writing

Reading John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars

In the past 24 hours I have been a-flurry with thoughts about YA literature, mostly because I had two significant reading experiences. The first is the YA novel by John Green, The Fault in Our Stars, which I finished last night. The second is an article in NCTE’s Council Chronicle (Volume 22, No. 2) titled “YA LiteratureWhere Teens Find Themselves” by Lorna Collier, which I read this morning.

Originally I wanted to write this post about Green’s novel, about how wonderful it is and what ideas I have for reading it together with a classroom of high school students. But while I considered my topic over breakfast, I read the NCTE article and found these quotes particularly relevant:

From Don Gallo, ALAN (Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of NCTE) co-founder:

“There are some schools where no teacher even knows about YA lit . . . You ask, ‘What do you think about young adult literature?’ and they say, ‘Oh, we don’t teach that crap here.’ That’s been an attitude of some English teachers since forever. There are school districts where YA is used in middle school but not high school because ‘in high school we do the REAL literature.'”

From Robert C. Small, past ALAN president, quoted from a 1986 article published in NCTE’s English Journal:

“These are works of literature [from a list including Judy Blume, Robert Cormier, etc.] even in the narrowest and most conservative sense. They have serious intent, careful craftsmanship, effective expression, and other qualities that make literature literature.”

Essentially, the point I took away from this article is that many teachers don’t teach YA literature because they think it isn’t valuable in a classroom.

Do teachers really think this? The article didn’t cite any specific research, and I didn’t do a search for such research before writing this. What I do know for certain is that I didn’t include young adult literature in my classroom for many years.

Why didn’t I? First and foremost, I was completely unfamiliar with it. By the time I started teaching, my last encounter with young adult literature had been junior high school, when I was primarily concerned with questions of love and popularity. As I moved into high school I became a strictly adult book reader.

I went to high school in the late 80s, in a time when YA literature was not the same as it is now. That’s not to say YA lit of the 80s wasn’t valuable or important, there just wasn’t the huge volume and variety there is now. I wonder if I were an adolescent today if I would have a greater or lesser interest in YA books, and I wonder if young teachers today who were raised in a world of such books are more likely to teach them.

When I started teaching, I did not look down my nose at YA literature. As I said, I just didn’t know a thing about it. My teacher preparation program hadn’t exposed me to the latest and greatest works of YA lit, and no one in my new English department was teaching it. Although I don’t know this for sure, I don’t think a single English teacher in my department in the mid-90s had a classroom library with numerous new releases. I don’t say this to be critical. I don’t think they had any better idea what was new in the YA publishing world than I did, and I was fresh out of college.

The truth is that I didn’t really get interested in YA literature until I attended a BER workshop titled “What’s New in Young Adult Literature.” I was looking for professional development points in order to renew my teaching license, and it seemed about time for me to really learn about what my students were reading when I wasn’t assigning Frankenstein or Romeo and Juliet. This coupled with my growing interest in a writing career put me on the path to developing a classroom library that sought to keep up with YA lit as it was being published.

It might seem obvious to you, if you are not an English teacher, that it’s important to keep up with the real world of books, but it’s not always so obvious to an English teacher. We are trained to teach the canon. We are trained to teach literary analysis, the five-paragraph essay, and (sometimes) grammar.

My own experience was that the more familiar I became with the actual real world of book publishing, and the more I understood and read the books my students were reading, and the more I could share about the professional world of writing (in other words the more I stopped being insulated from my field by classroom walls), the more I felt I could offer my students a glimmer of understanding as to how what-you-do-in-school is relevant-to-life.

There’s something about literature that always feels abstract when you’re a student. Something that makes the big ideas float around in a great mist you can wade through and even glimpse through, but never hold in your hand. The ideas encountered in English classes are universal, but contextual. I feel YA literature is a valid way to provide context for the audience it’s meant to address.

The story of a cancer patient and her romance with another cancer patient, John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars is one book I would use with students at any high school level. It is the kind of literature I wish all high school teachers were using in their classrooms. Although many more teachers are using contemporary YA works today than back in the 90s when I started teaching, I like to think even more would use it if they just read a book like The Fault in Our Stars.

