Worlds of Wise and Wicked Weeds

Rick,
Worlds of Wise and Wicked Weeds is a charming tale for youthful readers who are as adventuresome as Lauren and Charlotte. This story is incredibly imaginative and would have enchanted me some years ago when I could have become lost is such a fantastic tale.

Walden Carrington
Titanic: Rose Dawson's Story

Hi Rick, The atmosphere of the town is well-described and I liked how you established Lauren’s boredom at her free time and being alone. Her dialogue with her mother might be loosened up a bit. Lauren's an inviting and observing character. The synopsis sounds entrancing. Shelved – Katherine (The Swan Bonnet)

Dear Rick, Well, I'm on your 2nd book - what a concept of changing when going through the tunnel - I'm not sure if I'd like to do that, though. :) Happy endings, I loves. :) You may want to cut longer paragraphs in 2 for an easier read. :) Love, Susie :) p.s. Could you please take a moment to back my 2 memoir books? Thanks so very much. :) I would really appreciate it. :)

I think this is right on the button. The target audience will lap it up and the style is very visual. On my shelf. Patrick Barrett (Shakespeares Cuthbert)

Hi Sheryl,

Thanks for your comments, and for shelving (though as yet it doesn't seem to have registered as such).

I initially accepted your point about parentheses and began removing them and using different punctuation, but when I came to the place where Lauren says they're not going away on holiday but then adds, almost as an aside, that they are, but not for ages, I couldn't see any acceptable way of expressing it without parentheses -- unless I altered the wording, which I didn't want to do, because I knew exactly what I wanted Lauren to say and it sounded natural. So I concluded there's no reason why you shouldn't have parentheses (or any other form of punctuation, for that matter) within a passage of dialogue.

However, I do re-read and amend passages whenever I feel it's required, so I'm still open to further comments/advice!

Thanks.
Rick
Worlds of Wise and Wicked Weeds.

Worlds of Wise and Wicked Weeds...

Don't understand why this isn't doing better in the ratings. The writing is assured and smooth, the characters are believable and the story has a lovely pace.

The only thing I found a little odd was the use of parentheses in the middle of dialogue. I've never seen that before. I'm wondering if it's worth changing. Perhaps you feel the need for parentheses when what you might consider doing instead is creating beats with body language, etc.

Shelved without a qualm.

Cheers,
Sheryl
IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES

Oh yes!

This is going on my WL, right this second.

Of course, (sigh), I have a few criticisms - the rather jerky style of writing, and some other things, but the story and the theme itself, which, incidently, I didn't think would appeal to a jaded 37 year doctor like me, is enough for me to keep an eye on this work. You have got something going here Rick.

Best,
Martin.
(My House on the Fjord)

Rick,

I don't feel qualifed to tell you how to write. Each writer develops their own unique style. What I focus on when I read is the story and this one is truly delightful. I think it appeals to adults as well as young adults and I sincerely hope it finds a publishing home.

It's a book that deserves support.

Backed:)

Cheers!
Ci

Dear Rick,


I have read two chapters and have two thoughts for you. Literary agents are going to want you to tighten the writing by editing words out, They will also want you to drive the story more via character dialogue and character inter-action, so we hear them and see them.

Worlds of Wise and Wicked Weeds is on my bookshelf.

Go well with you writing. I don’t know about you, but for me it ain’t easy.


The notes below may provide a bit more insight. I hope you find them of interest.

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.

Dear Pierre,

Many thanks for your comments and backing of my book. Wow! I've only been registered with Authonomy for a few days and already I'm swamped with comments, compliments and criticisms (the latter mostly positive) and various pieces of advice, some of it contradictory. I shall have to try and sift through it, compare and contrast, collate the elements that agree, make up my mind about those that don't - and ultimately do what I feel is best in my case.

