Rachel Starr Thomson

All right, friends who wanted to keep up with my fiction journey. I am trying my hand at improving novel descriptions. I would love it if you’d give me your feedback on the following descriptions of the same book. Which would more likely interest you enough to read a sample (or even buy the book)?

1.

The Council for Exploration Into Worlds Unseen believed there was more to the world and its history than the empire had taught them. Treating ancient legends as history, they came a little too close to the truth. Betrayed by one of their own, the Council was torn apart before they could finish their work.

Forty years later, Maggie Sheffield just wants to leave the past behind. Memories of the Orphan House where she grew up are fading; memories of her guardians’ murder are harder to shake. When a dying friend shows up on her doorstep bearing the truth about the Seventh World–in the form of a written covenant with evil–Maggie is sent on a journey that will change her forever.

2.

Quiet, timid, and haunted by the murder of her guardians when she was a child, Maggie Sheffield wants peace and healing—not an opportunity to uncover truths so frightening and so vast that they threaten to forever unravel the world she thinks she knows. But when a dying friend gives her an ancient scroll that purports to contain just such truths, Maggie finds the lure of understanding too hard to resist.

For the power that killed Maggie’s loved ones was not human—and she has reason to believe the same power is both hunting down others and ruling the entirety of the Seventh World.

Leaving her hopes for peace behind, Maggie sets out to carry the ancient scroll to the far eastern city of Pravik, seeking the only man in the world who can read it and reveal its secrets. Along the way, Maggie falls into the companionship of a charismatic young wanderer called Nicolas Fisher, who has secrets of his own that he has long been trying to keep hidden.

Together, their journey plunges them into a strange new world of colourful Gypsies and ancient legends, of death-hounds and beautiful witches, of wilderness treks and unexpected love. But the price of truth may be too high: for Maggie, Nicolas, and the rebels of Pravik are tearing at the veil between the seen and the unseen, between good and evil, between forgotten past and treacherous future—and when that veil grows thin enough, it’s anyone’s guess what may come through.

So, I really spaced on the last CSFF Tour–totally forgot to write/post a third entry. This had nothing to do with the quality of the book and everything to do with me being in the midst of traveling.

We were featuring D. Barkley Briggs’s Corus the Champion, which was a really great read. My one qualm about it was feeling like so many elements of the plot were too familiar. Anyway, Dean very graciously responded to my review, and I thought I’d post his response here because it really does touch on a major issue genre writers face:

Rachel, thank you for your thoughtful review. I appreciate the insights, and also the frustration of feeling the familiarity of a sub-genre’s distinctives. As far as I can tell, that’s the double-edged sword: color too much inside the lines, and people may feel overexposed to the story (i.e. that it is derivative of other works), but color outside the lines, and people who wanted an epic fantasy may feel cheated, i.e. “If I wanted steampunk, I would buy steampunk!” Personally, I wrote what I like to read: epic fantasy, and tried to do it in a way that raises the bar for the quality of what the Christian market could expect from such a title. As you briefly and graciously referenced me in the company of Tolkien, Lewis, Alexander, Cooper and Kay (swapping McKillip or LeGuin for Lawhead), I’m quite pleased. Thank you!

Let me say, first off, that Dean absolutely HAS raised the bar. He deserves those comparisons, and the genre distinctions he’s referring to–including many familiar motifs, background myths, and even plot points–will no doubt make their first encounters with many young readers in his books. Those young readers couldn’t ask for a better introduction, in my opinion. And the quality of writing, plus serious depth in the themes and characters, make these books original as well–I don’t want to give the false impression that they’re completely derivative.

(Mind you, I say all this based on Corus alone. I ordered Book of Names from Amazon, but it arrived with a tragically bent-double cover. I’m sending it back but will pick up the rest of the series when I get a chance.)

