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Transcript

Readers come with assumptions. So if you and their assumption is default, our world unless specified otherwise, right?

So whenever you're going to change anything big about our world, like, you know you're going to change a piece of history, you're going to add magic, you're going to do this, you're going to do that.

Whatever you do it, the faster and earlier you can communicate that to readers.

The better off you'll be, because otherwise they're going to insert their assumptions into the story. Like on a global level, you know, you're going to say the word kingdom and they're going to assume it's standard kingdom. Then it turns out that actually this is kingdom used very loosely because the ruler is elected, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the reader goes, But none of that.

I don't know any of that, you know, And then you start getting issues.

All right. So I think we have another victim laid out on the slab for us today. This one seems a little anxious. They've been waiting for a while. We've been they've been poking us like, hey, when are you going to slaughter me? It's like the cow, just that annoying cow sitting there, like, I'm just tired of living. Just put a put a pistol to my head, man.

Come on. Look at all this meat.

So we do actually have a queue at the moment with. With our edits, which I do not mind at all. Please don't take that as a sign to stop sending them. Keep sending. But it does mean we've taken a little while to get to everybody's edits. And of course, the other problem is with both been sick for two weeks, which isn't affecting the audience so much.

They only had one week's interruption where we were, you know, both down and unable to edit the episode.

Awful about because we are like, we're finally back in law and we've got episodes and we're like four episodes deep. And I just because also our video editor is my youngest son. I said, You remember I'm really old, so he's an adult. He's a child to me, but to the world, he's legal to do anything and everything. But he was also sick like, and my wife is sick right now, so it's just going to rippling through the household as these things do.

Yeah. No, I don't. My my partner was sick as well. So, you know, it's it's it's been that way. So anyway, so the long story short is that we, you know, we haven't gotten to to this chapter and it's been sitting on my laptop going like, remember the first thing you need to do in the next session is this edit.

Well, I mean, we should also as, as, as awesome as it is that people, you know, are willing to send us their work and have this stuff done. You know, we're closing in on a thousand subscribers, which means we probably have three or 4000 people that watch, you know, off and on because you're usually in about 20, 25% subscribers versus, you know, people we're doing it.

So I guess I should say that, hey, how about a subscription, man? You know, you're squeezing off of our knowledge and you couldn't just click a subscribe button. It costs you literally nothing. But anyway, yeah. So eventually we are going to get to the point where we get too many to we just won't be able to all of them.

But, you know, it is something that we love doing and it seems like the audience loves them a lot. We get a lot of audience.

You know, the audience enjoys them and you know, then they make for good content that might be good discussion points. And people like the practical experience. But you're right, At some point we will receive too many too reliably, you know, get it to them in any kind of like sequence. And at that point, we'll figure out something with like wild card draws or something equivalent.

Yeah.

But we are not there yet. No, today is not that day. So let me share my screen.

We're only on most popular.

Almost close to popular,

Okay, so this chapter is this is labeled chapter one, The Pale Color of Innocence.

Now, my red pen. All right.

Okay. So as per usual, I'm going to read and then we'll stop and discuss as we as inspiration takes us. Xev watched the three sisters waltz across the night sky. The Blood sister led the way west with the world. Her warm presence brought increasing tones of red to the few clouds above them. On their heels, the lush sister danced all full and round and ready to burst.

She dominated the other heavenly bodies, her vibrant light caressing. They've exposed skin similar to a doting mother. I'm going to finish the paragraph and then talk. Lagging behind the little sister was at the end of her waning week, almost out of breath, knowing she would soon be sleeping, recuperating her strength so she could spring forth from that dark slumber once more as an opening.

I am not averse to this. There’s the faltering in the first sentence, but it does establish who our POV character is. So it's fine. I would have liked a different thing from watched. Maybe some kind of emotional something like that.

Right? But I'm going to push back on that because I don't. You're right. Yeah, it does Give us. Okay, we're in Xev’s if that's how you say that. Xev,

we're in.

This. You pronounce that X is a I'm a I'm assuming you pronounce that X is a Z.

I don't know. It's good we can go with Xev. I don't have anything better.

But here's the problem, remember? So we're filtering. What we're really doing is we're talking about sentence structure. So we're talking about diagraming the sentence we're going to look at our subject and our actions. So in that sentence, Xev watched the Three Sisters walk across the night sky.

The subject is Xev and the action is watched. So now that's the most important part of the sentence is what we're telling the reader. Reader Look at Xev as Xev is looking at something cool, but don't really pay attention to what's being looked at. And sometimes that is a you know, I never say never filter. It's not about never filtering.

It's about understanding that you're controlling what the reader is looking at. And we want the reader looking at the night sky, we want the reader looking at the moons. And because there's some beautiful imagery in here. But the problem is, is that opening sentence. We're saying, don't look at that, look at look at this character. And we're only doing it for the simple reason that you said to establish who the P.O.V. is.

And I think that we can achieve it better by breaking Xev out into his own sentence, because we can establish an emotion that Xev is feeling which will help the reader feel the emotion as he's as we're looking up at the night sky and seeing the three sisters. Yeah. So instead of watched, I would perhaps go something like.

Well, I would a.

Sense of awe filled Xev as he gazed upward.

That that works.

Where I was going to go was

one of the last couple of workshops that I did in the writers room I came across this month or last month, but the workshop was all about

scene starting and I really pushed them to think about there's four things we want to do as quickly as possible in every single scene, and we want to do it in the first paragraph, first, second paragraph first, you know, one through three paragraphs.

But we want to get it as fast as possible. All of these. The first is who's head are we in. Well, bam, we've got Xev right in the first words. So obviously, you know, we can check that off the list. Where are we? We don't I would not check that with this because we have no idea where we are. We know where the moons are, but we don't know where we are.

