The Book inside Each of Us

"There's a book inside each of us." 

I'm not sure if this statement applies universally, but I know that with my husband and me, it certainly rings true. The interesting thing about it is how different each of our internal books happen to be.

The book inside of me is centuries old and half a world away. It comes complete with chain mail, catapults, famine, foes, visions, intrigue, and a love triangle or two.

The book inside of my husband deals with something far more modern. It involves statistics, graphs, personal anecdotes, and eighty hours of fieldwork at a nearby freeway exit ramp.

My book: a tale of the First Crusade.

His book: an economic case study on the profitability of panhandling.

Here's to hoping that both books gestate by the end of the year! Here's to hoping that one or both of them becomes a bestseller! Because the one thing I don't want my husband's fieldwork to prove is that there's more money to be made in panhandling than there is in writing books.

Quality Queries and Small Press Praises: Saturday Links

For those writers hoping to travel the traditional publishing route, there's a step in between writing a novel and finding an agent that's a bit of a doozy. That step is called writing a query letter. Earlier this week Sam Thomas, whose book The Midwife's Tale is slated to be released in January of next year, shared his query letter over at A Bloody Good Read along with some paragraph-by-paragraph instructions on how to write a bloody good letter of your own.

What I’ve got below is an annotated and slightly edited version of my own cover letter. I’ll mention at the outset that as letters go, it was pretty effective: I received manuscript requests from over half the agents I queried. (I would venture to say that my letter is better than my novel. Ah, well.)....(read more) 

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As you probably know, I went the Indie route with my first book I Serve, and after learning the ropes of book production and marketing, my husband and I decided to start our own publishing company. Jessica Knauss had a guest post this week about the "Pros and Cons of Small Presses." I thought that her post was very valuable for new authors trying to decide whether to sign on with a small press. Many of her Pros were right on the money:

• Welcoming. Debut authors tend to get an unbiased reception. 

• Quick. A small staff can mean less bureaucracy and an easier decision process.... 

• Collaborative. It is likely that you, as the author, will have some say in the design of your book and its cover and possibly even release dates. 

• Creative. Small presses interested in their authors’ welfare and their own future will work with you to implement effective, low-cost marketing solutions and make the most of whatever resources are available.... (read more)

Her Cons were also insightful--no advances, a smaller level of distribution--but I was happy to see that one of them most emphatically does not apply at our company. Just because we're a small press does not mean that we offer authors a lower royalty than a big publisher would. At Madison Street Publishing our philosophy is author-centric, and we're committed to giving the lion's share of the profits to the one who actually created the book.

Not Exactly the Man from Braveheart

N. C. Wyeth's illustration of William Wallace
from The Scottish Chiefs, by Jane Porter

It's my day to post on the English Historical Fiction Authors blog, and for your delectation, I've elected to write about William Wallace of Braveheart fame--but not everyone agrees with Mel Gibson that Wallace was such a hero. Learn what one contemporary English source had to say about him.

About the time of the festival of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a certain Scot, by name William Wallace, an outcast from pity, a robber, a sacrilegious man, an incendiary and a homicide, a man more cruel than the cruelty of Herod, and more insane than the fury of Nero…a man who burnt alive boys in schools and churches, in great numbers.... (read more)

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The English Historical Fiction Authors blog is quite an extraordinary collaborative effort. Spearheaded by author Debra Brown, it brings together over thirty authors who write historical fiction connected in some way with the British isles. Established in September, 2011, the blog has had to date nearly 56,000 unique visitors and has about 1000 page views per day. Yesterday, Mary Tod (who has been writing a series on top historical fiction sites) posted an interview with Debra Brown and some of the other EHFA authors. Head on over there to hear them talk about how the blog works and about historical fiction in general.

Show, Don't Tell--Or Not: Saturday Links

As a writer and an editor, I continually puzzle over the well-worn maxim "Show, don't tell." Where did the rule come from? What does it mean, exactly? And is it actually a good piece of advice for authors to follow? I read a couple posts recently on the topic--which led me to Google it and find some more information. Here are some of the detractors of the "Show, don't tell" rule:

Writer's Digest features a piece where thriller writer Lee Child's debunks the biggest writing myths:

Picture this: In a novel, a character wakes up and looks at himself in the mirror, noting his scars and other physical traits for the reader.  

“It is completely and utterly divorced from real life,” Child said.  

So why do writers do this? Child said it’s because they’ve been beaten down by the rule of Show, Don’t Tell. “They manufacture this entirely artificial thing.”

“We’re not story showers,” Child said. “We’re story tellers.”  

Child said there’s nothing wrong with simply saying the character was 6 feet tall, with scars.... (read more)

Shawn Lamb gives a feet on the ground example of when she "tells" instead of "showing" in her YA series Allon.

There. The entrance Tristine anticipated. Twenty-year-old Ellan the brown-haired, blue-eye beauty wearing her new red and gold gown like a strutting peacock, smiling like she owned the world. Well, at least Ellis.

This lays the foundation by suggesting a jealousy rivalry between the sisters that carries on with action and verbal exchanges throughout the story. Yes, I know, some will say Show Don’t Tell concerning the paragraph, to which I reply Pshaw!  I established the scene from Tristine’s POV, so it is natural to include the way she views Ellan’s entrance. I’m not suddenly going to switch to Ellan’s mannerisms for show. However, Ellan's subsequent actions, reactions and speech once she is involved in the scene supports Tristine’s assessment.... (read more)

And finally, with the help of Google, I came across this older blog post on The Recalcitrant Scrivener which very eloquently laid out what's right and what's wrong with this maxim. Essentially, this writer says that all writing is a form of telling.

Contrary to this approach I would cite Wayne C. Booth’s The Rhetoric of Fiction, first published in 1961. Here the author engages in a sustained critique of the “show, don’t tell” maxim. One of Booth’s main accomplishments is to demonstrate that there are a nearly infinite number of gradations between absolute telling and absolute showing, and that these can be used by fiction writers in a variety of ways. It’s worth noting that this is a work of criticism, not an off-the-shelf “how to” book.

My intention is to take Booth’s argument further. My claim is that the partisans of “show, don’t tell” suffer from a very specific conceptual confusion. The truth is that in an absolute, literal sense, narrative writing can only tell. 

The bullets whizzed by my ear. My guts fell to the floor. 

The shots narrowly missed Pearson. He felt his nerves tighten. 

Contrary to what certain people would tell you, both these sentences are forms of telling. The first is clearly more vivid, but it is nevertheless written as first-person narration, a manner of telling. If I were sitting next to you in a bar and said “The bullets whizzed by my ear…” I would be telling you something. I would have shown you nothing.... (read more)

The Whole Art and Joy of Words

To say the thing you really mean,

the whole of it, nothing more or less or

other than what you really mean; 

that's the whole art and joy of words. 

--C. S. Lewis

I don't know if you've ever noticed it before--it's the quote on the header of this blog. The Greek tutor says it in C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces, and it's one of my favorite quotes about writing.

What it all boils down to is precision--using language to convey precisely what you want to convey. And precision--as knife throwers, crane operators, and race car drivers know--can only come through practice. *sigh*