All of this makes me wonder anew, however: how restrictive are the boundaries of genre, really? As a reader, do you go after books in a certain genre looking for something familiar, or for something distinctive? Have you had an experience like Dean describes, where an author coloured too much outside the lines and you felt cheated? Does it bother you to run across familiar things in different novels, or do you actually want that?

I’m curious, so please do share your opinions if you have them.

One other thought on this: when you read inside a certain genre all the time, that genre tends to shape your imagination. Maybe that’s why fantasy-style stories come so naturally to me, and “real-world” stories don’t. The first book I ever tried to write was a fantasy that ripped off Lloyd Alexander and Terry Brooks in equal measure, and even now I find “derivative” scenes and ideas in my stories a lot. They just seem to be part of the way I think. Maybe that’s a reason to read outside of your genre?

A word of explanation is in order: you may have noticed that “Day 2″ of this tour got skipped (for the first time ever, I’d like to point out). The sad fact is that my copy of the book arrived really, really late, and by the time it got here, it collided head-on with an unusually busy week. I could have tried to cram the book and write a bleary, half-formed review tainted by the fact that I’d stayed up all night to read it, but I didn’t think that would be fair to anybody.

Least of all to Stephen Lawhead, who has been one of my favourite writers since I was a young teenager.

With that in mind, I thought I’d wrap up the tour by writing about an aspect of Mr. Lawhead’s writing that has always made it outstanding. (I will review the book when I’ve had a chance to read it properly.) And that is his grasp of history.

The Bone House, like most of Stephen Lawhead’s books, is set in an otherwhen. Actually, it’s set in many otherwhens, and just as many otherwheres: 18th-century England, ancient Egypt, Egypt in the 20s and 30s, 17th-century Prague, Etruria before the dawn of the Roman Empire (ten points if you’ve even ever heard of Etruria), and, I’m assured by the cover, the Stone Age. Notably absent is the Celtic world, which he has fully explored in other books.

The remarkable thing is how fully he’s able to delve into every one of these settings, even if he only drops us there for the equivalent of a few minutes. Never do you get the feeling that you’re just seeing a temporary, airbrushed backdrop: every setting has texture, and depth, and detail. I recently read a review that praised his abilities as a writer on the “sentence level,” but it’s much more than that: good sentence-level writing can only partially cover up for a lack of substance in the details.

And it’s there that he excels. He always has, and he still does.

As the settings of the story change, the world kaleidoscopes around us in a finely wrought rush of landscapes, colors, weather, food, social strata, speech patterns, clothing, transportation, eating utensils, desert cooling systems, musical styles, and moods. And in all of it we get a glimpse of another story, a much larger one, across which Bright Empires is only playing: the story of humanity, and the world, and everything in it. The story we’re a part of every day, but to the details of which we only rarely pay attention.

Genre fiction can only benefit from this kind of attention to detail. May we all read and learn.

Parts 1, 2, and 3 of this series on how you can know when your writing is “good enough” for public consumption.

This question of objectivity applies in two ways: First, how do you know your writing in general is good enough to go out into the world and be read by others? Second, how do you know a particular piece of writing is good enough?

First things first: if you are strong enough as a writer to consistently put out quality work, then you can be fairly confident that your particular pieces of writing will pass muster. So how do you know you’ve become that strong?

We’ve already discussed things like developing an ear, learning technique, and getting an education. But all of this can only take you so far. When you really need to know whether you’ve “made it,” for me, the answer has been simple answer: Listen to what other people say. And most importantly, try to get published.

(I don’t remember where I first read/heard this, but it’s absolutely true. You will know you have reached that high mark as a writer when other people are willing to publish you. That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get your dream book contract. But when you can get into magazines or onto good websites, find acceptance in an anthology, or get hired to write a business letter, you’ll know you’ve reached “good enough.”)

It does matter whom you’re listening to. Mothers, God bless them, usually think their children should be raking in Pulitzer prizes even if that is not exactly true. Friends, siblings, and anyone with a vested interest in your life will have a harder time giving you objective feedback about your writing because they can’t separate your writing from YOU. For that reason, the best feedback usually comes from outside your usual circles.

