Publishing Journals

I have been learning a little about publishing journals lately through some classes I’m taking in Creative Nonfiction and Poetry. I want to write down some of the things I have found out about them, in case any reader-wanna-be-writers out there can benefit from the information.

-          Most journals require you (the author) to pay them something when you send in your piece. It ranges in price depending on how well-known the journal is. I’ve heard as little as 3$ to as much as hundreds.

-          Do your research on the journal:  you don’t want to build a bad reputation by having been published by a not-so-good journal.

-          You don’t get paid for getting published in a journal. But most of them run contests, so if you’re very good you can win as much as $1000. Also, you’re usually given a few complimentary copies of the journal that you get published in.

-          There are submission dates, deadlines, and guidelines that you will need to follow.

-          Keep your audience in mind: many journals are based out of Universities, and are edited by Grad students there.

-          Careful what you sign: some journals have you hand over the rights to your piece, or give the journal the right to edit your piece at their discretion.

-          However, most journals give you back the rights to your piece once it’s finished being published.

-          Every journal has its own “image”. Check into the types of pieces they’re publishing- are they edgy? Political? Happy-endings? Don’t waste your time sending your work to a journal that doesn’t typically publish your style.

-          Journals (if they accept you) want “first rights” to your piece – they want to be the first journal to publish you because if you get famous that will reflect well on them.

-          It could take the journal months to respond to your submission. In the meanwhile, see below

-          You’re apparently not supposed to send your piece to more than one journal at a time. Meaning, while you’re waiting for Journal X to get back to you, you can’t send your submission to Journal Y. If Journal Y accepts your piece, then Journal X wants to accept your piece too, Journal X will be angry at you and possibly tarnish your name amongst the publishing journal community.

That last one is what surprised me the most. I was thinking about sending my pieces out, but I don’t want to wait several months between attempts.

Originality

I want to talk about originality. Not because I have some conclusive statement on it, but because it’s an important topic.

The Hunger Games movie is coming out in March, and I’m quite excited. I thought that the first two books were very good – fast paced, pretty good characters, sufficient complicity of plot. (we will not mention the third book. I am trying to ignore its existence). However, my younger sister is constantly pointing out that the books’ idea is not original. There was a book/movie (With Arnold Schwarzenegger and Richard Dawson!) called The Running Man. This has some basic things in common with the Hunger Games: future post-apocalyptic U.S., evil government, put people in a televised competition to the death as a way of subduing the rebellious. There was another book before that which she mentioned, that again has the same plot features.

I’m perturbed over this. I believe in the old adage “nothing is new under the sun”. So, loosely speaking, I think that some themes and ideas will come up again and again.

Does time make any difference? The Running Man came out in 1982. Since most younger people are unfamiliar with it, is that why the Hunger games can get away with a very similar storyline? I’ve also heard that the Aragorn books are pretty similar to the Lord of the Rings. I’m just curious about what circumstances decide what things are too similar and what things can get away with it.

Making Dialogue natural

Realistic Conversations

Let’s keep talking about what makes good dialogue. As I worked on the last blog, I started to realize that a big theme of making good dialogue is making realistic dialogue. Basically, anything strange, awkward, or unnatural will cause the reader to stumble.  We have to make a choice to ignore the fact that the conversation is weird, and just take from it what we can. Don’t do this to your reader.

 Most people think that when things are written you need to use a formal writing voice all the time. There are many exceptions to this rule, and one of the biggest is dialogue. Dialogue should sound natural, the way real people talk. Granted, the topics of their conversations might be a little wild, hence the story, but no one wants to read a conversation that they can’t imagine themselves into.

My suggestion: Listen. Listen to real life conversations. Develop an ear for peoples’ styles. Give your characters voice styles too. Listen to what idioms are used. Listen to what sounds natural, and what grabs your attention.

 I’ve noticed many idioms that have gone out of use just in the last 10 years. Pay attention to these things.  Out of date idioms are corny.

There is one big difference between talking in real life and the talking that happens in a story. In real life, people talk all the time. Most of it is unnecessary. We do it because we’re social being s and we like to interact with others.

I’ve been told that in writing, everything needs to have a purpose. Dialogue should be used to further the plot. I don’t know if I agree. Dialogue is a great opportunity to communicate things to the reader. However, I find it very annoying when this is obvious. Some passages you can just point to and realize that the author only put it in to convey something to the reader; it’s not a conversation that would happen naturally. Be subtle.  

On Dialogue (post for week 11/13-19)

One thing that I wanted to write about was dialogue. Some authors are very good at it, while others make the dialogue seem awkward and obvious.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a topic I have paid much attention to independently, so I can’t think of any specific examples of authors who are better at creating dialogue than others. Still, there are some generalizations that authors should keep in mind.

-          Variety o f sentence structure is good, but at the end of the day, the author will need to write “He said” and  “she said” more often than they want to. The truth is, readers skim over these things. Repeating sentence patterns, at least when it comes to dialogue, is a necessary evil.

-          That being said, there is still plenty of room for creativity. If ‘said’ is in every single line of a long conversation, we will notice. Use stronger words that will convey more meaning where appropriate. Just don’t overdo these alternate words. What makes them special and effective is when they’re used sparingly.

-          Mix up the sentence pattern. Put the speaker’s name at the beginning, end, middle, or not at all.

-          I get annoyed when reading long conversations that don’t give any physical references. Perhaps it’s because I’m a visual person, but I like to be reminded of what the scene looks like. What are the body postures of the characters? Do their faces look intense, pensive, listless? Are they sitting or standing? Shift their positions a bit- no real person stands still that long. There are endless opportunities to add helpful information within a scene of dialogue to give it more life.

