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Where Sime and Gen Meet, Creativity Happens
WorldCrafters Guild Newsletter -- September 9, 1999
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
(which is why it's too long)
Welcome to those who've signed into the WorldCrafters Guild and just subscribed to this Newsletter since the last issue. You'll find some work to do in this issue.
This week, we've got 4 long, complicated items to tell you about:
1.A Novel to Study to learn to write SELLING fiction
2. The opening of a new department at simegen.com
3.News and Opporunities in our Book Review Section
4.How to prepare for UPCOMING Events in the Guild
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1. A Novel to Study
Disclosure: The publisher of this novel, Awe-Struck E-Books, has bought ad-space from us. They are an E-publisher, and this book is available in a number of forms. Check their website. You can click on their banner on many of our pages -- the big yellow one, or you can go to http://www.awe-struck.net/ and check them out.
If you know me well, and have been reading my own review column at http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/ you realize by now that I always disclose possible conflicts of interest that might be construed as affecting my reaction to a novel without my even realizing it. I know a lot of publishers, editors, agents, and writers personally, and there's no way I could avoid being affected by knowing who wrote a novel or who published it.
However, with this particular book, I do not know the author (I don't think -- might be a pseudonym), I have just recently discovered this publisher and have corresponded with them by email a few times as a reviewer -- and have read several of their novels with relish and delight. I have come to respect whoever it is at Awe-Struck E-Books who is doing the editorial work -- the person hasn't introduced herself to me yet. I've read a number of their novels -- and not yet found one with a flaw that should have been fixed in editing before publication, which is a lot more than I can say for a couple of other e-publishers I've encountered.
The book in question is CHERISHED by Tari May.
I felt so CERTAIN about my opinion of this novel, that I doubted my own reaction - so I consulted a veteran slushpile reader and sometime book editor for an opinion from the Manhattan Perspective, Anne Phyllis Pinzow -- and sure enough, I was right.
It is a structurally solid, sound, workmanlike novel, with all the pieces in place, just exactly as we have been hammering away at in the first course here, "The Essence of Story." BUT it could never, ever, by any stretch of the imagination, be published by a Manhattan publisher in the 1999 marketplace.
Still, I feel it's a book that should have been published, advertised on television, made into a movie, and then a TV Series maybe. There's a whole world there to be developed. It could become a miniseries like Columbo -- perennial TV Movies. (Anne disagrees with me about that, and she's the trained TV writer.) It's powerful material, but breaks all the Manhattan publishing taboos which were developed by computer-feedback from Distributors, and bottom-line calculations. Not enough people would buy this book off the stands to make publishing it profitable at today's price of newsprint, and with distributing in disarray.
Here is the reasoning from the Manhattan Perspective -- this represents what a slushpile reader would be instructed to reject without sending to the editor, and it's their job on the line if they violate these guidelines and don't produce a best-seller:
A. No politically controversial material -- such as Cancer or A.I.D.s.
B. All deformities or diseases or ailments in the book can't be permanent, except if it makes a man look more "dashing," or "dangerous."
C. Any disability can not interfere with the ability to have sex. (Notable Exception, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's St. Germain novels!!)
D. The plot-driving mechanism must not be simply one piece of information that one of the principle characters doesn't have. You may, however, write it so that "he knows, but she doesn't know he knows" which would be OK if the reader is let in on the secret.
E. In "Cherished" we find out too soon that her mother and father are the only antagonists who are a threat. They should be more powerful. Her victory comes too easily over them. (In "Essence of Story" we show you that the Protag's LOW POINT (the place where the Protag fails) is the MIDDLE if the ending is to be "happy." When reading CHERISHED note what's happening at the exact halfway-point in the page-count.)
F. "Love at First Sight" is a hot-selling Romance formula -- but Manhattan generally prefers to have books where ONE protagonist falls in love at first sight, and the other does not. (This makes for an easier CONFLICT for the reader to understand.) If this was the only taboo broken, this book might have passed muster.)
