HYSTERIA Release

HYSTERIA by Megan Miranda

Last week, I went to the book launch for HYSTERIA by local author, Megan Miranda.

I waited patiently in line with my critique partner, watching the stack of books dwindle, hoping there would be enough. (Note to self: buy the book as soon as you walk in the store next time.)

Beth Revis, author of the ACROSS THE UNIVERSE series, was is line behind me, being her sweet self. (I've noticed the YA authors in North Carolina look out for each other, and it's just one more reason I want to join the ranks.)

It was so nice to see the many supportive fans, friends and family of author- Megan's dad beaming over her as she signed book after book. Juxtaposition at it's finest, I tell you, because I have no idea where a girl like Megan gets such creepy ideas. No idea.

So.


About HYSTERIA:

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Mallory killed her boyfriend, Brian. She can't remember the details of that night but everyone knows it was self-defense, so she isn't charged. But Mallory still feels Brian's presence in her life. Is it all in her head? Or is it something more? In desperate need of a fresh start, Mallory is sent to Monroe, a fancy prep school where no one knows her . . . or anything about her past.But the feeling follows her, as do her secrets. Then, one of her new classmates turns up dead. As suspicion falls on Mallory, she must find a way to remember the details of both deadly nights so she can prove her innocence-to herself and others.

Part of the excerpt from the back cover:

   "You're sending me to Monroe," I said. I phrased it like an accusation, but it still came out sounding like a question. This wasn't the first time Dad had tried to send me to Monroe.
   "Over my dead body." Mom had said back then.
   Apparently, two years ago, my mother had lied. Apparently, any dead body would do.

Read the first chapter here.

About Megan Miranda:

Megan graduated with a degree in Biology from MIT and spent her post-college years working in biotech and, later, teaching high school Science. She now lives in North Carolina with her family. FRACTURE is her first novel.

Megan also belongs to the Women's National Book Association, Charlotte Chapter, where I'm the membership chair - remember?

If you missed the HYSTERIA launch, Megan will be at the WNBA-C “Meet the Authors” event on

Monday, March 11, 7 – 9 PM
Park Road Books, Park Road Shopping Center
4139 Park Road, Charlotte 28209

He Said, She Said

No Girls Allowed?

The SCBWI Carolinas conference in September already looms large, and I have to make a decision about an ms.

Soon.

Summer months are not my most productive. If I'm to get the ms up to snuff in time to submit the first ten pages for an agent critique, I need to get moving.

Here's the dilemma:

I've known for a while that I only have half the story on my sci-fi. I decided to go YA because the tone fits better, and the other half of the tale has been simmering since then. But which perspective provides the best delivery?

Thirteen year old Taner's arc is already written, so I need to flesh out the opposing forces of his world from another character's point of view from:

A) The sixteen year old soldier with a hidden past
or
B) The thirteen year old virgin priestess creating a triangle

Here's what my teen boys say:

"What?! #$#%*$%" Translate. No girls allowed.
See pic above. Note: I am mom.

Critique group vote (from a guy):

"You can expand your audience with the sixteen year old's POV."

My thoughts:

Yes, but a girl's POV works too, as long as I keep her from being girly, which she isn't.

(I'd just read SCORPIO RACES, which switches between a boy and girl, and does it exceptionally well. You should go read it too, if you haven't already.)

My girl's character has an important arc, but is her arc as important as the older boy's?
(Secret thought: Can I even pull his POV off?) Hmmm.

Then I went to lunch with a friend who doesn't have a (water) horse in this race. She voted for the boy too.

I wonder. Did I explain the boy's story better (every time) because I already knew it was the right choice? Was I scared to write a YA "boy" book? Methinks the answer to both of those questions is yes. But if I explained it well, then I must be able to write it well. (I hope.)

So here's me, writing what I want to write, again.

And hoping there's a market for it...

Beat Sheet vs Bookmap

B is for Bookmap and Beat sheet

 Pantsers, skip down to Bookmap. ;)

A beat sheet looks like an outline. A bookmap looks like an outline too. The difference between the two is how and why you use them.

Beat sheet: I look at this as a roadmap for my manuscript. I create it before I sit down to write page one, and it can vary in degree of detail. There are two layers in this process for me. First I open up my blank template in word-

Template? Ah! The horror!

