He Said, She Said

He may not have been a he, and she may not have been a she; but the title seemed appropriate for my next segment on contradictory advice.

If you are a seasoned writer you already know what I'm talking about. If you are a novice, I hope this article will give you a little helpful advice, when other helpful advice seems confusing. If that sentence didn't confuse you, you may not have a problem trudging through the well-meaning suggestions you receive when you submit your story.

I wrote a novel once about an up and coming model who returned home and runs into the man she once loved. She was attracted to him, but when he makes advances she puts the kibbutz to it. And why might that be? Because she had less experience at lust than I had writing scenes with lustful behavior.

But it was not my lack of writing experience one agent took exception with. What he found unrealistic was the fact that a model could be acting that way. In his view models were not examples of women with high morals. In fact, though he said he liked my story, he felt the only place my novel might get published was a Christian romance market.

At that time those markets were limited, and I was never one to shy away from taking a challenge. So I queried an editor of a Christian market (note I was a good girl and queried first). That editor was intrigued enough to ask to see the novel.

In her return rejection she noted that like the agent, she liked my story. Drum roll please. . . However, my story's love scenes were too explicit for their market.

Thus, he said, she said.

One might wonder in a case like this what they should do. Neither agent or editor had asked to see a revised version of my novel, so that told me something. In my case, I looked at the situation with an unbiased eyes – something I might add the agent did not do.

I realized the agent had stereotyped the model into a roll that said professional models could not be virgins, much less want to hang onto their virginity until the right man came alone. In fact, even though in my story the woman had found the right man, she still was dealing with first time jitters and a serious case of doubts.

On the other hand, even if the editor had asked to see my novel rewritten, I wasn't certain I wanted to remove the scenes I had taken such care to write. As far as I was concerned the scenes were hot and anticlimactic. I looked at each love scene as a cliff-hanger followed with the dreaded, "To be continued."

I wanted my readers hearts to be pounding as they awaited – or in this case hurriedly read to – the next love scene. I was careful not to use this tactic too often lest I anger my readers, which was more difficult to do when writing a novel. Would my readers be saying, "Oh here we got again," every time they read another lustful scene? Or would they eventually begin feel like a jury who found the hero of my story not guilty of date rape because he got impatient with the virtuous model.

Undecided what to do, I did what all writers must do from time to time, table a project. I stuck the manuscript in a drawer and forgot about it for a little while. Giving myself that distance also gave me objectivity.

When I pulled the story from the drawer again, I was already well versed in writing short love stories for women's magazines. With new eyes I saw that this novel plot was good, but it lacked what it would take to keep a reader reading from beginning to end. More than the characters would be frustrated, the readers would be too.

I cut the story down into a shorter form. That meant removing some love scenes, but keeping my main character's morals in tact. That, after all, was a large part of what motivated her, made her who she was.

The new version was snatched up by the first editor who read it. My model was still a virgin when she finally married the love her life, and the semi-explicit scenes were left in tact. I had the best of both words. I had what I felt was a true-to-life story. My character's story.

Sometimes you need to step back to gain objectivity when the first version of your story is rejected. Sometimes you need to take advice from professionals. But, because professionals are human's too, sometimes you need to take what they suggest with a grain of salt. If you feel strongly about something, don't change it.

Realistically your story may never be published, but you will not have compromised your beliefs in the process. And although you may at some point do as I did and change the structure of the story, you will still maintain the foundation of your plot and your integrity as a writer.

Write What You Know

I remember someone telling me that a writer should write what they know. I wondered if that meant I should throw away all the notes for manuscripts that didn't take place in my hometown. Or, scrub any characters who had successful professional careers. I mean, I was just a small town Mom.

Just! Saying that fires up rebellion within me. It still bothers me that I ever felt that way. I'm not "just" anything. To steal a phrase, "I'm all I can be." My writing allows that. I can go to foreign lands, I can be a cop or a nun. . .

Okay, maybe not me exactly, but I have had characters that were. And since every character is a part of me, for a short time I was a cop, a nun, even a prostitute. Get your mind out of the gutter! We are talking fiction.

I'd also had some good advice given to me, that said my characters needed to be sympathetic. Did that mean my readers had to feel sorry for them? I thought about it more, looking at the characters in the books I was reading, and realized I often felt like a kindred spirit with the heroine in the story. It was because I was able to relate to her on some level.

