writing workshop – Page 4 – June Paisa Perkins

Art of Critique

reflectionscover2 — Reflections – by June Perkins

Lately I’ve been asked to beta read and critique for a number of writers in quite a few genres, not all of which I am familiar with.

Beta reading is rarely done by professional editors (unless you happen to be personal friends with some) but is often done by other people with an interest in writing or reading.

Critiques similarly may be done by people well published, unpublished, or who are primarily readers not writers or a bit of both.

When picking someone to critique you need to think about what it is you are looking for? That will help you find a good match.

I’m trying to do the best I can to give people feedback that will help them make their work shine and say what they want it to say. I consider myself both a writer and a reader with a high level of training in written and spoken communication.

To do these critiques I am looking deeply into the magic of their story and divining its capacity and then having to work out from my point of view is it at full capacity or could it do more. I want them to do well, to succeed.

I’ve experienced plenty of critique, from writing groups in community settings and at a university level, from lecturers, teachers, family members and creatives friends as well as through telling stories to an audience (children are exceedingly honest if they are enjoying or hating something!)

Sometimes it’s left me astounded and happy at how much my work develops and other times it has made me want to never go to that class again as I feel demoralised. I have learnt to have a pretty thick skin now, roll with the punches and only take on board what helps build my skill and confidence in writing, as well as to have a truer empathy with readers. ‘It’s all about the readers,’ in the end is it not? Or is it? [Think writing for therapy.]

There’s something unique about people reading early or unfolding drafts of work and more polished sections in small portions and I’m discovering both the strengths and pitfalls of this.

Showing early drafts of work can lead to critiquers focusing on elements of your writing you would normally iron out, but it can also put you on a pathway that is more constructive for your story and knock out some bad habits. It’s a catch 22 situation, do I show it now and get some feedback or do I wait until I have it more fully polished and advanced. I think this is one of the case by case basis decisions; I’m still making my mind up about whether this is a helpful thing to do.

I once showed a film for early critique and it was savaged, but when the whole film was finished everyone loved it! It was a tricky thing to go through as I could have probably have held off and shown a stronger later draft but was so keen to get feedback a mentor said to me, ‘June you should have held onto that just a little longer.’ However I received some essential information in that early draft that I would have found so hard to find out at the end of the process.

I’ve found showing drafts of recent picture books as been massively helpful as I am so new to this genre. After three picture books taken through around 4 drafts, I am now getting the hang of the genre and hopefully future works held up for critique will be much better the first time around.

As I observe the way others critique I think about their techniques and styles and what I love in what they do. These are my conclusions.

As a receiver the most rewarding critiques are those that:

Start with something or more than one thing the person loves in the writing (be sincere) letting you know you are on the right track with those elments
Gives constructive and specific suggestions on how to improve that you can immediately see making the story stronger
Find small errors of any kinds that you might unintentionly be making a lot and helps you to eradicate them (but doesn’t dwell on this.)
Suggests specific parts where the story could be expanded or cut back
Let you know what they want to know as a reader about the story and if you are not giving them enough or giving them too much.

In giving a critique I’d like to do for others as they do for me (so all of the above applies), but in addition to this I want to:

1. Understand the genre they are writing so I can see how they are going with fulfilling conventions in that genre, or how well or brilliantly they are breaking the mould.

2. Suggest some cool authors writing in a similar way or treating the same subject in a different way to inspire them. This is because sometimes they could innovate and experiment with things like point of view and seeing an example of this would broaden their horizons. The beauty of this is that exemplar text does this, not you the critiquer.

3. If I am confused by anything make sure I let them know and they need to find out if other readers are confused by the same things. If lots of us are they really need to urgently fix the text so it does precisely what they want it too. There’s no point being able to tell me as a reader what your text does because you won’t be there to talk to the reader. You have to do it on the page.

4. Guide books on Traditional Grammar can be helpful, as can Strunk and White but also handbooks and posts in the genre help both critiquer and reviewer draw on specialists in the area to both give and receive their critiques in a way that is constructive. For instance in speech grammar rules often have to be broken because people do not speak in a grammatically correct way.

Having a very grammatically correct character could be a clear way of identifying them for the reader as a certain kind of person. Things like contractions in speech are often needed a lot in fiction (can’t for cannot, don’t for do not) and so you have to forget what you have been told in other forms of writing, such as essay writing. In school and university essays I know I was told avoid them.

I have to admit I don’t find grammar and formatting nazis easy to get along with. But this is only if that’s all they ever speak about and don’t do any of the above things that I’ve mentioned. If the story is rollicking along these things can be well and truly ironed out and in my experience often quite quickly without giving a writer the third degree on it.But if you find a typographical, a missing word, or a piece of punctuation that has altered the meaning of what I want to say in a piece of work I’ll love you for it.