Wait a second. The template basically includes what happens, the big moments that all my threads work toward. What I do with the story to get to those places depends on what happens at the keyboard in my drafting stage. A beat sheet keeps me on track, keeps me focused on the point of the story so I don't go off in a tangent, unless I want to...

Step two: Take the outline to the storyboard in Scrivener. This is where scenes start to pop out for me. (I lie. The first scene is already in my head when I come up with a main character. That step is before any of this outlining. Sorry for the tangent.) I make little notes on the research I'm doing for the story - or big notes, depending on the subject. These notes are reminders. For example, the saffron crocus is a fall blooming flower:Make sure the scene is set in late August.

Next I sit down and work on expanding the beats, grouping them to create chapters with a clear arc. Then I draft.

Bookmap: This is new and exciting to me. I just learned how to do it in an SCBWI Master Class with Cheryl Klein, and I recommend finding a class near you. I can't tell you all the secrets, because what I learned is her intellectual property, but the core idea is a basic one:

Deconstruct your manuscript into scenes, and make sure each scene is working toward the goal.

Remember I mentioned tangents? Well, even with a beat sheet, there are a bunch of things that can go wrong on the way to a finished first draft. At least for me, anyway.

The bookmap helps me notice redundancy, points out weak scenes, and overall helps me distill the big picture again - the why it happens.

I think the bookmap is an important step because my characters have usually modified the "why" since I sat down to write the beat sheet. Looking at each scene again in detail also triggers my inner editor: This is clearly what the character needs to say/do vs where I left off in the draft.

Now. Back to work. Butt in Chair, Hands on Keyboard!

Second Sight by Cheryl B. Klein

amazon.com

The NY SCBWI conference was full of information, but time only allowed for three breakout sessions. So I snagged my roomate's notes from the brilliant 'revision' session, and ended up grabbing the speaker's book too:
Second Sight by Cheryl B. Klein.

Second Sight is an obvious pun, which I love, but the book does equip a writer with the laser vision required for a tough edit. Plus, Cheryl Klein is a superhero - I mean -  a Scholastic editor who worked on the Harry Potter series. Enough said, right?

Some of the included ideas:

1) Run a plot checklist to identify the dominant plot threads in your work - www.cherylklein.com/plotchecklist.html
This one is relatively easy, so try it.

2) Create a book map, scene by scene, for your entire manuscript. No skipping around.
For me, this is the holy grail. It helped me put my writing into perspective like nothing else I'd ever tried. It holds a writer accountable for the content of every scene, spots plot holes and redundancies, and you really should try it. Ms. Klein refers us to www.anitanolan.com/theend.html, where there are some really great tips, like highlighting aspects of your manuscript in different colors. I like to use the highlights for plot threads, but she uses them for other reasons too. You'll have to head over there because there really is too much to cover in a quick book review.

3) Make a minimap using one-line summaries for each chapter.
This is not as easy as you'd think, and it's best done after you've completed the bookmap.

4) There are some repeated ideas, since the book is a compilation of talks she gave at various conferences. Repetition is actually a good thing because sometimes you need to hear it more than once. I read it one talk at a time, over the course of a few weeks. I don't recommend reading it all in one sitting. Let your brain absorb the ideas, read the next section, and then take out your pretty, new highlighters.

This post will end up spilling all the beans. I need to stop. You need to get the book. I'm sure $16.99 isn't too much to pay for amazing advice that can take your writing to the next level.

Bottom line: I've read books on craft, and some on revision, but this is one of the best by far because it gives me the tools to help my writing shine. And I'm not just saying that because Ms. Klein signed my copy. ;)

Sometimes You Need to Hear It More Than Once

wikipedia

I loved to just sit and write, and let the ideas flow, and come up with lovely descriptions, and think up clever dialogue. Except, the other half of me being a somewhat organized person, I wanted a method to my madness. I noticed an idea kept popping up.

First, Query Tracker & Elana Johnson pointed me to Dan Wells on Story Structure. I have no idea when this happened, but I clung to the information as I learned to write my queries. I thought I was doing OK, story-wise. Hehehe.

Lets just say R stands for rejection, re-evaluation, revision, *redacted*...