To answer some of your points, I would certainly agree that the first paragraph - sentence, even - should be arresting; the title, too, and indeed 'Worlds of Wise and Wicked Weeds' seems to have grabbed people's attention. However, I don't feel it's always necessary to plunge straight into dialogue. I've checked a range of books on my own (physical) bookshelf, and found that novels by such diverse authors as HG Wells, Dan Brown, JK Rowling, John Grisham, GP Taylor and various others largely begin by 'setting the scene', albeit in such a way as to make the reader want to read on. It could well be possible to start WWWW with some dialogue between, say Lauren and Charlotte—I'll certainly look into it—but I'm not entirely convinced it's necessary at present.

I too use Roget's Thesaurus, and keep it, plus the OED and other reference books by my computer, and try to avoid using the same word or phrase too often when there are suitable synonyms. And I do indeed try to 'live' my scenes, often drawing on my own experiences from similar experiences, or picturing myself in those of the characters.

Again, I agree about omitting the 'he said', 'she said' as much as possible—dialogue usually flows much better without having to be constantly (and unnecessarily) reminded who is speaking at any one point.

I'm not so sure about always omitting the past participle 'had': true, you can do so on occasions, but not always. I feel, for instance, it's justified to use the pluperfect in para 3 of WWWW chapter 1, where the children are telling of past experiences—I think it's necessary to go back one tense there. I tried reading it to myself without the 'hads' and it didn't sound right somehow.

I'm afraid I can't agree with your statement: "Write tight, sparse, lean, stark, bare bones. Adjectives and adverbs are for people who need a crutch to support their unimaginative nouns and verbs." Adjectives and adverbs are just as important as nouns and verbs (something I learned in my grammar school days and have appreciated ever since!). As a reader, I don't necessarily want to read tight, sparse, lean, stark bare bones (at least, not always). I like good descriptions, provided they're not overdone. GP Taylor's novels, for example, are full of rich description, and, I feel all the better for it. I think it's very much a matter of a particular author's style—or a particular book.

I do take your point about reviewing and editing out words and sentences that are unnecessary or add little to the plot, and I have done so myself on many occasions. I don't, however, share your views about adverbs ending in -ly. Far from weakening the writing and making it vague, I feel they can (if used properly) strengthen and enrich the meaning. For instance, in the first para of WWWW Ch 1, I've used 'distinctly', 'unusually', 'merely' and 'anecdotally'. If you omit those words the meaning in each case is certainly weakened, in some cases drastically (to use another -ly word!).

However, thank you very much for taking the trouble to pass on some very relevant words of wisdom, and I shall indeed consider them. I shall also endeavour to read some of your own work—although I can't fully satisfy the requests of all my respondents, most of whose work I can only sample as and when time permits!

Kind regards, and I wish you success with your own writing.

Rick Taylor
Worlds of Wise and Wicked Weeds
Time and Time Again

Dear Rick,


I have read two chapters and have two thoughts for you. Literary agents are going to want you to tighten the writing by editing words out, They will also want you to drive the story more via character dialogue and character inter-action, so we hear them and see them.

Worlds of Wise and Wicked Weeds is on my bookshelf.

Go well with you writing. I don’t know about you, but for me it ain’t easy.


The notes below may provide a bit more insight. I hope you find them of interest.

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.

I like this, it is really charming. My daughters would have loved it. On my shelf. Patrick Barrett (Shakespeares Cuthbert)

Hi Rick

Welcome to Authonomy! If you have any questions, please ask (although I am no expert).

I have read the first 3 chapters, but let me first say - LOVE the title!!!!

You have put this under children/young and your MC is 11, so that makes sense. However, I am having trouble imagining a youngster reading this and staying with it. It is a great story, you have imagination and depth going for you...but it reads as if it is written for adults. Even parents reading to their kids might not hold the young's attention.

I don't think you need the bit about Charlotte at the start of chapter 3. I understand you are saying Lauren was on another plane (so to speak) but it doesn't add to the tale at that point.

My suggestion (and they are only suggestions, take 'em or leave 'em)...put this is the young adult category and maybe make Lauren slightly older.

Speaking now from an adult's point of view (and with eclectic tastes) I adore this! I would certainly read on to feel the mystery of adventure.

I am shelving this, wishing you lots of luck and sending you a friend request to keep an eye as you progress on this site. Have fun!

Cheers
Elaina
Gathering of Rain