As it happens, the Star Trek fanzine scene has wrestled through this problem and decided that the best, and most interesting, story that does not denigrate either lover, is the one where BOTH fall in love at the same time, or the same pace. And so I regard this as a new sub-genre that is arising because of the new equality between men and women. Most editors in Manhattan today dare not take a chance on such stories -- with a few marked exceptions. But they'd be more likely to take a chance on the Cancer OR the Amputation -- but not both of those AND a two-love-at-first-sight.
But it isn't the editor you have to worry about as a submitting writer with a FIRST NOVEL -- it's the slushpile reader. The editor will never see it if it doesn't get through slushpile -- so for a FIRST SALE that must go through slush-reading (even if submitted by an agent) you must adhere to the guidelines.
Later, with a rising reputation for selling phenomenal numbers of copies, you can get away with things nobody would believe possible. So when studying published novels to determine what to offer for your FIRST SALE, research the author's previously published novels on amazon.com and then try to find out the sales-statistics behind those titles (look to see what advertising it had-- ad budget is a good way to judge advance paid to the author).
Pay special attention to the author's FIRST SALE, and be sure to note the date the first-sale was published, and what other novels were best-sellers the previous year, and ANALYZE this first-novel against the backdrop of those best-sellers of the previous year. The editor is looking at the sales statistics of those previous year's best-sellers using an analysis of the content of those best-sellers (as reflected ONLY in the cover-copy and sell-copy in the book catalogue) to develop "guidelines" to compare to your manuscript. Only you have to do it within the guidelines, and best-sellers SET the guidelines. (It also helps to study books that were published but didn't earn out their costs. Editors won't buy another like that for years and years.)
If somehow your taboo-breaking effort did make it to the editor's desk and she LOVES it, it would FAIL because the SALESMEN wouldn't know what to do with it. At the sales conference where a book like "Cherished" is presented before the editor makes you an offer, the editor might hear, "So what this means is that on the cover, we'll have a beautiful, big busted, blonde babe with no leg????" And they'd never think beyond that -- Salesmen generally don't READ THE BOOKS THEY SELL. And mostly the salesmen are still men.
Today, books an editor wants to buy have to be presented at a sales-conference before the writer gets an offer of a contract. So your manuscript has to pass SLUSH reading, which scans for formula as well as plot-structure, and then the editor's tastes and sense of what will make a profit, and then SALES which scans for the signature of popularity -- and then you might get an offer.
So "Cherished" is the sort of novel that just wouldn't make it in Manhattan today.
Nevertheless, Awe-Struck has brought it to light, and thus redoubled my admiration for their editing. There isn't anything wrong with it except it breaks all the taboos listed above. Since I didn't see the original submission MS I don't know how much is the handiwork of the editor at Awe-Struck. But someone there had the good sense to spot this novel and nab it for this publishing company -- which alone deserves respect.
OK, to read the sort of review of this novel that I don't write, (a description of the story), go to
http://www.awe-struck.net/AUTHORS2/cherished.html#anchor505083
You can click through from there to order the story at $4.45 -- but it's a very, very short novel, so it's expensive per word, and that's my only problem with net-publishing these days. But this particular novel is worth it's price to students of writing aiming at cracking Manhattan.
Here's what to do if you buy this novel to study:
FIRST: read it and analyze it as we developed in "Essence of Story"
http://www.simegen.com/school/OnlineLessons/EssenceOfStorySyllabus.html
(with these LONG URL links, if the link wraps to the next line, highlight the whole link, copy, paste, and remove the invisible carriage return that got inserted -- then paste the single-line URL into your browser. Or try typing it if you're that good.)
Our course's premise is that if you learn the structural tricks we are teaching here, you will be able to sell anything to Manhattan. This isn't quite true in an immediate sense. It's more a case of "...you will be able to sell anything to Manhattan EVENTUALLY!" Because Manhattan's tastes change with time. (for example, today they aren't buying Vampire novels -- and many agents aren't even reading science fiction or fantasy submissions.)
I think the work we're doing here at simegen.com, and the e-publishers are doing all over the net, will change what Manhattan views as profitable.
Awe-Struck is a standard-bearer in this effort -- their quality is consistent, and their product very offbeat.