The third is why? Why are we here? And we don't have that either, unless you want to say, well, let's to watch the movies. But we don't know that that Xev is there to watch the moons we just know that Xev is watching them. And so that's different from why, so we have no motivation for the character of why.

Xev is here. And then the last is the hook that makes me want to continue reading. Now, I would put a checkmark in that because we have some beautiful imagery. We have these three interesting moons that have a life of their own, and I do believe that's enough of a hook to make it interesting to keep reading. But we don't have where are we and why are we?

And so I, I am going to push back on the hook part.

No, no, I, I'm saying that's for me. You know.

I hear you. I hear that it's objective. But but here's the thing for me, the character's motivation and the hook work best when they are the same thing or close together, or.

At least connected to the character.

You're in some way connect, check.

And that's where I you want to differentiate. If this was chapter seven, that hook is fine. You know, while we're learning about these moons, I'm already invested in the story, blah, blah, blah. For chapter one, I will agree with you. It's way too weak of a hook to make me want to continue reading. Like if I was doing the look inside on this.

I don't know. Writing is so bad these days and this writing is good enough that I'm making Continue reading just because.

Look, I'll continue reading past the paragraph summit because I'm willing to give a book at least a page, page and a half of reading. And unless unless this is grammatical errors, grammatical errors will annoy the crap out of me. Right. And I'll get to one that I picked up that didn't win me. But. But I'll get there.

I would like a little earlier and establishment of why.

Right.

Dave is watching the moons.

Right. And that's where I was going with well instead of just.

Have to be huge.

Right when stead of just this opening sentence which which fixes the filter. So what you did here absolutely 100% fixes the filter

and it makes it more emotional. But I would actually take a step back. I would I would back up maybe 3 seconds of time and establish not only that I'm in Xev head, but why am I here?

Why is it important to me so that I'm prepped for what we're what we're going to experience with these moons rising? Why am I here? And so because readers aren't connected to moons. They're connected to character. Yes. And so while the Moons are beautifully written, I really think it was a missed opportunity just to spend a short paragraph.

And it doesn't have me more than two or three sentences. But, you know, Xev pulled his coat in tighter around him to ward off the chilly night as he as he walked through this thing. And and he's thinking, you know, whatever, whatever we do, we don't have to take a lot of time with it.

But, I mean, like, we obviously we can't write that because we don't know what his motivation.

Right. Exactly. Exactly.

I, I do want to highlight one sentence that isn't right or at least hits me. It's not right. I don't I'm not a huge grammar like I'm not, you know, the English grammar person, but I'm pretty certain that have a vibrant light creation's Dave's exposed skin similar to a doting mother, is not a correctly constructed sentence because of the iron G Right.

Yeah. They went with a to this verb and that should be a past tense.

Yeah. So it should be her vibrant light caressed.

Yes.

Also not sure I like similar, but that's just because I don't like similar as a word. Right. I would just have said her vibrant light caress sifts exposed skin like a doting mother.

Or or with the warmth of a of a.

With the warmth of a doting mother or something like that.

Yeah. Or the coldness, like doting, but with the compassion and of a doting mother. I mean, because it might not be warm. And so, yeah, even though I threw warmth out there, I don't know if I.

Would feel similar. It's just similar is one of those it's like seems like the word seems like. But it's not really a hurricane. Yeah, well, sure. Go away.

I don't care. And then and then one of the things that I want to talk about was on 13, I am a huge hater of wishy washy words. Yeah, we're writing drama. And so even though so like on 13 week, almost out of breath so even though we are we're like yeah but they're not really out of breath.

Yeah, but also the moon doesn't have breath, so it's just so much stronger to be to, right? Weak out of breath. Like it just, it just paints such a more definitive picture that that captures the imagination and a little bit more than, than the wishy washy, almost kind of sort of like, you know, seemed to be.

Almost almost as like started like began like then, like if you if you've written it nine times out of ten, I'm not going to say it always, but nine times out of ten, you don't need it. It's just a weak verb or a weak word that you put in because the other words that you chose weren't quite correct.

So now you just modify words.

But it's actually a choice because you're right, It's sometimes it's because you're modifying that you chose wrong. So we would need to, to strengthen the the other words. But, but where I'm talking about here is where you're just not

we talk kind of in this passive way. And so what you're doing is you're adding this passivity to the words like weak.

It's almost out of breath because and that does paint a picture. But what the picture that we're trying to paint with this moon

waning

is the end like that last few steps before the finish line and you're just exhausted and you're you don't know if you can make it. And that that almost just isn't as dramatic. And so for me, it's about the words.

So like, you're right, sometimes we add the word because it strengthens the words behind it and we should just use stronger words. But in this case, it weakens the words behind it. Yes. And they don't want them to be weakened. We need to paint that. You know,

gasping its last breath of life.

That is going to be much more powerful of the imagery that we're trying to show here.

And almost just kind of deflates it.

Yeah.

Then this sentence, this paragraph as a whole, I feel like it goes on a little long and this is a little nitpicky, but I do feel like these three sentences all more or less say same thing.

They do, and especially with the word choices. So like my my next thing was going to be the next line knowing she soon would be sleeping. Knowing doesn't give me a lot of emotion to this. And since we're trying to personify these, these moons, it would be really nice to have, instead of knowing which has no emotion attached to it, some type of verb that brings in if we're going to keep them.

You know, you went the other route, which like, you know, do we really need this? Could we cut it? Okay, great.

But if we are going to keep it, we could do something,

you know,

weak, out of breath,

begging

for the slumber that she so deserved or something like that, you know, So we get this. We get this emotional attachment to it as opposed to just know it.

So if we are going to keep it, then I would like to see. And then same thing with recuperating her street so she could spring forth from the dark slumber once more. That's all factual stuff as opposed to, you know, something like,

you know, desperate to regain her strength so she could

spring forth once more. We get we.

Spring forth from the box.

