PitMad

Yesterday was PitMad (Pitch Madness). It’s a Twitter based literary pitch festival, starting at 8am and running through 8pm ET. Basically, you pitch your novel on Twitter using the hashtag #PitMad and a genre tag (#YA for young adult, #WF for women’s fiction, etc.). Agents scroll through the tweets (i.e., Twitter posts) and if they’re interested in your novel, they “favorite” your tweet.

Anyone with a Twitter account can get involved by “retweeting” a tweet that they liked. So writers/readers get to put their two cents in too. (As one agent said, The next book you love might be here.) I know I retweeted a few excellent tweets. Strangers retweeted my tweets, and I even got a message from someone saying “I would totally buy your book.” J

Easy peasy. And loads of fun. Except for writing the Tweets. If you don’t use Twitter, the rub is that any tweet must be no longer than 140 characters—that includes spaces, punctuation marks, etc. And given the hash tags that were necessary for PitMad, you’re left with 130 characters. Now try summarizing an 80,000 word novel in what amounts to 20 words. We’re talking one sentence. Two if they’re short.

And Twitter doesn’t like repeat tweets, so you have to craft several tweets to avoid Twitter rejection. (Yes, you can do tricky stuff like move the hash tags to the beginning of the tweet.)

So the bottomline is you have to summarize your novel, including conflict, setting, and hook in one sentence. Gulp.

I dusted off a novel I’d shelved (which I really love) and crafted a few pitches. And some agents requested the novel. Squee! Here’s one of my pitches:

As WW2 takes Holland, a young mother must chose to love her missing husband, hide her Jewish niece, & embrace death to survive. #PitMad #WF (Exactly 140 characters.)

If you’re interested, you can go to Twitter and search for #PitMad and see what it’s like. If you’re a writer and want to participate, PitMads are held quarterly. The next one is scheduled for December 4. Even if your novel is ready, join the fun. Retweet your favorite pitches and see how the game is played.

Writing, Beware the Thirds

While waiting for my betas to finish Screwing Up Alexandria, I’m editing another book. It was going really well, and then I hit a brick wall. After eight chapters, the book stopped dead. The story was there, but something was very wrong. I pushed ahead to the next chapter. It sucked too.

I got a terrible sinking feeling. I told myself that maybe I was too tired or too spent or maybe my blood sugar was too low. So I came back to it the next day. Both chapters were still bad. Very bad. And I wasn’t sure why. I could taste panic like a metallic flavor on my tongue.

So I put the book aside for a couple of days. On the second day, I realized what was wrong. The voice died. It was completely missing in chapters eight and nine. But I didn’t know why. Did the bad chapters need to be thrown out and completely rewritten? Or had the plot taken a wrong turn in the earlier chapters?

I thought about the plot structure and then I knew what was wrong.

Two weeks before, I’d talked a writing friend down from the same ledge. She was panicking over her novel, trying to decide whether to toss the whole thing. I asked her, “Where are you in the novel? Are you between the first and second third of the novel or the second and final third of the novel?” She said, “Between the second and final third.” I said, “No worries. Your novel is likely just fine. You’re just stuck between thirds.”

That’s where I was stuck too. My two chapters were the transition between the first third of the novel and the second third.

Years ago, I read a book about novels that discussed novels as three act plays. I scoffed. Surely, something as complex as a novel, especially those crafted by seat-of-the-pants novelists, couldn’t be deconstructed into three acts. Then, I got more experience writing. And I saw it in my own work. I saw it in other peoples’ work. I saw it in the novels that I read.

The transitions between thirds of the novels are difficult. Usually, the many of the elements of the story (plot/characters/setting/pace/etc.) take a turn at the thirds. Those turns are complex, interconnected, and very difficult to manage. Just getting them on the page is a huge effort. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that in the first editing pass I found a mess. Of course, the voice died—you can’t do everything at once. I should have been thankful that I got the elements transitioned without having to rip things apart and start over.

Once I realized what the problem was, I rolled up my sleeves and dug into the text, adding in the texture and rhythms that make up the voice in the novel. And then I moved on to the next chapters and found the voice was there waiting for me.

Now I’m pondering making a placard and putting it on the wall of my office. It will read “Beware the Thirds.” I need to remember this because in the next month or so, I’ll be hitting the transition between the second and final thirds. And I’m likely to find that the voice died, the characters are stilted actors, and panic is making my eyelids twitch.

A Single Scene

A month ago, I signed a contract to write a short story for an anthology. At the time, I thought, “No problem. I can whip out a short.” After all, I’ve written lots of short stories. Then, I sat down to write it. And it wasn’t as easy as I thought.

When you’ve been writing novels for a long time, the short story skills get rusty. A writing friend who also is in the anthology was having a similar problem. She’d started two short stories only to have them crash and burn.

The problem is the scope and complexity. With a novel, the author introduces layers of complexity—tensions, minor characters, hints of character development, subplots, etc. Short stories only have hints of these elements. Some not at all. Or they focus on one aspect of these elements. Mentally, I knew this. But I couldn’t get it to work on paper. Every idea I came up with was too convoluted for a short story with a maximum of 5000 words. The plots couldn’t be resolved in the space, and the settings and characters couldn’t be developed. I knew that if I wrote what I had in mind, I’d end up with a glorified plot sketch. And I (and my readers) didn’t want that.

So I talked with a friend. She’s been a published writer for years and years. And she’s done it all—novels (sequels and stand alones), novellas, short stories, etc. I said, “Help.” She told me, “Remember a short story (particularly of that length) is a single scene.” I wish I could say that it was a lightning bolt that struck my mind. It wasn’t. But I began to ruminate on what she said.

I realized I was doing too much. Everything in the short needs to revolve around a single writing goal. In my mind, my short story had three settings, several plot points, and too many characters. I realized that my first setting was only a starting place. A place where my characters would start from on their journey—it would have to be cut. I’m in the midst of trying to cut the second setting. A single scene, I keep telling myself.

After taking apart the settings, I cut all but one plot point. My characters needed a single goal. Everything needs to flow from that goal. If it doesn’t, it needs to be cut. (Remember the writer’s mantra, “Kill your darlings.")

But setting and plot trimming weren’t enough. Once I trimmed those, I realized that I needed to dump three of the six characters that inhabited my story. I’m sure some of my readers will miss seeing their favorite characters in the short story (my short uses the characters from my Screwing Up Time novel), but that’s the way it is with a short story.

Now the story is beginning to feel manageable. Of course, I haven’t put pen to paper yet. But in theory, the story feels doable.

What about you? What helps you focus your writing goals for a short story? I’d love to hear your suggestions.