This is possibly my poetry background where formatting and grammar can often be more free flowing, but which again can have conventions in set forms that you have to follow or the work is not crafted properly.

In all writing, there is both the technique and the spirit of the story. The writer balances themselves delicately between technique and content in such a way as to attract readers beyond themselves into what is hopefully a lifelong relationship.

What are your handy tips for what NOT to do in a critique?

(c) June Perkins

I have a PhD in writing empowerments from the University of Sydney and studied creative writing at University of Melbourne. I attended workshops in playwrighting at Interplay in 995 as well as IntheBin short film weekend crash course in script writing and an online QPIX writing for screen course in 2010. I’ve written essays, short story, plays, memoir, interviews and articles and over the years been in (and sometimes facilitated) several writing groups and created a number of community writing projects for people at all stages with their writing. Now I’m writing picture books, a full memoir, comedy script, and my first novel with critique and beta readers helping me on my journey.

Dear Sherlock Holmes

Creative Commons from Adplayers

21/02/2015

Brisbane

Dear Mr Sherlock Holmes,

Did you know how many were going to play you on the big and small screen
and that your reinvention would lead you across time like the Phantom?

Did you have any inkling how universally your story would be shared?
Any at all?

Did you know you would be cast as egotistical yet caring,
brilliant and yet utterly emotionally unintelligent (with a case of aspergers)
and that Watson would be so understanding of your little
foibles and in emotional intelligence often outdo you and through it all
the violin, the fight against addiction and the brilliance would remain?

Did you foresee that your battle with Moriarty might become
a battle of brilliance based mainly on your ego and that Steven Moffat’s and Mark Gattis,
imagining of you has you have a ‘mind palace’ that you go into to solve your crimes?

The internal workings of brilliance signified by the’ mind palace’
give the film makers a chance to do imaginative, abstract
and sometimes down right loopy things on screen.

Did you know that the man who inspired you
would also grace the screen, and
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would be
a factional character in a series called Murder Rooms?

Did you know how cool you would be with technology – texting, GPS and more?

How could you know that your fame would
lead you to dance through time, re-imagined, rewritten,
interpreted, unpacked – and vulnerable to fashion.

How could you see your future in fiction,
in the fandom rewritings
would take hounds and cliff top battles into the realm of legend.
And a television series would send up the whole concept of your fan club.
And play with the concept of multiple endings on one of the crimes.
TV with pick your ending!
Watson’s blog~ What a master stroke!

And you, you have your own blog as well.

Of course it has to be super clever.

Will future generations know you weren’t real, if essential records be lost
and only your blog and that of Dr Watson’s remain?

Will they rewrite you to tell their stories?

Take you as motif and reinvent you and Watson all over again?

If you know the answers to these questions
and begin answering them,
I’ll know that you will have
taken me into the realm of the fandom.

You will be tempting me to tell your story,
but in my case I would want to send
you to North Queensland and
see what happens to you there.

Or perhaps I’d encourage you to go there on holiday
and discover some emotional intelligence
to make you worthy of Molly.

I realise there just has to be
an irresistible puzzle for
you to solve.

Yours Sincerely,

Dr June Perkins,
budding detective of the social condition,
whose mother was an Agatha Christie Fan – who didn’t discover Sherlock until later.

P.S. Yes, it really exists, a blog for John Watson

To visit – John Watson’s Blog

Story on – John Watson’s Blog

Yes, yes we’re getting to you, you clever boy –Sherlock’s Blog

Finding the Zing

Guinea Pig Soft toy Cubby – June Perkins

So today for PiBoIdMo – I was inspired by this post Plot Twists that Zing. You just have to head over to it and have a read of that post and look at the books it talks about. I just loved it!

I am looking for story ideas that have a clever twist, an xfactor that makes you want to read from the title alone. It’s about pushing the limits, nothing is too crazy or out of the way.

It’s going to be fun. What will I put into my magic zing list? What is my recipe for zing, gleaned from the Picture Book Den, fabulous blog. Plot Twists that Zing?

Think of a favourite animal, in my case from Far North Queensland where I used to live, or maybe go with one of the animals I know well like guinea pigs or Minor Birds (make sure it is something other people don’t write about though).
Combine it with something kids love, pirates, fairies, wizards, magic, or dragons.
Give them an unusual problem that doesn’t come immediately to mind, maybe drawn from a reality show, house sharing, cooking, music talent show.
Remove something essential from a fairy tale and put something else in it to make it zing.
Check no-one else has done this, and then adopt the process again, until I have generated several ideas, then pick one to work with.

I hope you find your zing today too. I am going to apply this same rule to my chapter book. Already I am excited about the writing day.

5 Thou Shalt Nots of the Writing Craft

Once we have beaten writer’s block, found our stories, and drafted them, then comes the intense process of editing.

