Permanent Passenger: My Life on a Cruise Ship

wow - you're really letting the cat out of the bag with this one.
it would maybe good to turn it into a tv or comic book series ... you'd possibly grab a 'lads mag' audience.
although you write well and have structured the story excellently, it's not something that a woman like me would go for.
thanks anyway.
kaye x

Takes me back to my days on the Oriana.....fraternising with the passengers was one of my favourite pastimes....
Thank you for this....backed...

Angus Shoor Caan.

Violet Hiccup

Hi, Misha,

I really enjoyed reading this. Not only was it a pleasure to read non-fiction for a change, it was also a really interesting subject for me to read about. I have been on two cruises because my elderly aunt needed some companionship, not because I would ever have chosen to take that kind of holiday myself, and it was so interesting to read about these strange phenomena from a staff member's perspective. Your perceptions about the passengers are funny and insightful and also help to explain a lot. (Like the guys on staff who were hitting on me.)

This is a really good topic and I'm sure that if there aren't other books like it out there, it will have a good market. I am sure that a publisher would want it restructured somewhat but all the basic material is here.

I wish you success and have backed with pleasure.

Best

Mary

Dear Micha,


I have read your pitch, synopsis, first two chapters and placed Permanent Passenger on my bookshelf. Nice to read non-fiction for a change.

The notes below really relate to fiction but I hope something there catches your eye.

Over the past five months I have spent three hundred hours providing page-long critiques but can no longer keep up with the volume.

So I’m trying another way of passing on information.

I will attempt to do better than critique your work by indicating how you might judge it yourself. Rather along the lines of give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish, feed him for life. You may or may not agree with everything and I admit I do not always stick to these thoughts either.

What I have set out below are guide-lines based on what I myself have learnt from being published.

The pitch is critically important as among the book-lists which editors scan, your pitch stands alone with no support from the synopsis. I write the synopsis first, because a key sentence there is usually appropriate for the pitch.

A synopsis is not a dust-jacket advertisement. Aimed at a professional editor, it is a no-nonsense summary of what happens in the novel, including how the novel ends. Don’t leave the editor dangling and don’t ask her questions. Tell her.

Somerset Maugham said, ‘There are three rules for writing a successful novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.’

Correct. There are no rules for creativity. Think of Richard Bach’s Jonathon Livingstone Seagull. So way out, so creative it was rejected over a hundred times. Then it became a best seller.

There is one criterion though……. entertainment. Our writing must entertain from the very first sentence. There is no other reason for story-telling whether around a camp fire or in print..

I have struggled nine years to write three novels. Each written three times. One published, one lying fallow, Fig Tree currently in the process of being rewritten for the fifth time. Two literary agents requested the full manuscript but threw it back at me for narrative story telling. So I am rewriting, converting narrative to dialogue.

Based on what has happened to me, these are my thoughts on what editors want from us…………….


Plunge directly into the story. Do not set the scene or back-story first. When we go to a play and the curtain rises, we don’t see stage hands putting the props in place. The stage is already set. Likewise our opening paragraphs to the reader, the actors should immediately get on with it.

I have found that our opening chapter isn’t necessarily the first one we write. It might only occur to us when the novel is completed.

Let our characters drive the story-telling via dialogue, interplay and direct action. It’s stupid (although I am guilty of this) to have a stage set and silent characters frozen, while an off-stage narrator bores the audience with what is supposed to be happening on the stage.

Write minimal words because research shows that our readers’ brains race ahead of our words, visualizing the scene themselves, anticipating how our sentences end…… four times faster than they are reading. They become bored and frustrated by our overwriting, over description, unnecessary information. (I have been hauled over the coals for this.)

Write tight, sparse, lean, stark, bare bones. Adjectives and adverbs are for people who need a crutch to support their unimaginative nouns and verbs. As far as possible, always seek the appropriate noun and verb.

