Marie Alafaci – Author and Trainer
Writing services and workshops
Hi all
Just a quick note to let you know I’ll be running a ‘Pathways to Publication’ course in Kyneton on November 17.
This half day course will look at ways to help you find your feet on this difficult path and give you some tips on how to stay focused.
Bookings and more information can be found at Writers Victoria: Pathways to Publication
Whenever I hear someone say ‘Give it to Helen and I’ or ‘Just between you and I’, I want to scream.
Sorry, I’m not usually that pedantic about grammar, but this one really gets me going.
This error seems to have arisen from childhood memories of our mothers correcting us as children. You know the scenario – you’ve said: “Mum, me and Peter are going to the park’ And your mother has said, almost as a reflex: ‘Peter and I are going to the park, dear.’
So, we’ve all remembered the construction ‘Peter and I’.
Unfortunately, while Mum was right in this case, the Australian public seems to have taken this example as a universal rule, at the same time as forgetting about poor old ‘me’.
Let me say loud and clear: it is perfectly acceptable to use ‘me’ in around 50% of cases.
So, how do you know when it’s ‘I’ or ‘me’?
The answer is simple: take the other person out of the sentence and try ‘I’ or ‘me’ and you will know which form to use.
For example, do you say: ‘
or
First, take the other person out of the sentence. You now have two options:
Which one sounds right?
Of course, it’s the second one. You would NEVER say ‘Please give it to I’. So the correct form is:
In the example of ‘Just between you and I/me’, it’s a little more tricky, but if you change the other person to a thing, say a door, it makes more sense:
or
Again, the second version is right.
So, whenever you are stuck and can’t work out whether it’s ‘I’ or ‘me’, do the two tests above, and you are sure to find the right answer.
And for those of you who would like a more detailed explanation, in a nutshell, it is the ‘case’ of the pronoun (I /me) that determines which one you use. ‘I’ is subjective case (the ‘I’ is doing the action) and ‘me’ is the objective case (the action is being done to, or in relation to, ‘me’). There are scores of articles and books you can read, but this one from Grammarly is a good place to start: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/grammar-basics-what-is-grammar-case/
Submitting your work to others for their opinion can be daunting, even if they are offering their own work for the same treatment. You might feel anxious, defensive or embarrassed about your writing, or perhaps just unsure what to expect.
As someone who has been a part of a fabulous critique group for over fifteen years (hello fellow Torcans, you great people, you!), allow me to give you a few tips on making the group work for you.
Firstly, there must be respect.
Respect for each other and respect for everyone’s work. No-one, if they are serious about improving their own writing, benefits from an ego-fest, be it their own ego or those of the other writers.
Leave your pomposity at the door. Remember we all started somewhere and we all have a way to go before that international prize for literature is ours.
It sounds obvious when you say it, but in critiquing someone’s work, you are talking about the words on the page, not the person who put them there. You might not like someone’s comb-over or their irritating throat tickle, but if their words sing on the page, that’s what you need to comment on.
No matter how hard it is to find, it’s useful to give a little praise to someone’s work. Imagine how you would feel if you are playing ten pin bowling and everyone else is getting seven or eight pins at a time and you’re only managing one. If everyone tells you that you missed nine, you’d probably feel terrible. However, if they told you that the one you got was pretty clever because it was on a rebound, and that with a bit of attention to your wrist action you might get four or five next time, you might feel a bit less hopeless. There’s always something good to say about someone’s work, even if it’s only ‘I can see that you’re trying to do here’.
Being as specific as possible about what is working in a piece (and what isn’t) is more valuable than vague generalities. It’s so much more helpful for a writer to hear ‘I think the dialogue was a little stilted in this chapter. It didn’t seem to me to sound like Olivia’s voice, compared with how she spoke in the last chapter’ than ‘The dialogue didn’t work.’ Giving the writer something concrete to look at, and if possible something to compare it to, is the best sort of critiquing.
