Book Critiques– Beta Reading, How to Take Criticism, and Much More. A Discussion

Join us, two authors, to discuss the ins and outs of beta reading, from a writer and a reader perspective. This is the second post in a series on reviewing and critiquing. You can find our first one here, with details on reviewing. Like last time, we are J.S. Fields and William C. Tracy. Here’s a little about us and beta reading:

WCT: I’m William C. Tracy, author of a series of space opera science fantasies, collectively known as the Dissolutionverse, in which a series of planets are connected by music-based magic instead of spaceflight. The more I’ve written, the more I’ve included diverse people and genders to make my worlds more vibrant and real. I also have an epic fantasy coming out next year from NineStar Press.

As I’ve gotten more into the writer community, and specifically the self-publishing area, I’ve been involved with critiquing others’ books, both early versions and ARCs (Advance Reader Copies). I generally like to read science fiction and fantasy, but I’ve also critiqued a few romance and contemporary fiction. The principles are the same.

As I also work in engineering, I’ve learned a lot about the iterative process of design, and so I was able to translate that to my writing. It’s certainly helped in learning to accept that multiple drafts are necessary before a story (or design) is finished.

J.S.: I’m J.S. Fields, author of the hard sci fi/space opera series Ardulum (Forewords INDIES finalist and Gold Crown Literary Society finalist in science fiction). I also write science nonfiction. I recently got an agent (yay!), and moonlight as a reviewer for the New York Journal of Books.

Like most writers, I started doing beta reads and critiques when I began writing as a way to get feedback on my own work. I’ve been a member of a long-running critique co-op for a few years now, but also have a number of stable beta readers (and beta read for a few other authors as well).

My day job is a professor in the hard sciences, so I am very used to being given critical feedback, and giving it as well. Peer review is a brutal, brutal thing sometimes, but I think it prepared me well for fiction writing.

Basic principles of reader feedback and critiquing

WCT: Critiquing is a different animal from reviewing, which we talked about last time. Even if you are not a writer, you are trying to give impressions back to the author, not to other readers. It’s a switch from just enjoying the book to dissecting the book, and your reactions to it. Why did it make you feel this way? Could you have felt a stronger emotion or been more involved in the plot?

There are a couple different types of critiquing, too. A lot of writers have critique groups, where several other people read a chapter or so at a time and give in-depth feedback on that piece. Then there may be an alpha or beta reader, who gets the whole story at a time closer to publication. They give their thoughts on the plot, character, and setting as a whole rather than on individual sections. Finally, there are ARC readers, who are reading a work that is very close to what will be officially published. This is often less for feedback to the author and more to gain a first reader reaction to help publicize the book right when it goes on sale.

J.S.: First off, critique is not reviewing. Crit is meant to help the author, and is not at all meant for reader consumption. At its most basic level, a critique gives the writer one person’s emotions about the piece of writing. When taken with feedback from several other people, the crit can help form a picture of where people are ‘bouncing’ from the work, what resonates, how pacing is progressing, etc.

William has gone into the different types of critiques, but I’ll add a few more. Above what he wrote, there are a few categories of paid readers. The first are technical readers, where a beta reader or critique partner is selected based upon their knowledge of a certain field (I get pulled for this a lot because of my background). These people fix technical issues of worldbuilding, like the physics, the biology, etc. There are also sensitivity readers, who are paid (italics because this involves not just time but also a heavy dose of emotional labor) to read through the work and identify cultural issues. People use sensitivity readers when writing both outside their lane and even when writing in their lane, just to make sure that the experiences presented land as authentically as they should.

How and what should you, as a reader, give as feedback?

WCT: If you are just starting out critiquing—say a friend excitedly gives you something they wrote and asks what you think of it—what do you do? You don’t want to offend them by not liking it, right?

Not necessarily. The first thing is to find out what kind of feedback the author really wants. Do they just want affirmation? In that case, read it and tell the author how proud you are that they finished a story. It’s a hard thing to do, especially at novel length. Maybe mention the parts you liked best, and if they seem comfortable, one part you liked the least, and why.