This is what I talk about when I'm teaching verbs. You know, when we're when we're talking about verbs. And, you know, both me and you have said many, many, many times verbs are the most important word in your sentence. There is no more important words. And the biggest reason that they're so important is because verbs aren't just actions, they are.

And if you use them like this, knowing and and recuperating and stuff like that, they are just actions. But the beautiful thing about writing in American English is that we have 30 words that mean the same thing, but they don't mean the same thing because even though they mean the same thing, each one can come with a different emotion or a different sound or a different smell or a different taste or a different, you know, connotation or a different imagery.

And so choosing the right just by changing verbs, you do this. I mean, just look what we just did here. Instead of knowing she would soon be sleeping, begging to be, you know, sleeping. And now we have this begging comes with this desperation, emotion, this this desire, this and none of that is in that writing. It's just in the verb, you know, just that verb brings that with it.

And then same thing here, you know, desperate or longing to regain her strength and whatever all of these verbs are going to be bringing in this extra layer of subtext to these sentences. And then I think that if the, you know, my opinion is maybe if we used stronger verbs do here, you wouldn't see this as a this doesn't really anything.

It just is all saying the same thing because we would be bringing in all these new, tactile and and visceral and and emotional things with these sentences, and you'd be like, you know what I mean? I mean, I'm guessing, but I'm assuming that you might not see them as egregious.

You know, to it to a certain extent, they would probably still be a limit, you know, like I would probably pick one of those, you know, not but not but, but yeah, but I mean, the imagery is good so far. There's there's some good imagery going on here. I would just I would like to understand a little more why these wounds matter sometimes.

And after that discussion, I want to go back and. Yeah, and, you know, those were the most egregious and I wanted to start there with with those. But if we go back and we really start taking a look at some things,

so waltzed across the sky is actually kind of cool that that gives it but like lead. So if we look at our verbs lead led the way

brought

there's a lot of very weak words in here that we really could take advantage of and we already talked about similar to and everything like that.

We have some good like the vibrant like caressed her exposed or his exposed skin. I don't know if it's a guy or girl yet know it's a.

Is it's a guy I think.

there's just some opportunities and verbs. Again, I don't want to go into, you know, every single one of them, but I just wanted to kind of pointing out now that we've had this discussion on verbs and the importance of verbs, we can look back and there are while there are some good verbs in here, there are also some pretty weak verbs.

yeah, there you go. Yeah, it is. Xev is a he. Yeah, but I would also get that in there. And I mean.

Verbs are really critical.

Yeah.

You know, they really are the center point of your say. So it's worth taking a long, hard look at them.

Yeah. Because other than the one typo, the thing is well written, and I'm going to assume that that's just because they haven't made that mistake anywhere else. You know, when somebody does it like it.

Probably used to be attached to a previous sentence and then got broken up into its own sentence and left in a Yeah.

Yeah, that happens to me all the time. But like, so during the last workshop

when everybody's reading their samples that they had written, there was this one girl who started off and she had verb tense in the opening paragraph, but then it was just solid third person, third person. There are no past tense presidents, past tense. And I was like, okay, it was just a typo.

No big deal. But then it crept back in and it popped up here and it popped up there and I was like, yeah, no, this person is struggling with holding tense. So yeah, I'm going to assume that this is a

as a typo, because you're right that that has happened. Every one of us where, where we write a sentence that we are like and then one edit mode, we're like, let me change this around.

Let me break this up. No move this year. And then you just forget to change the tense of a verb. And it used to be the correct tense, but now it's not because you know, I mean, just like when you had to up in the opening paragraph, you had to change a tense a verb if we're going to expand that first line.

So, you know, we had to go from

that was the opening line where you.

Yeah. What's up.

Here. Yeah. So instead of waltz which was correct, verb tense there, we had to add the EDI on it to

make it. Now, because we do that, we chop that sentence out.

Absolutely happens to everyone.

So and then the last thing I do want to say is because I touched on it just now, not only do we want to get that Xev a little bit better, but we do want to have the he in there, especially since we have a lot of shes. We need to make sure that because here's the thing.

The reason why this is so important, this is one of my Drake isms. Stories are written one word at a time. You get the word A and that leads to the word sense and that leads to word of and that leads the word ah, And hopefully it will eventually form a coherent sentence and hopefully it'll be a couple other coherent sentences along with it to create a coherent paragraph.

That is the way the readers are painting it in their brain. And this is where you have the difference between the head book and the paper book. When the writer starts writing Xev they know Xev's a dude. They know it's in their head? They know this, but that's your head book. If I have to wait to line 18 to find out that I'm in the head of a dude and I've got all these female moons, I'm very apt to paint Xev as a female.

And what that does to me now is that I have to go repaint everything that I just painted. And when you make that mistake over and over and over and over again, it just keeps pushing the reader further and further and further away from your story because they're constantly have to rejigger what they've already kind of created in their mind.

And so we don't want to wait to paint this stuff because if you don't give it to them, they will make it up. No one's just going to go Xev a floating ball of light. Yeah, until you give me details, they're going to create those details in their mind. And so like the solution that you picked, which was, you know, a sense of all fields of as he gazed upward, bam, got it all.

It's not that hard to get that information into the reader so that they are grounded. You paint what you want to paint, you paint it quickly and you move on.

Yeah.

It's also it just ties into what what I also say about world building is

Readers come with assumptions. So if you and their assumption is default, our world unless specified otherwise, right? So whenever you're going to change anything big about our world, like, you know you're going to change a piece of history, you're going to add magic, you're going to do this, you're going to do that.

Whatever you do it, the faster and earlier you can communicate that to readers.

The better off you'll be, because otherwise they're going to insert their assumptions into the story. Like on a global level, you know, you're going to say the word kingdom and they're going to assume it's standard kingdom. Then it turns out that actually this is kingdom used very loosely because the ruler is elected, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then the reader goes, But none of that.

