If that’s not the title of a horror movie, I don’t know what is!
Two minor items before I get started on what happened after the public flogging, er, critique of my opening.
First, for the moth of August, I ended with over 1300 spam comments blocked from the blog. Thank you, again, Word Press. I shutter to thing about the amount of moderating/deleting/screaming I would have done if it weren’t for that.
Second, I was going to post about the critique yesterday, but I got sucked into the Saved by the Bell movie. Don’t judge me. Sadly, I was horribly disappointed. It was rather boring and tame. I didn’t really learn anything about what went on behind the scenes, nothing salacious or even remotely interesting was revealed. Yet, I’m not at all sorry I watched. Really. Please, don’t judge me.
So. The Critique.
To set it up, you sent in your first 150 words and the critters (as I affectionately call them), had to try and guess your genre. The top ten entries with the most correct critter guesses move on to the next round. The idea was to see how well you built up your world right from the start.
At the end of the critique period, I decided I will now write in the “I don’t know” genre.
I’m OK with it. It’s a necessary part of being a writer. And, it was very eye-opening. While I’d argue that trying to get a genre type (or world) established in less tan 150 words is kind of difficult, it might even be unnecessary. A reader who picks up the book probably already knows the genre or world based on the title or the cover or both. Or maybe they got an idea based on the flab copy. However, there were a fair number of entries that did establish a genre in less than 150 words. Very clear, very concise, very obvious. And very well written.
As a sort of side observation, none of the adult entries (versus middle grade or young adult) made it through to the next round. In fact, most of the adult entries seemed to have “I don’t know” as a guess. I’m not sure what this means. Is it that all of the adult entries selected happened to have weaker openings? Is it that writing for an adult audience results in a different type of writing – one that is less concerned with world building in the beginning?
Interestingly, one entrant echoed my thoughts about how 150 words just isn’t enough and the title would have made it clear (or clearer) what the genre is. And, another said that the set-up was more obvious at about 500 words in. What this all means in terms of writing for a broad audience, I don’t know. Yet. But it is intriguing.
As for my entry. Well, I knew it wasn’t totally polished when I entered. The entries are selected at random so you never quite know if you’re in or you’re out until you are. So, I probably got what I deserved. Feedback that wasn’t very, um, great? That’s not right. It was great. Just not what I wanted to hear. It was totally clear in my head, just not so much on paper. Eating banana pudding while I read it helped.
It did encourage me to rewrite the opening, which I did. On paper. With a pen. Which slowed the process down for me and allowed me to really stop and think about details. Which got me thinking about character names (another critique) and streamlining things and where to add and subtract from the overall arc and a bunch of things I probably wouldn’t have considered if I hadn’t done this. So, in the end, very useful. Like I said, good can come from the comments section. You just have to be willing to find it.
And do it while eating banana pudding.
Partly Writing 