If you want to be a writer, get involved in the community of writers that exists online and in the real world around you.

Professional editors and writing coaches can give critiques or other services, for a fee. Writing conferences offer workshops and other opportunities to get your work in front of people who know good writing from bad. But most forms of feedback are free:

Critique groups can be helpful, because the people in them are also getting an education, training their ears, learning technique, etc. They know the objective things to look for and can help you see what you can’t in your own writing. Most communities have a critique group meeting somewhere–or you could start one. Online forums can be a great place for reader response and advice. And blogging, networking online, and reviewing books can help get notice for your own writing as well.

And don’t forget publication. Keep putting your work out there, getting it rejected, revising your approach, and trying again. Eventually, you’ll cross over the other side, and you’ll know you’ve become a professional.

Of course, any comments on your abilities have to be taken with a grain of salt. People like to give opinions even if they don’t know what they’re talking about. (Sometimes they even speak out of jealousy.) And someone who hates your genre or topic isn’t likely to be charitable to your writing.

I really began networking online about six years ago. By now, I am convinced I can write. Editors, agents, bestselling and uber-talented writers, reviewers, readers, and publishers have all told me so. If nothing else, participation in community has shown me that I am a professional and I do have a right to take myself seriously as a writer.

As for knowing when a particular piece of writing is good enough . . .

Find some readers you really respect, people who are willing to tell you what they really think, and open yourself up to criticism. It will help if you will let it. Participate in a workshop or critique group. Or just start trying to get your work published. An acceptance letter will tell you all you need to know :).

P.S. There is a flip side to this whole thing: some really good writers don’t get published and don’t get recognition, for a few reasons. And some of us never believe our writing is ready, no matter what others say. But that is a different issue. Most of us really can use the opinions of others as an effective measuring stick when we’re trying to figure out where we’re at in our writing readiness.

In the ongoing discussion on becoming objective about your own writing (Part 1 is here; Part 2 is here), I’ve mentioned that it’s important to gain a working knowledge of technique. In other words, you need to become a student of your own craft. Most of us have seen thousands (if not millions) of automobiles in our lifetimes, yet I wouldn’t consider myself able to put together a Dodge Caravan. Yet, countless would-be writers believe they can write a book because they’ve read books, and surely, it can’t be that hard.

Now, you can probably write a book with far less training than it would take to put a minivan together. But in writing, there ARE rules, techniques, structures, approaches, and conventions, and if you want to be a writer, you should learn about them.

Fiction writers: What is POV? What are the different approaches to using it, with their strengths and weaknesses? What is a scene, and what is a summary? What scene structures tend to work best? Can you describe traditional three-act structure? What divides good dialogue from bad? How should you handle accents and dialects? What about flashbacks? Flash-forwards? Passive voice? Is your timeline linear or out-of-the-box?

Nonfiction writers: Can you write an outline? What’s your hook? Do you know how to research a topic? Have you thought through structure? Can you name other books on your subject? What tone is best for this project? Why? How much do you plan to explain concepts, and how much will you trust your readers to know? Is a heavily anecdotal approach best, or should you lean more on evidence?

If you don’t even know what I am talking about in the above two paragraphs, you need an education :). (Also, if you ever use the term “fiction novel.”) This is not hard to obtain, nor is it expensive. Most libraries have a section for writers. Writer’s Digest publishes hundreds of titles on everything from research to world-building to dialogue to plot. There are probably thousands of blogs by and for writers, including many by agents, editors, and working authors. Start reading.

If you have a bit more money and ability to travel, try attending a writer’s conference or two. These can be hugely educational.

Once you’re armed with some knowledge of technique, you’ll start recognizing various techniques when they’re used in books you’re reading. And then you can start to see how they do (or don’t) work, to understand what you do (or don’t) want to do.

(This isn’t about becoming slavish. In writing, you just have to learn the rules so you know how to break them well.)