April 2011: I picked up Emotional Structure: Creating the Story Beneath the Plot: A Guide for Screenwriters, by Peter Dunne. Still shy of note cards, I began to write the plot points on one side of my outlines, and each scene's emotional impact on the other. *light bulb overhead*

October 2011: A critique partner introduced me to Storyfix.com. (There's also a book: Story Engineering.) I got hooked on writing from a beat sheet. I learned to outline the right way, with specific turning points - like Scene 12 as the First Plot Point. I guess I went a little overboard with the setup on the first time around. *blushes*

November 2011: I developed an addiction to Scrivener storyboarding during NaNoWriMo. I finished the manuscript without a single tangent. *crosses heart* :)

January 2012: I signed up for the April SCBWI Master Class on Plot with Scholastic editor, Cheryl Klein. She sent me homework - Bookmap my entire manuscript, scene by scene. I'm working on it. *kisses Scrivener storyboard*

January 2012: I went to the SCBWI National Conference. Delacorte editor, Wendy Loggia, picks up the gorgeous ARC for Starters - and mentions that the original manuscript was pretty flawless, because the author is a screenwriter. My roommate went to see Cheryl Klein and got a great list of things to do on a revision. *buys Ms. Klein's book: Second Sight*

Think someone is trying to pound this idea into my head? I think I'd better listen.

February2012: My son came home with an essay assignment on Heroes in Hollywood. We find a website about the Monomyth, specifically for screenwriters. There's a youtube clip called Story, Screenplay Law. Law? Yes. Law. *doesn't want to break any laws*

Outlining is the new black, in my house anyway. Just thought I'd share.

Reflections on the SCBWI National Conference

via wikipedia

I want to sing like the birds sing,
not worrying about who hears or what they think.
― Rumi

I just got back from the SCBWI National Conference in New York City.

Wow.

There was so much information to absorb. I flew home last night, exhausted. All I've been able to do today is organize my thoughts, and I'm not very far along in that task. Enter: the blog post. You, my dear bloggy friends, are my unsuspecting therapists for this session. ;)

Attending a writers conference does two things for me:

1) It gives me plenty of revision homework.

and

2) It injects me with creative energy. Good thing I'm not taking Rumi literally - my words are really all that sing well around this house.

If you recall, last week I posted about my two manuscripts, and which I would present to the editors for a critique. Old Kitty got her wish. (Yay!)

I read the first 500 of my MG work, Mist of Kavala, to Scholastic editor, Jenne Abramowitz. Her list includes lots of humorous middle grade fiction. While my MS is not humorous fiction, she really encouraged me by totally buying into the sci-fi premise of my story. Maybe it was the adrenaline, but I thought she was nodding her head and smiling at me like: "Go for it." The boost to my fragile writer's morale was priceless. Now, I do have to work on formatting a few things, and the rest of the story needs a thorough edit still, but I think maybe I'm on to something.

In the afternoon, I met with Kari Sutherland from HarperCollins. I read the first 500 of  my YA Fantasy, Burnt Amber. Can I just say that I've been working my butt off on this MS? I've revised, and revised, and revised again. I totally get the word RE-VISION. Apparently, the work paid off. She said BA has an authentic teen voice. I translated that to: "the voice works".  She might as well have told me I won the lottery.

So what does all this mean? Were they just being nice to me because I was sitting at the same table? Will the self-doubt never end?

Other conference highlights:

• I met people I've only seen in thumbnails on the sidebar of a website. Puts things into perspective like nothing else, I tell you. I really want to query some of them now, and some others I don't think would be a good fit at all.
• I attended amazing breakout sessions given by editors from important publishing houses. For example, Wendy Loggia from Delacorte gave pointers on the sensory elements she looks for in manuscripts. I love the way she thinks, especially since I dream in deckle-edge.
• I met lots of authors. Cassandra Clare, Katherine Erskine, Chris Crutcher....there's a long list of awesome for this conference.
• I made some new friends from the Carolinas and beyond.

Most importantly, I learned that I shouldn't give up on this dream of mine. Ever.

Lateral Thinking



via NorthernTool.com

I spent this past weekend with some amazing authors and industry professionals at the SCBWI Carolinas conference. Except it was only when John Claude Bemis gave the closing speech that I felt I was truly swimming in my element.

His talk was about lateral thinking, which apparently expats and multilinguals do very well.

I was like: Hey! That's me! Until he gave us the warm up exercise and I couldn't come up with any evidence that I deserved the points.

