Pitch Critique

I sent my pitch for "Mirror Man" in to Bookends, LLC for a critique, a few weeks ago.

The response was not only very complimentary and encouraging - particularly as I'm now first-drafting the final chapter - but it gave me some invaluable pointers on how to polish it further and increase my chances of catching a prospective agent's attention.

The Pitch:

Valentine is a Child of Loki and one of the original Berserker tribesmen of Norse Folklore. With unobstructed access to the minds of his chosen victims and the ability to assume their precise physical characteristics, he takes what he wants, when and from where he pleases. He is the ultimate identity thief, unconstrained by the password-encrypted barriers his human counterparts face. Only a conscience and the inherent loneliness his immortality brings, stand between him and the decadent life of leisure lead by his brothers and sisters.

The Critique:

I love this! I really think this sounds cool. My only suggestion is not to let it dwindle out. Give us the conflict in the last sentence. What is this book about and what does Valentine face? I hope the book isn’t entirely an internal battle for Valentine on whether to use his powers or not. That would be boring. No, I want to know what he’s going to be up against in this book. If you can nail that last line you have an absolute winner here.

I'll get to work in that final sentence of the pitch soon, hopefully incorporating more specifics on the conflict.

Many thanks, Jessica!

Genre Definitions

It’s been an interesting week, with a few days spent in Louisiana and a few good solid hours of writing ‘Mirror Man’ each day.

I love the drive home fromhere as I avoid I-10 for as long as possible, taking the scenic route along the edge of the lake and then follow the coast road back into Texas.

In the summer, the drive always brings encounters with wildlife; turtles and occasional gators in the road. I stop and pick up the turtles, saving them from certain reptilian pancakedom, but the gators just get a blast on the horn and a few angry revs of the engine. After that, they’re on their own.

The coast road inspires me to pull over and take a small walk on the sand. I miss living right on the ocean and when ever I find myself on a quite shore, I make a promise that one day I’ll move back to a coastal address, preferably a Caribbean one.

Anyway, back on topic…

I’ve struggled with defining the genre of ‘Mirror Man’. The protagonist is the direct descendant of a Norse God, which might place it firmly in the realms of a fantasy novel, although there is little reference or relevance to his godly heritage, beyond immortality.

I’m a huge fan of Neil Gaiman’s works and I would like to think I could occupy the same genre as ‘American Gods’ or ‘Anansi Boys’.

That being said, there are some gruesome scenes in my novel and some elements that I’d like to believe were psychological horror.

In short, I’m not sure how to classify it at the moment so, as a procrastination tool, I thought I’d set out my understanding of the various genre options.

Mystery/Suspense

Works that usually revolve around a mysterious or unexplained event or a crime that is not solved until the story comes full circle, to keep the reader in suspense. A good mystery/Suspense novel, for me, follows the process of solving the mystery, rather than the event or crime itself. It presents puzzles and red herrings for the reader to digest and analyse.

According to my google searches, subgenres include: historical, detective, supernatural, noir, detective fiction, and Miss Marple type whodunits.

Thriller

Danger-filled plots with high stakes, where the protagonists and their loved ones are in serious jeopardy. Although thrillers, like mysteries, often involve solving of a crime, the primary conflict is often imminent threat that the protagonists must overcome at all costs.

Crime Fiction

Obviously, the plot of a crime fiction novel focuses on the actual planning and perpetration of a crime rather than the detection and bringing to justice, the criminals.


Fantasy

Fantasy works often contain elements that are not of this world, such as mystical creatures, giants, faeries, goblins, gnomes, wizards, and witches. Magic, spells, swords and sorcery, supernatural powers, talking animals, and fanciful kingdoms abound in Fantasy works. Plots often centre around a quest, damsels in distress, epic battles of good verses evil.
Subgenres include mythology, dark fantasy, and graphic novels.

(So far, I think I’m still in this genre…)


Science Fiction

These are stories with a basis in the futuristic - a well-crafted blend of scientific fact andfiction. Science, both real and imagined (but with a basis in reality), contributes to the storyline.