And once you’ve started to recognize technique in the writing of other people, you’ll start to recognize it in yourself, too. You’ll know, to a much greater degree, when your dialogue is bad, your scenes are summaries, and your head-hopping is making people dizzy. You’ll be able to spot problems in structure, tone, or competition.

Weigh in, readers! I’m enjoying the discussion :).

This is Part 2 of a discussion on how you can know when your writing is good enough to unleash upon the world. Part 1 is here.

As you could probably tell from my brief overview of ways I go about evaluating my own writing, I don’t believe there’s a quick and easy way to become objective. But one thing does hold true: if you can tell the difference between good and bad writing in general, you’ll be better equipped to tell the difference in your own writing.

If you want to write, then, and especially if you plan to be published, you simply must familiarize yourself with really good writing. Read it. Listen to it. Read it out loud. Read it in lots of genres. Read poetry; read song lyrics. Read classics. Read nonfiction. Read things that stretch you. Pick up, through exposure, vocabulary, technique, structure, rhythm. Pick up the flow of an effective story, the way it builds and climaxes and falls.

(Since I know many of my readers are homeschoolers/homeschool grads, I want to add one thing to this: don’t just read fiction that is more than a century old. I love Austen and Dickens and the Brontes and Shakespeare as much as anyone else. Without question, much of the greatest literature in the English language came out of the Victorian era and earlier. But writing, as an art form, has come a long way since then. Readers have changed; the “rules” have changed. I see a lot of writing from homeschoolers that is, frankly, overwritten–and in its lines floats a distinctly Victorian perfume :). It’s true that many of the “modern classics” are books you won’t necessarily want to read, and that’s fine. But make sure you’re reading enough modern writing to become very familiar with the way literature has evolved.)

The goal in all of this is to train your own writerly ear. You want to become so familiar with great writing that bad writing grates on your ear, even if it’s your own. You want to be able to recognize cliches, hear bad rhythm, and know when you’re overwriting.

That is the broad background for knowing when your own work is good enough. Coming soon: nitty-grittier thoughts. In the meantime, I’d love to hear what you think about this.

Back when I posted “Mystory,” fellow self-published author Natalie Wickham asked a fantastic question in response. Here’s her comment:

Here is a question that might make for an interesting discussion. How do *you* know when your writing is good? I have received so many articles for editing that I look at and think, “Really? Do you really think this is well-written?” I suppose that’s why they have whole courses on how to become a good writer, but I just wonder if there are some key things that a writer could ask himself to objectively evaluate the quality of his writing. Do you have any specific questions you ask yourself? Or is it more intuitive for you?

As a writing coach, I’ve often found myself stepping in for parents who just aren’t confident in marking their children’s writing. The reason for that is that unlike math or even history or science, writing isn’t just a study; it’s an art and a craft. That means that any assessment of writing is going to rely on a certain amount of subjectivity–that is, we like some writing because we like it and dislike other writing because we dislike it. And you can’t get much more scientific than that!

With that being understood, it’s nevertheless true that some writing is objectively–well, if not “bad,” at least not very good. Almost anyone with the exception of the writer’s mother would agree. This usually means that the writer just doesn’t have the grasp of language or of basic writing techniques needed to craft good writing.

The tricky thing is that it’s almost impossible for us to be objective about our own writing, at least for the first good while after we’ve written it. And yes, this is true for me too.

Natalie asked, then, how I know when my own writing is good. The simple answer is that (a) I train my ear and (b) I use several objective yardsticks, including knowledge of technique, the opinions of other readers, and most importantly, the willingness of third parties to publish what I write :).

I can go into a lot more detail on that, so I think I will. Stick around for follow-up posts! And keep the questions coming.

