Susan, sounds like you did well, and that it went well. Like Amy, nothing you said sounded remotely trouble-makingish, although I find myself wondering who the editor at Tor is (I know a few of them, at the senior level).
Anna Genoese--she's an Assistant Editor, runs their paranormal romance list, and edits women's fiction and dark fantasy.
Oh, and re paranormal? Apparently, the market is glutted. Don't make Jack into a werewolf just yet.
Heh. Word at this conference was "Paranormals are selling like hotcakes! Christine Feehan! Christine Feehan! Laurell K. Hamilton!" Though Anna Genoese hinted that vampires were getting overdone, and PLEASE keep the blond Tolkienesque elves in your private fantasies but out of any books you pitch to her.
Go for it, Allyson.
Allyson, I think you're going in the right direction, but it's a tad overwritten in spots. Mostly minor stuff--if I were your editor, I'd take "accommodation" out of the first sentence of the second paragraph, tighten up the ending of the next-to-last paragraph, and stuff like that.
but it's a tad overwritten in spots
This is my worst habit. I get all Anne Rice and can describe a lamp for 14 pages.
This is my worst habit. I get all Anne Rice and can describe a lamp for 14 pages.
Knowing a bad habit is half the battle, because then you know what to look for on rewrite.
Signed,
Rough Drafts Never Include Description of Anything Other than People and Occasionally Horses, No Matter How Opulent or Exotic the Setting May Be
This:
I feel like Lily Tomlin’s Edith Ann being swallowed by that really big rocking chair.
is a perfect line, because it's a perfect visual.
With Susan on a few places of it being, not so much overwritten as obscurely overwritten. It took me a second to get around and through "We agreed that the show was one big nocturnal emission on sheets of milquetoast." It's a fun sentence, but it stopped me cold: too much information, literally, to have to process, and in too personal a way of phrasing for it to have cut through my cranium on the first read.
When the descriptions of the physical surroundings are as crisp and clean as, say, that entire first paragraph, anything that runs too far in the other direction ends up reading as muddled. I'd stick with really straightforward in the introductory pieces, personally, because a) using them sparsely adds to the punchiness when you actually do use them, and b) an introductory or framing bit should always be clean. (Um, that's clean as in clear, not clean as in non-porny...)
Also with Susan on "accommodation". And with her, as well, on the sense that it's headed where I think you want it to be.
Noted. I think I'm going to write furiously through, get the whole story out, put it aside, write the next thing, then pull this one back out of file.
There's places where I've sort of mentally noted that I need to be cleaner, and I'm sure there's a lot I've missed. I'm more concerned about keeping the car on the road, this is such a monstrous, windy piece.
I think I love the writing-furiously thing. Because hell, if it's there? Pruning and/or retrofit, not such a big thing, or rather, not such a daunting thing. And all kinds of willing betas out here.
Asleep on feet, and keeling. And later today, Teppy posts a new theme/drabble/topic thing.
Allyson, agreeing with the tightening and making clearer. Without losing that breathless impetus the piece has, the sense of excitement about being on set. And my inner line-editor is screaming that "wispy" has no 'h'.
Allyson, I should be writing an essay and not skimming here at all, but I really wish I could read the rest of that. It may be that it could be tighter, but I didn't notice that; it really grabbed me, right from "fireworks and sawdust".
Allyson, although a re-read does make me think that things could be tighter, the first draft sucked me right in and made me want to read more.
That said, I loved the Tor editor so much I was half tempted to turn James into a vampire and Jack a werewolf on the spot so I could pitch to her.
Coffee. All. Over. Keyboard.