-          Be REALISTIC! I’m going to write my whole next blog on this topic, because it’s so important. Conversations that sound…like a book… don’t sound like people. And like I said earlier, we want characters that we can relate to. Characters that we feel like we can interact with. If their conversation is strained and obvious, this connection from character to reader is broken.

Pacing a plot

I think one quality of good writing, which often goes unnoticed, is pacing. Right now there’s a trend that tells writers to “start with a bang” and continue at a high pace right from the beginning of the story. I guess with today’s fast-paced society, we don’t want to read books that take very long to get going. Nevertheless, I will point out that that’s a trend. Older books don’t start like that because it wasn’t necessary.
There is a balance needed when it comes to pacing. One extreme is the story that starts so suddenly that it never allows the reader to catch their breath. They read it very quickly, hoping things will make sense a little further on, but eventually discover that the author has no intention of explaining himself. I don’t think this is good. Although it may feel cliché to fill the first couple chapters with a lot of details and explaining, it is necessary. The reader needs to build their confidence in your story, you can’t assume their confidence. That’s a delicate process.
The other extreme is the kind of story that is long and drawn out. The reader feels like it takes as much as half of the book to explain things before the story gets going. Little hints of the plot may be given along the way, but the reader can sense the lack of momentum. To me, it feels like these authors have wasted my time.
Personally, I feel that the best books are those that balance out these extremes. The reader is drawn in, enticed in. Not forced in. The book balances mystery and fact so that the reader is never too confused but never too knowledgeable. It’s just enough so that we’ll want to keep reading. Usually something big needs to happen to get the story off its feet, otherwise, its not much of a story. But the “big” things need to keep happening, with increasing frequency, drama, and importance as the story progresses. Until you reach the climax.
Although, I have to note that the desire for a single, grand climax is probably a personal preference. I have read books that conclude with a series of small and interesting climaxes, and I think these are good too. They are just not as common. Personally, I love the stories that build to something epic. I love that feeling of passing the point of no return, knowing that the characters I’ve grown to love will never be the same after what happens next.

Throwing us off

I like to read books. There’s a calming effect to the casual glance along the pages. There is also an emotional exchange. The reader chooses to suspend their disbelief so that they can follow the story. The reader makes a mental commitment to follow the storyline. Because of this, I get annoyed when authors do things that jolt readers out of that mental state.

There are a few things that could cause this result. One, words that don’t fit the surrounding world of the story. For example, an overly fanciful name for an average character in today’s world.

Another thing that could “lose” the reader is inconsistency. Surprises can be great for your story, but not if they come unexpectedly and leave no mark on the rest of it. For example, a character who has been mostly timid and unsure of themselves should not have a bold confrontation with their boss, then return to being timid without any explanation to the reader about this sudden uncharacteristic shift. It’s different if the character grows from or towards that experience, but not good if it just suddenly happens.

A sudden reference to the “real world” can be very jarring if it’s not done tastefully. References like this are usually intended to be humorous. Perhaps the author is poking fun at another author. Or they simply want to make us laugh by letting our characters experience something that we the reader have experienced. These references need to be subtle to work. And of course, you’d need to refer to something that most people are going to get.

Unrealistic characters and circumstances will also exhaust our suspense of disbelief. Characters and situations should be cool, yes, but if it’s so over-the-top that the reader is constantly comparing the them to reality and saying “this could never happen” then the reader isn’t plugged in anymore.

Of course, a lot of this will depend on the reader themselves. Some readers are more cynical. Some become absorbed in the story more easily than others. Some are more forgiving than others.

4 books

Tonight I can't sleep, so I'm going to blog a little randomly. (Trying to distract myself. Not sleeping really makes me annoyed)

I have 4 books out at my bedstand right now. It's a little strange for me; I usually finish one then start another. But different things came up so I now have four going. The first one I started out of a campaign to read all the unread books on my bookshelf. They're aren't many, I only buy books that I truly love. So the unread books are all hand-me-downs. It's a spiritual book about overcoming negative self-image. I guess it was boring me because I'm not having major problems with my self-image right now.

The second one I started is the autobiography of Harpo Marx. My family and I LOVE the Marx brothers movies. I read a biography about the whole family a couple years ago called “Monkey business” (A stolen title from one of their movies). I've never enjoyed a nonfiction book so much. This autobiography though got a little boring once Harpo got past describing his childhood. I'm sure I'll come back to this; both of my parents said it's a very good book. Maybe I got bored because I already read a biography of their lives.

The third one I started because I was visiting home from college, and had forgotten the Harpo Marx book at my apartment. “The Outcast of Redwall” My sisters and I grew up on the Redwall series; it was our first great passion in reading. My older sister used to read outloud to us younger two during car rides. I haven't read the Outcast for myself before in fact. Brian Jacques (RIP, sniff) was a great writer. But like I mentioned before, he tends to use all the same characters with new names, and all the same plot elements with slight variation. I don't think I'll get around to reading all 17 of them. My favorite is Mariel of Redwall. (I had a copy of this one. My mom sold it by mistake)

The fourth book I actually haven't started yet. My roommate suggested it and I want to read it before she gets annoyed. “Emotional Purity” I've read some about the concept before in other books but I haven't read it in a book on it's own. It's short. Should be good.

My expected route:

Finish “Outcast”, go to “Emotional Purity”, back for Harpo Marx, and (maybe) finish Negative Self-image.