I don't know any of that, you know, And then you start getting issues.

So when you do, bear in mind that the reader assumes so you need to if it's something that you don't want them to assume, get in there fast. And especially with with men and women characters, you know, or whatever gender these are, you know, if you have some weird science, nonfiction, gender or whatever,

you have to establish that fast because that is one of the very base assumptions that readers come into because that's part of their identity.

Yeah, Yeah. Scroll up to the top again, the peanut gallery. That's a really interesting question that I kind of want to go through. Yeah. So talking about the first since I don't know when they actually typed this in, but they said, What if we switched the two sentences I'm just going to go with this one here. The, the added a sense of all filmdom versus the three sisters nightly walks.

Right. So first of all, this is subjective. You know, whether you want to start off the three sisters walks across the night sky a sense of all feel they Xev as he gazed upwards or somebody else, even a different person from the peanut gallery wrote, The three sisters walked across the night sky above Xev as he and then, you know, pulled his coat on or whatever.

Here's the thing it is subjective. You can do it either way. But to me and how I always do it is almost every time my opening sentence is in the head of the character that is narrating, because I want to establish that run in. I want to come out of the gate. You know, if I kind of imagine it like, you know, a horse race where the gates open up and the horse goes running out, will that horse with the rider is that is the narrator And they're in something.

They're in a track, they're in a field they're in or whatever. But some people do like to open up in more of a of a omniscient kind of way.

So I'll tell you what, my like, what my feeling is I would actually not flip the sentences, even though I am not as like, for me, it's okay to start a little differently, to maybe start with like the scene or whatever. Like I'm okay with that sometimes.

mostly I agree that it you know it's good to establish the character and so on but sometimes like there are reasons not to but

I wouldn't in this case, flip the sentences and here's why. We're going to be looking up and we're going to be looking up at the night sky now quite extensively because there's a lot of description.

What you don't want to do is you don't want to look up at the night sky, look down at the narrator, look up at the night sky.

Yeah.

Because that doesn't feel like a smooth scene progression. You want to go on in the narrator. I'm looking up at the night sky, all one smooth motion. Not I'm looking up, I'm looking down. I'm looking up, I'm looking down.

Yes. Yeah. And that's, that's what I was basically saying. And that, you know, for me personally, I like to start it off, you know, But it's also different between opening a scene and opening the first scene. Yeah. And so I'm even more conscious with that first scene in that first scene in my opening paragraph of my of every story that I write, I don't think I've ever not started in the head of the narrating character right out of the gate.

The only times I'll do that is there's a reason for it. It makes sense. It actually is more beneficial for the audience to have something else going on, either because I want to confuse the audience because they maybe the narrative character is confused or whatever. But other than that, yeah, I'm, I'm I mean, it's funny if you look at like, if you go through most of my stuff, not only do I start off in the character's head in the first sentence

and I just grabbed I happen to have carnage across it next to me and I don't even know.

I don't remember. But the first word is inner. Like, not only do I usually start off in the first sentence in the movie's head, usually the first word of the first sentence. And this is in almost every scene, not just in this one. So Chapter one Ayana of Clan Dumoulin pushed his way through. You know, Here's chapter four.

I never followed auditory as they queued up. Here's chapter six. See, now this one doesn't. But now I'm in chapter six when they reach the landing hall between the Hall of the Arena in the Great Hall, the sounds emanating from above warned them that they were no longer alone.

So I'm starting off because in the last scene ended with him sneaking up to danger.

And so now I'm starting this chapter with the danger, Grunts, growls and the occasional smashing of furniture trickled down, sending icy, sending ice slicing through Ana's veins. So I'm still bringing him in. And that opening chapter. But the last chapter just ended with them having to sneak in a place that they think might be very dangerous. And so I'm going to start off that.

I would say just purely from a like a starting perspective. I do prefer to start with a character doing something actively like I wouldn't like, I might add, a sense of awful save because it was a better opening sentence that I don't know enough to write an act of 100%, but I would generally prefer to have the character actively doing something because it establishes the protagonist nature.

Yeah, you know. Yeah. So that's just something to think about. I always I mean, I'm, I'm very, very particular on the very opening sentence, so I don't so you get a lot of people that are like, my God, the opening line of your of your sentence has to be this most amazing line that has never been written before and captures the soul of the reader.

And it's like, I'm not that smart. I don’t I don't do that, but I do capture you into the moment like I'm not going to very rarely. I don't think I've ever written an opening line that is just like this, this great American novel line opener that you're you read the line and you will never stop reading because that line so in captivated you I'm like now but I do connect you to the character very very fast and usually right in that opening line.

And then, you know, I just I don't know. I'm not I'm not a fan of the whole thing, although I do want to break my do are.

All right heels is spelled wrong.

It is. Yeah. Good catch.

I fell straight on it and I was like, that's not the right heels.

Yeah, I don't I do. As a dyslexic, That's my weakness. Is typos, especially homonyms like that. I think they're called homonyms, whatever they're called.

Homonyms.

The first commercial because I should have done it a couple of times because we organically did it because we mentioned a couple of things. So if you don't know, we're doing a little I'm doing a two camera commercial, but I only have one camera, so

and if you would like to join us and be a part of the peanut gallery here in releasing your inner Dragon, we you absolutely can watch us do this live.

We do it every Thursday morning from 930 until usually about noon, and that's Pacific Time. So for Marie and Finland, it's much later. But all you got to do is join the free area of the writers room. So if you just go to writer's room, Dot USA, the link is down below, you can actually join for free. Although right now we are doing 50% off for the first 250 members.

So if you want to get 50% off for life in the writers room and work with me on a weekly basis with daily writing sessions, weekly critique groups with both me and Marie and classes and workshops and all the other things that I talk about that I'm working on with people in the writers room, head on over to the writers room, dot us and you can join and be a part of all of this fun, good writing this.