And since this post has become longer than I intended, I’ll leave off with two blurbs from the back of my hardcover edition. I think they pretty succinctly state why I would love to read Green’s book with a group of high schoolers:

“[Green] shows us true lovetwo teenagers helping and accepting each other through the most humiliating and emotional ordealsand it is far more romantic than any sunset on the beach.” -New York Times Book Review

“The Fault in Our Stars takes a spin on universal themesWill I be loved? Will I be remembered? Will I leave a mark on this world?by dramatically raising the stakes for the characters who are asking.” -Jodi Picoult

 

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ALAN, Council Chronicle, John Green, Lorna Collier, NCTE, The Fault in Our Stars

The Drift

Both of my long-term critique partners have had special news this October. Rhonda Masoncompleted the draft of a new manuscript (I’ll label it space opera romance for now), and I am SUPER EXCITED to announce thatDiana Botsford‘s second novel set in the Stargate universe is releasing today as an ebook! (releasing November 20th in print!) The Drift is the sequel to her first Stargate novel, Four Dragons. If you are a Stargate fan, or even if you’re not, I invite you to check out her work. Diana is a thoughtful writer who understands character motivation, and I really responded to her portrayal of Jack and his inner crisis in this story.

Diana is largely responsible for my return to writing after my own inner crisis. Her example during the writing of Four Dragons really gave me the push I needed to recover my rhythm and confidence as a writer, and for that I will be eternally grateful.

A little while back I posted aboutthe importance of good critique partners. I have been inspired, encouraged and improved in so many ways for having had the blessing of a few good writing buddies, Diana and Rhonda especially.

Congrats, Diana, on the release of The Drift!

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critique partners, Diana Dru Botsford, Four Dragons, The Drift

Great book endings

So I’m thinking about book endings. I mean, I’m thinking about what makes a book ending GREAT.

Because I’m taking a pause in my writing, I’ve been catching up on reading. (I don’t seem to be able to read and write prolifically at the same time.) I’ve been struck by how much, or how little, I love the endings of some of the novels I’m reading, and I can’t help but be insecure about the impact of the endings of the stories I’ve written.

I’ve been taught that the ending to a novel should deliver the inevitable in a way the reader does not expect. To do this, a story must be meticulously plotted with characters’ actions carefully bringing about the ending. Some novels I’ve read this year seem to be plotted correctly, to build sufficiently to the ending, yet somehow I don’t get the big bang out them that I crave. In truth, very rarely do I get a true feeling of completion, of catharsis, of fulfillment when I read a novel, and although I chalk that up to my impossibly high standards (after all, I do LIKE a lot of books, but here I’m talking about LOVING a book), I think I can pinpoint a couple of reasons I am disappointed by endings.

Ironically, my disappointment in an ending is proportional to my faith in an author’s skill. If I’m reading a book and find myself entranced by its language, its concept, its world-building; if I find myself excited about the thematic complexity; if I say to myself, Holy crap, this author knows what he/she is doing; then I ratchet up my expectations for a jaw-dropping ending. This is probably not fair since I tolerate much less in an ending when the beginning and middle don’t foster such high expectations in me. I can use the example here of TVs Lost and Battlestar Galactica. I adore both stories (own both on DVD), and I like both endings, but ultimately I don’t feel those endings exploited the full potential that was there throughout.

Another way an ending can disappoint me is if I feel essentially unchanged by what the author ultimately has to say. I want a book to have educated me or have made me think about something in a new way. Again, I can get excited during the beginning and middle of a book as I contemplate the premise or the message I think is coming, and when nothing of earth-shattering significance shows up in the conclusion . . . disappointment.

Mostly I am disappointed in an ending if I can sit there with the book closed and think about how I might have made the ending better.

I know I’ve loved the ending when I want to sit there and savor what happened, just the way it did.

It’s hard to talk about specific endings that I’ve loved because doing so obviously creates spoilers, but here I offer, by way of example, a brief list of books I’ve read that have wholly satisfied me with their endings. You’ll likely recognize all of them. The first thing I noticed upon reflection is that several are series, and I think this says something about what I need in complexity in order to feel I’ve had a satisfying pay-off.

The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons

The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

The His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman

Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (my favorite book ever)

 

What do you need in order to LOVE a book’s ending? What ultimately disappoints you about endings? What are some books that have had the greatest pay-off for you? (Be warned I will use your advice to revise my own stories’ endings!)

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Ender's Game, endings, Harry Potter, His Dark Materials, Hyperion, The Book Thief, The Time Traveler's Wife, Thirteen Reasons Why, To the Lighthouse

Where I’m at Part 5Yes, I finally have an agent!

So this not-quite-published-yet writer is one step closer to getting published. I’ve cleared a hurdle that felt so big it may as well have been a pole vault bar. I’ve just signed with the very talented Alexandra Machinist at Janklow and Nesbit, who will be representing me for my third manuscript, still tentatively titled World Maker.