However, if you ask the author and they say, “no really, give it to me. Tell me what sucks and what’s good,” then you have some work to do. One of the best methods I’ve heard of to give basic feedback is from Mary Robinette Kowal. It’s the ABCD method:

A: Awesome B: Bored C: Confused D: Don’t Believe

Whenever you have a reader reaction—whatever it is, from “That’s cool!” to “Ugh,” to “I hate this character,” to “I don’t get why X did Y,” then try to categorize it in one of the four boxes and make a note with whatever reaction you had. Don’t try to figure out what’s wrong—that’s the author’s job. Just give them your honest feedback as a reader. This keeps you from coloring the author’s perceptions of the story and possibly changing it to something other than the writer intended. Often, what you think was wrong with a scene might be just one aspect of a larger problem in the book. On the other hand, a writer can also change reader’s perceptions of a character by deleting a single word in a description. It’s a complex problem, but that’s what writers do!

J.S.: This definitely varies, but some of the best feedback usually follows a format like William presented, or is a blow-by-blow emotional reaction. This second type is usually accomplished by leaving little notes as you read to tell the author what you were feeling at the time. Even things like ‘ewww no’ or ‘OMG I LOVE THIS’ can help the author know where emotional points are resonating correctly.

You do no favors by sugar coating your comments and reactions. Don’t critique the author, clearly, but all authors must grow a thick skin in order to survive in publishing. They have to learn to take feedback and critique of working drafts is the first place that starts. Be honest (not mean) about what worked for you, what didn’t, and how you felt. Resist the urge to just say ‘I loved it!’ That isn’t helpful at all.

In that same vein, you don’t need to tell the author how to fix something. You can offer suggestions, such as ‘I think I would have liked this more if X did it instead of Y,’ but don’t rewrite whole swaths of text unless you are trying to illustrate a point you cannot manage to do otherwise. New writers, especially, are prone to sterilized works when too many rewriters have had their hands in a manuscript and have overwritten the original text. Give the author feedback and let them decide how to integrate it.

How should authors react to critiques?

WCT: Imagine this: you are giving your precious newborn baby to someone else to hold—just for a moment—and they tell you it’s ugly! You’re going to get defensive, right?

In the world of writers, this is a no-no. DO NOT respond negatively to critiques from your writing group, your critique partner, or your alpha or beta readers. If you asked for feedback, then you have to be open to getting it, bad or good.

Some writers take this even further, and when a writing group meets, the one who wrote the submission for that session is not allowed to speak at all, or defend their work. They might be able to ask some questions after everyone has given their feedback, but that’s pretty much it.

Why so harsh? Because the writer needs to turn off their protectiveness when getting constructive feedback so they can instead focus on fixing problems. Responding to a single critique will bog things down and keep a writer from getting all the information they need to make a better story. Instead, swallow that pride, gather all the feedback in the spirit it was given, and figure out where the collective input points out holes in your story.

Then use it to turn your baby from an ugly mess to a beautiful creation.

J.S.: 100% everything that William said. Don’t defend, don’t explain. If you have to explain something in person, your text has failed. Just listen.

I will add one caveat. If you are writing marginalized characters you will at some point get critique feedback that has obvious bias in it. It can be really tempting to just shout the critique giver down. Definitely do tell them why their feedback wasn’t constructive, but also use it as an opportunity to see how your characters will land with different demographics. For instance, I specifically chose to send my nonbinary fantasy novel through my critique group made mostly of cis white males, knowing that they would miss the more nuanced discussion in the book. Their feedback helped me identify areas where gender needed to be better discussed for a broad audience.

Moving past basic critiquing…

WCT: If you are familiar with everything we’ve talked about so far, there are some more complicated aspects to critiquing we haven’t mentioned.

Being Prescriptive: Remember the ABCD method? What a critiquer is not supposed to do is give ideas or prescriptions of how to fix the problems they’ve found. However, there are cases when this is allowed. Usually, this is when the writing group knows each other very well and has worked together for a long time. They understand some of the common problems that author makes, and some of them may have experience with the same issue.