In my defense, it was a low-caf Sunday morning and I'd just been bombarded with three days of information. Anyway - my contribution is a red fez - to anyone else who was there.

So Sunday night I go home to mull over everything I've learned. I pick up the short stories on the nightstand, figuring if I could get a few of those in, it would quiet the buzz in my head.

Picture this:

I'm reading in bed, engrossed in the story of an asphalt layer (John Grisham's contribution to Don't Quit Your Day Job) when my dear, dear, dearest husband mutters:

Cordless Super Jerky Blaster?

Now, usually, I ignore everyone and keep reading, but the odd combination of words just pulled me right out of the book.

Me: Did you just say Cordless Super Jerky Blaster?

You should know, my husband speaks English as a fifth language (very well, I might add) so he can be... mislead by some phrases. But he was reading the Nothern Tool catalog.

He offers me the catalog with a gesture that says "Please, help me understand!"

And here's where I:

1) Start laughing until my sides split

and

2) Come up with some great lateral thinking

All I could picture was:

Codename: Kids Next Door

via wikipedia

Have you seen this bunch of ten year olds take down an adult lately? Well, the Cordless Super Jerky Blaster looks EXACTLY like something they would use. AND the next pages in the tool catalog feature go carts to mount them on! Plus a plethora of other interesting items, but I'll let you explore them on your own.

The point of all this is: You don't need to be an ex-expat, or multilingual, or a transplant to find ideas for your lateral thinking. Lateral thinking is just ordinary stuff that you use in an extraordinary way.

Writers Conference or Workshop?

Tracy Marchini, freelance writer and editorial  consultant extraordinaire, is here to discuss some writerly pursuits and tell you about her new e-book. (Remember her awesome post on craft).
From Newberys to Nebulas, wholesalers to world rights, PUB SPEAK: A WRITER’S DICTIONARY OF PUBLISHING TERMS is a reference book for every author.

PUB SPEAK explains commonly used terms from all sides of the industry. Terms defined include those used in contracts and royalty statements, crafting fiction and non-fiction, ebooks and audiobooks, social networking, retailers and distributors, industry and author organizations and awards, and general publishing terms. Designed for both aspiring and established authors, PUB SPEAK can be read through for a deeper understanding of the industry, or used as one would a traditional dictionary.

PUB SPEAK: A WRITER’S DICTIONARY OF PUBLISHING TERMS is available as an ebook through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords and Amazon UK.

Hint: Contest at the bottom. One lucky winner will get a copy of PUB SPEAK. :)


On to today's topic:

Conferences, Workshops and Retreats: Which is best for you?

For most writers, attending a conference, workshop or retreat is something that is done once a year or so. To be sure you get the most out of your experience, here’s a few questions to ask yourself in order to pick your best option.

1.) Do you want to spend the time writing?

If you’re looking for a chunk of uninterrupted writing time, a writer’s retreat is a fabulous option. I spent a month at La Muse and was able to complete an entire draft of a novel, as well as making friends with other writers and enjoying the French countryside. For most retreats, authors and artists are left to their own devices, and what you get out of the retreat depends on your own self-discipline and the amount of preparation you’ve done before hand.

When I went to La Muse, I had already written seventy pages of a novel. I knew that I actually had to scrap what I’d written and change from a dual-voice YA to a single-voice YA. But since I already had characters and an idea of where the novel had to go, I could jump into the writing process once I arrived. You don’t need to have outlines, maybe you’re just going with an idea. Or maybe you need inspiration. But I think it’s wise to think about what you need at that particular time and what you hope to accomplish while you’re there. The time will go faster than you think, and suddenly you’ll be packing your bags to go home.

If you feel like you need a bit more structure, then perhaps a workshop is the better option for you. The Highlights Founders Workshop I attended was fabulous. We were a small group of twelve people, and we spent each day with prompts, writing exercises and readings designed by our mentor, Kim Griswell. We would have an exercise, write and share. The goal of our particular workshop was to find our voice, and our assignment by the end of the workshop was to deliver “one true story.” Each workshop is different, and the website would tell you if the end-goal was to work on a particular novel that you had already started, or if it was perhaps to inspire or stretch your writing in another way. I wrote the first story I sold to Highlights at this particular conference, and it definitely changed the way I thought about the type of writer I was.