It would seem easy to blur the lines between Science Fiction and Fantasy, wouldn’t it?

Historical Fiction

Stories based in a particular era of the past, often using a genuine setting, place or event such as the American Civil War, The French Revolution, the reign of Elizabeth I, etc.

Historical fiction is often quite literary work and the historical period is expressed in the language of the prose. Even in fictional tales, accurate historical facts and details are employed to bolster the story.

Chick Lit

Usually light, life experience based tales aimed at and about women. The protagonist(s) usually experience conflicts of a love/relationship/career nature. Bridget Jones’ Diary comes to mind.

Women’s Fiction

Again can be simply stated as fiction aimed at and about women. However, women’s fiction tends towards a greater depth and literary tone than chick lit.

Commercial Fiction

Based on heavily conceptual hooks and plots, appealing to a wide audience. The plot is the key in commercial fiction, with a strong narrative storyline, rather than literary prose or internal character conflicts.

Horror

The primary intent is to frighten. Horror can be based in extreme gore, graphic violence, or tense psychological suspense. Supernatural folklore, encompassing creatures who prey on humanity often fill the genre. – Vampires, werewolves and so on. The subgenres list seems endless and almost any genre with an element of terror fits here.

I have some elements of horror by way of a few gory scenes and some psychological suspense. Perhaps it’s a dark fantasy?

Literary Fiction

The quality of writing is valued above all else in literary fiction. Plot and commerciality are secondary to the development of story through prose. Descriptive narratives abound as the art of writing is explored.

Nope…nothing here for me.

Romance

Love stories set against dramatic backdrops, passion and mostly a ‘and they lived happily ever after’ resolution.


I think I’ll stick with ‘dark fantasy’ for now but if I need to change focus slightly, to attract the attentions of a specific agent or publisher, I have a few options.

Right, the sun is shining and the road is clear. I’m going to put the roof down and cruise home along my back roads and coastal routes and hope i don't get pulled over by a local cop with only two teeth, who calls me 'boi'.

Point Of View

What point of view to adopt has always been a significant hurdle for me, when beginning to draft a story. I used to charge full speed ahead, only to grind to a stop and decide that a different Point of View might be better suited.

Now I spend some time considering who is the best person to be telling the story before I get started. Can the story be properly told by the protagonist, or will it require a narrator? Will a third-person limited approach work or is omniscient is the best approach to allow greater latitude and a God-like knowledge of the characters and events?

In “I Hate You”, a very short story about a young boy of four who decides to run away from home, it was important for me that the reader be allowed inside the head of the child. A first person approach provided the intimacy but problems arose when I realized I was ascribing mature words to the thoughts of a kid. Four year olds don’t think “she infuriates me!” so the challenge was to stick with first person but accurately convey the emotions of the mind I was trying to portray.

I could have switched to second person and told the story from the mother’s pov, as if she were retelling the event to a now grown Son, - You glared up at me, defiant for the first time - but I felt that would reduce the impact of the tale and the overwhelming sense of unfairness the boy feels. Besides, it would have given the story a sentimental, nostalgic feel, rather than the immediate, inexpressible anger and frustration of a child that I wanted to convey.

“Birth Marked” my first novel (a work that I will return to at some point and try to polish into a marketable tale), studied the possibilities of murder, untimely death, redemption and reincarnation. The main protagonist, Nelson, is a man faced with the choice of joining his daughter in heaven or seeking out his soul mate through reincarnation. He interacts with two other key figures – the hit and run driver who took his daughter’s life, and a dying man with ‘perfect understanding’ who explains his choices.

Telling this story in first person wouldn’t have allowed me to develop the characters of the hit and run driver or the dying man – both of which are key aspects of the story. How could Nelson narrate the events of two other individuals’ lives? Events that he was not part of and has no way of knowing? First person was therefore rejected.

A third-person limited approach would allow the narration to jump from one character to another – provided that the switch is always made very clear to the reader! In third person limited, narration describes the events impacting the chosen pov character. This allowed me to tell the story from Nelson’s point of view in one chapter and then in a subsequent chapter, jumps across the Atlantic to the hospital bed of the dying man and narrate part of the story from his perspective.