This also may depend on the skill and experience of the people involved. If a very experienced author is giving feedback to a less experienced one, they may be able to give some simple prescriptions to help lead the newer writer to a quicker fix for their story, rather than struggling through everything alone.

However, if you are that more experienced author, this gives you an extra burden. This is not your story. You may think you can help out this poor newbie with some of the problems obvious in their craft. But make very sure you are not influencing the story they want to write. Offering prescriptions on certain character traits or technical issues with the story is probably alright. But prescribing the direction the story should take leads to taking the story away from that writer. This is the danger, and why you should only prescribe if you are aware of the ramifications.

J.S.: Nothing beats a well-worn critique group where everyone has worked together for a few years and knows each other’s strengths and weaknesses. If you can get into one of these groups, as William said, many of the above rules may not apply.

You can also get down into the weeds a lot more with a critique group. William and I have been in the same group for about two years now, and also beta read for each other. Over time our feedback has changed, especially as we are familiar with the deeper worlds each of us write in. What started as a more formal feedback: ‘I’m unclear what is happening here. This character’s motivation confuses me,’ has morphed into feedback like: ‘EMOTIONS! WHERE ARE THE EMOTIONS? Also X would never do that because she had that thing happen to her so really I think she should just STAB HIM AND BE DONE WITH IT.’

WCT: LOL. This is so true. I think it also helps us as writers to be able to give each other such raw feedback instead of formalized phrases. Often the all-caps and keyboard-banging “WHAT JUST HAPPENED??” when one of us surprises the other is even better in terms of feedback. We get a true “fan” reaction (because of course we are fans of each other’s work) rather than just anyone reading our stories.

In conclusion

WCT: Books are complicated creatures. The popular version is a lone author, slaving for months or years over a draft, which then is sent to publishers and produced into a novel. While it does require a lot of work on the author’s part, often there is a great amount of help from an army of alpha and beta readers, maybe a critique partner, then later developmental editing and copy editing. This is not to mention the revisions the author does alone.

That said, it is primarily the author’s vision. So if you are in the position to offer feedback, do what you can to help that author out. Give your honest opinion, as much or as little as you are asked for. The person writing may or may not take your changes, but know that they are appreciated. When the finished novel is published, take pride that you were a part of it!

J.S.: Your book isn’t ready for submission/agents/publication until you’ve had it go through beta reading and preferably, a critique group. It just isn’t. You need the feedback from other perspectives to help identify problem areas you were not aware of.

In that same vein, you need to critique other’s work in order to grow as a writer. It can seem hard to find time to balance doing critique for others when you barely have time to write, but seeing issues like pacing, head hopping, etc., perpetually crop up in newbie writing can help you avoid those issues in your own work. Time spent critiquing is never wasted. Long term critique groups tend to grow up together, too, which can be a very exciting phenomenon as you all hit those bigger milestones together.

Here’s where you can find our books!

J.S. Fields: Amazon author page Goodreads author page Barnes and Noble Audible Kobo Ninestar Press Smashwords

William C. Tracy: Amazon author page Goodreads author page Barnes and Noble Park Road Books Flyleaf Books Quail Ridge Books

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A TWITTER THREAD ON MARTIAL ARTS AND WRITING

This is the second twitter thread I’ve put together, this time on martial arts and writing. It originally appeared on twitter in a daily format between September and October 2018. I’ve transcribed it to blog format, so it may ramble a little, but I feel it still has some good points about martial arts (including some engineering), writing, and their intersection:

Ok, folks, it’s time for me to ramble on about something I know pretty well, and has connections to my writing. This time it’s: Martial Arts! *cue cheering*

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been practicing Wado Ryu karate since 2002, which keeps surprising me as being quite a while ago. I now run my own dojo, where one of the things I focus on is body mechanics. What is body mechanics, you ask? It’s the way you move, or more generally, the way humans move. Over the last 4-5 years, I’ve been concentrating on this more and more to help my movement in karate. (Standard disclaimer: I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV. I can’t fix your ailments, but I do know a little about how muscles connect, mostly by experimentation.)