Recently, Stephen Burnett wrote a post on SpecFaith about how we depict God in our fantasy. Entitled “Fighting man-centered monsters in fiction,” it used the recent Voyage of the Dawn Treader film as a jumping-off point to address man-centeredness in our fiction:

I won’t say names here — partly because, sorry to say, the titles and authors can be forgettable! — but I’ve read a few fantasy books whose authors are trying to Imitate Lewis. But there’s a catch: their Christ-figures, a la Aslan, aren’t much like Aslan, much less so the Biblical Christ. Sure, they have all the loving-humble-helpful parts, but few to none of the sovereign-holy-kill-his-enemies parts. And these Christ-equivalents exist, not with their own missions, but mainly as sidekicks for the real hero of the story, the Self-Doubtful Often-Angsty Gifted protagonist, who is on a Quest.

Well, parts of the above description fit The Wolf of Tebron to a tee (even though Stephen hadn’t read Wolf and wasn’t referring to it, so not surprisingly, Susanne Lakin was one of the commenters. She wrote,

I cringed a bit at your attack on writers (like myself) who write fantasy books where many of the qualities and character of Christ is embodied in a character or animal (like Aslan) to accompany a hero on his journey, or whatever. In my case, I am not trying to make the wolf in The Wolf of Tebron BE Christ. Like Lewis said, he was not trying to teach Christianity, only help others experience it. For me, portraying a wolf with qualities of loyalty, faithfulness, encouragement, fierce protectiveness, kindness was where I could explore some of the facets of God’s nature. Books like this are not meant to belittle or cheapen God, his power, or sovereignty but I believe they are very important in helping a reader be drawn to God.

The whole discussion is well worth reading, and both writers make some fantastic points. These are questions I’ve also wrestled with. How do we depict Christ in our fiction — especially in fantasy fiction, where we are not actually depicting the real world? My own faith has drawn me to two extremes: trying to write any Christ figure in such a way that he becomes an exact representation, doctrinally accurate and characteristically exact, or (once I’ve failed at the first extreme) avoiding writing Christ figures at all. Who could possibly ever depict everything that Jesus is? I’m not even sure the Bible does that!

It was another great fantasy writer, George MacDonald, who helped me find a balance — ironically, not in his fantasy. He also wrote novels about Christians in England and Scotland in his day, but they were exemplary Christians. In their own way, every one was a Christ figure. Michael Phillips, who has edited many of MacDonald’s novels for modern audiences, wrote in a preface that MacDonald’s characters show different facets of Jesus’s character, and if you were to put them all together, you would get a composite of Christ.

Aha, I thought. That’s it.

As a writer, I can’t possibly embody him “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,” he “who is the brightness of [God's] glory, and the express image of his person” in words and an artificial plot. But I can, like Susanne said, explore facets of who Jesus is. I can take parts of his character and see how they would be expressed in another world, or how another person who possessed them might act. I can take the yearning he provokes in me and transfer it to my characters (that is why yearning is such a major theme in my Seventh World books — almost the first thing Maggie and Virginia learn to do is to long for the King’s presence).

I can sometimes show how the world centers on him. And at other times, I can show he helps others on their quests, not as a sidekick, but as a servant — like Ruyah the Wolf or the Holy Spirit himself.

In the end, the whole argument makes me realize anew that God both invites and defies description. He is holy, entirely “other,” and worth spending all of our talent, strength, and time getting to know.

Cross-posted from Speculative Faith.

(Someone once told me that “history” is called “history” because it’s HIS story, meaning God’s. Dunno if that’s true. But if it is, then my own personal story can be called “mystory.” In this case, I’m writing about the story of my stories, so that’s … “mystories”? But I digress. Ridiculously.)

I am a writer; in fact, I am a novelist. I get to call myself that, even though I do not have a single book published by a trade publisher, because I have been writing novels since I was 13ish. I’ve self-published five in various forms, and people read them, review them, and otherwise interact with them, so I figure that I’m doing what novelists do, and that’s good enough to claim the title.