There may be writing intensive sessions at some conferences, but if the goal is to seriously get busy with paper and pen, you may be more successful at a retreat or workshop.

2.) Are you looking for feedback?

If you’re looking for a critique of a particular manuscript, your best bet may be a writer’s conference or workshop that requires you to come with work in hand. Though you may find fellow writers that are willing to critique your work at a retreat, this isn’t guaranteed and depends on the personal goals of your fellow retreaters. It is probably best to assume that all the writers at a retreat are there to write, and not to critique.

If you’re a children’s writer, many SCBWI regional conferences offer 15 minutes or so with an editor, agent or published author who has read your work in advance and is prepared to give you professional feedback. The two national SCBWI conferences (New York City and Los Angeles) host writer and illustrators intensives before the conference, but during the main event you will find panels and sessions, but there won’t be any critiquing.

Usually, the critique slots fill up quickly for established regional conferences, so be sure to submit your registration and manuscript early. (Shameless plug, I do critique professionally if your regional conference is already sold out.)

3.) Are you looking for a wider author network?

If you’re looking to find a local critique group or to meet local writers, a conference is ideal. A regional conference may have 100 – 300 authors interested in the same type of literature that you are writing and reading. You’ll also have the opportunity to chat with fellow writers between sessions and at lunch. It may not be as intimate as a workshop or retreat, but you may be more likely to find writers that live right down the block from you as opposed to across the continent. (Though nobody is really too far with the internet!)

4.) Are you trying to network with agents and editors?

Workshops may be lead by one editor or agent, which you would have more time to get to know as you’d be working intimately with them over the course of the workshop. National conferences may have a hundred editors and agents presenting and milling about, but it can be difficult to make a connection with so many people vying for their attention and time. One of the benefits to regional conferences though, is that you’ll see a variety of editors and agents, and there’s usually more opportunity to chat. You can sit next them at lunch, or perhaps have a quick chat after the session. You may also find that the editors of closed houses are more likely to take unsolicited submissions from conference participants for a limited time.

No matter which option you’re leaning towards, always read the descriptions, feel free to talk to previous conference or workshop participants and come with a professional and open attitude!

Thank you, Tracy!

Since there's so much speculation on self-publishing lately, I asked Tracy why she chose to e-publish PUB SPEAK. Here's what she said:

I think I'm going to do a mix of traditional and self publishing. Right now, I have manuscripts out to major houses and also a picture book geared towards regional presses. I think for fiction, very few people can be Amanda Hocking, and as a debut novelist I'd still want the weight of a traditional publisher. (Especially after I started looking into distribution.) But for this book I thought it'd be best to do it myself because it is a small niche market, and it's not quite large enough (over 400 terms, but that's about 100 pages of print) to do a decent sized hardcover. And, I've always wanted to try to put a book out myself, and this idea seems like the right one!
As promised, there is a contest and just one rule: Answer the following question!

What would a writer do with an exquisite corpse?

Toss your name in the hat! Results on Friday! Good Luck!

Q&A Gems from Tracy Marchini

via LittonsDirectToYou.com

Happy Dance! I have 100 followers (See the little box on the left sidebar? That's you folks!) and (starting from when I became a real blogger in July) today is my 100th post! Schools always celebrate the 100th day, right? So everybody grab a some chai or a latte and lets have some virtual red velvet cake!

A bit of info about our wonderful guest, Tracy Marchini:

Her resume includes Curtis Brown, Taconic Press, BookPage... She's mentored at Rutgers One-on-One Plus Children's Literature Conference. She's critiqued query letters and/or manuscripts for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) Poughkeepsie Conference since 2007.  The list goes on! Tracy is currently a freelance writer and professional manuscript critiquer. For more about her, because she says it better, click the link above for her "about me" page.

Everybody, this is Tracy...
Please do not stalk her on the subway for insight. Send her an email!
(Little tip folks: she often has a query critique contest on Mondays.)

First, I would like to thank Tracy for always taking the time to answer all of my (sometimes) overly analytical questions. The Dunning-Kruger syndrome targets writers especially hard, as we all know :)


ME: Connecting to characters kids already know is tempting, except references to popular culture can be expensive and sometimes date a book. However, does (very limited) name dropping distract too much from the story?