With that out of the way, let’s talk about basic motion. Do you lean forward when you walk? Is your back straight? Americans especially have very poor posture, but here’s something you can do to help this:

1. Tuck your hips forward. This is easier shown, but if you point a finger straight out from your belt buckle (or pants button, etc… ), it should point straight, not downward. If it points down, that means you’re sticking your butt out. While it may get you more looks, it’s pretty bad for your back.

2. Once your hips are tucked, your center of balance is more underneath you. This means it’s easier to control where you move next. Why is this important? I’ll get there.

3. Now shoulders. They should be DOWN, not in your ears. Relaxing shoulders can remove upper back aches, pains, and knots. Try this: pull your shoulders up (like I said not to) then back as far as they go, then straight down.

4. You may notice your chest sticks out more when you put your shoulders down as above. That’s good. Once again, you’re aligning your center of gravity directly beneath you. This is very useful for efficient movement.

5. And the last big thing: look forward, not down. Don’t lead with your head. In fact, pretend the top of your head is connected by a wire to the ceiling, and it’s pulling you up, just a little bit.

6. Now put all this together: hips tucked, shoulders back, head up. We’re going to try a very simple exercise to show how this affects you. It’s very hard: WALKING.

First, walk like you usually do. Walk in a straight line forward. Now walk sideways. Now backwards, now turn quickly. How fast can you change direction?

Next, try the same sequence with the changes above. Once you have your balance directly under you, it’s a lot easier for you to change direction, and do so quickly. You’ll have more control over where you move and how fast you do. It also means you’re putting less stress on one part of your body (i.e. your back) because you probably were leaning forward. Lastly, you can move your legs faster, and take bigger steps. It’s more efficient.

To tie this in with books (and to nerd out a little), if you’re familiar with The Wheel Of Time series, I believe this way of walking is “cat crosses the courtyard.” It’s a swordfighting stance described as arrogant and self-assured. Try and you’ll see. Standing like this just *feels* confident.

Now to the writing part. If you want to make your characters’ movements more real, read authors who are martial artists or performers. Jim Butcher, Fonda Lee, and Mary Robinette Kowal are good examples. Read with an eye to their physical descriptions. Knowledge of body mechanics makes you more efficient at doing physical things. It can also make your descriptions more precise.

I’m an engineer, so I like making systems better. This is also why I like teaching karate. At the intersection of martial arts and characters is the *act* of writing. You can use the exercise above to sit in a good position to write. Head up, shoulders back. If you like to stand to write, this definitely applies. If you want to type 2000 words a day, and not have your wrists crumple in agony, posture is important. Get a comfy chair, or a good place to stand, and keep your body relaxed while you type. It will make things go faster. Learn to check if you unconsciously tense up muscle groups (Neck and shoulders, I’m looking at you) while you type. Relax them! It may take some effort to make your muscles relax if you’re used to tensing them.

You can move a lot faster, and with less effort, if you are relaxed. This is one of the basic tenants of marital arts. It also helps while writing. Want to up your words typed per minute? Relax! This is also useful in games of skill, and tense computer games, like Call of Duty, Overwatch or Fortnite. Rather than tense up when things get hairy, if you make an effort to relax your muscles, you’ll have a better reaction rate.

(Note: just saying “relax” doesn’t work–it takes effort. First step, be aware of how your body moves. You may need to set a 1-minute timer to check your shoulders, for example. You might be surprised how often you tense up.)

A good way to release tension is through breathing. Take a deep breath, hold it, then breathe out and let your eyes, jaw, neck and shoulders, etc, relax. Figure out what that feels like, compared to your natural state. Releasing tension as above is also important in martial arts. “Relaxing” doesn’t mean going limp, but using the least amount of muscle effort required to keep your limbs where they should be. Any more requires too much energy.

My students sometimes struggle with tension (in fact, I talked about it in class a few weeks ago). To me, there are 3 “levels” of tension: Rigidly Tense: you can’t move, Completely Relaxed: you fall over, and Engaged, but not tense. This third one is the one you want, most of the time. It’s as if you have a sort of tight elastic band between muscles and joints, without actively tensing, and without losing connections. It helps generate power. This goes back to that walking example above. Call it “engaged but relaxed.” Exactly like a cat. Ready to sleep, but also ready to pounce on something.