That did not mean I could be a doctor – I certainly lacked the training for that. But when the doctor was feeling drawn to a child, it didn't matter what her profession, I could relate to that. When the doctor found herself falling in love against all her carefully made plans, I could relate to that, too.

As for the doctor part: that brings me back to writing what one knows. Since I didn't have medical training, I had to do research. I even spoke to doctors. And after my story was written, I had a pro look at any questionable parts that might give away the fact that I didn't have a clue how to conduct brain surgery.

Ooops, I nearly gave away part of the plot for my next novel.

Back to the nun. I'm not even Catholic, but I do have friends who are. And they were able to give me insight, and interviews regarding certain aspects of my story. I learned that though you don't often see them anymore, there are still orders that wear full habits – remember The Singing Nun? You might be too young for that, but we'll just say, she wore the full, long black habit.

When a Priest read that I had a nun jumping from a plane, his words, as I recall, were, "It will probably take her a very long time to come down."

Sadly I'm giving away too many scenes from future novels. However, my hope is that by relating to my work, you will see that you can't be an expert in everything. But you can conduct research and know a little, and then interview an expert for the rest. The same research can be done for locations for your stories. Today the Internet can take you anywhere you want to go, or anywhere you want your plot take place.

Last, you give your characters the same heart and emotions, the dreams and hopes, the concerns and worries that any one of us might have. Why? Because we are also readers, and when we do read your work, we will see something in your characters that makes us empathize with them, and make us sympathetic to them.

Loving the Red Pencil

In high school I hated when homework assignments were given back to me with red pencil marks on them. At the time that meant only one thing to me – my work was not that of a budding genius. Rather it was filled with mistakes. I was no good. I was a failure.

The person who said, "Perception is reality," was right. Instead of loving the red pencil marks I looked them as negative signs. I took them very personally. When I kept getting them, I gave up.

Maturity came many years later, along with it came a more positive attitude. It was when taking a night class in writing I got a paper back with a lot of red pencil marks on it. I appreciated that, because it finally showed me what I was doing wrong. Even better were the notes that explained my problem areas and even made suggestions.

The teacher of that class became a good friend. I think it had something to do with my openness to having my work criticized. It was constructive criticism that I had finally learned to embrace. Without it I would have kept writing things that were destined for rejection. By accepting the criticism and learning from it I was able to truly begin my career in writing.

A writer also learns to go with their gut on some things. It's a fine line knowing what criticism received is worth making a change, and what things are best left alone. I find that very often it is a compromise. An example: the red pencil notes tell me that my sentence is grammatically incorrect. If the sentence happens to be a quotation, I may decide the character speaking that sentence is not supposed to speak in proper English. If that character is say a lawyer versus a young child, I may decide to clean up the grammar.

Only the person writing knows for certain what should be changed and what should not. A writer must learn to determine which suggestions to take and which to ignore. As I said above, it is often a compromise. Just remember, never compromise what you feel strongly about. On the other hand, if the same story is rejected over and over, it may be time to take that advice.

Getting Started as a Writer

It is easy to say, a long walk starts with one step.  Or, in the case of writing, it starts with one word.  Ah, but it isn't as simple as that.  Getting started is having something to say that people will want to read.

I was a writer for many years, a reader for many more.  My biggest problem was that I thought I could write something just as interesting as the novels I was reading.  I hoped and prayed each time I mailed the piece of myself I'd just written to an editor that it would be loved as much as I loved the things I was reading.

I was in for a long line of rejection letters and disappointments.  Fortunately, I got a few that actually had notes.  Albiet the notes weren't often very positive, but they were lessons learned.

I grew more and more confused as I would take those suggestions and make changes to my stories, only to have new suggestions made by the next editor.  At one point I realized the one thing these editors didn't do was ask to see my manuscript again after I'd made those suggested changes.

The realization that I was acting like a fish out of water, just flopping around on the ground, uncertain which way to go.  People could shout at me, telling me which way back to the stream, but hey, I was grounded --clueless how to get there.  Besides that, how could I get there without help?

Ahha!  I finally learned a valuable lesson.  I needed help.  I had to throw my ego out the window and get ready to see red.  yes, red pencil on my manuscripts.

I'd heard one who went to college to learn to write should forget everything they learned if they wanted to get published.  That was no problem for me, I hadn't gone to college.   With my new realization that I needed to learn, I started taking classes: night school, votec, college, any class I could find that had anything to do with writing.

I embraced the concept of red corrections and notes written all over my carefully prepared assignments.  And I learned.

Watch for my next article "Seeing Red".