So see in the writers, I'll turn back

to

ask you a Okay.

So let's pick up again from line 16. Though she was not the dominant one, it felt apt that they were dressed in the colors of her palette. At least that was what Ziff thought as she considered the thin robes they wore on the final night at the cusp of adulthood. Not quite the yellow tinted white t associated with bones.

There was too much of a blue undertone for that. Okay, so this is not necessarily something that a reader would pick up, but this paragraph was nails on a chalkboard for me. Not because it's not because the word choices, but it contains a lot of my my triggers. It felt that. Right. Really. What does that feel like? What does it feel like?

What does it felt apt feel like? Right then we have was we have were we have was there we have another was this this is a it's like a wasp nest of to be verbs.

Yeah.

And and then we have at least that was what Xev thought that comma is grammatically incorrect.

Yeah. Yeah we don't so I.

I want to fix this paragraph very badly.

But what you know, here's the problem that I have with it. I don't know what I'm supposed to be painting. I am lost in this paragraph, and maybe it's just me not being smart enough to follow this paragraph. But though she was not the dominant one, it felt that they were dressed in the colors of her pale light.

Okay, I get that We're talking about the other moon. The other rooms are actually being overshadowed by the colors of the first moon. Great. Awesome. At least that's what Xev thought as he considered the thin robes that they wore on their final night on the cusp of adulthood that I don't understand. We got.

One. I do. I do that. They're waxing full and they've got like they've got little small rims around them, I guess.

But I got who's waning.

She's at the end of her waning. Yeah, it's a little.

Girl, but that's lagging behind. Yeah, I No, the first one. So go up and see. This is stuff we don't want our readers thinking about.

Yeah. So the blood of the.

Blood and the blood sister led the way.

Yeah.

And she is waxed. Yeah. The thing that's waning is the second moon.

The third moon, the third moon. So the so on the blood, it's just so luscious. The doll. All right, there's the luster. And then there's the pale.

Sister Lagging behind. Right is the third.

It's blood. It's blooded, lush and then pale. And then the pale is not dominant. But they were dressed in her light. At least that was what they thought. As you considered. See, I guess the thin robes they wore could be the two front moons who are both nearly full because they're white.

So since we have a pale sister, so who's pale light, first of all. So we we went. we talked about the pale sister still.

Yeah. Yeah. Because, because this is the last she right, was the pale sister though she was not the dominant.

So I don't that's what lost me is I don't understand how a waning moon that's, that's weak and out of breath and not dominant is actually casting her light on the two other moons, one of which is waxing like, that's why I'm like, I don't want to paint here.

If you want to get ridiculously overly complicated. I don't understand how a moon is costing light because all moons are actually only reflective.

Yeah, but the light is casting. So we had multiple moons, you know.

None of. But I mean, that that can only reflect a lot of the stars. Right? Right. They're rocks. So but that that's that's that's me being very.

Very blood man Red moon here and a pale moon over here. There's going to be times where maybe they're on opposite sides, where the sun hits the blood moon. And then that red light comes over here and hits the pale moon. But I don't that's what I mean. I I've lost the ability to paint this because I don't understand where the light is coming from.

And here's the problem when you get specific. I love specificity. However, when you get specific, you have to be very, very careful of, again, what I call the head book versus the paper book. In this writer's head, they see all of this stuff. They see where the light is coming from. They see how it's how this pale moon is.

Somehow the light from the pale moon is affecting these other two moons. Even though you've just told me that the other moons are bigger and this one is barely a sliver. And I I've now lost the ability to follow the logic. And so my problem is, is that now I read that paragraph and I'm no longer thinking about Xev or whatever, say Xev or why Xev is there, or what Xev is concerned about or anything like that.

I'm actually now trying to figure out geometry of light reflection, and that is not what I feel like the reader should be thinking about. So this paragraph is completely botched me and confused me, and some of the other peanut gallery was like, yeah, it's there's, there's, I don't I'm confused too. So there's it's not just me, but now I'm trying to think geometry.

Yeah. And I'm not thinking.

It's definitely a confusing paragraph like you know and.

Yeah, and that was so another peanut gallery person said, I thought the Rose might have been something. So I was reading a wearing and I did too. That's why I had to reread it. It's like, no, it's they're just like wrote and, and then.

The problem is, my other problem is this paragraph. And the next one. Okay, the imagery around the moons was pretty, but I am now a page in.

Yeah. And we're talking about the moons now.

With no idea why these moons are important or whatever. And that's too much. Even if even in really pretty prose, even if I could follow what's going on.

Yeah, it's.

Give me a reason.

Yeah. My next note was that now I'm. I'm four paragraphs deep reading about moons, and I don't know why. Yeah. Again, the why is so important. And since we don't know why Xev is here, we don't know why. You know what Xev is? Motivation is we don't have any type of hook that gives that makes us go. Okay.

Yeah. No, this is interesting. I need to. I need to burn through this moon stuff so I can figure out what's going on. There's nothing that's. That's holding me to this story. And then this paragraph just throws me out, and I'm just like, I'm done. I would probably put the book down after this paragraph because while the though decent writing above kept me interested, like, okay, so this person can write, that's nice, that actually can hold.

And it was just a couple of typos, but whatever. I can overlook typos and sometimes don't even see them because of my dyslexia. But then I get here and I'm like, I don't know what you're trying to get me to paint. Now I am completely lost and I don't like that feeling. I don't ever want to be lost when I'm reading.

And so therefore, there's a billion books out there and I'll just go to something else.

I'd put it down at the next paragraph, but that's a personal.

Well, let's find out. Let's go to the next paragraph instead.

It was more like fresh snow, watery crystals, as if they had gone their purity, their innocence, pieces of cloth still unmarked by the force of the world around them, a symbol of how the adults viewed the teens, said cloth clung to the sweet lies they told themselves, he mused. And I like that. That catches me on a bad spot where I'm not a huge like.