This was a better option than first person, but caused problems when the characters finally interacted with one another. The question arose: which character would be the focus when two or more were together? I could have opted for Nelson in every instance, but I feared it may become complicated, confusing and possibly too limiting, so I opted for third person omniscient. I don’t know if it was the right choice because the story is still rough as a robber’s dog, but when I finally get back to it, I think I’ll try to stick with that approach.

“Mirror Man” on the other hand is third person limited – everything is experienced from Valentine’s perspective and therefore Valentine is present in every scene. No other narrator intrudes into the story or offer opinions – it’s Valentine’s story from start to finish and I found it came very easy. It helps of course that Valentine has the ability to read the minds of others – a mechanism I employ when the limited perspective requires broadening.

I don’t think I have an affinity for any particular POV at the moment, either in writing or reading. The main thing to remember is, what ever point of view is chosen, it’s always critical that the narrator tells the story, not the author.

Show and Tell

By virtue of the fact I’m male, and probably due to some other external influences beyond my wit, I’ve always tended towards the visual. My first attempt at the spoken word was “lookit!” (Followed soon after, by “Gimme!”)

Although my vocabulary has expanded a little since then, the theme has remained consistent. From enchanting women to elaborate deserts; exotic cars to cutting edge gadgets, my response seldom wavers from some variation of “Lookit!, Gimme!”

When in conversation, I’ll often use phrases like “Do you see what I mean?” and “Look, you’re not seeing the big picture.”

So when it comes to reading – and therefore my writing, too – I get turned off by an abundance of telling. I simply stop listening! Many of the writers I’ve worked with in the past - both in giving and receiving critiques - largely agree with the principle of ‘show not tell’ but some seem to confuse ‘show’ with several paragraphs of descriptive prose. For example, (and I’m deliberately exaggerating):

The black satin Oscar de la Renta dress created a decent cleavage from her normally miserly 32A bust. It cinched in at the waist before hugging her thighs to just above the knees. The dress, coupled with her diminutive, perfectly toned five foot two inch frame, obsidian eyes and cascading ebony locks drew both malicious and longing glances from women and men respectively.

Despite the fact the above passage contains the word ‘frame’ in a character’s physical description, one of my pet peeves (and I have so many of them they could almost be considered commercial livestock rather than pets) it doesn’t allow the reader very much latitude. There is some very specific information (telling) whereas I’d much prefer to be given stimulants for my mind’s eye (showing) and be allowed to build a mental image of the character within certain parameters rather than strict specifications.

So, I could rewrite the above passage as:

It was her first real designer dress and fitted so much better than the department store petite ranges she was usually forced to chose from. She felt sexy, thanks in no small part to Oscar de la Renta’s ability to coax a cleavage from even the most miserly bust. Tonight, for the first time, she was the sultry, dark temptress drawing looks from men and women alike.

What I prefer about the second approach is that the reader can decide how small a petite woman is, based upon his or her own perspective.

The reader dictates what constitutes small boobs, taking me out of the firing line!

The character is clearly meant to be a beautiful woman in both passages yet in the second, her eye and hair color, the length of her hair and her body type are also left to the reader to decide. That way, even if the writer and the reader have differing views on what defines beauty, the women in the dress should remain beautiful to both of them. Of course, if her hair length, eye color etc. are crucial to the plot then I’ll introduce those details, but again, I’ll see if I can ‘show’ her hair is long by allowing her to unpin it and let it fall rather than tell the reader she has shoulder length hair.

For every person who likes to be shown, there is another who reads my work and says it’s lacking a few paragraphs of descriptive prose because they simply can’t picture the cottage without knowing the make and model of the fridge or the pattern of the curtains in the living room.

All I know for certain is that I learn better when shown rather than told.

Just ask my wife!

Methods of Drafting

When I first started writing with a view to getting published, my methods were quite haphazard. I’d come up with an idea or find a prompt in a literary magazine competition and allow the kernel of a story to roll around in my head like a snowball, gathering weight and girth, until I was ready to start writing.

