Who has read Twilight?

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Is that something, or what? The writer breaks all the rules and you can't put the damn thing down. I've never seen so many adverbs on one page, ever. And the damn thing still holds your interest.

So, it's not about the writing, but the story.

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1. If it's about vampyres, not likely ever.

Just not a genre I care about.

So how does one "break all the rules" and still get published, without an editor correcting it all back to the rules? ;)

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2. She actually wrote an explanation about it.

It was one in a million experience. Here's a link to her website. Scroll down to the section called

"Getting Published"

http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/twilight.html

[kentauros]

3. Yeah, it looks like she mostly had a LOT of luck on her side

:)

Now if only we could patent that luck-making ability ;)

Actually, what came to mind when you mentioned "breaking the rules" wasn't in getting through the publishing process, but the literary style, like pointed out in that thread here: "A Reader's Manifesto". I still don't understand how all that experimental stuff ever gets read at all...

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4. I think the first rule was that she knew her audience.

Teenage girls. And she hit all the bells and whistles. Maybe the rest of us just need to find the right publishing company? Avoid all the high-brow crap unless that's who we want to impress?

[kentauros]

5. So far, I haven't attempted to publish anything

nor to write to publish. Like with that fanfic thread, that's about all I've done, even with "spin-off" stories. I think I'm going to "practice" for a while longer until I'm confident I have both a quality and a genre I like and think I can market. Even with what I have written, I get discouraged when all I get is a handful of reviews, though the majority are good reviews, i.e., they liked it. I need to learn how to accept that for what it is. Luckily, I continue to write anyway ;)

How do we find that audience, would be the other question, especially if the assumed positive sources aren't responding...

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6. Actually, Stephenie Meyer wrote for herself.

It was a story that amused her, very character driven. So I might want to amend my previous statement. If you don't already have a genre that drives you, write a story that means something to you. Find someone willing to read your manuscript to give you feedback, hopefully, someone that is in the target audience. And see the reaction.

[kentauros]

7. I feel I write for myself as it is.

I just do like feedback, and too often get the "I'm not qualified to give a review" kind of response when all I really want is, "Did you like it and would you buy it as a book?" ;) And I do have a genre that drives me. I am trying to turn a normally ancient story (djinni/genie) into something with more spirituality mixed in, though in a way that can still be read as fiction for those that don't have such beliefs. It's a challenge I do enjoy since it also makes me evaluate what I believe to be true or how it would work in the situations I create.

I do have a good friend that is becoming a published writer. He goes to all the conventions, is working on getting an agent and is writing in the genre he prefers (sci-fi) as he discusses it with agents and such at the conventions. I have let him read my work and other than pointing out that I like to possibly over-explain how the unexplainable could work, he enjoys what I write. I do realize I should find someone that is impartial, not a friend, and I'll get there. I write because I enjoy it, telling a story, getting my characters into situations I haven't fully plotted out and writing them out of it in a mostly believable way. Writing isn't currently my income, though it would be great if it developed into that ;)

So-o, what's your story? You like Stephenie Meyer's work; is the underworld genre what you write within? I suppose if someone wrote a vampire/underworld book akin to Young Frankenstein, I could get into that :D

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8. I like that she can write crappy and still hold a reader's attention.

It's inspiring.

In my own writing endeavours I tend to over-explain, but that's because all the how to books said to provide details and show, don't tell. After reading Meyer's writing, which is very primitive, yet effective, I understood what I was doing wrong. Ohhhhh! details, not details. Shooooow, don't tell. I get it now. And probably the most important thing I picked up is writing in first person. I was writing in third person, and not getting anywhere with it. I bored myself rereading it.

I realized that even a flawed perspective would work if I put it all through the main character's eyes. So, I developed the character, gave reasons for her perspective to justify her approach and conclusions. Assuming the experiences the character went through holds true, then her conclusions are valid.

The only problem is, that I now have to rewrite everything in the first person.

You might say I'm writing a fiction based on fact that may cause friction. So I call it a fraction.