SECOND: While analyzing "Cherished" separate the content from the structure, and analyze the content of the story against the backdrop of other novels in its field (it's a contemporary Romance in form, but breaks the content formulae for Romance).
Remember, in my opinion, and that of an experienced slushpile reader, (as enumerated above) this novel would have been rejected instantly by the slushpile readers of Manhattan publishing because of content, not form. See if you can find the points listed above in the story. Note that these points are all story-points not plot-points. There's nothing WRONG with this novel, plot-wise. The slushpile rejection would have included an invitaton to submit something else and a copy of the prevailing guidelines.
When I took the Famous Writer's Course in the 1960's, one of the first lessons was to analyze your market for content, write what the editor is looking for, and adhere to the simple structural elements which we've been harping on in Essence of Story, and you will sell. I did that -- and sold my first story, "Operation High Time" which is posted for free reading at
http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/oht.html
It sold to the editor I studied to a fair-thee-well before constructing the outline for the story, and that was Fred Pohl, then editor of IF Worlds of Science Fiction, who later, as the book editor at Bantam Books bought my non-fiction book, STAR TREK LIVES! which was a contributing factor to the burgeoning of STAR TREK fandom. "Operation High Time" sold on it's first submission to the market I aimed it at. It was in the January 1969 issue of IF. This year is my Thirtieth Anniversary as a pro. When Marion Zimmer Bradley first began teaching me writing, she was approaching her thirtieth year as a pro.
So I must recommend this method to those eager to break into print -- or electrons. Study your EDITORS as much or more than you study your WRITERS. Awe-Struck is a good place to start studying editors -- this editor edits like a Manahattan pro for structure, and like a reader for content.
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2. The Opening of a New Department at simegen.com
This coming week -- perhaps as early as this weekend -- we will have our own, unique, unusual, and exciting electronic greeting card site. The number of offerings will grow, and we have many plans for more unique features for this site. On or about Wednesday, September 15, 1999 take a look at FLAMES OF INSPIRATION at:
http://www.simegen.com/marketplace/ecards/
If any of you are electronic artists who want to display your artwork on this card site, email sendacard@simegen.com or ecards@simegen.com with a URL where you display your art. We have plenty of room to grow.
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3.News and Opportunities in our Book Review Section.
The Coordinator who first developed the gateway site:
http://www.simegen.com/reviews/
has left.
We are currently in the process of re-designing the content and intent of this Gateway site. We are asking all those who have reviewed for this website to email reviews@simegen.com . We don't have direct contact with most of those who have done this work.
In addition, we are looking for someone who'd like to become a web-review editor to volunteer to rebuild and manage this high-traffic gateway site.
Under the gateway we expect to have several review columns in addition to my own. A gateway site on simegen.com is basically an index of sites grouped because of their similar content -- link-keeping and news-posting is a time-intensive chore, and in addition to all that, the gatekeeper of /reviews/ would be getting and passing on review copies of novels.
There is an opportunity for the gatekeeper of /reviews/ to make some pin money on the side. For details, email reviews@simegen.com
We're also looking for columnists who want to begin their own review column with a slant and specialty all their own. The payment for this effort is to have a chance to make a name for yourself in a respected area of publishing -- reviewing. (not to mention getting free books -- a reading addict can appreciate the value of that). If you're interested, email reviews@simegen.com and be patient - we'll be making a list and then emailing further instructions. You'd have to work closely with the gatekeeper.
THE CATCH: Review Columnists for this website should have an operational grasp of "The Essence of Story" -- if not to plot as well as a professional writer, then to be able to RECOGNIZE when plotting has been done well.
Hence, above, the advice to study the e-book "Cherished" as an example. The application for review columnist may well include instructions to write a review of this and/or some other novel. What we're looking for in our columnists is the ability to distinguish between reviewing, criticism, and our own type of ANALYSIS. It's ANALYSIS that we want to see dominate this review section, but personal opinion has its place.