Sometimes we forget that critiquing isn’t reviewing. We are not telling a potential reader what we thought of the work. Rather, we are telling the author what worked for us and how they might think about fixing the things that didn’t. So, while it’s great to have a hundred errors noted in your manuscript, having some suggestions for how to improve your work is better. In the example above about dialogue, you might indicate why the dialogue sounded different. Was it the length of sentences or the choice of words? Was the language too adult for the age of the character, or did the humour come as a surprise? When offering the writer suggestions about how they might improve their work, remember that what you are offering is just suggestions. Don’t be offended if they decide not to take your advice. They are the author; you’re just offering an opinion.
Our group has been going for around fifteen years and, because we are all professional writers, we started with a strict set of rules. Yours may be different, but here’s what we use:
Being a part of a writing group has changed my life. I’ve made some great friends and improved my writing no end, and not just from comments my colleagues have made on my work. In looking at how other writers do things, I’ve learnt so much about good technique. I am now aware of certain bad writing habits I might have and am confident that the good stuff isn’t too bad either.
Being part of a writers group may not have made the difference between my work being published or not, but it certainly has made a difference about whether I gave up or kept going. Long live writers groups!
There’s a secret to writing killer first chapters, but you probably won’t like it.
The secret is that you have to have something worth writing about.
There, I’ve said it.
You can write thousands of words, buy the latest plotting software, do a hundred drafts and join a dozen writing groups, but unless you care about what you’re writing, you might as well put lipstick on a pig (which, while cute, is really pretty pointless).
This doesn’t mean your characters have to try to end global warming or eliminate child poverty, although they are great ideas. What it does mean is that your central idea, the thing that gets you excited about writing, has to do just that – excite you. That’s because writing is about communication. How you communicate, the ‘mechanics’ of it, are less important.
So, a killer first chapter starts when you find something that gets your creative energies flowing. This could be a great story idea, a challenging issue, a terrific character who won’t leave you alone until you tell her story, or something that just makes you laugh. When you know what it is that you want to say, crafting the first chapter becomes easier. You can cut out things that sound pretty but don’t add to the story. You can also add things that enhance the mood you’re trying to create. Knowing what you’re writing about will tell you how to write it.
My speciality is in writing humorous short stories and picture books. In these short works, each paragraph is like a chapter, and you have to make the first line irresistible. In a novel, you have a little more room to move, but the principle is the same. Grab the reader in the first line and don’t let them go until you’re good and ready. You might want to leave them hanging, wondering what’s going to happen next, laughing, or just reading on because they can’t put the book down.
And this is where the first chapter comes in. It makes it clear to the reader what the book is going to be about.
Here’s an example:
Zelda had a plan. She was going to be the first chook in space.
This is the first line of my latest title, Zelda’s Big Adventure, a picture book illustrated by Shane McG and published by Allen & Unwin. The first sentence sets up a question –Who is Zelda and what’s her plan? The second sentence is really a joke, but it tells you that not only is Zelda a chook, she’s a very special one who wants to be an astronaut. So, this is a case where humour hooks the reader, and if they like the joke, they’ll keep reading.
Not every story can start with a joke or weird concept like a chookonaut, but every story has to have a central idea or character that makes it worth telling.
Here’s another example:
In the holidays before the dreaded term at my school’s outdoor
education campus two things out of the ordinary happened.
A picture of me was plastered all over a twenty-metre billboard at
St Kilda junction.
And I kissed Ben Capaldi.
This is the opening of Fiona Wood’s outstanding YA novel, Wildlife. Anyone reading this opening will instantly know several things – the protagonist is a young person who is in an unusual situation (the billboard), is about to be taken out of her comfort zone (the ‘dreaded’ term at an outdoor campus) and is of an age where sexuality is going to be confusing, important and ever-present. If that’s the sort of story the reader thinks they’ll enjoy, they’ll keep reading and, unless Wood disappoints them (she doesn’t), they will do so until the end.