Watch a really good martial artist (Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Jet Li, etc) move and you’ll see this loose connection informing everything they do. They can’t not move like that. It’s trained into them. This type of movement is also (I believe) what a character sees in a fantasy book one they eye up another character and profess them a warrior of some sort. It’s where descriptions like “fluid grace” come into play.

“Engaged but relaxed” is also the reason good martial artists are so fast. Relaxation is tied to speed. Here’s another exercise: try moving fast while your muscles are tense. I’ll break it down for you.

1. Open a pen that has a cap, then tense your hands up as much as you can. Now try to put the cap back on. You’ll tend to overshoot, and it takes a few tries.

2. Now loosen that tension and do the same thing. You may not be much more accurate, but it probably takes less attempts, and it’s a lot faster. Accuracy comes with practice.

3. Next, imagine throwing your whole arm out with everything tensed vs. when you’re relaxed. Once relaxed, you may not hit every time, but you’ll be a lot quicker to hit the target when you do.

Physics-wise, speed is a function of friction and resistance in a system. The less resistance, the faster you go. Resistance, in part, comes from binding muscles up in opposition to what you want to do (e.g. tensing shoulders). To add more (bio)engineering, when you are looser, your body operates and learns better. This is where accuracy comes in. Back to the example with the pen, did you notice you make little loops in the air while finding the cap? You are (basically) damping a recoil motion. Your body is learning to find the best path from pen tip to cap. This learning takes place best when it’s uninhibited from extraneous motion or resistance.

Uncap and cap a pen a thousand times with no tension and I guarantee you’ll be able to hit the target every time. This is how martial artists train. It’s also how your body learns. Repetition has uses. This is the “wax on, wax off” philosophy. Martial arts teachers often “hide” a really useful self-defense move in a basic exercise. Once the student learns that action and can do it perfectly, a complex move becomes simple.

Teaching this was is rewarding (and hilarious.) My co-teacher and I once broke the most complex section of a kata into individual, meaningless, movements and taught them over a few weeks, without telling what we were doing. When we later learned the kata, we taught up to the hard section and told them, “This will be difficult, but you already know how to do it.” When we demonstrated the full movement, jaws were on the floor, but they could do the movements on the first try, and more important, were already good at them. They still talk about it.

This can apply to writing, as well. If you have a plot problem, or don’t really know what your book is about, break the plot into smaller, unrelated sections. Have a list of character reactions, and write 500 words a day on one. You might write linearly, or not. But once you have words down on the page, whatever order, you can use those character reactions to make a story. If you practice how a character thinks, you can “become” them while writing.

This might seem a little sociopathic, writers in effect “stalking” their characters in order to become them. It also doesn’t seem related to martial arts, but stay with me. Both are ways to learn about a whole from small parts. Just as with practicing martial arts, where we learn in great detail how our bodies move and react to external stimuli, so in writing we get to know our characters so minutely that any external input has an obvious response.

This response to stimuli is what happens when authors talk about their characters going off on their own, or doing the unexpected. They’re just responding in a very specific way to the challenge the author put before them. It often means the character has a very detailed personality, in the author’s mind, even if that personality is not always displayed on the page. Sometimes you have to search for what a character is responding to.

Similarly, if you encode a set of moves in muscle memory in a martial art, then they might come out in unexpected places. Several of my students have told about being surprised at work, and barely avoiding throwing a backfist. The same thing can apply to writing. Learn to know how to write so well that it happens by instinct.

Well, that’s the end of this for now. It may become a “part 1” in the future, if I find I have more thoughts on the matter. I hope you enjoyed it, and maybe learned something!

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A Twitter Thread on Writing

This is a thread I put together on twitter between April and June 2018, and I thought I should transcribe it to blog format, since I think it does have some good information. I cleaned it up, and while it still rambles a bit, but also contains a lot of my impressions about writing structure.

