put it away for a year and a half, then pulled it back out, revised it, and sent it to critique partners.

And then my critique partners, being the awesomely insightful ladies they are, sent me back their notes. And, um. There were a lot of notes. Like, maybe a little more than I was prepared for.

Just put ALL CP comments into one Word doc. Um. Um. 1309 comments. O.O #YAFantasyWIP
— Ava Jae (@Ava_Jae) February 14, 2015

And that didn’t include the tracked changes. Activate panic mode.

I knew right from the start there was no way I’d be able to tackle all of these revision notes at once, especially since they were all over the place—I had notes on character, plot, pacing, worldbuilding, writing, etc. To try to tackle everything at once would’ve been a recipe for disaster.

And so, I edited in passes. 

After importing all of my new comments into Scrivener, I did a preliminary round of edits to remove notes that were really easy to fix. These were comments like you used this word three times on this page and you have a typo here. Each note took under a minute to check off, and after going through everything I had 332 notes left.

Much more manageable. But these notes weren’t easy fixes anymore, and I knew I’d still have to split them up if I wanted to give every element (character, plot, etc.) its due.

So now that I was down to 332 notes, I went through and color coded them. Purple for worldbuilding, blue for plot/pacing, red for character, orange for voice/writing, and yellow for miscellaneous. I then counted them up to see how many notes I had for each and came up with this:

Broke CP notes into categories: Character: 125 (38%) Plot/Pacing: 75 (23%) Voice/Writing: 60 (18%) Worldbuilding: 50 (15%) Misc.: 22 (6%)
— Ava Jae (@Ava_Jae) February 22, 2015

Now that I had an idea of what needed the most work, I prioritized and separated them into different passes.

First pass: Character (125 notes)Second pass: Plot, Pacing, Voice and Writing (131 notes)Third pass: Worldbuilding and Misc. (72 notes)Fourth pass: Polish
This is where color-coding the comments came in handy, because while I was doing my first pass, I was able to easily ignore notes that weren’t related to character (AKA: any note that wasn’t red). Same for the second pass, and by the third I only had purple and yellow notes left.

Breaking it up like this made revisions much easier to handle (and, just as importantly, not nearly as terrifying to think about). Not only did it allow me to really hone in and focus on improving one element at a time, but as a whole, I think it made the whole process a lot more enjoyable than it might have been otherwise.

What do you think? Have you ever tried revising in passes?

Twitter-sized bite: 

Are revisions overwhelming you? Writer @Ava_Jae shares how she breaks down the revision process. (Click to tweet)

Pitch Tip: Make Your Stakes Personal

Photo credit: Stephen Burch on FlickrSo I’ve been working on Twitter pitch critiques all week, and I’m not sure how many I’ve read, exactly, but it’s been a lot. And while I’ve spoken quite a bit about the essentials of a good pitch and making stakes clear before, there’s one related aspect that I sort of glossed over. I’m fixing that now, because to be honest? It’s pretty essential.

I’m talking about making your stakes personal. To your protagonist, that is.

Many times, I’ve seen pitches with stakes that are mentioned, but it’s unclear why it matters. For example, take this (completely made up) pitch:

When a serial killer abducts Michael, it’s up to Johnny to save him before Michael becomes Victim 13. 

I frequently see pitches about the protagonist needing to save someone from certain doom, but like the fake pitch, it’s not always clear why it matters to the protagonist. In this case, what is Michael’s relationship to Johnny? Is he Johnny’s brother? Best friend? Boyfriend? Husband? Is he just another random person, but it’s up to Johnny because Johnny is the detective tracking down the serial killer? There are loads of possibilities here, but without the specifics, pitches like these fall flat regardless of how big the stakes may seem on the surface.

Repeat after me: we must know why the conflict matters to your protagonist. 

Another pitch type I see revolves around characters having to save the world. On paper, this sounds like it’d be a really solid set-up for high stakes, but the truth is, personal stakes have a much greater impact than macro-stakes. Saving the world is great, but saving a loved one, or a child, or sibling, is so much more powerful.

The thing to remember is if we don’t know why the conflict matters to your protagonist, then the stakes (that is, what your protagonist has to lose) fall flat. So next time you’re working on a pitch, I encourage you to take a good, hard look at your set-up and make sure it’s absolutely clear why the conflict is so important to your protagonist.

After all, if your MC doesn’t care, why should your readers?

What do you think—are personal stakes important in a pitch? 

Twitter-sized bites: 

Working on a query or pitch for your WIP? Writer @Ava_Jae says to make sure it's clear your stakes matter to your MC. (Click to tweet) 

"We must know why the conflict matters to your protagonist." —@Ava_Jae on pitching your novel. (Click to tweet)

Book Review: THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER by Michelle Hodkin

Photo credit: GoodreadsWelp, it’s another day of everyone telling me I need to read something, and I say I will, and then I don’t forever, and then I finally do, and everyone was right. So. 
I finally read The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin, you guys, and you haven’t read it, you should probably do so.

Here’s the Goodreads summary:

“Mara Dyer believes life can't get any stranger than waking up in a hospital with no memory of how she got there. 

It can.  

She believes there must be more to the accident she can't remember that killed her friends and left her strangely unharmed.  

There is. 

She doesn't believe that after everything she's been through, she can fall in love.  

She's wrong.”

I actually don’t think the summary does it justice, to be honest, because while there is romance (and Noah is a fantastic book boyfriend), that isn’t what did it for me with this book.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a total sucker for unreliable narrators—Unbecoming absolutely takes full advantage of Mara’s extremely unreliable narration (and I’m not spoiling anything to say so). I was quoting Mockingjay ’s “real or not real?” throughout the book, there are twists galore, and the paranormal/supernatural aspect was so perfectly creepy. And I was totally impressed with all of that, and then I reached the end, and now I seriously need the sequels, which I will be buying together. And as an added bonus, I appreciated the incidental diversity integrated into the cast.

My one peeve was more of a writing quirk than anything else: there are a ton of filter phrases, which honestly is something I see all over the place, but I noticed it more than usual for some reason while reading Unbecoming. That said, it in no way ruined the reading experience for me, and it’s a super minor flaw that most people probably won’t even notice. So.

Unbecoming is twisty, eerie, unintentionally takes advantage of my fear of swamps, and I absolutely enjoyed it. Definitely recommended for those of you who like creepy book with trippy plots that leave you wondering what the hell just happened.

Have you read this fabulous book?

Twitter-sized bites: 

.@Ava_Jae gives 4.5/5 stars to THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER by @MichelleHodkin. Have you read this creepy YA Para? (Click to tweet)   

Looking for a twisty & eerie YA read? Check out THE UNBECOMING OF MARA DYER by Michelle Hodkin. (Click to tweet)

Vlog: How to Handle Tough CP Feedback

So you've traded with critique partners and now you have their feedback...and you have a lot of work to do. Today I'm talking about the very real reality of how to handle tough CP feedback.

 
RELATED LINKS: 

How to Edit: The CP Trade (vlog)How to Determine a Good CP Match: Trial RunsRevisions: Don't Be Afraid to Make (Big) Changes 5 Places to Find Critique Partners
What tips do you have for handling tough CP/beta feedback? 
Twitter-sized bites: 

Not sure how to process tough CP feedback? Writer @Ava_Jae vlogs about her process. (Click to tweet)  

What do you do when your CP feedback requires a lot of work? Writer @Ava_Jae vlogs some tips. (Click to tweet)