TRACY: I think the biggest problem with contemporary references is that, like you said, it is very easy to date your book before it's even been published. There are some references that will always be classic -- generations of teens have loved the Beatles, for example. But if you were to mention Bieber's newest album (My World 2.0 - and yes, I had to look it up!) as if the character had just bought it on iTunes, the album could be three years old by the time your book hits shelves, and the next 16-year-old teen artist will probably be on the rise. It will pull readers out of your contemporary story, because they will remember immediately that they acutally did buy that album three years ago.

That's not to say that pop culture references are always detrimental. They can be very useful in giving the reader a sense of character. If you tell us that someone has every film that Alfred Hitchcock has ever made, it gives us quite a different sense than someone who has watched Beauty and the Beast over 100 times.

The trick is to pick your references so that they are timeless, and to do it only when it will truly enhance the reader's understanding of your character. Otherwise, feel free to make up band names and cheesey sounding romance movie titles, and whatever else you need that can help flesh out your main character's world!


ME: Adjectives are an expensive accessory. The cost is pacing and word count. On the other hand, stripping a manuscript down can leave a generic mess behind. How do you decide where to put the descriptors?

TRACY: If you're reading the mansucript outloud and you can feel that you're stumbling over words, then it's time to look at how you can clean up your prose. Since every manuscript is different, it's hard to give a set of rules about when and where to use description, but I can give some general don'ts.

- Don't use adjectives or adverbs with every dialogue tag (i.e. "she said, sadly," "he said, laughing," "she said, weeping," etc.).

- Don't open each chapter with a paragraph of description. If the setting is important, we certainly need details, but I find that many newer authors open each chapter with a large block of description about the setting or whichever character we're about to meet. What this tends to do is slow down the pacing of the book, and also can make the reader feel like they're reading multiple first chapters.

- Don't stop your action in the middle of the scene to tell us extraneous setting or description. If your main character is falling down a cliff, we're not really concerned about the minute details of the flora and fauna she's falling past!


ME: What about the use of big words? We’re all tempted to go purple with the prose… maybe if we add just a few interesting words…like say… intarsia or zephyr? (Such pretty words. Sigh.) Good? Bad? Do you think they hurt pacing even if we put enough context?

TRACY: Again it's hard to say, but the read-aloud rule is an excellent litmus test for this as well. I think that writers sometimes assume that you can't use larger words in children's literature because the child/teen won't know what it means. I think this can be a large underestimation of the audience and also can sanitize your writing. However, if you find that you're defining words in your prose, or you're using two big words when one smaller one would work better, then you might want to reconsider your word choice.


ME: Male protagonists seem to be on the rise in YA. Are there a few cardinal rules you can give us (ladies) about crafting a believable male voice?

TRACY: The first thing I would say is to search out books with YA male protagonists and read, read, read! I would also remember the following:

- Males and females have different speech patterns in general. Men use fewer qualifiers and tend to make statements, while women will try to ask questions to try and keep the conversation flowing. (I talk more about this in a post on my blog - Differences in Male and Female Speech )

- Boys don't talk about girls the way girls talk about boys. Though they use fewer words, they are much more graphic when they talk to their friends. They also tend to be more visual. So if a boy decides to talk about a girl with his friends, he's going to describe what she looks like first, and he probably will keep his deeper emotions to himself. A girl, however, will tell her friends everything and use much more flowery language.

- Men tend to be more action-oriented. They want to fix things, and they like to find the logic in things. Think about the protagonists of John Green's novels (and I'll try to do this without too many spoilers, because everybody should go out and read these books!) In Looking for Alaska, Miles wants to know what happened to Alaska. His mission is based on both his affection for Alaska, his guilt over his part in helping her leave campus, and also a desire for logic. He needs to understand why she did what she did. In An Abundance of Katherines, Colin is looking for a mathematical formula to predict the path of a relationship after being dumped by his 19th Katherine. (How's that for seeking logic?)

But, not all men are the same, so these are perhaps more like baselines than cardinal rules.


ME: Frontloading with backstory is bad, but we need solid facts in the first paragraph on the first page to indicate where the story is going. Any magical hints on how to balance that?

TRACY: As far as a character's personal history on the first page, only give us the information we need to know to understand what is happening in that first scene and at that moment. Pull us in with the action, and then let the backstory come out naturally as it's needed. You might find that you know your character's whole life story, down to their first word -- but unless it's relevent, leave it out.