I don't know if that's what the author was implying, that like adults look at teens with like lust. But it's kind of what I took from the paragraph.

I like that kind of freaks me out.

I took it as they were that the adults were looking at teens like they were morons. But then again, I have teens, so they're morons. Not all teens. I'm just saying mine, yeah, technically they're no longer teens. They're actually even past that.

And I don't mean like like I have issues in in, you know, like, I know that that's also specific to my baggage, but it would probably throw me up like me person.

Yeah I don't I don't get any sexuality from that It's just me. And again, everything's subjective. So that's the thing you know, we talk about this in the writers room where I say you can never argue with someone on on what you're writing makes them feel because it makes them feel that like, that's just the way it is.

The thing is, people come into the book with their own baggage. Yeah, I think things that they've experienced in life and they're their own view on culture and whatever religion, etc., etc. So you have no control over how they're going to how that baggage is going to react with your book, Right? You the only thing you need to watch out for is like if 30% of people react negative, like it's 30% of people read this paragraph and say to you, it feels like, you know, then maybe reconsider.

Right? Yeah, but if it's just me, that's why I always say Drake's Rule of ten. You get ten people that don't care about you to read something. And if you know less than eight because we want, you know, if seven or fewer say something, or if in this case three people say something, you don't want that because that puts you below a four out of five stars.

We want eight of ten people to like it, or only two people to feel like if ten people read this and two people were like, Wow, that feels like the adults are very sexual toward their teens. And the other eight are like, I don't see it. Then I'd probably go with it because, you know, then you're down to that 20% mark and you know, whatever, it's subjective.

You're never going to bat a thousand. But if 100%. But, you know, right now we have a sample pool of two. So 50% of us.

Yeah. So don't don't listen to me. I'm just saying, like, what.

If this was my size? This would be a two and a half star's sample size. So you have to.

I do know that I story. I probably just put the book to look at it and I mean it. Yeah. Yeah. I just I have issues, I have hangups. So there are things I don't like to read.

So yeah. So from the peanut gallery somebody says, Yeah, it to me it reads like the adults are lying themselves about the teen's purity and she has no idea what that has to do with the moons. And the other one agrees. The way I see it, which is the adults are envying the teens purity that. The adults have become dirty and and corrupt and filthy or something like that.

So, you know, again, it's subjective. You're never yeah, every everything you write is going to be subjectively consumed by the audience. And you never know what that is.

But you want to go, I am. And I'm also highly unlikely to be your target audience, you know?

Yeah, well, you got to go with so like one of the very first writers groups that I ever ran. So this is many, many years ago. This girl read and it was just this scene. It was an opening scene of her fantasy book. And it was a brother and sister. And they're out in the field and they're just kind of working their work in the farm.

And I always go last. That was my rule back then. It's still my rule because I want what the other members to try to get as much as they can before I come in and kind of clean it up. And so everybody went. Nobody mentioned this thing. And so it got to me and I was like, so, so brother and sister are and I didn't say I said the naughty word for it, but I said they're their intimate.

And she was like, what's? And everybody is like, my God, I'm glad you said that. Like, everyone in the room was thinking it and I was like, yeah, no, they're definitely boning. Like, there's no way they're not doing that. And she's like, What are you talking about? Like, look at how they're flirting with each other. That is flirty.

She's like, No, no, no. It's just it's just. It's just brothers. I'm like, no, like, that is hardcore sexually charged. And since everyone else felt that way, it was like, you want to think about their interaction with each other? Because it wasn't just me. It was like all ten of us in the room that were like, Yes, I was thinking, I didn't want to mention it.

I didn't, you know, it was that because it was a new group and everybody still kind of on, you know, pins and needles about what to say and what not to say and everything like that. But I don't have those problems for some reason. I just say what I mean.

You you do you do need to be so. So for me, the reason why this paragraph sketches it is, is because it feels like there's some connotation here with like, you know, teenagers should keep themselves pure, you know, and like.

Yeah, no, I mean, I can see where you go with it.

It feels of, of it tastes of sexual control to me.

Yeah. So you just know the point here is to say does it matter what you think when you write your stuff and it doesn't matter what you get out of your writing when you start testing it out and get other people to read it, get mad. Now, if Marie is the only one who reads this and is the only one who feels that way and everyone else is like, I don't feel that way at all, then you're probably pretty safe.

You may want to tweak it, you may not. It's up to you. It's, you know, at the end of the day, your name is on the the products. But in the case of like that first writing group where everyone felt that the there was a lot of sexual tension between the brother and sister, that if they weren't intimate at that point, they were definitely going to be at some point then you might want to think about, even though you didn't feel that you wrote it that way, you may want to seriously consider doing that.

So that's the point is the point is, is that and I say this all the time.

Unless of course, you or George are right. And I mean.

If I ask you to back off, in which case you may be.

Golden, well done game. The whole family can play. Yeah.

anyway, the point is what I say all the time. And this is something that rubs every writer wrong and I'm sorry, but it is the fact writers do not get to decide if what they writing written works because you're not the target market. You're not the person who's going to pay for it. The only people that you decide if something you've written works is other people.

If they think it works, then it works. If they don't think it works, it doesn't matter how much you like it, how much you thought it was good, how much you thought that you'd have written, you know, literary gold. That's if no one else agrees with you, then you're wrong, plain and simple. Because you, as the writer, never.

It's not even in your wheelhouse to decide if something that you wrote is good. You don't have that ability. You don't get that deed. It's not your job. It's not in your skill set.

For you as the writer. Of course you're going to look at it and be like, Of course it's good, it's fine. I look at everything I've written. I'm like, It's fantastic. God, it's fantastic. I wrote it. Yeah, come on.