As stated in the beginnings of the restructuring of the /reviews/ section, we are changing the criteria for a book to be STARRED or REVIEWER'S CHOICE. The ONE-STAR designation will become "Can't Put It Down" -- and nothing less will be mentioned. CHERISHED is an example of "can't put it down" -- I don't read a lot of Romance, am not a fan of the genre, but couldn't put it down. Neither could Anne Pinzow, despite being so keenly aware of its taboo-busting content.
We're looking for a gatekeeper and some columnists who understand that busy people don't want to read about novels that aren't worth reading. Any novel mentioned on our site has to be worth its price, and a good-read for those "in the right mood" or "fans of the genre". We would also want a column about "important" books -- done by an eclectic reader who reads and follows all genres and mainstream and can spot the current novels that will change the face of publishing, or reprints of those that have done so -- which is my definition of "important." "Important" to me doesn't mean "popular" -- but rather, causitive.
We have room for columns that focus on currently available (if only by e-pub) CLASSICS of various genres -- Mystery, Suspense, Romance, Westerns, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Intrigue, New Age, Mainstream, even nonfiction such as Biography, New Age, How To, Internet, --- you name it. What are the Keepers on your bookshelf? The old, tattered, reread books you will never throw away -- will buy for your grandchildren in an electronic edition? Make us a column out of those oft-re-read books and make a name for yourself with publishers and editors.
So we're looking for people with an ambition to break into non-fiction writing and editing. And you also have to have the ability to build and/or maintain a text-intensive website. (we provide the graphics you'll be displaying).
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4.How to prepare for UPCOMING Events in the Guild
Jean Lorrah and I returned from the NasFic Convention filled to the brim with plans and projects for the School -- and ran into the problem of losing our /reviews/ coordinator, so many of the items we'd planned aren't going to be available as soon as we'd hoped because this has taken up so much time.
However, the /reviews/ section is an integral part of our teaching-plans for the School, so it must be attended to first.
Therefore, some of those plans we cooked up are in progess even though more slowly than hoped. Every idea we come up with needs our techs to build us a new item of infrastructure because we're so NEW, so everything takes more time than we'd like. Here's a run-down of what we have planned:
A) This fall will see the presentation of our first course in RADIO SCRIPT WRITING, which will I expect be the prerequisite course for those who want to take our script writing course. Most of the best tv script writers who built the genre of tv writing came up through radio -- and remarkably enough, radio drama is in resurgence, so there's a possible market there if you take this course -- which will be offered by a veteran professional radio writer. We also intend to do a course in translating a story from one genre to another. With the advent of digitial tv, the market for scripts will be growing as channels proliferate.
B) A Poetry Contest is in the works.
C) A writing contest is in the works. (this one will be the foundation for another course we intend to offer -- but it will be a lot of fun and open to everyone.)
D) A group exercise in writing is being designed as an outgrowth of the Essence of Story course, but it's rather complicated so it's taking longer.
E) And we have outlines for a few more fundamental courses in essential writing skills -- we just need to get the TIME to create all the course materials. Perhaps someone will come along and offer to teach such courses.
We want to have a course in EDITING if we can get someone to teach it who is a professional editor. And we have in mind to do some work in BIOGRAPHY writing, which is a plot-intensive form of nonfiction that neither Jean nor I have credentials in. What gets done first will depend on how many students want it -- and we will soon have the infrastructure to let you provide us direct feedback so we can design what you are most eager to learn.
F) We are planning to launch a Critique Circle With A Twist -- a different sort of thing than you might find in living rooms across the country. We might call this an Analytical Circle. Or the Alchemist's Bench -- since we are a Guild after all. Or perhaps we'll run a contest to name it. All we've got for it right now is a blueprint. But this will be neither "supportive" nor "flaming" -- this will be a group effort to learn together that will be suitable for everyone from fledgling beginner to veteran professional trying to add a new Genre or Technique to their toolbox. In fact, those who just read for pleasure should find themselves welcome.
To prepare for the upcoming Events this fall, you can:
A) Go buy some Old Radio tapes and analyze the episodes of famous shows that have survived using the analytical technique in the "Essence of Story" syllabus.