I’ve found writing is like painting. I layer down a background of setting and sketches of characters in the first draft, then paint in more and more detail about the subjects during each revision. Characters have a life of their own, and will mess up your background setting, especially when they won’t keep still! That’s alright, because they’re the stars. Repaint as needed to make the whole painting come to life.

I think of writing like tying new shoes. First you thread the laces through the holes, but then you have to make several passes to tighten everything up. In published books, authors seem to unfold emotions and events at the best possible places. How? The secret is that this is the result of many revisions. Don’t be discouraged–any story can become polished with feedback and editing!

Most important while you’re writing: finish the first draft! Even if you know one part isn’t what it could be, you can go back to it after you’re done and fix it. You might come up with something better after you know the end! Pay attention to little clues you’ve placed subconsciously while writing. Why did a character do or say that one strange thing? Often, these can become great side stories and personality-building moments. Your mind has been trained by the stories our society tells, so even if you’re not sure about your plot, use those nagging feelings that come up! It will likely make a better story. And that little nagging voice? Listen to it. Every single time I write something and that voice tells me “this could be better,” one of my beta readers picks up on that part. I’ve started editing those parts preemptively.

Learning what to edit before sending something out to beta readers doesn’t mean my writing is now perfect. It means beta readers can focus on finding new issues I haven’t realized, making me a better writer. to continue the analogy, writing and editing is like lifting weights. You gradually get used to lifting a certain amount, then you add a little more weight. In this case your prose is now stronger the first time around.

I started my writing weight training by doing NaNoWriMo. I learned I could write 1600 words at a time, if I wanted to. It also helped me set a schedule of writing. Now I get itchy if I don’t write when I’m used to doing so. This sort of “weight training” can be applied to anything, not just writing. For example, I also get itchy if I don’t get my karate practice in.

Training yourself to practice a skill regularly is very rewarding. There’s a saying that embodies this. “The mind is like fire: it makes a good servant, but a bad master.” Fortunately, if you learn how to train yourself like this, it’s very easy to translate to another skill set. It becomes easier to learn new things. One of the most important things I learned in college was not in a specific class. It was learning *how* to learn. That’s the “teach a person to fish” skill. It’s served me well.

Learning how to learn is like knowing “how do I say X?” in a different language. Once you get to the level of using this tool, then you can begin to learn everything else. Don’t be discouraged if you’re not to the “how do I say X” level yet in writing (or anything). Just like learning to speak, you have to first learn basic sentence structure and grammar. Then you can layer on the harder stuff. My perennial recommendation for a starting writer is to read Strunk and White’s “The Elements of Style.” All the way through. Cover to cover. You may not agree with everything Strunk and White say, especially as writing had evolved in the last, oh, 60 years, but you can only start breaking the rules effectively once you know them. It’s certainly alright to break the standard rules of writing–and even encouraged. However, it’s also a higher skill set. Start out with the standard rules, then make your custom deck.

When you get the basics of sentence structure and grammar down, then you can start on the advanced stuff: Character, Setting, and Plot. You can divide these up into many categories, but they are at the root of every story.

Character is the easiest to define and the hardest (for me) to nail down. We all know what people are like, but describing a character in prose so they feel real is very hard. Setting is worldbuilding. For SFF authors, this is the time to show your Cool Idea, but it can also be a hole you fall into, then never get past chapter one. World Builder’s Disease has struck down many a potential author! Finally, there’s plot. I hesitate to say this is the least of character, setting, and plot, but I’ve read many books I really enjoyed, where nothing much happened. It’s easier to get away with a shallow plot, of the three.

If you have really good characters, or a really Cool Idea, you can bring in a lot of readers. However, if you’re dependent on a tightly woven plot with wooden characters and a standard setting, you might be out of luck. This doesn’t mean you should do away with plot. I plot my books out intricately (a 10-20 page outline per novel). However, that’s just the framework holding the story together. The real stars are the characters and settings.

