Peril On Your Street

I spent a few hours yesterday writing down a chapter-by-chapter summary of my latest novel. I did that in response to the literary agent's complaint that my pacing was the reason he rejected my project for representation. I hadn't done that review before, but it was an educational time. Before,  I simply took my seat-of-the-pants approach and followed a logical path from event to event. I missed the forest for the trees in the process. I should have listened to one of my first-draft beta readers who told me the story didn't grab her until one of my main characters began talking about his history. That is about twenty chapters in. She saw the same thing the literary agent did, but I was too close-minded to see the wisdom. I see it now. That chapter-by-chapter list showed me that I spent too long establishing interpersonal connections among characters and not getting to the meat of the story. That won't continue. I embark today on major revisions on that first chunk...

I have written about the tough but necessary part of this author lifestyle that involves rejection. Have a thick skin, I've been told and repeated to my blog readers. Expect a lot of thumbs-down responses. Yes, it's part of the life. That said, it's never easy to get that letter or email that says my project doesn't fit a literary agent's parameters for representation. A top agent requested a full manuscript of my latest novel. (I won't name the agent because I didn't seek his approval to use parts of his note.) It's the kind of agent that fosters an author's hopes. His fleet of writers feature names that are instantly recognizable and newbies who have won top awards. He sent me a wonderful note today that said he wasn't taking my novel under his wing. There were parts of the note that were encouraging with terms such as, "you write with energy and great care," and "given the ambition of this plot, I feel certain another agent el...

I have reached that point of great anticipation and justifiable angst. My most recent novel is ready to pitch to literary agents. The anticipation is obvious. This is my foray into becoming a published author. The chance to receive justification for my many months of fingertips on keyboard might be only a phone call or email away. The angst is obvious as well. Rejection is part of the process, and it is most disagreeable. Before I began the process, I armed myself with a thick skin. That's not hard to do for someone who spent years in journalism. Putting your reporting and opinions out for others to read invites considerable negative reaction if a reader is so inclined. One of the earliest pieces of advice I got from an author was delivered by John Hart, the creator of Edgar Award winners Down River  and The Last Child.  He said an author must be ready to receive multiple rejections. He said he keeps copies of those rejection letters from the days before he cracked open the ...

I watched Rear Window , the great Alfred Hitchcock movie in which Jimmy Stewart is confined to a wheelchair and watches the little world of nearby New York apartment buildings. It is a great way to show how this idea of Peril On Your Street plays out when done well. A brief overview: Stewart is in a cast after an accident, and he sits in his wheelchair for hours. His only entertainment is watching those in surrounding apartments. There is the lovely young female dancer who practices her craft often, Miss Lonely Hearts who never has a man in her life, the newlyweds who rarely open the shades on their windows, the frustrated songwriter who tries to find the right melody, the older couple with their small dog, and Raymond Burr and his ailing wife. The tension heightens when Stewart notices Burr's wife is gone, and he begins to wonder whether she is the victim of a murder. I won't go deeper into the plot because I want to concentrate on the obvious peril in the movie, and how i...

The first three entries in this series are so basic that they apply to every bit of fiction writing from a high school English project to a full novel. You need a good protagonist and events to force the action. I led with determining the setting and strange factors within that environment for a reason. Setting can be so vital to the overall strength of the project, so I gave it the top spot in my hierarchy. Besides, it's a good starting point for constructing this world in which you want your characters to live. Now comes the good part. I am not going to suggest details because this is where your creativity as an author comes in. Take those three basic steps and run with them. Create characters that speak to you or for you. Put them in that perfect setting. Shower them with events that spawn troubles aplenty. It might take you tens of thousands of words to construct your personal masterpiece. Good. I will touch on a major issue here, the length of the project. The novel on whi...

I will review briefly what I am building here. Our protagonist lives in a neighborhood that is much like your neighborhood except that every neighbor craves a maximum amount of personal privacy. That includes our protagonist, but that works only so well. Someone or something enters this neighborhood and demands the protagonist's attention. That attention forces a slight crack in this need for personal privacy. Of course, that slight crack is only a precursor to larger fissures, which become the grist for expanding peril. But how do those larger fissures form? Enter the next key element: the unexpected person or event that trashes this veil of safety craved by the protagonist. One of his or her goals must be put on less-than-safe ground. I could detail how I use this in my current novel, but I won't let the cat out of the bag as far as story details. I will gladly discuss those details with a literary agent because this part of the process opens a Pandora's box of poss...

We have our basic setting from my last post. This neighborhood is strange in its need for individuals to remain separate, with little or no interaction. We won't ask why for now, but such a place would be like putting billiard balls into a confined space and keeping them apart forever. Something or someone must change the scenario. Introducing our protagonist, the human cue ball. He or she doesn't need to be an over-the-top figure, especially within my parameters of this place being somewhat like the street on which you live. I want to portray this cue ball beginning to interact very logically within this world of insular souls. What prompts him or her? The irresistible force. Maybe it's a teen female who has a need to compete with another teen female who lives just down the block. Such an interaction is logical because teen group dynamics have their own set of rules. Maybe it's an older protagonist who sees something from his or her past, and that enforced separati...