B)Visit and read the following website and find out who Robert Allan is:
C)Watch reruns of TV Shows you like, especially ones you dislike. Tape some
episodes and analyze them according to the instructions for analysis
in the "Essence of Story" syllabus.
In addition, you would do well to read my first novel sale, HOUSE OF
ZEOR, which is posted online for free reading at:
http://www.bb.com/looptestlive.cfm?BOOKID=1540&StartRow=20
And then read the following:
http://www.simegen.com/sgfandom/rimonslibrary/howszero.html
Study and contrast/compare these two Sime~Gen items to each other -- and then
the pair of them to whatever TV show you've been analyzing using the analytical techniques
from "The Essence of Story." Pay special attention to plot.
EXTRA CREDIT: Submit (to simegen@simegen.com ) a good essay on this
contrast-compare of several TV
episodes to HOUSE OF ZEOR/howszero.html clearly demonstrating a firm grasp of
analytical technique and we'll post it with the Essence of Story
material with a link to your own website if you like. (this is not an
exercise in getting "the right answer" or doing an academic paper but
in teaching the art of original thinking of the sort that
sells to Manhattan publishing. The essence of originality is
analysis.)
If you haven't taken the course, this would count as the equivalent of half the course, the analyticial half.
D)Read and study the "Essence of Story" Syllabus and do the Assignments if you didn't take the course. If you want to, you may post your writtten Assignments to the WorldCrafters Bulletin Boards. To find them go to
http://www.simegen.com/techtools/boards/And click on WorldCrafters -- make yourself a thread with your name, or "Essence of Story" Assignments, and then post your work, and invite anyone you please to look at it and comment. You may post your request to writers-l -- the school's open listserv. You may subscribe to writers-l at
http://www.simegen.com/archives/wa.cgi?SUBED1=writers-l&A=1
The important part of this is DOING the Assignments -- posting and getting comments is extra. If you have worked through the course by yourself, and know how to teach yourself all by yourself, you will be well prepared to tackle the project we have been building for you. If you need input from others to give you perspective, then by all means post your work.
E) Read and analyse "Cherished" -- and for extra credit read and study a few of the other novels offered at Awe-Struck E-books. Even if you don't want to do reviews here -- you will find this study will come in handy later.
F) WRITE -- those of you who are working on your FINAL EXAM for the "Essence of Story" course, don't forget the deadline is November 28, 1999 -- and shortly thereafter we will open the passworded Bulletin Boards with your Assignments and our commentaries to public view to complete the "Essence of Story" course materials -- so make those Final Exams show you have learned all the things you couldn't do when you started on this course. "Essence of Story" will be prerequisit to many other things we'll be offering.
For newcomers to this Guild -- we did this course in double-time, summer-session style, and these students worked like slaves in the bottom of a galley rowing across a stormy Mediterranian for 8 weeks. There wasn't enough time to assimilate the about-face in thinking style we forced on them -- so we've allowed a few months to do the final exam. See the Syllabus for the Final Exam itself, which comes in several different levels of accomplishment.
Everyone here should be writing -- prolifically. We will provide you with places to use what you've been working on -- but we can't do that if you don't work on it and finish it so it's ready to post when we call for it.
The WorldCrafters Guild isn't a place where other people give you an education in writing. It's more like a gym where you go to work-out every day. The more you work out, the stronger you'll get. The equipment is just sitting there idle -- climb on and sweat.
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Jean Lorrah will do next week's WorldCrafters Guild Newsletter -- so it'll be shorter and more to the point.
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Live Long and Prosper,
Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Sime~Gen Inc. and the WorldCrafter's Guild writing school are now on www.simegen.com
To read my FIRST PUBLISHED NOVEL, free, go to http://www.bb.com/looptestlive.cfm?BOOKID=1540&StartRow=20 House of Zeor is a rare book collectors have paid $140 for, and it's yours free.I reserve the right to repost any comment that comes to me that is NOT MARKED DNQ or in some way obviously personal.
My SF Review Column is posted at http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/
Join the Sime~Gen Listserve. Sign up for any of the free Email Newsletters (a few pages, twice a month max)at http://www.simegen.com/archives/
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