At some point along that writing path I would go back to the beginning, essentially to refresh myself of the premise, and find myself spending hours – sometimes even days – fine tuning a single scene. I would become so caught up in the detail that the story itself lost momentum. Additionally, I invested so much in the scene that it became a cast in stone element of the story, regardless.

By nature, I lose interest easily. I’m not quite Homer Simpson - The problem with first person POV is…Oh look, a split infinitive! – but, when the story doesn’t move from my head to the screen at a fair clip, my mind starts leaping ahead to the next idea. That dictated a more structured approach to drafting would be required, if I was going to successfully complete a story.

So I started writing a brief scene-by-scene draft:

1. Danny prepares a birthday surprise to bring to his girlfriend’s apartment and wake her with breakfast in bed and an expensive gift.

2. Danny arrives to find her ex-boyfriend’s car in the drive. Internal struggle = silent retreat or confrontation?

3. etc.

This approach gave me a direction from the outset and immediately improved my ratio of completed to commenced stories but new problems arose; while I was not dropping back into earlier scenes and fine tuning them to death mid flow, I was still writing each scene in full detail before moving to the next. The effect was, by the time I’d reached the end of the draft I had no energy or enthusiasm to go back and improve the areas that needed work. I can see this in some of those earlier stories if I read them back now – they are still not bad, in my humble opinion, but they could be so much better if I’d aggressively edited them after finishing the first draft.

Now I have employed yet another system which, based upon the speed and ease “Mirror Man” is approaching the end of the first draft, is my most suitable yet. I started out by writing a synopsis of the story. I then took a notebook and jotted down brief physical and mental characteristics of the main players, details of anticipated locations and any other pertinent information that needed to be carried throughout the story.

From there I drafted the outline of the story, usually writing a sentence or two for each intended chapter - sometimes a little more if I had some vivid ideas for the scene.

Once that outline was completed, I looked at it globally, to see where foreshadowing and back story might be useful and then set off writing the first draft. While I wrote that first draft, new ideas came to mind, secondary plot threads, enhanced character details etc. but rather than get bogged down, I made notes and moved on.

I expect to finish this first draft in the coming weeks and at that point I’m going to put “Mirror Man” away for at least two weeks before taking out those notes, returning to Chapter One, and enriching the prose.

For example, Chapter 1 begins:

A glass-walled restaurant, slowly revolving 800 feet above the bright city lights of Las Vegas seemed a far from ideal dining experience for a man afraid of heights, confined spaces and crowds.

"Agora-acro-claustrophobia?" Valentine asked, eyebrows raised.

It sounded too ridiculous to be true and, squeezed into a large red Hawaiian shirt and cargo pants, the little man looked as if he should be joking; he was the embodiment of the Pillsbury doughboy on vacation. The expression on his face, however, was as sober as a ‘Mothers Against Drunk Drivers' meeting.

Pillsbury took a handkerchief from his pants-pocket and dabbed at the sweat that ran like a mountain spring from the dome of his bald head. "I'm not sure that's a real word, but yeah, it sums up the condition pretty well."

"So what possessed you to have dinner at the ‘Top of the World' restaurant?" Valentine continued, hoping conversation might distract the man from his impending coronary.

"My psychiatrist said I needed to face my fears," Pillsbury said, unleashing another barrage of finger-prods upon the elevator's call button.

"Sound advice, no doubt, but are you sure he meant you to face them all at once?"

***

My notes, among other things, address the following:

1. Need to establish that the restaurant is also very busy, to satisfy Pillsbury’s fear of crowds.
2. Could ‘Mothers Against Drunk Drivers’ be abbv. to MADD? Is that acronym widely known?
3. Exact location in restaurant is not clear. Need to establish their location as being the lift lobby, much sooner.

Etc.

I can’t say if I’ve reached the final evolutionary development in my writing technique yet, but I’m as comfortable and as excited about writing as I’ve ever been and I haven’t yet lost interest in…Oh look, a dangling preposition.