Exactly. But that's not you don't even have that ability. It's not even a skill that you own. So you have to take feedback from others. That's why I always say it's why the writers room is so important you have to be a part of a group that is a critique group. You have to you have to both critique others because critiquing others.

The reason why do me and Marie critique other people all the time? Because it makes us better writers, but we're not doing it just because we're, you know, saints and trying to, you know, spend all of our time bestowing all this greatness upon everyone else. We're doing it because it makes us better writers.

Looking at other people's writing, improving other people's writing helps me improve my it helps me see the same issues in my own writing.

And then you must also get critiqued so that you see your writing through other people's eyes.

So I okay, so I do want to just read like up to here, Okay? And then all the.

Time we still got about ten more minutes.

So while the Pell sister weekly danced across the sky, they've followed the current of her matching youngster's as it was pulled in the wake of the Druids guiding them up the side of the hill toward the stone structure at its epics, flames swayed along the worn path, watching gods barely kept the encroaching darkness from overwhelming the pulses by the crackling of the flames and the buzzing of the insects fulled the merciless silence left by words that died before they could escape the lips of those among the pale procession, the mix of dread and anticipation thickening to the point where they felt he could have grasped and held it, if only he bothered to reach for

it. Why didn't you start with this? Like, Yes, yes, the moons are important, but there's a ritual going on here. These druids and people doing stuff and they're guiding the moons.

And now when I look up at the moons, they mean it to me.

People.

They're not just three cool moons.

Yeah, because until we got here, it meant like they were just. It was just pretty imagery, which was why I was all like, Why are we focusing on these freaking moon summer? Yeah, start with the stuff the characters are doing. Attach me to the character. Let me let me understand what's going on around the character before you show me the cool fantasy element, I promise you the character will keep me more invested than the fact that the world has three moons.

Yeah, yeah, that's.

That's just going back to what we said. It's connect us to the character. Connect us to the, you know, everything like that.

I mean, we have some more wishy washy, weak writing, so we've got a couple of l y adverbs in there weekly and barely I down on five. So both of these. So there's three ways that you should never use an l y adverb.

One of the ways is the way these two are used. We're going to use a weak l y adverb because of the fact that we're using the wrong verb. So while the pale sister, we couldn't say, while the pale sister danced across the sky, because that's too strong. It's too strong of a verb. So we have to either weaken that verb with an l y adverb, or if it's a weak verb, we have to strengthen it within a way.

Adverbs Or we can right, you know, shuffled, stumbled, lurched, floundered.

Faltered, floundered.

Yeah, whatever. There's. There's a bunch of words we could use to replace that so that we don't have it. Same thing with barely keeping so on down in five in the five. Last word. So there's other words we could use. And so again, we can't write twitching guards, keeping the encroaching darkness from whelming because we that's too strong because they're not actually keeping it or whatever.

So we have to come up with something. And that's just that's just that. And then we have another felt in there. Just see, you know, my memories. Rules are you should never use, feel or felt in prose. I will give the exception to sometimes if you're actually feeling something

tactile, you know, like I'll let that slide every once in a while if if it's the right word.

I don't think Marias is gracious on that.

Word is I am not gracious on feel felt. It has to be perfect. It has to be the perfect word for me to even consider leaving it improvs. I'll leave it in dialog. But but in prose it earns its keep like five times over.

Yeah, yeah. In dialog, you know, people say all the time, you made me feel bad, you know, whatever. That's it's dialog. Dialog is dialog. But in prose you hurt my feelings. So yeah. I mean in, in dialog though, I mean in narration though feeling felt should just never be used. They're just so telly and they're always telly and you can't get away from it.

So just kind of. Yeah. So twitching guards braced, braced against the encroaching darkness from a braced against the encroaching darkness. We'd have to rewrite a little bit. But yeah,

saving.

The possibilities or whatever.

By, from being overwhelmed or whatever.

yeah, you are right. This is kind of what we were talking about earlier. We start with something closer to this and now we have who's head are we in? Where are we at, Why are we there and what is a hook?

And so things are moving around us. There's an actual ritual going on. We're a druid. There's like flames and encroaching darkness and we're guiding the moons. And then we look up at the moons and the moons are amazing and in context.

Yeah, and this is going to go into. So the next episode is the point of view episode. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about it in ways that I don't think anybody else is really covering. But this is what we're talking about. Here are four limited POVs, so we're talking about third person limited or first person.

So if we're in a limited POV, meaning that the story is limited by the knowledge of the narrating character, the character is an unreliable nature. NARRATOR They only know what they know, and so they are limited in what they can perceive when what we're talking about is. And that's what it feels like that this person is trying to do.

The problem is, is that so few people understand point of view. Everyone thinks they.

Say even an omniscient I would have started with a proscenium.

Certainly, but well, maybe omniscient. You know, it depends on what we're doing. We might need to establish the voice we know. I mean, there's there's all sorts of of reasons. But here's the problem. People don't understand point of view. They just don't. They think they do and they think they're doing it. But they really are kind of doing this mighty wishy washy mixing and melding of like a pseudo omniscient in a pseudo limited.

And then you get this stuff, you get this weird and it's because that's the way a lot of novels are written and a lot of novels. I mean, it's, you know, at a time there was a time when that's all that there was out there. And so, you know, people equate success to process. And I always hate that.

Like people, the industry truly believes that Hunger Games was successful because it was written in first person present. It ain't got Jack all to do with that. That has nothing to do with why it is. But then they went out and bought a whole bunch of first person president stories because they were like, obviously process is why it was a success.

She could have written those books in third person past tense and they would still have been successful. Yes, because she might. One hell of a line of tension.

Yeah. So but that's what the industry. And so it bleeds over into the writers where writers start equating process to success. And so they go, well, you know, when you look at the the big books from the 6070s, eighties, nineties, they're all kind of written in this way. Yeah but that doesn't mean that that's why they were a success doesn't mean that you can't improve upon that.