[kentauros]

9. There's a petroleum engineering process called "fractionation";

it's how they crack the crude oil into all the fuels and other substances to make plastics ;) It uses high-heat and high-pressure in a vessel several storeys tall. (My father is a retired petroleum engieer.)

So, when you're into your writing, is that an "infraction"? :P

I've done some first-person, but never really liked it for serious story-telling. I think it really depends on just how you are trying to tell the story. I am so used to narrative, third-person, that I hardly notice when I am rereading. I'm just paying attention to the world I'm in. In one semi-fanfiction (a spin-off of a spin-off) "book" I started a few years ago I decided to hold it to the main character's perspective only, such that you only knew her thoughts, and none of the other characters' minds. It is difficult restricting myself, but I think it works. It's still third-person, though I don't know how many other authors have taken the telling in that style. It seemed weird to me at first, but I got the hang of it and kept going. I will likely just post it online eventually as it is technically fanfic, but we'll see as I do have a tenuous connection to someone associated with the original copyrights.

Since I've never read Meyer's work, you may have to relate to me what you learned about how to present details without getting too detailed. I didn't quite get that.

Oh, and there's a thread in The Lounge quoting some news today of Stephen King dissing Meyer's work. Here's the link if you want to look:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x8481962

I'm going to go open my Office 2003 copy of Word and see if I can figure out the pagination thing you're talking about in that other thread. You might want to say which version of Word you have, since 2007 only seems to be understood by Microsoft engineers.

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10. Before I read that King critique, I have to add a few pre-statements.

King is the master of character development. He can create a character that you care about in one paragraph...and then kill him off in the next. And it moves the story forward.

So, before I read his critque, this is what I predict. He won't get it. He won't get it because this story is written for teenage girls who are more into romance, than they are into science or fantasy fiction. "Science fiction for fans who don't like science fiction." That kind of thing. The book is written by a woman that knows how to get into the heads of lovestruck little girls. I sometimes read their comments on the various on-line websites and I can't stop laughing, because these kids really think they own those characters. It's a physiological kind of thing she tapped into.

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11. Oh, he did get it.

It's about the audience. He figured it out. I'm not sure why people are freaked out about her writing. Girls read a lot worse with all the text messages they send to each other.

Okay, about detail and show, don't tell. Well, let me just speak generally what I examined in her writing that helped me. Meyer is writing in first person and my story lends itself to that style. I actually had to go through the books and write down the number of times she wrote "I <insert verb>" to try to get my head out of third person and into first person. I also had to teach myself to stick to past tense. "was" and a lot of "ed." She does that a great deal, in a simple way, to great effect.

When I write in the third person, I tend to write EVERYTHING that's going on. The setting, thoughts from the past, thoughts from the present. It just gets to be too much. In the first person, I don't go into that much detail on the small stuff. Just what the character would see at a glance. A sentence or two maybe. That forces me to get the right details into that sentence or two, and I combine both adjectives with emotive words to try to establish a mood. Just off the top of my head, as an example, she uses marble, stone and cold a lot to describe her vampires. Some people may think it's weird, but, I think she's using them as a metaphor for what they're like emotionally.

Showing. I use to show everything. Now, if there is some special bit of information I want to thread into the story, I find a way to make it important to the character to figure out. If its not important to the character, it's not important to the story.


Oh, also about explaining too much. The one thing I learned about the Meyer books, is that I was trying to write the entire story in the first chapter. Dropping a lot of hints in mundane things the character was doing. It didn't work. The people who were kind enough to read my story (and thank you all who did. Especially the negative critique was helpful) said that they didn't know what the story was about, or who it was about. So now, in the first chapter, you meet the main character and you find out from the beginning, what the story is about. Also, I have a story board I use to try to help me figure out when I'm going to introduce information.

Also, I'm not afraid of long chapters anymore. I use to freak if they were longer than eight pages. Meyer broke that fear. She has very LOOOOng chapters.