So your first chapter is also ‘selling’ the rest of the story to the reader.
If your novel were an old fashioned dress shop (stay with me here) your first chapter is the window display. If you like the black, off-the-shoulder number in the window, you might push the door open and see if they have it in your size. If the shop is full of gorgeous gowns, you’re going to make sure you look at everything; but if the only items for sale are jeans and T-shirts, not only are you not going to buy the dress, you’ll probably want to get out of there pretty quickly and never come back. That’s because the payoff – the jeans and T-shirts – didn’t fulfil the promise the little black dress made.
Don’t do that to your readers. Once you know what kind of story you’re going to deliver, tell them what your intention is. And then tell that story.
Take, for example, the first two paragraphs from one of my short stories:
A chicken walked into the room.
Anna looked up from her Annotated Lewis Carroll Omnibus, and gaped. Yes, it really was a chicken, a curvaceous Issa Brown if she wasn’t mistaken, but what was it doing striding through her front door? And why did it appear to be shushing her as it slipped behind the coats on the hatstand?
What this extract tells you (apart from the fact that I really like chooks) is that this story is going to be a bit oddball. On the first page we know that Anna has found a chicken walking into her apartment, and even though that’s strange enough, this chook is confident – it ‘strides’ – and seems to be telling her to keep quiet. So, we know something out of the ordinary is going to happen. The reader, if they like that kind of story, will read on to find out if Anna is hallucinating (she isn’t), or there’s something very different about this chook (there is).
The other reason a first chapter has to kick backside is that as a writer you owe it to your readers to write a really good story. That’s your job as a writer. Your readers, be they publishers or the general public, are busy people with lots of other things that can distract or entertain them. They don’t want to waste time reading stories that don’t get them excited. If they hate your work, they’ll just ignore it. However, if your reader loves it, given we’re all so connected to social media, chances are they’ll tell their network about it. With a bit of luck, you might even end up with a strong following of readers who inhale everything you write.
So, if you want to engage your readers, and make sure they read all the brilliant stories you’re writing, write about things you are passionate about. Then write a first chapter that sets the tone for the rest of the book.
Oh, and include a chicken if you can.
A great way to improve your writing and to gauge if it’s meeting your expectations is to surround yourself with people who are as immersed in writing as you are and who will read your work and give you constructive feedback.
I call these amazing people ‘critical readers’. They’re called that for two reasons: firstly, because they offer constructive criticism of your work and secondly, because they are a critical part of improving your craft.
Critical readers are not your mum, your partner or your best friend. They are fellow writers or subject matter experts who will read your work and critique it in detail.
Your family and friends might say unhelpful things such as: ‘It was okay’ or ‘I didn’t understand it’, but critical readers will say really useful things like: ‘You have a tendency to use dangling modifiers’ or ‘I found the dialogue credible’ or ‘I didn’t believe that your 14th century protagonist would know about nuclear fission’.
Critical readers are the writer’s best friend (after a good dictionary, a cup of coffee and lots of great books). They tell you when something works or doesn’t, and why it does or doesn’t.
Finding critical readers can be hard, but they are out there. You just need to know where to look, and that’s in places where writers gather.
So where to start?
Libraries often host writing groups and run writing courses. Their community engagement person would be a great person to talk to.
Or you could try writers’ centres – they often have lists of who convenes writing groups in your area.
In Australia, there are writers’ centres in each state, as well as national professional associations. The following links will take you to the state writers centres:
These links will take you to some of the best professional organisations for writers and illustrators:
If you go to conferences, classes and seminars run by these organisations, you will meet other like-minded writers. Join in the conversations and meet new people. You may just form a writing group and find your very own critical readers.
Blogs and newsletters are also great sources of information, and are far too numerous to list here.
Reach out to other writers, commit to being a critical reader for them, and pretty soon you’ll have the beginnings of a great professional relationship.
Oh, and your writing might just improve.