This is where we put ourselves to the mirror as writers and start to notice the blemishes and strong sides of our writing.

Over time there are rules that we learn from editors, teachers, readers, bloggers and other writers that make that looking glass moment bearable.

These vary from ‘Thou Shalt not’ to ‘our writing will be stronger if we do …..’

Then there are specific formulas to poems, novels, genres within novels that gradually become set in stone, and then are challenged by those who don’t want to follow rules but make new ones. Before we break rules it is good to understand them, and then work out why it is we might depart from them or reinvent them.

‘Thou Shalt Nots’ tend to stay around for longer and follow each new rule. The main ones I have heard continuously are:

1 – Don’tTell, show, (I like to think I am a camera with this one, and it works well with sensory language and seeing a character through their actions and not just their words.’

2- Don’t add useless words, make every word count (there are huge lists of these, very, really, but I’ve come across lists saying avoid saw and sit and find new words)

3- Don’t use words that are overused and mundane, be surprising (this list might include words like saw and sit and it changes as the popularity of words changes, this one is a tricky one, but lots of editors are aware of this list, which can remain secret unless you read a lot and see that truly some of the best writers avoid these words like the plague).

4- Don’t use overly predictable plots, provide twist (there are set plots that are frequently used, polyplots, and yet the challenge is to put something extra in and play with the expected). Some of the most annoying plots might be ‘then I woke up and it was all a dream’ and the romantic plot where the two main protaganists hate each other at the beginning and end up together)

5- Don’t sink into cliche, surprise (again it’s about the unexpected and surprising situation or image, and so love and rose becomes something to avoid it is so over done, but also there are so many crime stories it is becoming harder and harder to avoid cliches, they then start making the characters the unique thing to avoid cliche even whilst working in the set plot (more on this in future posts). One thing I love with the use of cliche though is humour and a twist, here it begin with the cliche but ends in a different direction.)

With writing that surprises, the twist is never seen, the plot is keenly anticipated and theorised yet tricky, the image is unique, every word is doing work and there isn’t any padding and love is raised above the expression of desire and roses; yet even as we learn and follow these ‘thou shalt not’ rules there has to be something in the story that people recognise and follow that has its origins in the past.

One of the surprises we learnt about when I was studying modern fiction was the rise of the ‘unreliable narrator,’ where the character narrating a story is lying to you, and yet you don’t realise it until almost the end of the story. At the time this began being employed as a technique it was surprising, and yet now it can be cliched as people took up the trend and employed it in their writing.

Memoir has always fascinated me because we have come to expect the author to be as reliable as possible, even as they write from a slanted perspective, and yet there are now some highly publicised memoirs, that have turned out to be mostly fictions. If only they had been written as fictions their authors would not be being sued by publishing companies, but the catch is that these authors have sought the authenticity mantle as a selling point for their work and cheated the public reading it for that element.

The challenge for contemporary writers, is perhaps how can we keep it surprising when so many have come before us and set up patterns. This then is the role of the imagination and pushing ourselves with our craft.

Who are the contemporary writers who most impress you with how they do any of the above?

Quest for brilliant first lines and strong openings

Standing on the muse’s dune, I want to hook the best first line ever.

Don’t you long to say that about the first line you wrote to a short story or a poem? If not you might want to say that about the best line you delivered to someone you had a crush on and wanted to impress. I think first lines can be in danger of entering cliche territory if one tries too hard.

Yet, despite this danger, a thought provoking video viewed this morning has me looking at the first lines of my short stories, and memoirs with a hypercritical eye.

This week I’m going to search for these as if questing for best friends when I was ten ( I imagined one next door who came to her window and called out goodnight to me every night as if she was my sister from the Waltons and was into reading Swallows and Amazons and Famous Five), along with the usual writing tips of look out for ditching cliches and making sure to show not tell.

I have to be careful though, because having this goal for that brilliant one line, and being too hypercritical about it, might cause a complete shut down in my writing.

Normally I like to write without censoring, and see where a story takes me. I follow my fictional or non-fictional nose. Then I begin to polish. Free writing is liberating and stops a blocking of the creative flow. It can be enlivened by paying attention to all the senses, or concentrating on one or two.

I have come to enjoy editing and polishing, especially when it’s not attached to read ink and marks, but attached to an improvement in telling a story. Looming though is the desire to have work that will be worthy of publishers, editors and the all important reader.

Although the last year or so, particularly for 300- 500 word beats, I find beginning well is empowering for telling the rest of the story. When I am in this state I write as if it’s a haiku reading in one breath and suddenly 500 words are strung together just the way I want. I wish I could do that in longer and longer beats. Is it possible to write without always needing to redraft and polish, polish, polish.

I begin my quest by writing a 100 first liners and will then make a selection from them as story triggers to write other pieces.

What is your favourite first line ever? How much attention do you pay to your openings?

(c) June Perkins