In fact, this past week I finally finished a trilogy I have been working on for nearly ten years. In 2001 or thereabouts, I wrote a book called Worlds Unseen, which told the story of a handful of people who were curious enough — and gripped by longing enough — to explore beyond the boundaries of the world-as-they-knew-it and discover the truth about their history and future. As in our world, the truth is obscured by the machinations of evil. If discovered, it will set people free — but only if they’re willing to side with the ancient King and cast off the “safe” life they’ve always known.

Worlds Unseen helped me break through a few personal blocks as a writer, and I followed it right away with a sequel, Burning Light. I knew the story was supposed to be a trilogy. But back then I didn’t do outlines, and the third story wasn’t readily to hand like the first two had been. I was out of steam and content to let it rest.

So I did. Someday I would write a book called The Advent and finish the trilogy. Maybe.

In the meantime, I wrote a bunch of other books and became published as a freelance writer for various online and print magazines. In 2006 I entered the exciting waters of POD-enabled self-publishing, and in 2007 I looked fondly at Worlds Unseen and Burning Light and thought, why not? I have moved on to pursuing publication for other books. I could get these out into the world and start building readership. To the printing press!

This will have applicability to you shortly; keep reading . . .

Well, I did publish Worlds Unseen and Burning Light, and they began to accrue fans. They opened doors for me to get into all sorts of discussions with people about books and writing and my faith. They collected some good reviews. Worlds Unseen in its Smashwords-ebook form has been downloaded over 13,000 times.

But there was trouble. You cannot publish the first two books in a trilogy without eventually, someday, somehow, finishing the series. Readers made that clear. The third book needed to come out. And it didn’t want to.

The Advent turned into my life’s worst case of writer’s block. Dogged and determined, I wrote it. Hated and scrapped it. Wrote a different story with the same title. Scrapped most of it. Changed its name to Coming Day and kept going. Seven or so almost-complete rewrites later, I finally, finally wrote the book that finished the trilogy appropriately and in a way I could be proud of. It was like pulling teeth the entire way.

But now it’s done. I’ll be making it available to the world just as soon as the cover art is finished. And I can move on to new adventures, new worlds, new stories, and of course, marketing.

I share this bit of mystory with you because it highlighted two lessons for me.

1. Even when you think you know the cost ahead of time, anything you do will require commitment. Writing stories, like pulling a tooth or doing ministry or navigating a tricky relationship, requires a commitment that transcends how we feel at the moment. The upside of this is that commitment eventually yields fruit, and the fruit likewise transcends how we may have felt during the process.

2. Publishing, in any form, creates relationship and responsibility to readers. Don’t take that lightly. Like any relationship, it will cost something. It will require work and follow-through. And it will also create its own rewards. We are all, writers and readers both, engaged in one great conversation that truly impacts lives. And that is the best reason to pursue publishing in the first place.

I’d love to hear more about yourstories. Anybody?

P.S. If you’d like to read more about my trilogy, the website is www.worldsunseen.com.

I had originally intended to post “Light Isn’t Boring” today, but I messed up on scheduling and accidentally posted it two days prior to when I actually wrote it. I was not alerted to its active presence on my blog until a friend posted it on Facebook for all the world to see. Jolly :). So instead, I’m resurrecting a related article, one of my favourites from my first year writing for Boundless:

In these dark days, we desperately need Christian artists who will love God with all their hearts, minds, souls, and strength, and who will pour that love into unique creative expressions of truth that have the power to bridge into the souls of others.

This is my charge to them, to you, to myself more than anyone.

Go and meet with God. Seek Him in your relationships, your circumstances, the creation around you. Immerse yourself in scripture. Pray with your whole heart. Let His Spirit fill you with light. And then do what God has asked you to do — be a candle, a burning light, a city on a hill blazing with truth and shelter for those who are lost in the darkness. Use your art to do it.

It is such a dark, dark world. Is there light in you? Then hear my call to you, and to all in whom truth is burning.

Oh Christian, please paint the light!

Read the whole article here.