The rest of Friday

Workshop

            We got to my piece today! Everyone’s piece was workshopped thusly: What is this about? What’s working? What could we say to help this person? Finally, does this person have questions for us?

            What’s working for QQQ: The internal speech—they quoted the lines “Ryan’s voice comes back to me” and “it’s the simple truth and conveys nothing of the confusion—and what the hell, joy—flooding my lungs.” Ella’s character stood out as personable and chipper when we meet her, but when we got to the dining hall, we see she’s protective. The vibe of the Doublestar group changed nicely and taught a lot about those characters. The last paragraph. The dining hall scene. The confusion about why there’re boys at Bryn Mawr.

            Patricia says she would read this world. Perhaps I’m misremembering, but I think I’m the only one she says that about. She says it has the potential to change hearts and minds and teach people about the trans* world.

            Things that could help me: They thought the public stakes got too in the way, and that I should make sure everyone cares about more things than this immediate problem. I think that’s just the function of the inciting incident. Goodness knows I have enough subplots I’m having trouble keeping track of. They think it’s a bit odd that Ella opens with the pronoun question. I think that’s how Bryn Mawrtyrs tend to talk.

            Questions: I want to know if it’s okay to just weave subplots in the calmer scenes, and not try to get them into the inciting incident, and they think that’s fine. They want to know how one pronounces ze/hir, and say it tripped them up not knowing how to pronounce it. I want to know if I can talk about unimportant people just to fill out the scene without making them look important, and they give me a few ways to do it: summarize, allow her to make up names for them out of characteristics.

            It occurs to me that I didn’t post the inciting incident. Perhaps that’s a thing I should do. It’s a wee bit long for a blog post, but it might be worth it.

            Finally, we look at those index cards. I’ve finally acquired a sense of the plot by writing out several lists. We have: a list of events from Atalanta, who tends to respond to me complaining by trying to fix my problems, the sweetheart; a combination diagram of Patricia’s and Matt’s structure discussions from earlier; a list of plot twists from the plot book, a checklist from the plot book, and a list of plot twists from a website the alpha mother Raziel sent me. For all that, I couldn’t get the subplots to link up nicely for the life of me, so I took a piece of paper, wrote a name for each subplot across the top, and considered the length of the page to be time. Then I wrote in things that had to happen for each subplot and approximately where in the book they had to do it. This was insanely helpful. I started writing the whole thing out on paper before I realized I was wasting my own time by doing it twice, and just wrote up the index cards. We chatted about problems encountered and traded cards with a partner.

            We finish up by meeting with Matt’s group for some final burning questions. A couple of us have questions about publishing.

            “I think an editor would be very confused if you did everything he told you to.” ~Matt

            “I’m a little mad at my copyeditor. I translated ‘closed’, like a door, into Spanish and got Miercoles which apparently means f****** Wednesday.”

            They tell us to remember that your agent works for you, and that a good editor knows it’s not their name on the book, it’s yours. You can refuse, especially when you have a good reason. Have good communication with your agent, but don’t pester them. You can ask them how much they communicate with their clients, fancy that!

            We had a quick course credit meeting with Jerry to clarify things. I discovered guitars in the campus shop and was very happy.

           

            Matt’s reading

            Matt read from his book Uncle Janice, which is about an undercover narcotics officer (uncle) and her partner. The section covered Janice being threatened by two people she was keeping an eye on and having to take care of them without breaking cover.

            It was riveting, that’s all I can say. You should go read Matt. I’m considering buying his first novel, Dogfight: A Love Story, because even though I have no interest in the topic, his writing is just that good. His language is spot on, his tension ebbs and flows with the perfect cadence to keep the reader pinned to the book, and his problems are beautifully laid out and solved. I’m definitely buying Uncle Janice when it comes out. I want to write like Matt when I grow up.