Critiqued - Pitchwars

[davidgillon]

I had my first chat session with KT Hanna, one of my two Pitchwar mentors today.

Apparently I have a voice.

Apparently it says things, interesting things, but says them repetitively.

Apparently I also have a problem with the passive voice and a tendency to overtag speech.

Interestingly the problems differ between which character's POV the chapter is written from (rotating first person POV), apparently one character does more telling than the other.

KT talked a lot of sense, and the problems were ones I was aware of, I just haven't been as successful in dealing with them as I thought I had, but she seems really enthused by the story and convinced we can turn it into something stronger.

The repetition problem is one you can probably see in my writing here. I'll say something, then wonder if I've made it entirely clear, so add another clause, and then I'll take another look, and add another clause still, and end up with an incredibly complex sentence saying the thing four times over.

I have wondered if it's neurodiverse in nature, a problem with being unsure about understanding the way other people will parse and understand the sentence and trying to belt and braces a solution. I mentioned that to KT and she noted a friend of hers, both an author and possessed of an AS diagnosis, does have similar issues.

So basically the plan is I use the next three weeks to do a complete redraft taking into account what KT says, killing passive voice and repetition, retagging speech and adding in physical description where needed, then KT will go in and do a line edit. But first I rework chapters 1 and 2 as a prototype by Monday (I suspect it'll be by Friday).

I also had feedback from Julie Sondra Decker, one of the mentors who turned me down, which I wasn't expecting. Mostly overlapping with what KT said, but with some really good structural advice on my query. I even agreed with her reasons for turning me down (she doesn't read detective stuff).

Slightly nervously contemplating the new draft....

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

"If I had more time, I would have made it shorter."

It's so hard to pare away all the extra bits!

Best wishes, and I'm glad you're getting such useful advice.

[davidgillon]

That's one of my favourite quotes!

[redbird]

That sort of repetition is also something that a lot of people are trained to do, and it can be hard to stop.

I'm copyediting scientific research papers these days, and a lot of them seem to be

Abstract

1. Introduction, in which we state what our current research is about and what we are going to show

2. Methods, where we tell you how we did it

3. Results, in which we go into detail about what we promised in the introduction, and repeat some of the methods

4. Conclusion, in which we (after optionally restating a bit of the introduction) repeat a chunk of part 3

This is pretty obvious when I'm looking at the papers on a word-by-word level with attention to grammar and punctuation, because I find myself making the same change to the same sentence two or three times.

[davidgillon]

Actually now you've made the point it's reminded me that's precisely what we were told to do in presentation training:

Tell them what you're going to tell them.
Tell them
Tell them what you've told them.

A friend has done presentation training with the Civil Service, which was presented by some world-renowned guru of presentation training, and I think he had them repeating the message even more than that (9 times?)

[capri0mni]

When I was in my second or third year of my Bachelor of Arts degree, I took a course in Greek History: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings.

It only took me a couple of weeks to realize that the professor gave a new lecture on Monday, and then repeated himself -- word for word on the other two days. So I took careful notes every Monday, and spent Wednesdays and Fridays practicing my drawing by copying the map of Greece that was on display behind him, getting as detailed as I could with the coastlines and islands. :-)

BTW, I was taught "Tell them what you will tell them, tell them, tell them what you told them" method of speaking, too.

That's a really good strategy for a nonfiction lecture, because you have a captive audience for a very short time, and you'll likely never see them again (and you don't know who's distracted by what inside their heads -- or maybe the person fidgeting and coughing two seats over). So repeating yourself is good reinforcement to make sure you're "Heard" over all that background noise and static.

But people pick up a novel because they want to be distracted -- by the rollicking adventure you've promised to tell them. Like a six-year-old in the backseat, they want to know "Are we there, yet?" or to see really exciting things out the car window. If you stop every few minutes to pull over and double check the map, they'll be really annoyed with you. And anyway, because this is a book, and not a lecture, if they miss a detail the first time around, they can always go back and reread something -- if that's a detail that's exciting enough that they want to.

... Now, if I can only learn to follow my own advice... *sigh*

[kaberett]

Luck :)

[hilarita]

Sounds promising!