And so in the next episode which for us is going to be in like 5 minutes we, we're going to go into point of view and hopefully you join us for that.

Just to, just to finish up here. Like I genuinely feel like this piece has got some strong writing. Yeah, it's got it's got a the author has a good grasp of creating an image. Yeah. Some of that moon imagery was really lovely. Alright. But what you want to do is you, you do think that your moon imagery is the strongest part of your writing, but it's not that.

And this is the this is the thing that a lot of writers struggle with, especially when they start. They think that the prettiness of the writing is going to sell the book.

There are a very, very few, very rare exceptions where that is true. People who write prose so beautiful, it could be poetry. You or I'm not one of them.

You are very unlikely to be one of them, that those people are like or like poets. Ray And poets are rare for a reason, right? Like poets who make money out of or read for a reason. Because it is really hard to write to actually craft the words that beautifully. So what readers are. But that doesn't mean that you're not going to be a good, successful writer.

You're going to be a good, successful writer by getting people to read your book because of the character, because they attach to the characters, bring in the character early, establish why the prettiness of the moon matters, and then use your very good prose. You know, your your good imagery creation to add the silver to it to to wash the whole scene in color and give the reader a reason.

They've gone like, okay, I like your character enough to keep reading. Now give me that. The fantasy, the fancy thing.

And look, you can also write. That's really cool. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, you know, And I, I struggle with this because I work so hard to write immaculate prose. I mean, I pushed my head. I don't know of any other writer who pushes himself as hard on prose as I push myself. You're a close, close second, but I'm insane with it, and it slows me down.

And that's the crappy thing about it, is that I'm not a fast writer because of how insane I am on every single word. But what rubs me is that I know that a beautifully written book versus just a book that's horribly written but has a great story and great characters is going to sell the same amount of books.

Because again, readers concerned about character and store like that's the thing that can you write a good story? Can you write a good character? And and I do write good characters and good stories. And I know that because I have the success that I have. But I also and it's probably because of my dyslexia and it's probably because of my lack of education.

It's probably because of, you know, my own self. I don't just have low self esteem. I have self-loathing of my intelligence level on, you know, because I'm dyslexic and all this other stuff and just being raised in the seventies and, you know, we didn't have dyslexia, we just had stupid. And so I know that I have these demons inside of me that that I'm always fighting against.

And that's what drives me to have to do this stuff. But the reality is character and story like that is what the readers want. That is what matters, and they'll overlook so much other stuff. Now, I do also believe that that the quality of writing that I put in is the reason why my, you know, if you're into fantasy and you read my stuff, you are, you know, I have an over a 90% hook rate on that 90 to 93% hook rate on anybody who reads my work.

Because not only do they get the good character and a good story, but they also get this amazing writing. And so that really doubly hooks them in. And so I do believe that the good writing does help my career, of course.

But it's like it doesn't matter how hard you push yourself, you are not going to sell your books on prose.

Right?

You know, the book.

And for those and we need to do this for you too. I don't I don't think we have done this. But for those who do want to check out my writing, if you go to Starving Writers Studio, so starving writer's studio, all singular words dot com forge slash, genesis, you can actually download the first 70,000 words of my next novel for free for the cost.

Your email. It is a marketing thing, but you can check it out and you can see how I craft my. Now it is fantasy and it is epic fantasy, so you have to be into that, but you can check it out for free. And so that's about, you know, the first Harry Potter book was only like 76,000 words.

So it's almost the size of the first Harry Potter book. So I would encourage you to go and check that out and download that and kind of see how I craft what I mean. You are listening to mine and maries advice. It seems like hopefully we can deliver on that advice in actual product. So head on over starving writer studio links below for each last genesis and you can pick up the first 70,000 words of that for yourself and check it out.

We need to get something like that for you.

Sure I can. I mean, I've got some of.

That because got I mean, the fourth book is out or coming out.

No, no, I've I've actually just written the end of the fourth book.

Yeah, I know.

It's now, it's now got better reading and editing and stuff. I hope to publish it by the end of this year. And that will actually complete the, the first series, the trilogy and.

I do have a couple signed copies for sale over on Starving Writer Studio. Yeah, if you want to get signed copies of the Sangwheel Chronicles, the first two books, I don't have the others, but Maire came a year and a half ago to Comic-Con with me and she left some of the copies here. I actually took a I should have taken more, but I think I only took three copies of book one in book two to Comic-Con with me this year.

Sold them all on the first day at auction, so I haven't had a chance to do all my accounting and everything like that. But I do know you some money because, yeah, first they sold all three copies and so that was nice. Now they were two people that were waiting on them, you know, people that are fans of ours that were like, Did you happen to bring any of Marie's books?

Like, matter of fact, I did, but I should have brought more. But I think I've got five or ten copies of each left. So if somebody would like to get those and not pay shipping from Finland, I can head over and she makes all the money. I don't take up a penny of that. So come on over and yeah from starving Writer studio.

Okay so I think that that more or less covers. I think what we want to say about this critique like I, I do really want to emphasize and re-emphasize this to all of our listeners, start with a character attachment to the character motivate me for why the pretty fantasy scene matters by attaching me to the character and their motivations and their emotions.

And after that I am on board to read about your.

Beautiful.

Moons rising over the the thing. Yep.

Yeah, yeah. Because the writers got a solid base. They understand prose a couple typos or whatever. We can't. None of us can get away from typos.

Mostly good imagery. There was that one paragraph that threw me for a loop. I can't. I couldn't follow. But for the most part, you know, everything was good.

So, yeah, Art.

And

I think that's a good note on which to end this episode. We will see you soon for another one. Back.

if you are ready to take your writing to the next level and work with a group of highly motivated, dedicated writers who are all working to not only improve their writing, but improve your writing. Plus, you get to work with me on a weekly basis.

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we have daily writing sessions. I do want the classes Q&A as we have activities.

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