Comments on: Teamwork

By: Bethany Scheerer

Bethany Scheerer — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 22:25:01 +0000

I just finshed Across the Great Barrier, thanks so much for writing it! I can’t wait for The Far West!

By: ABeth

ABeth — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 23:23:39 +0000

I’m one of the “talking about the story kills it” people — while at the same time needing to bounce things off other people sometimes! Fortunately, my spouse can work with this, since what I usually need bouncing is “is this logical? given the situation, what do you think the characters are thinking? what about these secondary characters/NPCs?”

(NPCs is, of course, a gaming term for non-player-characters, but it has utility; if the NPCs have too much of the spotlight, then there’s going to be issues whether the “PCs” are actual player-characters or just “the characters the story is about.”)

By: Cara

Cara — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 11:21:03 +0000

@ Cecilia – sometimes you really have to make an effort to find someone to bounce with. When I moved after college I lost my usual bouncers, and I had to look hard for more. I’ve used my blog, my crit group (in the after hours of coffee and snacks), I even had a very productive few hours diagramming the logical structure of one of my WIPs with a dude who turned out to be a little crazy. But he was really good at sorting out the problems in my piece!

Sometimes if you find a book group of people who read what you write you can make friends with people who like that sort of thing and aren’t afraid to state their opinion.

By: Cecelia Ward

Cecelia Ward — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 19:27:24 +0000

Um, well, I don’t have anyone else to bounce ideas with… as pathetic as that sounds, it’s completely true.

By: pcwrede

pcwrede — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 14:51:04 +0000

Cecelia – A lot of non-writers have bought into the whole “talking about the story kills it” thing – which is fine, if their writer-friend happens to be that sort of writer, but not good at all if the writer is the sort who needs to bounce ideas around. Or possibly your husband is simply not interested in the kind of stuff you write; it happens. My experience is that if it’s the latter, it works better for everyone if you let him be supportive in other ways and, as Esther said, find someone else to do the bouncing-ideas-around part.

LizV – What a great idea! Pity I don’t have the time to start one.

David Y – The professor, as I understand it, claimed that any examples of editorial changes were all the author’s idea; apparently he’d never heard about what Maxwell Perkins did to Thomas Wolfe’s mss. Or else he had “editor” and “copy editor” confused…

Deborah – Yes, exactly.

By: Deborah

Deborah — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 10:54:18 +0000

It may have been an odd place to learn the lesson, but watching DVD extras has long since convinced me of the need for an editor. The omitted scenes are usually cut for very good reason.

So, yeah, editing is definitely more than just finding the grammatical and spelling errors.

By: David Y

David Y — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 02:08:34 +0000

“A professor of literature at the local university once told a friend of mine rather condescendingly that editors never asked for substantive changes in a manuscript, and therefore they never needed to discuss what changes might have been requested for marketing reasons vs. which were made for artistic ones.”

This professor needs to encounter the reissue of Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein’s cut)with “30,000 words you never noticed were missing”.

By: LizV

LizV — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 20:05:23 +0000

Binocular vision for ideas – that’s it exactly!

Now if only there were some kind of matching service for crit groups/first readers… like online dating for writers.

By: Esther

Esther — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 19:05:09 +0000

@Cecelia
Wives have been making that exact comment about husbands for long time. A big part of the problem is that most males get frustrated/bored with long talks about problems they can’t fix. If you present it to him as “a problem I need to FIND” rather then “a problem I need to FIX” your husband will probably be a lot more helpful.

Or… find a female friend to talk to.

By: Cecelia Ward

Cecelia Ward — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 18:55:38 +0000

I’m so glad you said all that. I have been getting so frustrated trying to talk to my husband about my story and his only response is, “it’s your story so just sit down and write it.” There are days I just want to scream! *laugh* I’ve read this post aloud to him and hopefully it means that he’ll listen and respond to my ramblings as I try to get my thoughts together, rather than just tell me to figure it out myself.