In order to tell us the direction of the manuscript in the first couple paragraphs, it might be helpful for you to finish the manuscript first, and then go back and read your first chapter. Many times, your manuscript has taken a life of its own, and perhaps your first chapter no longer accomplishes everything it should. If you find this is so, rewrite. It'll be easier to put all the essentials into the first paragraph and chapter once you know exactly where your character is going to land by the end of the book.


ME: Happy endings just don’t seem to fit with a lot of edgy YA stories. Nevertheless, many authors feel the need to tie it all up with a nice bow. (I’m thinking Mockingjay: stone me later). Do you think they’re capitulating to a market trend?

TRACY: I'm going to say that I hope not! No matter how edgy your YA story is, the character does have to show an emotional growth by the end, but they don't have to have all their ducks in a row, so to speak. Marketing trends are interesting, because sometimes two or three houses will come out with very similiar sounding books and it'll feel like there's been a group decision to make something the next 'it' thing. But in reality, the books were bought at least a year and a half to two years before, the publishing houses are not trading notes about what are on their upcoming lists, and each house is independently buying books to try to vary what they offer with each list and to perhaps fill the gaps in what they're missing. (However, imprints within a house talk, of course, and Random House and Knopf are unlikely to both buy different picture books about the same subject.)


ME: Mythology is big right now. (Actually, I can’t remember when it wasn’t.) Yet allusion is a bad query word. I thought the whole point of allusion is that some people get it, while others don’t... like finding the cheat codes for Assassin’s Creed. (Can’t wait for the new one!) My question: Is too much subtle allusion a silent manuscript killer?

TRACY: I don't know that I'd agree to allusion is a bad query word, I think it's probably the words that follow! But I would say that allusion is really only truly effective when your audience does know a bit about what you're alluding to. For example, most teenagers have either had to read or are familiar with Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet, so if your main character describes herself and her crush as two "star-crossed lovers" the audience is going to immediately picture the terrible end of Romeo and Juliet and (hopefully) assume that the relationship between your protagonist and her crush is also going to end pretty poorly.

If you find that you're explaining too much of the mythology or other material that you're alluding to, it might be time to re-evaluate why you want to use that myth or allusion in particular. I would also keep in mind that a lot of readers will gloss over allusions they don't understand instead of going to look them up, so in that case they've become words without meaning/value.


ME: Since I’m itching to know, what was the most useful thing you learned from the La Muse workshop?

TRACY: La Muse was a retreat, so we didn't meet for workshops. I think one of the best things about the retreat was being in a maison with five other people that were serious about their writing, but who were also looking forward to exploring the French countryside. I'm still in touch with some of my fellow Musers, and I was able to write a first draft while I was there. It was an amazingly beautiful village, and there were definitely days I felt like I was living in a postcard. I did learn that I liked duck though, so that might be useful the next time I'm in a restaurant!


ME: What’s your favorite book of all time?

TRACY: This changes depending on the last book I read, and what mood I'm in! Recently I've been feeling an itch to re-read all of Beverly Cleary's Ramona books, but it could be that it's because there's been a push and repackaging for the movie. (Darn you marketing!!)


ME: Bittersweet or milk chocolate?

TRACY: Milk chocolate and/or dark chocolate, but I will pretty much eat any chocolate that doesn't have anything crunchy in it. (Also, I love peanut butter and I love chocolate, but I don't enjoy them together. It's kind of weird.)


ME: Finally, does a degree in Rhetoric make you a more tactful editor? Or are you simply nice?

TRACY: Maybe I'm nice because I'm eating all that chocolate! :) I do think my degree definitely trained me to think critically about a piece of work, and I always strive to be honest and fair in my critiques and to do it in a constructive way. My main goal is always to help somebody make the piece the best it can be, and to do in an atmosphere where they feel like they can ask me questions if they don't quite understand something in my editorial letter. I can't guarantee that everything that I critique will get published, but I do want to make sure that everybody that gets a critique comes away with knowledge that they can use to become a stronger writer.

Thank you for all your fabulous answers, Tracy! 

PS from ME: A manuscript critique from Tracy feels like a detailed revise and resubmit request, except you haven't wasted any query goodwill of the agents on your list. She's probably saved me a great deal of heartache. (Although, I fully expect to do plenty of writhing when I query soon.)