Of course I am over the moon about this! BUT! I know that signing with an agent does not guarantee a publishing contract (not that I doubt the taste or skill of Ms. Machinist in any way). Nor does a publishing contract guarantee awesome sales. There are many hurdles yet to clear, and we’ll see if they’re the standard 100 meter height, the more lofty pole vault height, or something more akin to a mountain.

For now I’m just so happy to have gotten this far!

Here is a brief summary of my agent search:

I completed manuscript #1 in 2006. It’s my 169,000-word science fiction story set on a faraway planet in the future. For me, this story is still my favorite, but I recognized early on that its length is a problem, and that since it was my first try at novel writing it might not be awesome to everyone else, so I started another story.

I completed manuscript #2 in 2011. It’s a 90,000-word YA fantasy set in ancient Greece. This I shopped during the fall of last year, and while I waited to hear the verdict from a bunch of agents who requested the full manuscript, I started manuscript #3.

I completed manuscript #3 (World Maker) in January of this year (4 and a half months!). At the tail end of February I sent it out to nine agents, three of whom I considered the perfect match both for me as a writer and for World Maker as a story. When I heard back from six of those nine, I sent another round of queries, then another some weeks later, then another. Four rounds for me equaled about 50 agents, all of whom I researched at length, and any of whom I would have been pleased to work with.

In May, while waiting on World Maker queries, I started writing manuscript #4. I decided to stop querying on World Maker and simply wait out the responses on what was out already. I had reached the end of my list of agents I thought were a strong match, and I thought if I got no offers I would simply either finish manuscript #4 or redraft manuscript #2 and start again fresh.

On Monday, July 9, 2012, I had four full requests pending on World Maker when Alexandra Machinist called me to offer representation. I stopped breathing. I don’t think I inhaled or exhaled through the entire conversation, which lasted something like an hour. When I hung up the phone I emailed the other three agents with the manuscript to inform them of the offer. One declined to make an offer, one didn’t get back to me, and the other offered representation two days later.

Remember I said I considered three of the agents from my first round to be the perfect match? Well, the two agents who made offers were two of the three! How lucky is that?

In a future post I might share some wisdom I’ve acquired during this quest for an agent (though I don’t presume to be wise, I can relate some details of my experience), but for now I have some work to do on revisions before the manuscript goes on submission again. This time to editors!

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HAS SUPPORTED ME, LOVED ME, AND CRITIQUED FOR ME IN ORDER TO GET TO THIS POINT!

 

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agent search, agents, Alexandra Machinist, Janklow and Nesbit, where I'm at, World Maker

High concept?

High concept fiction is that which can be pitched in very few words and has mass, easily recognizable appeal. The term “high concept” has filtered into the publishing world from the movie world.

Here is a very succinct set of examples from Nathan Bransford to illustrate high concept versus not:

Kid wins a golden ticket to a mysterious candy factory? High concept.
Wizard school? High concept.
There’s this guy who walks around Dublin for a day and thinks about a lot of things in chapters written in different styles and he goes to a funeral and does some other stuff but otherwise not much happens? Not high concept.

As I research agents for submission of my latest manuscript (#3), I find myself questioning whether or not my story is, in fact, as high concept as I intended. My story isn’t Snakes on a Plane, which tells you all you need to know from the title.

I found a great line from Steve Kaire that has me thinking: “Non-High Concept projects can’t be sold from a pitch because they are execution driven. They have to be read to be appreciated and their appeal isn’t obvious by merely running a logline past someone.”

I’m not willing to divulge the premise or plot of my manuscript on the internet (sorry), but I will say that I’ve had one heck of a time boiling it down to a logline that really conveys the essence of the story. Could this be because the strength of my story is in its execution, not its concept? Or am I just a failure at coming up with a great logline?

By contrast, I know with certainty that my second manuscript IS high concept and my first is NOT. (And my fourth, my WIP, IS.) Why am I having such a difficult time determining the status of manuscript #3?

Well, I’ll be attending a conference later this month with workshops led by literary agents evaluating query letters and opening pages, and I hope to have my question answered.

In the meantime, some of you reading this post have read said manuscript #3. Thoughts?

* * *

Here are a few links to info on high concept fiction:

http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2010/08/what-high-concept-means.html

http://www.writersstore.com/high-concept-defined-once-and-for-all

http://misssnark.blogspot.com/2006/06/high-concept.html

http://www.amazon.com/High-concept-literary-fiction/lm/R2V1Y7KSZU48B0

http://www.rachellegardner.com/2011/08/what-is-high-concept/

http://waxmanagency.wordpress.com/2009/02/06/recipe-for-success-high-concept/

http://www.professorbeej.com/2012/02/high-concept-vs-high-character.html

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high concept, logline