However, one of the hardest parts of writing (just as in any job) is selling your brand and your work. It’s incredibly hard for artists in general to get their work seen. I’ve gained some experience with marketing over the last few years, since I’ve gotten into self publishing. The hard part is, there are a lot of people creating really cool things and somehow you have to get your voice heard. You can market by shouting to the void for people to buy your stuff, but that rarely works. Even “contest” marketing like giveaways and raffles mostly attract people interested in free stuff. It’s harder to make lasting fans.

One of the best marketing things you can do is connect with other authors and agents and make friends–like actual people you want to hang out with. Find out what they’re working on and promote it to your fans. If you promote other creative efforts, you won’t “lose” money when people buy their stuff. Instead, they’ll be grateful you pointed out another quality piece of art. You might even get more sales/followers/etc…

It’s easy to get jealous of another’s success, but there are plenty of people who want to buy things. By making friends, you also reach new markets. Yes, I said you should make friends and not get carried away with marketing, while also saying you can use your friends to make money. Welcome to small business. Of course, “use” in this means taking advantage of happy accidents and natural turns in conversation to sell your products. Don’t be a pest about it. Try to determine when people are actually interested in what you’re saying.

This part is tricky. How do you tell when someone is no longer interested? Often, it’s in body language. Crossed arms, feet pointing away from you, or eyes staring rather than focused, can all mean a loss of attention. When in doubt, disengage. Ask about the other person. If the topic comes back to you, then they might be interested in your work.

But this gets us back to writing! Use your observations about people and how their body language lines up (or doesn’t) with what they are saying. It can help fill out your character reactions. If a character is lying, does their body language betray them? Does it make them an unreliable narrator? You can have a lot of fun showing a character saying one thing and their body saying another. You can make a character nervous, or annoying, or courageous, or anything else with a few good descriptions of body language. Remember, show, don’t tell (in most cases).

And now, a bit about work balance. Work balance is something easy to get, well, unbalanced when writing. I have a day job, which means I try to cram in all my writing time when I’m at home. This is fine, except when I have a deadline. When I have a book I need to finish, my free time contracts greatly (just ask my wife…). Writing will take up all the time you give it.

On the one hand, devoting a lot of time to writing means you might be producing Great Works. On the other, if it’s not your primary income stream, you might be holed up somewhere not doing things that need also to get done. There’s only so much time each day and writing as a second job is very demanding. I’ve been writing consistently for the last year and a half (as of June 2018), and I’ll soon have three books published (and five total) from that time writing.

However, getting that many words down, and edited, takes a toll. I haven’t had many free weekends since last September. The yard desperately needs to be weeded. Why do I write, then? Because I can’t not do it. I like writing. However, when I get these two latest stories finished, I’m taking a well-deserved break for a bit. Going to play games and get caught up on the to do list. There is a lot of truth to “refilling the well.” I’ve been writing consistently for about a year and a half now, coming up on 240,000 published words, when my two latest stories come out. That’s a lot of creation. It’s time for me to pay more attention to what other people have created, than what I create. This lets the mind rest, and remix what our society’s artists are saying in their stories.

All writing is a conversation, happening over years and decades. Writing evolves just like anything else. Our stories today could not exist without the ones that came before. Previous stories include mistakes and books that are just bad, or racist, or otherwise flawed. We must realize previous generations erred in removing women, or POC or LGBT characters, so new books can celebrate them. This is how a society progresses. We see what is a problem, then address it. Sometimes it’s painfully slow, or too late. I have hope we will continue to improve ourselves.

I’ve started to infuse my stories with non binary, and queer, and genderfluid characters. Many of my alien species have more (or less) than two genders. It’s a lot more fun to write about these inclusive cultures. After all, what is SFF for, but to experience different cultures and people? It’s oddly similar to real life in that way. The more new things you experience, the more you understand how life works. The converse of this, I think, is also true. If you avoid experiencing new things, then you cannot learn about them. You will be stuck in your routine, doing the same thing, writing the same words. This brings us back to “refilling the well.” If you only write, and you don’t consume others’ works, then you are creating from a limited subset–an echo chamber.

All this points to one of my favorite quotes: “A writer is a reader moved to emulation.” – Saul Bellow

And that’s some of my thoughts about writing! I hope you enjoyed it, and maybe learned something. Let me know what you think!

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