(Read John Steinbeck’s field notes Journal of a Novel which he jotted down while he was writing East of Eden. He edited out as many adjectives and adverbs as possible, finding the appropriate noun or verb instead.)

And yet, in my rewrite I am horrified to find superfluous words, adjectives, adverbs and general waffling which I am getting rid of. I am embarrassed at my own work.

My vocabulary is poor, so I use Roget’s Thesaurus which is a treasure. A real work-horse and a delight to use. It’s a companion that provides thousands of alternative words. Appropriate nouns and verbs are there for the picking.

Don’t write your scenes. Live them. Experience them. Meditate. Daydream yourself into them Watch what is happening. Listen to what the characters are saying. Smell the sweat or the aroma or whatever. Touch what the characters are touching. What do you feel? Taste the bile, the coffee, or the skin of the lover.

All communication is made through our five senses. I wear earmuffs when I write, to help me leave this world, experience the emotions and the senses and disappear into another universe which is the scene I’m trying to paint.

Are we stirring the emotions of the reader? Feeling is critically important. This can be achieved through good dialogue. Speak your dialogue aloud to hear what it sounds like. Is it natural? Do people really speak like that? Is it too formal? In the real world, we often don’t speak complete sentences. So dialogue can be truncated too to make it more natural.

In my opinion a novel must generate its own momentum, so readers experience it rather than read it. This can be achieved by dreaming it, experiencing it, living it, rather than writing it.

To avoid clumsiness I edit out the past participle ‘had’. I change ‘he had done it’ to ‘he did it’ It seems to make the action more immediate and more relevant.

I also dump words ending in ‘-ly’……. seemingly, clearly, obviously. actually, strangely, finally, eventually………. and all the others. Somehow they weaken our writing and make it vague.

And I am finding that much of the dialogue reads better if the ‘he said, she said’ is deleted.

Taking words out of our sentences and taking sentences out of long narrative paragraphs, in my opinion, is the secret to better writing. I can easily cut my stuff between 20% and 50%.

I learnt this when a literary agent demanded I delete 40,000 words from my first novel of 120,000 words. I was shocked but I cut it back to 80,000 words and the novel was published.

Fig Tree has already shed 16,000 words and I am currently rewriting it for the fifth time, changing the dialogue, cutting the narrative and tightening the writing as much as possible. I might dump another 6,000 words.

You may be interested in The Video Inside Our Heads, which is part of a confession I made about my idiocies in attempting to write. See, ‘How I Wrote and Sold My First Novel’ in Forum’s Writing section. It’s quite insane and you’ll probably laugh at me but it did work and I suppose that’s what matters..

I trust this is better than a critique and provides a bit of food for thought..


Kind regards,



Pierre Van Rooyen.

The Little Girl in the Fig Tree.

Hi there
had a read through different parts of both chapters - I worked on the ships for sometime enjoying fun and frolics so interesting to read ...

I'm curious too - why start at Chapter 5? Will add to my Watchlist and await early chapters...

Lesley
Kangaroo land

Hi Micha - you didn't disappoint with this. And I note that you've published already on lulu - congratulations!
Martin

Great pitch - I have watchlisted this!

cheerio from another non-fiction slave

anli

Thanks Micha! You are also on my shelf now....good luck with this! Alison

Micha - I'd be grateful if you could take a look at my book , Alarums & Excursions! Still like yours! Alison

Hi, Micha! Just wanted you to know I've watchlisted Permanant Passenger and will be getting to it before next week is out.

Take care,
Amethyst

I've put a plug on 'Recommend a manuscript'..hope you get some views from this! Alison

Micha - having last year 'done' the QM2 to NY and back, I'm intrigued by your pitch - and the first chapter. A great idea to have the 'fact' bit at the end of the page! Have put you on watch and will be back! Alison (Alarums & Excursions) ps Now I can't write that exposee I was planning!

Micha - I love the pitch. I've watchlisted it and will be back
Martin